House On Mango Street Project Ideas

This project will take a week. Your rough draft is due Tuesday of this week, and your final copy is due on Friday of this week. You MUST turn in your rough draft in order to receive credit for this project. It is completed in phases, and the schedule is imperative. 100 points Sandra Cisneros’ book The House on Mango Street raises a number of issues that merit further discussion. In this paper you are to choose a vignette and discuss an issue that is raised by the story.

Then, relate the issue raised by the story to your own life. You need not agree with Cisneros’ take on the issue but in your paper you should use her ideas as a jumping off point for your own understanding of the issue. You will need to use quotations from the text to support your comments about Cisneros and The House on Mango Street. In order to effectively use quotations you need to do more than just insert them into your paper and expect the quotation to explain itself.

Rather you should dialogue with (talk back to) the quotation. Explain to your reader what you think the quotation means and then respond to that meaning. A quotation of more than one line in your text should be formatted in the following way: double spaced 12 font not to exceed two pages. You do not need to use “quotation marks” but you should indicate the page the quotation is taken from in parentheses. SOME POSSIBLE ISSUES TO DISCUSS:

The House On Mango Street Vignette Project

Male/Female gender roles (Minerva, Sally, Rafaela, Mamacita, Linoleum Roses) Power dynamics of male/female relationships (same as above, plus Beautiful and Cruel, Monkey Garden, Red Clowns) Adolescence and the developing awareness of the opposite gender (Family of Little Feet, Hips, Sire, Monkey Garden) The experience of shame (House on Mango Street, Rice Sandwich, Bums in the Attic, Monkey Garden) The power of writing (Rafaela, Mango Says Goodbye Sometimes) The responsibility of people to where they came from (Three Sisters, Alicia and I Talking on Edna’s Steps, Mango Says Goodbye Sometimes)