Sandra Cisneros Only Daughter

Sandra Cisneros, an author who is deeply inspired by her Mexican American heritage. This inspiration is clearly shown throughout every one of her writing pieces such as “Salvador Late or Early” and “Eleven”. Both short-stories focus on adolescents with a mature mindset and adult precision, and each story does a marvelous job portraying Cisneros constant writing style. “Salvador Late or Early” is focusing on a young boy, Salvador, with heavy burdens to carry on his shoulders, which is unfortunate because he is such a young boy with an old soul. The responsibilities he has are unimaginable due to the fact they don’t pertain to his age. The short-story “Eleven” is about an eleven-year-old girl named Rachel, a forthright character who explains

I have come from a well-meaning but very scarring, ambivalent and dysfunctional family. My father was a sometimes physically, but often times very emotionally abusive person. Using a large amount of fear and intimidation of him to control our family and home. My mother regularly took out her anger and frustration towards my father on me since my parent’s first major separation when I was seven years old which in conjunction with the negative impact of my parents’ off and on separations leading up to their eventual divorce I developed depression, anger and other behavioral problems as well. I suffered many years of abuse from my mother as a result of these things. I understood both my parents cared for me, even though their actions often time both demonstrated it and contradicted it which lead to much confusion in relationships and friendships outside of my family. One of if not the most scarring experiences were of my mother and the adults she surrounded herself with sympathizing her abuse towards me because of the abuse she endured by my father and

“My Name” by Sandra Cisneros is a short excerpt from her book The House on Mango Street (1984). In this excerpt, Cisneros narrator is a girl named Esperanza, who is telling us that her name reminds her of a lot of negatives things, including who she inherited it from. Esperanza is trying to convince us that her name is a terrible name, which is built up of negativity and bad history. She state that she was named after her great-grandmother, who was born in the Chinese year of the horse, which they have in common, and is well known for her wild customs which lead to her feeling sad and lonely all her life. Esperanza specifies that her name sound beautiful among Spanish speakers, but to non-Spanish speakers her name is pronoun funny “as if the syllables were made out of tin and hurt the roof of your mouth” she says. She indicated that she would like to baptize herself under a new

The narrative written by Judith Ortiz Cofer discusses some of the many experiences she has encountered throughout her life dealing with stereotypes and common misconceptions of Latin American women. To further engage her audience in the story, she provides detailed past experiences that have stood out to her the most. In order for the readers to fully understand those past encounters, some of which are cultural and common among Latinos, Cofer explains them in careful detail. For example, Cofer explains the concept of piropos which are poems composed on the spot by men to women as a form of admiration. This helps her introduce the audience to her own experiences with piropos and how she has dealt with them throughout her life. One of the

The article “Only Daughter,” by Sandra Cisneros from Glamour magazine was published in 1990. It talks about how Cisneros felt overlooked, lonely, and unacknowledged in her Mexican- American family, with her being the only daughter with six brothers. Her father and her brothers belittled her only because she was a female. When she told them she wanted to go to college they found it useless other than trying to find a husband there. After going there and being a hardworker it all paid off. She showed her father a copy of one of her stories and he loved it. Cisneros father wanted to show all her relatives her work. Cisneros says, “Of all wonderful things that happened to me last year, that was the most wonderful,” This created a bond they never had, that she always wanted.

The story “Only Daughter” was published in a Glamour magazine in 1990. It was written by Sandra Cisneros. She comes from a Mexican-American family who follow the tradition where men are considered more important than women. She describes the cultural strictness that she faces due to the fact that she is the only female of the family; she has six brothers. Cisneros does her best to get her father to recognize her importance, however she is always unacknowledged and overlooked not only by her father, but her brothers as well. Sandra specifies the difficulties she experiences while she is the only girl; she is considered different. Her purpose is to illustrate the reality of living in a hispanic family. For example she mentions that the hispanic culture sees women are only meant to find a husband and get married.

“Being only a daughter for my father meant my destiny would lead me to become someone’s wife”, like Sandra Cisneros illustrates in her essay “Only Daughter”, many women in the Mexican-American culture used to not have other choice in life, but to eventually become someone’s wife. Cisneros focuses on the lives of first and second generation Mexican American females. In her essay, she brings the reader her own life story to support the struggle that many Mexican-American women had to experience at the time the essay was written, and that can still be seen in modern society. In her essay, Cisneros effectively convinces her reader of the difficulties of growing as a female, more specifically, as an only daughter in a Mexican-American family of nine.

