Swirl of Colors :: essays papers

Swirl of ColorsSandra Cisneros has spent a lifetime trying to discover her ownliterary voice, only to be drowned out by the generally white and mostlywhite voices that she imitated but never identified with. The onlydaughter in a family with six sons, Cisneros was often theodd-woman-out-forever (Ganz 21) early on in life. It was not until shewas enrolled in the Iowa Writers Workshop that she finally discovered thather experience as a woman and a Chicana in a masculine dominated world was thevoice that was uniquely hers.Cisneros was influenced by her familys constant travels betweenMexico and Chicago. Cisneros never had the opportunity to make friendssince she was seldom in one place for very long, nor did she have allsisters to confide and identify with. When her family finally settled in asmall red house in Chicago, Cisneros had a home and a sense of permanencethat she had previously never known. But it was not the house she haddreamed of nor been promised by her father. She had always thought of ahouse with a green lawn, white lookout man fence, and a bathroom for everyperson. Instead she got a dilapidated bungalow in an impoverishedinner-city neighborhood. Cisneros described the house as an ugly littlehouse, lifelike red as if holding its breath (Ganz 22). It was this housethat inspired her first and most successful novel, The House on MangoStreet.Cisneros writing has been shaped by her experiences, which havegiven her a perspective and voice very different from traditional Americanwriters, such as Poe, Thoreau, and Emerson. These are the writers thathave helped comprise the literary cannon of the United States for nearlytwo hundred years. She has something to say that they do not know about.The House on Mango Street is an elegant literary piece, somewhere betweenfiction and poetry, that explores issues that are important to herfeminism, love, oppression, and religion (Mathias 4). In addition toaddressing these issues, Cisneros is also propelling Chi cana literatureinto the larger macrocosmic white male club that governs the United States(Lucero-Trujillo 621). One of the tools utilized by Cisneros to achievethese goals is the use of symbolism in her writing.The House on Mango Street reads more as poetry than as anarrative. This is accomplished through the liberal use of colorthroughout the vignettes. Nearly every passage in this book contains cite to color. Specifically then, it is the symbolic use of colorthat defines this novel. Even the title of the book brings to mind the