The House on Mango Street

While reading and analyzing Junot Diaz's How to date a Browngirl... this week, I was reminded of a book I read as a teenager titled The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros. At the time, I liked this book because it was short, but still powerful.  You could write a review of The House on Mango Street twice as long as the very book.  The characters are so complex and real. 

What both Junot Diaz and Sandra Cisneros have in common is that they are writing about a minority culture, pretending to be writing for people of the same social circumstances, but in reality writing for the general audience, and more specifically, those outside the lifestyle about which they are writing. These two writers also are very skilled in poetry.  Diaz has very poetic meter. I love the "goat on a rope" bit. Cisneros finds poetic beauty in simplicity.


Has anyone else read this book? How do you feel about this topic of writing? At first I was annoyed by How to Date a Browngirl. I felt it was a bit trite. "Look how different people are, isn't it funny?" Did you feel this way?

Are you okay with it?

Delicious street food in Vietnam.
I'm on the bottom right eating Bún chả

Tim O'Brien, in the short story, The Things They Carried, tries to contradict the way hollywood and other exciting stories depict war. It's fictional, but O'Brien's personal experience fighting in the Vietnam War is is pretty obvious from his ability to powerfully depict the complex setting of the war.  The story takes place in Vietnam, but the setting of this story is better described by the nature and interesting features of the characters in Luitenant Cross's Squadron.  The plot of The Things They Carried, is simple. Only two things really happen, but they impact the reader dramatically, because of the overt humanization of the characters.

The Vietnam War was fought by mostly 18-25 year olds.  They had dreams and aspirations. They wanted to hold on to the parts of life the loved so far. O'Brien makes the statement that these soldiers had to give up those qualities that made them human in order to get through the war. This was symbolized by Cross burning his pictures of the girl he loved.

The Things They Carried interested me because I have had a fascination with Vietnam for a while now (it started when I discovered the origins of the cover of that Rage Against the Machine album). Last summer under the pretense of a music internship, I was able to go to Vietnam.  While reading this story, I was reminded of the uneasy feelings I had while getting ready to go to Vietnam. I read or watched material about the country's history and wars...it got to be a little depressing. Whether you think war is necessary or not, a teenager with a scared mother and a hopeful girlfriend being killed for you is a hard thing to swallow. It leaves you asking, "am I okay with this?" And that is exactly what O'Brien was going for.

Treasure Island

I already talked earlier this week about why I chose to listen to "Treasure Island" by Robert Louis Stevenson on Librivox. I simply liked the narrator's voice. For the most part, I'm pretty ambivalent towards the book, but there is one aspect that fascinated me, and that is Robert Louis Stevenson's use of vagueness.


I think older movies had it right: don't show the monster because what each individual viewer can imagine is more scary for than something that every single audience member will see.  Robert Louis Stevenson might be the reason we depict pirates the way we do. He was very descriptive about certain unique aspects of his characters, but the vagueness comes in with the aspects he doesn't really talk about, like age.  Part of this is probably because the narrator in the story is young, and to a younger teenager everyone over 25 is just old, but it really helps the reader/listener create a scary or heroic picture in their head. Movies today have made us numb to scary monsters. Just because we have the words, or means to show every hairy detail of characters or monsters, doesn't mean we should.  There is power in vagueness. 

Things that make sense confuse me

I’ve spent a couple hours the last few nights re-reading Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut (the house I live in has no internet, which means I don’t have Netflix to help me sleep). I don’t have a huge repertoire of literature under my belt, so I know I should be branching out, but now that I know I want to read more literature, I figured I’d start with something I knew I would enjoy re-reading.

Slaughterhouse Five is a science fiction satirical historical novel that confuses me in that somehow it all makes complete sense.  The book takes place, for the most part, over a period of half a century, but simultaneously.  It’s science fiction as the soldier Billy Pilgrim, zips around from one point in time to another, and also between the planet of Tralfamadore and Earth, but historical while a central event in the plot is the Dresden Bombings during World War II, which Kurt Vonnegut witnessed while in the military. The book is satirical of war, as Billy doesn’t want to fight. He is actually a bit of a wuss, a refreshing change from the usual glorification of fighting and war. The list of seemingly incongruent elements goes on. But it works so well! 