He would come home wasted after weeks of not being home; of me wondering where my father had been all those weeks. Staying up late on school nights just wishing for him to come home and tuck me in bed, to tell me he loved me, to ask me how my day was, or just tell me that he was there to stay. As a first grader it is hard to explain to your friends why they can not come to your house to play just knowing that if he is there that he will be drunk yelling at my mom for nothing. It got to the point to where he would come home after a few days and grab a suitcase and leave to go with his new girlfriend for a few days or even weeks. Right before he would leave I would always have hope that he would tell me where he was going or take me with him. I just wanted a father. My mother always told me that he would be back and to have hope; to always trust in her and that she would always be there for me. She was always my rock when I was younger. Until one day she finally told me what a monster the man I called my dad was. He was an abuser, physically and mentally. She told me the truth about the man that I wished was in my life for so long. He never wanted me. I was the youngest out

Against the backdrop of unequal behavior and discrimination towards woman during the 20th century, they appear to be more

Sandra Cisneros father grew up with what he was taught about being successful. So the mind set between what he thought was right and wrong differed for his sons and daughter.He believed that since she was the only daughter should would lead to becomes one's wife who is financially stable.Meanwhile, he approved of his son graduating college using his head instead of his hands. I can agree to disagree instead of it being a financial gain, others may use it as personal success. Being prideful in what you love to do, while reaching the goals you’ve set for yourself making accomplishments. Differing the fact that their are many different concepts of what success might be taught to the human mind of many people. For me I consider my cousin Taurean

The role of strong female roles in literature is both frightening to some and enlightening to others. Although times have changed, Sandra Cisneros’ stories about Mexican-American women provide a cultural division within itself that reflects in a recent time. The cultural themes in Cisneros’s stories highlight the struggle of women who identify with Mexican-American heritage and the struggle in terms of living up to Mexican culture – as a separate ethnic body. The women in Sandra Cisneros’ stories are struggling with living up to identities assigned to them, while trying to create their own as women without an ethnic landscape. In Sandra Cisneros’ stories “Woman Hollering Creek: and “Never Marry a Mexican” the role of female identities that

“After the shopping trip fiasco, my mom decided she wanted to learn to paint and ended up trying to purchase an entire art supply store over the phone. When my dad forced her to hang up, she went into a rage so fierce she pulled a knife on him. She kicked and screamed and yelled at him, called him the worst names I had ever heard, until she was crying on the floor again. Dad put her into the hospital after that.”

Growing-up in a predominately Mexican/Mexican-American community as a first-generation girl, like I did, is no walk in the park. Not only was I to uphold my parent’s traditional Mexican values such as: learning to cook and keep to a household, as well as a marriage, but also to uphold my new American values of independence and success measured in money as well as in property. At school I was taught to forget my first language, Spanish, and speak only in English, reminding me that: “You don’t want to speak with an accent.” At home I was reminded that Spanish, was and still is my first language and to leave English for school use only, reminding me that: “We can’t understand you in English.” Through this tug-of-war, between both cultures expectations of who I was to be/become, there was a desperate need to find my own identity, away from either culture. Sandra Cisneros’, The House on Mango Street, documents the need and struggle to find one’s own identity, through the narrator Esperanza’s experiences growing-up in a predominately Latino community in Chicago. Throughout the book Esperanza tries to understand the many different factors that influence her life and identity: in particular ethnicity and gender. Although, Esperanza suggest that she doesn’t want to be identified by either her Mexican identity or her sex; both of these factors play a major role in her struggle to find her own identity, by the way that they are intertwined in her own thoughts and in the descriptions of

Reading and comparing two essays, “Dear Sugar” and “Only Daughter”, they both are about women’s life, but there are so many differences between two. Sandra Cisnero’s novella, “Only Daughter”, indicates a more effective discrimination of older women’s power in their life than Sugar’s essay “Dear Sugar” through family relationship, symbolism, and conflict with others.

Growing up in a home with both my parents, I was fortunate to be able to spend a lot of quality time with my father. We used to go out together and play soccer, baseball, and ride bikes. I remember we used to play a lot of old school video games and my mother would get pretty upset at the hours we spent playing and not doing anything productive. In my point of view, our relationship was perfect; our bond was strong like any father and son. I was only four years old when my world was turned upside down. My life changed the day that my mom and my dad separated, I felt alone. The process of a divorce was too much for a child that age to handle; it was a hard time for me. Although I had no father figure for about 12 years because my dad moved