osprey_archer (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
osprey_archer) wrote2009-05-28 09:19 pm
osprey_archer) wrote2009-05-28 09:19 pm
Entry tags:
1. The House on Mango Street
I threw myself a little party today because I just finished Sandra Cisneros’ The House Mango Street, in Spanish. Yes! I read La Casa en Mango Street.
I was so hyped up that I ran out and got Julia Alvarez’s Antes de Ser Libres (Before We Were Free), which is considerably thicker and has chapters that are actually, God help me, eight pages long, so we’ll see how that works out.
But, back to
Take this with a grain of salt; it’s possible, indeed probable, that my affection for this book is influenced by the fact that I didn’t need to resort to the dictionary every third sentence.
However, I did really like it. The House on Mango Street is the story of Esperanza, a Latina girl of about twelve whose family has just moved into their first house. It’s in a halfway shady neighborhood; Esperanza tells the story in the form of a series of vignettes about her friends and the games she plays and the other people in the neighborhood.
Each vignette takes a chapter, and each chapter is very short, two to three pages with pretty big printing. The structure sounds choppy, but it builds to a surprisingly satisfying whole: characters recur and the vignettes connect back to each other like a series of ribbons knotted together.
Most importantly, Esperanza – at least in Spanish – has an excellent voice: believably childish but also clearly growing up. One of my favorite vignettes was a story about a family party Esperanza went to. She had a nice new dress but her mother forgot to get shoes to match, so Esperanza, miserable, sat in the corner with her feet under her chair, refusing to dance because this was not how things were supposed to be.
I could relate to that: I remember sulking because something or other, while fine in its own right, wasn’t going according to the road map in my head. (In fact sometimes I still do it. I am trying to grow out of it.)
A while ago I read a quote from Sandra Cisneros: she said, and I’m paraphrasing, that she wrote her younger characters by peeling back the layers of her mind like layers off an onion until she reached the age she needed. I could see that here, the empathy with the narrator, the understanding that yes, the wrong shoes are that big a deal, and no smug adult superiority about freaking out about such a small thing.
So I liked the book very much. I would recommend it to people who like books about children that aren’t necessarily children’s books; people who like books with odd, interesting, elliptical story-telling methods; and anyone who reads Spanish semi-fluently and wants to practice.
It would also, I think, count for![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
50books_poc, in case you needed more reasons to read it.
I was so hyped up that I ran out and got Julia Alvarez’s Antes de Ser Libres (Before We Were Free), which is considerably thicker and has chapters that are actually, God help me, eight pages long, so we’ll see how that works out.
But, back to
Take this with a grain of salt; it’s possible, indeed probable, that my affection for this book is influenced by the fact that I didn’t need to resort to the dictionary every third sentence.
However, I did really like it. The House on Mango Street is the story of Esperanza, a Latina girl of about twelve whose family has just moved into their first house. It’s in a halfway shady neighborhood; Esperanza tells the story in the form of a series of vignettes about her friends and the games she plays and the other people in the neighborhood.
Each vignette takes a chapter, and each chapter is very short, two to three pages with pretty big printing. The structure sounds choppy, but it builds to a surprisingly satisfying whole: characters recur and the vignettes connect back to each other like a series of ribbons knotted together.
Most importantly, Esperanza – at least in Spanish – has an excellent voice: believably childish but also clearly growing up. One of my favorite vignettes was a story about a family party Esperanza went to. She had a nice new dress but her mother forgot to get shoes to match, so Esperanza, miserable, sat in the corner with her feet under her chair, refusing to dance because this was not how things were supposed to be.
I could relate to that: I remember sulking because something or other, while fine in its own right, wasn’t going according to the road map in my head. (In fact sometimes I still do it. I am trying to grow out of it.)
A while ago I read a quote from Sandra Cisneros: she said, and I’m paraphrasing, that she wrote her younger characters by peeling back the layers of her mind like layers off an onion until she reached the age she needed. I could see that here, the empathy with the narrator, the understanding that yes, the wrong shoes are that big a deal, and no smug adult superiority about freaking out about such a small thing.
So I liked the book very much. I would recommend it to people who like books about children that aren’t necessarily children’s books; people who like books with odd, interesting, elliptical story-telling methods; and anyone who reads Spanish semi-fluently and wants to practice.
It would also, I think, count for
50books_poc, in case you needed more reasons to read it.
no subject
I may have to pick that up just for the style because you're completely right about my interest "strange narrative forms." That's such a great phrase...I feel like I'm talking about little aliens made out of words.
no subject
If you end up reading it I'd be curious to hear what you think.