After I finish Slaughterhouse Five, I’m moving on to books I haven’t read.  I think a terrific choice for my next book would be Catch-22, yes? I look forward it.

Humans are egocentric creatures

Despite what the majority of people say after listening to a recording of themselves, we like the sound of our own voices (collectively). Even the  musical instruments we create are often used to mimic or exaggerate elements of the human voice. As infants we are forced to cope in a very confusing world, but one source of comfort that most of us grasp onto is the sounds our parents make. We listen closely, because eventually we will mimic the sounds.  Affinity for the human voice is cemented in our subconscious. It's not even the words that matter, it's the very sound that we love.

"PS"-The Books. Have you ever had a conversation without intelligible words?

I think the human voice is beautiful.  This is why I love audiobooks. I really discovered them for myself only a few years ago, while working on a project for my own interests.  I wanted to make and record music involving human speech.  At first, most of my material came from field recordings downtown with homeless people, but I soon discovered public domain recordings. I scoured Librovox.org for any recordings of translated hindi text, and became fascinated with all the short poetry that was available with eight or nine choices for narrators. This made my project incredibly hard, and virtually impossible to finish.

Carl Sagan is my close friend

If I sound like an astronaut today, it is because I pretty much am--according to a test I took last week at the wonderful Air and Space Museum at the Smithsonian in DC. No, it wasn’t a real test, and it was probably geared towards children, but I’m going to take whatever consideration I can get from NASA. I know Dr. Burton gave a few suggestions on what to write about on our second blog posts, but the bold part said “Your choice” so I’m running with that and I’m going to talk about space, because space is awesome. For the last few years I have seen countless documentaries on Youtube and Netflix about space, and space travel, and the universe.  I feel like Carl Sagan is a close friend. Google moon made me giddy, and I  check up on the new Curiosity rover a few times a week.

I have a problem in that I get a lot of questions in my head, and I’m not satisfied with the answer. The more I know, the more I realize that I don’t know anything about anything. What started as a simple question, “We celebrate the moon landing so much, but how did the astronauts get back to their crewmate orbiting the moon in the command module?” lead to reading and watching countless hours of material about our universe, and the exploration of our close neighbors. The answer I read and even watching this fascinating footage (or just view it below) of apollo 17 leaving the moon wasn’t good enough. I guess what I really desired was not an answer to my question, but the knowledge and ability to answer the question (myself). I surprised myself (and my family) when I went to the Smithsonian and I was pulling all this knowledge out that I had been storing away for the last few years. It was a thrilling and rewarding experience.

This is why after listening to our first lecture and finding out a great deal of this class is student discretionary, I was thrilled. I’ve always approached school in this way, weather my instructors liked it or not. My physical science class was really my time to learn about space.  Was it practical? It seems not. You can get by in life by just knowing what you need to know, and you might even do exceptionally well and make a great living. I did not get an A in physical science, but I think I learned more than at least some of the people who did get A’s. I think thirsting for knowledge so you can have answers leads to making the world a better place and solving problems. They can’t teach it in school because it hasn’t been figured out yet.

In the grand scheme of things, it’s more important to be a great learner than it is to be a great student. Traditional education would sometimes have us believe differently, but I say let’s break from tradition. Don’t ever let school get in the way of your education.    

Non-fiction literature

I love non-fiction literature, I’ve always felt it was more raw, and it effects me deeper than made-up fairy tales. I look forward to some of the opportunities to read this kind of literature in this class. There is great literature in every genre, though.  I don’t usually care much about the story, or the hero getting the girl, rather I care more about descriptive imagery, and unique portrayals.  Sometimes I think my favorite authors must sit and think, “what is the weirdest way I can describe a person making eggs?” That’s why I hope to get into this semester. I like strange.

Hopefully I have the mind or the ideas for this class, or at least I’d like to think I do, but I know the actual technique, and quickness will be a struggle (I would be embarrassed to tell you how long this post took me). I’ve got some experience analyzing literature, and I’ve been going to school for a while, so I think I’ll get through just fine. Here’s to a great semester!