Reviews for Violence in America

The average rating for Violence in America based on 2 reviews is 4.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2010-04-12 00:00:00 Adam Sant Ever since middle school when I discovered the writings of the amigas, I have jumped at the opportunity to read novels written by Hispanic women. Despite my life long love of this genre, I have never until now had the privilege of reading Sandra Cisneros' A House on Mango Street. Cisneros is a torch bearer for the Hispanic women writers who I love to read today, so I feel privileged to have read her first novel, now over 30 years old. Sandra Cisneros grew up on Chicago's north side on Keeler street, not far from where my grandmother's family settled when they first came to the United States over half a century earlier than the Cisneros family. Recognizing street names and places, I felt an instant comradeship with Cisneros. Additionally, she attended the University of Iowa Writers Workshop, where I spent my undergraduate years. At the time she was one of two women of color in the program dominated by white men. She was viewed as a poet rather than a writer so was not afforded the same opportunities given to her colleagues. Yet, she found an agent to make the initial contacts for her and has persevered all these years later. A House on Mango Street began to give Latin American women their voice. Along with Gloria Andalzua, Cherrie Moraga, and Denise Chavez, Cisneros started a network and these women are now the matriarchs of the amigas who I read now. They gave Hispanic women their opportunity to enter into the writing world so that they could begin to tell their stories about their place in the fabric of American society. In her Once Upon a Quinceanera, Julia Alvarez refers to Cisneros and her colleagues as las padrinas, the godmothers- to these next generations of writers. The House on Mango Street in this sense could refer to any Latin American girl who is first coming of age and looking to fulfill the American dream. Mango Street, poetic in its prose, describes Esperanza, the oldest child in a Hispanic family who moves from apartment to apartment each year with her family. Mango Street is her family's first house and the neighborhood becomes a part of her existence. In two to three page vignettes, Cisneros poignantly describes Esperanza's adolescent angst. Navigating life as one of few Hispanics in her school, Esperanza faces pressure at school, at home, and with her friends. Partially autobiographical and part fiction, Cisneros employs luscious words to reveal how Esperanza desires to become a writer and leave Mango Street. As in her own life, her neighborhood will always be part of her, no matter how far she goes. Only 110 pages in length, A House on Mango Street is widely studied in schools as both an example of Hispanic culture and coming of age. Cisneros with Mango Street paved the way for generations of Hispanic women writers. Her story of Esperanza is poignant, poetic, and a joy to read. I am glad that I finally took the time to read Cisneros, and I rate her ground breaking work 4.5 stars.

Review # 2 was written on 2009-05-05 00:00:00 Marko Vizaniaris It’s a little after 2am. I’m having the dreams. The ones that blindside me and have that weird echo --- is or isn’t this real? Sleep isn’t going to happen. What’s new. I leave my room to check out the house. Doors locked? Check. Kids asleep? Check…whoa, hold up a minute. Em is awake. She’s sitting in the living room illuminated by a booklite. She’s got about 4 blankets piled on top of her and she’s….. reading. Reading? I’m used to the insomnia, on both our parts… we knock around each other, say a few words and pretend to sleep. It’s routine by now. But, to see her reading? She looks up at me and there are tears in her eyes. Okay, now I’m really testing that reality theory. ‘Mom, have you ever read The House on Mango Street?’ Huh? I look over the book. No. Never even heard of it. ’A novel of a young girl growing up in the Latino section of Chicago.’ Okay… assigned to a freshman English class in Northern Vermont. Where ethnicity is reserved for the Somalian refugees that pepper Burlington, but hardly touch the suburbs. I’ll bite. I pick it up, it’s maybe an hour’s read. Tops. “We didn’t always live on Mango Street.” Then, I’m lost. This is lyrical, this is heart wrenching. Words are married, sentences consummated, images borne that my white-bread, New England-raised mind can’t comprehend except on an emotional level. I’m in love. “She looked out the window her whole life, the way so many women sit their sadness on an elbow.” “You can never have too much sky. You can fall asleep and wake up drunk on sky, and sky can keep you safe when you are sad. Here there is too much sadness and not enough sky.” “Everything is holding its breath inside of me. Everything is waiting to explode like Christmas. I want to be new and shiny.” “You know what you are Esperanza? You are like the Cream of Wheat cereal. You’re like the lumps.” “But I think diseases have no eyes. They pick with a dizzy finger anyone, just anyone.” “There were sunflowers as big as flowers on Mars and thick cockscombs bleeding the deep red fringe of theater curtains. There were dizzy bees and bow-tied fruit flies turning somersaults and humming in the air. Sweet sweet peach trees. Thorn roses and thistle and pears. Weeds like so many squinty-eyed stars and brush that made your ankles itch and itch until you washed with soap and water.” I’m caught in this world that Cisnero’s painted for me. I’m hugging Alice who sees mice and wishing that Sire would hold my hand. I’m drinking papaya juice with Rafaela and reading Minerva’s poems. I’m hiding from Red Clowns. I’m nostalgic for my own childhood. For that freedom that kids today cannot relate to. They have curfews, and GPS chips in cell phones, and mini LoJacks® implanted in their neck. What do they know of freedom? What do they know about riding their ten speed through dark streets guided by the screams of their friends ahead of them? Will they ever hang out in vacant lots with their friend’s older brothers who hand them warm beer and try to feel up their shirts? Hell no, not on my watch. So, thank you, Sandra Cisnero. Thanks for giving me back all those summer nights… “They will not know that I have gone away to come back. For the ones I’ve left behind. For the ones who cannot out.”