Reading Response: The House on Mango Street

               I have learned what a child’s innocence is like as I read this book. The House on Mango Street is told through a young girl’s voice and her maturity shows. Multiple times I have found myself explaining how the grown up world is to Esperanza in my head. I want to teach her right from wrong and tell her that the things she sees going on in the lives around her are not right. Abuse is never okay and we should always help those who do not have the same privileges are we do.

            Esperanza’s friends Sally and Minerva are both abused. Sally is abused by her father and Minerva is abused by her husband. Esperanza really wants to help both of these girls, but she feels like there is nothing she can do if the girls keep going back to those who abuse them. In life we have to learn that we cannot help those who refuse to help themselves. It hurts as a child to know you have no control over a situation and some things Esperanza just can’t understand. Sally enjoys the boys’ attention, because she gets the wrong attention from her father. Esperanza didn’t understand why Sally didn’t want to be saved from having to kiss all of the boys in order to get her keys back. From the rejection of the boys and Sally, Esperanza wanted to just die.

            We can see Esperanza’s innocence and true spirit in the chapter “Bums in the Attic.” She says

“One day I’ll own my own house, but I won’t forget who I am or where I came from. Passing bums will ask, Can I come in? I’ll offer them the attic, ask them to stay, because I know how it is to be without a house.

Some days after dinner, guest and I will sit in front of a fire. Floorboards will squeak upstairs. The attic grumble.

Rats? they’ll ask.

 Bums, I’ll say, and I’ll be happy.”

She wants to give a helping hand to anyone she can. She knows the struggle of everyday life in the poor community and wants to give back to those who have taught her a lesson.



Esperanza cries in the garden by herself after the rejection from her so called friend Sally.



Reading Response: The House on Mango Street



The House on Mango Street cover lets you know that this book is supposed to be for the women.



              I am reading The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros. My old English teacher Mrs. Mann recommended this book to me. As I was reading this book, I realized that a passage seemed very familiar. It was the passage about her family’s hair. In our Grammar and Composition Class, we read a passage from this same book so we could write a poem in Sandra Cisneros style. I named my poem Smiles. The book is about a young Hispanic girl named Esperanza. She hates her name, because in Spanish her name means sadness and waiting. This book follows her through the random events in her life.

            Sandra Cisneros writes very different, but everything flows so well. I love how she wrote this book through a child’s actual voice. Deep down I really feel like the author is Esperanza. A lot of authors only include the child’s voice and not how they may really write or say certain things. There is no punctuation, except periods. When Esperanza is talking with her friends, you can only tell who is saying what if you are actually into the book and connecting with the characters as if you were in their discussion. Esperanza is also very relatable. I understand every feeling she has and her thoughts. She is a lot younger than I am, but she symbolizes a lot of girls.

            For some reason, every time we have an essay due I am reading a book that has a relevant topic. Esperanza is Hispanic and only lives around Hispanics. In the chapter Those Who Don’t, she is describing instances where someone of another race entered her neighborhood and judged them like she goes in their neighborhoods with caution. “All brown around here, we are safe. 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. Yeah. That is how it goes and goes.” Esperanza is very open about how she feels. I laughed at this passage, because what she said was so true and I could clearly visualize her facial expressions. I look at Esperanza as a little sister for some reason. She gets involved in some things she shouldn’t and sometimes doesn’t understand where others are coming from. She needs a little guidance, but I am really enjoying reading this book.



Sandra Cisneros

Reading Response: The Secret Life of Bees

              I like to see the formation of relationships between the main character and others as I am reading a book. The Secret Life of Bees is about a girl, Lily Owen, who wants to find out about her deceased mother’s past. Lily doesn’t go alone though. She decides to take her “stand-in mother” Rosaleen . The two girls know how to survive for a while and end up right where they needed to be. Lily and Rosaleen know each other very well. Lily was practically raised by Rosaleen. The author uses a lot of saying to describe just how much Rosaleen loves Lily and Lily loves Rosaleen. They were able to show each other a side of them that no one else could ever see. “I was the only one who knew that despite her sharp ways, her heart was more tender than a flower skin and she loved me beyond reason.” No matter what Lily did, Rosaleen was there to pick her up.

