In the story, “The House on Mango Street”, Sandra Cisneros discusses a child’s life about moving to a new house. The family is constantly moving, and now they have moved into a house on Mango Street. The house is better than the last place they lived in, which was an apartment on Loomis street in which the water pipes broke and they had no water. So the new house on Mango Street is an improvement, however it still isn’t the house the family talked about. The new house is small and worn down.…
"A Long Walk To Water" by Linda Sue Park describes the life of a female child living in poverty. Nya is 11 and Nuer, a rival tribe with the Dinka. She has to walk a very long way to get water for her family because she is a girl. Her younger sister, Akeer gets sick from the muddy water that they all have to drink, because they don't have a well. Then Nya's father, the chief, talks with a visitor and the visitor tells him there is water between two trees.…
“Shells” by Cynthia Rylant is a realistic short story about a fourteen-year-old boy who learns to live with his Aunt after his parents deaths. His Aunt Esther, is his closest family member. After Michael's mom and dad passed away, Esther was the only one that would take the teenager known as her nephew in. Esther and Michael bond over Michael's mom but Esther's sister. They don’t know each other at the start, but finally learn to cooperate.…
In Sandra Cisneros’ “The House on Mango Street”, in the vignette “Born Bad”, Aunt Lupe encourages Esperanza to continue to write because writing will “keep you free”. Writing can be an avenue of freedom in so many ways. Writing has the power to make a person feel as if they are escaping a prison in their mind full of words and phrases that they do not know what to do with. The second they write down those words and phrases they are free of themselves and their thoughts. Another way writing can be an avenue to freedom is by using writing as a way to communicate your feelings and viewpoints.…
The idea of home and its importance in The Arrival, Sonora and The Faith Healer of Olive Avenue A person is influenced by several cultural, material or emotional aspects that help building a personality and are part of someone’s self-definition. One of these factors can be considered home, and it has a big role in The Arrival by Shaun Tan, Sonora by Hannah Lillith Assadi and The Faith Healer of Olive Avenue by Manuel Muñoz. A close analysis to the meaning of home and what it represents to each story can be seen as a space or place which characters depart and return, each one of them with a different association to what they call home.…
In the novel The House on Mango Street, protagonist Esperanza is discontented due to her unfulfilled expectations and her unwillingness to belong, but eventually learns to accept her place in Mango Street. Esperanza’s initial expectations for her new house were raised too high, and dealt a heavy blow to her morale when they went unfulfilled. When Esperanza recalls her parents saying that one day they would have a house with “at least three washrooms” and “a great big yard and grass growing without a fence” but then realizes that the house “is not the way they told it at all” (Cisneros 4). Esperanza's hopes were raised for nothing.…
It takes a moment in your life to have a self realization that will impact you for the rest of your life. In the text, “ Chasing Fairy Tales” by Lauren Fulmore she portrays the narrator as a little girl who goes through a moment in her childhood that changed her whole outlook on life. She recounts a series of adventures from her younger days to the accidental discovery of a “magical” truth. The author uses detailed examples to explain her main idea of the story.…
“Not In My Backyard:” Southern Concern on Northern Bottle-feeding Canadian scientists imported much of the discourse concerning the “commerciogenic malnutrition” occurring in developing countries to examine the issues of infant health in the Canadian north. In 1980, in an article in Globe and Mail, Dr. Schaefer argued that the “trend in the Third World towards the use of infant formula, with corresponding increases in malnutrition, infections and death, was also occurring to a milder degree ‘right in our own backyard, the Canadian North.’” Thus, the very real issues with bottle feeding were no longer presented as external to Western society but internal in the Canadian north. Discussions of Inuit lifestyles, northern environments, and southern Canadian action are echoed throughout the printed media during this period.…
Richard Ramirez, “The Night Stalker” Richard Ramirez was born on February 29, 1960, in El Paso, Texas. The mother that gave birth to him was Mercedes Munoz and the father of Richard is Julian Tapia Ramirez. They both met each other when they were fourteen and eventually fell in love and got married in 1948. Richard was the youngest of five children and as he was going up he had a bad childhood life.…
You may not know what your destiny is, or where your home will be. Home is where you have your family, friends, and the people you love. Grace is going to find out where her home is and where she belongs. This story is a mysterious and adventurous.…
The story “Leaf by Niggle” by J.R.R. Tolkien is a very complicated story. In this story Niggle, the main character, is a painter. The story begins with him starting to paint what he considers his masterpiece, a painting where a road leads to a tree and this to a beautiful landscape. Parish, his neighbor, asks him to go and get him a doctor and a builder in town because his wife is sick, and the roof is leaking due to lost tile blown away by strong winds. Although Niggle felt like he was being bothered, he did his neighbor the favor.…
This problem appeared in the newspaper about a month ago, but I overlooked the article. Just recently I saw the article on the net. The headline is 'Change to ethics textbook has bakeries up in arms.' The phrase 'up in arms' means very angry.…
Cisneros, having grown up in America, often experienced rifts between her Mexican parents and their cultures as well, and this is reflected in her writing. In “Only Daughter” she writes, “Being only a daughter for my father meant my destiny would lead me to become someone’s wife. That’s what he believed.” Here, cultural values clash as Cisneros recounts the conflicts she has faced in her life due to different ideologies in within her household. Similarly, in “Woman Hollering Creek”, the main character feels isolated from both her father and husband due to the oppression she feels under the traditional Latino values that dictate a woman as property to the men in her life.…
One piece that we read this year in LCS that has stuck in my memory was the poem Behind Grandma’s House by Gary Soto. While we did not spend a ton of time on this piece, this poem made me think on a deeper level, and as a result has stuck in my mind. What caught my attention in this poem was the ending when the grandmother punches the boy square in the face. In addition to seeming to being unexpected, the Grandma’s actions made me consider the morality of hitting children. In 2016, society has a very negative view towards hitting children.…
“House Taken Over” by Julio Cortázar is about two middle aged siblings living in their ancestral house together and describes their daily routines during the tragic time when everything was magically taken away from them, including their house by an some entity that represents fear. The story presents the loneliness, love, and the fear that takes place in both Irene and her brother that contributes to the overall depiction of the story. Irene and her brother are presented as very secluded people that don't want to change their lives, unless they are forced to. From the start they both were more introverted because they don’t go out and socialize with people; they also just stay home. They didn’t have jobs because they were given money from…