Post #3 - Currently on Mango Street

So many things are happening on Mango Street, and as a result, so many things are happening in the story that happen in our own world today.

In "Geraldo, No Last Name," Sally dances with a boy who is later involved in a hit and run, and dies shortly after from the injuries he sustained.  Hit and runs happen quite often, and it's almost as if these people have "No Last Name," too, because it seems that the only people who grieve them are their families and those who knew them.  Two hit and run examples that I thought relate to the one Cisneros describes comes from WGRZ - "Hit and Run" and "Walking From Work" because both of the people in these stories who were hit were walking from their jobs to nearby homes.  They were hit after trying to earn a living, which Geraldo was doing in the Mango neighborhood, having moved from Mexico.  It made me really sad that no one would be able to honor Geraldo - because "the ones he left behind are far away, will wonder, shrug, remember" (66).  It makes me really sad to think that those same sentiments - wondering, shrugging, remembering, are what the drivers involved in hit & runs often experience.

One especially relevant issue that just came up in the news today is the mistreatment of girls and women by men, which sadly is often taken to levels of pedophilia, sexual harassment and sexual abuse, which is brought up at the end of "The First Job."  When I first read this section, I was shocked by what had happened in the coatroom.  Esperanza describes what happened quite factually:

    "He said we could be friends and next time to go in the lunchroom and sit with him, and 

     I felt better.  He had nice eyes and I didn't feel so nervous anymore.  Then he asked if I 

     knew what day it was, and when I said I didn't, he said it was his birthday and would I 

     please give him a birthday kiss.  I thought I would because he was so old and just as I 

     was about to put my lips on his cheek, he grabs my face with both hands and kisses me 

     hard on the mouth and doesn't let go" (55).

I can't say for sure is this man was a pedophile, but I can say for sure that he mistreated Esperanza and pushed to make a sexual advance on her, she being a young girl, and he an "older" man, which makes it completely and entirely inappropriate.  In today's workplace this would definitely be considered sexual harassment, and this episode paints a picture of the continued mistreatment of women by means of sexual acts.  

Just today in the news it was reported that Lara Logan, a correspondent for CBS News, was beaten and sexually assaulted by a group of men in Cairo as she covered the protests  there last week.  You can read an article with the actual report from USA Today here.  It sickens me to hear that things like this still happen, it sickens me to read that they ever happened.  For men to sexually assert themselves onto women is an atrocious act, and I wish behaviors and acts like this would be more harshly punished and more closely watched, because I think it's happening much more frequently and harshly than we know.  The news seems to be permeated with episodes of "To Catch a Predator," reports of molestation, horrific testimonies of rape, and every few months a newsletter to my house letting me know where the latest sexual predators have moved in my neighborhood. Who knows what would have happened to Esperanza had she encountered this man elsewhere, or to Rachel, had she walked over to "the bum man" in "The Family of Little Feet."  These sexual predators and male assaulters seem to be everywhere - how and when will we be able to put an end to this treatment of women, because it is saddening and scary, especially for a fellow girl like me.  Even scarier is that Esperanza didn't react enough to share any feelings about this with us, as if this is the norm for her in her experience.  I think I'm starting to see the harshness of her childhood that you have all been writing about so far!
-Hannah