No pledge...please own words

 

"My Name" from The House On Mango Street, by Sandra Cisneros

 

In English my names means hope. In Spanish it means too many letters. It means sadness, it means waiting. It is like the number nine. A muddy color. It is the Mexican records my father plays on Sunday mornings when he is shaving, song like sobbing.

 

It was my great-grandmother's name and now it is mine. She was a horse woman too, born like me in the Chinese year of the horse--which is supposed to be bad luck if you're born female--but I think this is a Chinese lie because the Chinese, like the Mexican, don't like their women strong.

 

My great-grandmother. I would've liked to have known her, a wild horse of a woman, so wild she wouldn't marry. Until my great-grandfather threw a sack over her head and carried her off. Just like that, as if she were a fancy chandelier. That's the way he did it.

 

And the story goes she never forgave him. She looked out the window her whole life, the way so many women sit their sadness on an elbow. I wonder if she made the best with what she got or was she sorry because she couldn't be all the things she wanted to be. Esperanza. I have inherited her name, but don't want to inherit her place by the window.

 

At school they say my name funny as if the syllables were made out of tin and hurt the roof of your mouth. But in Spanish my name is made out of a softer something, like silver, not quite as thick as sister's name--Magdalena--which is uglier than mine. Magdalena who at least can come home and become Nenny. But I am always Esperanza.

 

I would like to baptize myself under a new name, a name more like the real me, the one nobody sees. Esperanza as Lisandra or Maritza or Zeze the X. Yes. Something like Zeze the X will do.

 

Thesis

Everyone has a different way of determining his/her identity explain how all the aspects you have picked have culminated in determining your identity and whether this created has an identity you are comfortable with, including how you have changed parts of yourself so you could become the person you wished to be not the person you were expected to be

 

Steps:

*   After your thesis statement, summarize Cisneros, briefly.

*In paragraphs 2, introduce your first quote from Cisneros and then discuss its significance, compare and contrast it to your experience, explaining why it is important.

*Paragraphs 3, 4,5,6,7 introduce more quotes from Cisneros and then discuss their significance, again comparing and contrasting them to your experience, explaining why they are important as you develop your central thesis. Remember Cisneros stresses she does not want her great grandmother's life and therefore rejects her name .

*You can develop two or three different ideas that are related to how people form their identity.

*Paragraphs ,8,9,10 begin to explain how all of the aspects you have picked that culminate in determining your identity and whether this created has an identity you are comfortable with, including how you have changed parts of yourself so you could become the person you wished to be not the person you were expected to be, . That will form your conclusion.