What's in a Name?

עמוד:6

My Name Sandra Cisneros was born in Chicago , in the United States , to an American mother and ^ ר immigrant ^\ ר & . Cisneros wrote a book called The House on Mango Street . Read an excerpt from the book and consider how she sees her name as affecting her identity . In English my name means hope . In Spanish it means too many letters . It means sadness , it means waiting . It is like the number nine . A muddy color . It is the Mexican records my father plays on Sunday mornings when he is shaving , songs like sobbing . It was my great-grandmother ' s name and now it is mine . She was a horse woman too , born like me in the Chinese year of the horse — which is supposed to be bad luck if you're born female — but I think this is a Chinese lie because the Chinese , like the Mexicans , don ' t like their women strong . My great-grandmother . I would've liked to have known her , a wild horse of a woman , so wild she wouldn ' t marry until my greatgrandfather threw a sack over her head and carried her off . Just like that , as ifshe were a fancy chandelier * . That's the way he did it . And the story goes she never forgave him . She looked out the window all her life , the way so many women sit their sadness on an elbow . I wonder if she made the best with what she got or was she sorry because she couldn't be all the things she wanted to be . Esperanza . I have inherited her name , but I don ' t want to inherit her place by the window . At school they say my name funny as if the syllables were made out oftin and hurt the roofof your mouth . But in Spanish my name is made out of a softer something , like silver , not quite as thick as my sister's name Magdalena which is uglier than mine . Magdalena who at least can come home and become Nenny . But I am always Esperanza . I would like to baptize * myself under a new name , a name more like the real me , the one nobody sees . Esperanza as Li sandra or Maritza orZeze the X . Yes . Something like Zeze the X will do . * chandelier —an expensive ceiling lamp with many branches that hold a number of lights . * to baptize —to give a child his or her first name at a Christian religious ceremony .

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