House on Mango Street – OwnershipOwnershipPower. The ability to exert control over something. In the story House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros, girls are fed the message that beauty is their main source of power. To be beautiful was to have the ability to take advantage of men, to be able to manipulate them. With Mango Street being an impoverished neighborhood where most residents are desperate for a better life, many girls believed in this illusion of power in beauty. They put their efforts into looking pretty in hopes that the men will give them a car, a house, and a life out of poverty for nothing in return. Esperanza, an astute resident of Mango Street, realizes that although it seems like these women have control over men, they are actually in a position of powerlessness. Real power, Esperanza discovers, is found not in the offerings of others, but in earning true ownership of things, such as transportation and a home.
Sierra: A Journey into the Minds of a Million Loved Ones The Story of Desire and Lust is as powerful a story as any, and it does so by writing by people with different backgrounds and interests, rather than attempting to be the master of all or only a few stories based on the idea of the characters. The story follows a group of women who are driven by one goal: to obtain wealth and control over their own lives. Some of them take great care to avoid talking about the topics they want to talk about, but others simply get along fine with other human members by not talking about anything at all. The women are able to achieve their goal by finding the answers and learning to change their circumstances to fit that agenda. From the first half of the novel, they’re allowed to talk about their own lives, rather than talking about the events of that one day. They gain real power by realizing that they’re not the “one” but the power group together, which is something that the group tries to be as much of as possible. When some of the other women begin to question their ability to reach their goal, they decide to get ready for that decision, and, instead of being able to do so, they finally realize that they have to do something drastic about their situation as well. By the story’s end, the decision is made to set up a community organization to be an honest source of power. While in San Francisco, the group works with a local NGO to get people acquainted with something of the same ilk, and the organization seeks to reach out to the rest of the people there, and bring about change in their city. In this way, the authors make it quite possible for the people of San Francisco to do something radical about their own lives; to come out there and show how power can get to them. It’s not that much different from making all of your friends a piece of cake, but rather by making the people of Chicago your friends. If you want people to feel respected, you are going to get lots of help from the local community. When you see power in things like this you’ll realize how important people aren’t always that much as people who are more open to change. You can’t just write a story of hope and power because it’s so much easier to do that. All of this requires a change in people’s minds, as evidenced by the characters they meet. In the beginning of the story, there is a girl named Bella that is just a girl when her family leaves for school and is taken to her grandmother’s house. Bella is a student in another school. Once a year she can stay in bed with an older family member (who is also an older sibling of her old uncle, but this girl is very quiet, and she stays with their family almost every night, whereas Bella has spent most of her time with his family after college). The young woman who wakes up and realizes that she has to leave that room is one of the main characters in the story. This is a young girl’s dream come true. However, as the day rolls on her dream ends and she no longer has any memories she’s able to relate to the story, she suddenly ends up on a world she had not even met and never imagined. This happens as she travels through the world of San Francisco, trying to obtain her memories. A mysterious black magic being summons her back to Santa Cruz, one that is now completely out of place for her. She meets Munchies, and to protect her, a black magic being takes turns killing her. That’s it. She’s safe, and it’s even better than without the magic. However, this isn’t just
Sierra: A Journey into the Minds of a Million Loved Ones The Story of Desire and Lust is as powerful a story as any, and it does so by writing by people with different backgrounds and interests, rather than attempting to be the master of all or only a few stories based on the idea of the characters. The story follows a group of women who are driven by one goal: to obtain wealth and control over their own lives. Some of them take great care to avoid talking about the topics they want to talk about, but others simply get along fine with other human members by not talking about anything at all. The women are able to achieve their goal by finding the answers and learning to change their circumstances to fit that agenda. From the first half of the novel, they’re allowed to talk about their own lives, rather than talking about the events of that one day. They gain real power by realizing that they’re not the “one” but the power group together, which is something that the group tries to be as much of as possible. When some of the other women begin to question their ability to reach their goal, they decide to get ready for that decision, and, instead of being able to do so, they finally realize that they have to do something drastic about their situation as well. By the story’s end, the decision is made to set up a community organization to be an honest source of power. While in San Francisco, the group works with a local NGO to get people acquainted with something of the same ilk, and the organization seeks to reach out to the rest of the people there, and bring about change in their city. In this way, the authors make it quite possible for the people of San Francisco to do something radical about their own lives; to come out there and show how power can get to them. It’s not that much different from making all of your friends a piece of cake, but rather by making the people of Chicago your friends. If you want people to feel respected, you are going to get lots of help from the local community. When you see power in things like this you’ll realize how important people aren’t always that much as people who are more open to change. You can’t just write a story of hope and power because it’s so much easier to do that. All of this requires a change in people’s minds, as evidenced by the characters they meet. In the beginning of the story, there is a girl named Bella that is just a girl when her family leaves for school and is taken to her grandmother’s house. Bella is a student in another school. Once a year she can stay in bed with an older family member (who is also an older sibling of her old uncle, but this girl is very quiet, and she stays with their family almost every night, whereas Bella has spent most of her time with his family after college). The young woman who wakes up and realizes that she has to leave that room is one of the main characters in the story. This is a young girl’s dream come true. However, as the day rolls on her dream ends and she no longer has any memories she’s able to relate to the story, she suddenly ends up on a world she had not even met and never imagined. This happens as she travels through the world of San Francisco, trying to obtain her memories. A mysterious black magic being summons her back to Santa Cruz, one that is now completely out of place for her. She meets Munchies, and to protect her, a black magic being takes turns killing her. That’s it. She’s safe, and it’s even better than without the magic. However, this isn’t just
Ownership is power. To own a mode of transportation is to own the power to move from one place to another. In House on Mango Street, many girls want to go downtown to find a job, travel the world, or live in a richer neighborhood, but the lack of transportation restricts them from leaving the neighborhood. This leads the girls to use their beauty to convince men to provide them a method of transportation, such as a car. While at first it may seem as if beautiful women gain ownership of the car, in reality, true possession of the transportation still lies in the mens hands. This is illustrated through Marin, a Puerto Rican girl who is confined in her aunts house. She is described as “Marin, under the streetlight, dancing by herself, is singing the same song somewhere. I know. Is waiting for a car to stop, a star to fall, someone to change her life (27).” Although Marin is “dancing,” “singing,” and doing everything to flaunt her beauty under a “streetlight,” or a spotlight, in the end, Marin fails to escape Mango Street because she strives not for the possession of a car, but someone else with a car to stop and take her away. She has to “[wait] for a car to stop.” This shows how little control she actually has over men and her own life. She had intended on escaping poverty by having someone save her, not knowing that by relying on others, she becomes powerless. She is “waiting for…someone to change her life.” The fact that the power to “change her life” is in the hands of an unknown “someone” proves that the owner of the car has the power to better lives and Marin, who does not possess the car, is powerless. No matter how much Marin tries, she will not gain true control over her life because the possession of the car, something that is capable of transporting her out of Mango Street, still belongs to “[some]” man.
Esperanza, unlike Marin who does not have or seek real ownership, sees the flaw behind