Blog Post 4-Topic 4

Sandra Cisneros’ The House on Mango Street is a book that in a series of multiple short chapters, tells the story of a young Mexican American girl, Esperanza. It is a coming of age story, and talks about different events that happened while she lived in her neighborhood and about the local people. The book has become renowned in the US since it dives into the immigrant experience, and Chicano culture. As the daughter of two Mexican immigrants, I can see the ways in which this book hold true to the culture, and although it does portray a few negative stereotypes, the book is still describes an experience that many first generation families know all too well, along with stories that everyone can resonate. For example, names for first generation children can become issue.Growing up, my experience at home was not exactly the same as Esperanza’s, but I do feel like the book captures a lot of common themes that many Mexican American experience.

Names are an important part of a person’s identity, and for many immigrant families, they reveal a part of their culture. One of the first chapters of the book is My Name, and it is Esperanza talking about her name. In this chapter, there are instances of stereotyping, and even a bit of racism. Esperanza makes the assumption that the Chinese, like the Mexicans liked their women weak. Obviously, this sounds along with the story of Esperanza’s great grandmother sound racist ad stereotypical. However past this, lies a common sentiment among children that grow up having an ethnic name. Esperanza describes the story of her great-grandmother, and how she was named after her. She goes on to say that she was made fun of at school, and would like to have a different name. This reminded me of something that happened when I was a child. I remember a boy in my 3rd grade class whose name was Joan. In Spanish, his name was a boy name, but he grew up hearing people at school talk about how his name was a girl’s name since in English it is. Due to this, he managed to convince his parents to change his name to John. Understandably, his parents, Mexican immigrants, did not know that Joan was used as a girl’s name I'm the US. However, as the book and real life reveals, these small issues can be the cause of insecurities. Stories like these are common, and even I can say I partook a bit in this since I deliberately decided to pronounce my name, “Caro-lee-na” because I did not want people to struggle pronouncing my name in Spanish, but also did not want my name to sound too “American.”I think this chapter in the book was good at diving into the thought process of a child from an immigrant family and how they feel.

Although many immigrant families can experience similar issues like the names, each family is different and have different perspectives they can share. I know for myself, if I were to write about my experience I would write funny or mundane instances with family, my love-hate relationship with my parent's culture growing up, and how in college, I was able to learn to embrace it. I would write about this because I want to make it a point that each family is different and that culture is not uniform across whole ethnic groups. I also wanted to focus in the internal struggle that children can have.