            Color didn’t matter to Lily. Rosaleen was just a house maid, but to Lily she was much more. While reading this book, I could feel Lily’s pain. She wanted so badly for Rosaleen to always be there and make everything alright. Being without a mother, Lily hung on to anything that gave her love or even comfort. Lily wished that color wouldn’t be such a barrier between her and the dreams she had for Rosaleen. “I used to have daydreams in which she was white and married to T. Ray, and became my real mother. Other times I was a Negro orphan she found in a cornfield and adopted. Once in a while I had us living in a foreign country like New York, where she could adopt me and we could both stay our natural color.”

I think we have all experienced a time where we wished someone that was not blood related to us, to be a permanent part of us. I know that when I was in Elementary School, I really looked up to my meal time buddy at the Boys and Girls Club. Her name was September and she was such a nice and peaceful person. I sometimes wonder where she is in life and if I made a difference in her life like she did to in mine.

Lily and Rosaleen

Reading Response: The Coldest Winter Ever

The name of my book is called The Coldest Winter Ever. I first got interested in this book by reading a book from this same author. The author, Sister Souljah’s style is so raw, real, and honest. I enjoy reading a book about a life I do not live, so once I read the summary, I knew this was the book for me.

Sister Souljah’s style is like no other that I have read. As I read this book I can see a movie playing in my head.  I feel like a by stander in Winter’s world. Before being an author, Sister Souljah was a hip-hop artist and political activist. She grew up in the underclass urban areas in New York and knows how Winter feels. I think Winter is actually a part or side of Sister Souljah. She tells the truth and nothing but the truth. This is not a book that would be accepted into a public school library, but is still worth reading. She is the number one author of the hip-hop generation and is respected for that. Most like to read stories that sugar coat things, but not me and that’s why I love reading Sister Souljah’s novels.

The Coldest Winter Ever is Sister Souljah’s first novel. The main characters name is Winter. She is a young girl that was born and raised in Brooklyn. She is the daughter of a prominent drug dealing family. Sister Souljah describes her as “quick-witted, sexy, and business minded.” Life for Winter has always been easy, but when things started to go wrong, she is left in this world all alone to try to fend for herself. This book is about her struggle to get back to the top and re-gain her spot at the top. There are times where I wish I could speak to her. It’s like she feels the world is against her and she has to be ruthless all the time. Maybe in her world and lifestyle she does, but there are other ways of life not taught to her by her family because of the lifestyle they chose to live and follow.

Reading Response: The Coldest Winter Ever

While reading The Coldest Winter Ever, I learned a lot about what it meant to be a strong black woman or even a woman in general. I also learned what I should expect out of a man and how I should be treated. To me, Sister Souljah’s words are so strong. Everything she says has power to it. She is very aware of the community around her and is very involved in trying to better the conditions of the ghettos in New York where she came from.

            I read a passage in the book where she is asking the girls in her weekly woman group what they believe in. What Sister Souljah had to say stuck out to me because in class we were writing essays on what we believe in. Each week Souljah has women empowerment meetings held at her home. The girls are from the inner city of Brooklyn and are introducing themselves and sharing what they believe in. Souljah asks the girls to be as honest as possible. Majority of them didn’t know what they believed in. Souljah then says to the girls, “Knowing what you believe lays a foundation for your life. Then you can have principles and ideas that you follow. Things that you are unwilling to compromise. If you’re deciding what you believe everyday and everyday you believe something else, you have nothing to look forward to but chaos.” Her statement is so true. How would you know what to do in any situation if from the beginning you didn’t have any rules and regulations for yourself? She does not tell the group of girls what to believe in, but help the girls get to the core of why they do the things they do.