Blog Post 4, Topic 3

By Patty Swing 

Maxine Hong Kingston and Sandra Cisneros are both writers who have written about their immigrant experience in the United States, however they differ in how their narrator views what they went through. Hong Kingston seems to have held a lot of bitterness and resentment towards her situation while Cisneros’ narrator presented a gradual loss of innocence. This can be seen in their difference in narration style.

The anger in the child’s voice resonates in the way Hong Kingston uses imagery, specifically when she is recalling tormenting the girl who seemed to be a reflection of everything she hated most about herself. “I hated… I hated… I hated… I hated her,” she had repeated (68). She criticizes every detail that connects back to her culture—the younger sister’s haircut, her struggle with speaking, and the way she seemed to embody their Chinese heritage. However, the manner in which she speaks to the younger sister sounds more like she is talking to herself. Hong Kingston separates herself in the text, trying to become more like her Mexican and black friends and mimicking how they acted. She even tries to hide the features that are associated with being Chinese and through most of the text, it seems as if she wished she was never Chinese. By the end of it the excerpt, though, it is revealed that it was not that she hated who she was, but that she hated how unprotected she felt. Because unlike the younger sister, there was no one there to protect her from the “strangers, ghosts, [and] boys” (73).

            Cisneros, on the other hand, uses the stream of consciousness that projects the naivety of Esperanza, the main character. Her thoughts are brief and are simple reiterations of what she is experiencing, and the implications of the events seem to go right over her head, even though it seems clear enough to the audience. In one of the excerpts, “My Name”, the two sisters take advantage of her desire to make friends. “If you give me five dollars I will be your friend forever. That’s what the little one tells me” (80). To her, there is nothing wrong with the proposal; it is reasonable and even cheap. However, the audience knows that they are using her. This naivety and ignorance is also present in “Those Who Don’t” because she notices the way other people behave in the neighborhood where she grows up as opposed to the way her and her family behave when they visit another neighborhood that is unlike theirs. “Those who don’t know any better come into our neighborhood scared… But watch us drive into a neighborhood of another color and our knees go shakity-shake and our car windows get rolled up tight and our eyes look straight” (82). There is an implication that she wants know the reason for that, but then she finishes off with, “Yeah. That is how it goes and goes,” which expresses a confused resignation that she might have to just accept the fact without ever knowing why. Much of what Esperanza witnesses is given the same response because it is like no one seems to want to tell her what is going on. She is being kept in the dark, blindly scrambling for the pieces to a puzzle that everyone around her has already put together and accepted. This slowly makes her resentful of her upbringing and the way things are—the fear, the unfairness, and the reality of it all.

            Both writers’ narratives hold a resentment that stirs bitter feelings toward their different upbringings. This creates an environment where they feel the need to make weapons of their own--a different image for Hong Kingston, a different name for Cisneros—to protect themselves because no one in their family would give them that protection.

Word Count: 634