Esperanza/Hope - Post #2

Hannah

While I started off reading through the first few vignettes thinking this story was going to be sad throughout, I came away from page 42 feeling happy and enjoying Esperanza's experiences.  The book starts out with her lamenting her house, all of the moving she's had to do, her lack of a best friend, her little sister, and even her name.  Because she was named after her, Esperanza suggests that all her name requires her to live up to is a life of wanting more, stuck looking out the window just like her great-grandmother did; she even tells us that her name means "sadness, it means waiting" (10).  What made me feel the most sorry for Esperanza is the fact that she was longing for "a best friend all [her] own" (9) to tell her secrets to and laugh with, because when your upbringing isn't the most luxurious or easy, a good friend is always a glimmer of light, but she didn't even have this.

But after reading our section for this week, I don't get the sense that she is sad anymore.  The vignettes quickly turn (after she "baptizes" herself with a new name-almost like she is willing that she won't be tied down to what her name stands for) to her finding first one friend - Cathy, Queen of Cats, and then two more - Lucy and Rachel, with whom she shares her very own bike!   As the vignettes move on and on, she makes more friends - Meme, Louie, Marin, Alicia who sees mice.  Once friendless, it seems that Esperanza now has plenty of people to share her time with.

The thing I love most about Esperanza is how much she celebrates the beautiful things.  They may be small things, but they are beautiful, and they are details and treasures that many of us take for granted.  I LOVE the vignette about the junk shop.  Esperanza seems to describe the beaten down objects with such celebration - I've never seen a dusty couch so beautiful as when she says, "and couches that spin dust in the air when you punch them" (19).  I could see that dirt float up and dance in the light from the dirty window.  And then the description of the sound of the music box- "It's like all of a sudden he let go a million moths all over the dusty furniture and swan-neck shadows and in our bones.  It's like drops of water.  Or like marimbas only with a funny little plucked sound to it...And then I don't know why, but I have to turn around and pretend I don't care about the box" (20).  The sound of that music just ran right through me, and the beauty Esperanza felt in it grabbed on to my heart.  Her having to detach herself from something that touched her was sad, but I could tell she had found something she treasured.  In the last two vignettes I read, Esperanza describes for us two experiences with clouds.  Darius pointed up to the clouds, saying to his classmates, "That's God" (34).  Esperanza describes his comment as "something wise" (33), and you can just tell how much she appreciated this one utterance.  She truly sees that value in the smallest of things, made clear in the next vignette when she begins to celebrate words - 30 for snow, 10 for clouds.  Another great moment came when Esperanza, Nenny, Rachel and Lucy put on the high-heeled shoes and they celebrate their legs: "yes, it's true.  We have legs.  Skinny and spotted with satin scars were scabs were picked, but legs, all our own, good to look at, and long" (40).  I just find her perspective so refreshing and pure - in a place where so many things could bring you down or break your spirit, Esperanza takes nothing for granted and sees that true value, beauty and treasure in all the small things around her.

Just as cherished is Esperanza's family.  Besides Nenny, we haven't gotten to know her family too much, but the impressions she gives of them stick with you - again it's her celebratory nature, and the author's extremely vivid descriptive style.  Esperanza explains her admiration and love for her mother in "Hair": "But my mother's hair, my mother's hair, like little rosettes, like little candy circles all curly and pretty because she pinned it in pincurls all day, sweet to put your nose into when she is holding you, holding you and you feel safe, is the warm smell of bread before you bake it, is the smell when she makes room for you on her side of the bed still warm with her skin, and you sleep near her" (7).  Who doesn't love snuggling in bed with their mother, especially during a rainstorm?  And we know Esperanza's mother is a generous, loving parent, too, because she willing makes room on the bed that she just warmed up.  And Esperanza describes her as telling her and her sister stories before bed.  She also describes her father, speaking of his snoring almost longingly, and noting how he put up bars so she and her siblings wouldn't fall out of the window on Loomis St.  While she doesn't tell as much about him, we know there is a loving relationship there, too.  I think the most beautiful family moment so far comes from "Laughter."  Here, Esperanza says that she & Nenny don't look alike, but when you hear their laugh, you know they're sisters.  And the connection between them is deepened when she shares with her sister that a house they passed by looked like Mexico.  Her sister replies without a chuckle or any questioning of her sister, who admits she had no real reasoning behind feeling this, "Yes, that's Mexico all right.  That's what I was thinking exactly" (18).  Clearly, the sisters, and the family, are connected in ways that we haven't learned yet, and I love the positive depiction of the family unit.

Especially because of Esperanza's carefree attitude that leads her to have fun and find the beauty in the world, and because of the important role her family plays in her story, and this family extending to the community on Mango St as well, I chose to include a song by The Cranberries called "Ode to My Family."  I think all of the images of the large groups of kids together -playing, running around, playing ball, having fun, laughing- matches up nicely with the images I have in my mind of Mango St.  In my mind, I see girls running up and down the street in their mother's clothing, lots of kids on bikes, kids outside Louie's house with the radio, laughter, lots of children outside, and all of them doing many different things.  So the video connects well to the neighborhood I'm picturing.  The lyrics of the chorus fit Esperanza and her story very well, too - "My mother, she hold me" - just like her mother did during the rain storms, "We were raised to see life as fun and take it if we can" - the children learning to have fun and find to good in everything, despite their circumstances.  Two lines that I think ring true to House on Mango Street are "Do you see me standing there?" and "Does anyone care?" Esperanza illustrates in "Those Who Don't" that people who don't know the members of Mango St. are scared of them and think they're dangerous, but as she says, they just don't know them.  These outsiders see them for nothing other than "All brown all around" (28).  This to Esperanza means safety, but those other people don't see her and her family & friends for who they really are, and don't care about them either, except that they are Hispanic.

Here's the video - The Cranberries "Ode to My Family"