Coyolxauhqui and Coming of Age in Sandra Cisneros’s The House on Mango Street
2024; Springer International Publishing; Linguagem: Inglês
10.1007/978-3-031-12863-9_4
ISSN2634-6028
Autores Tópico(s)Asian American and Pacific Histories
ResumoIn an exploration of The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros (1984) as a survival narrative, I propose a theory of transformative narrativity, a process of negotiation between the writing, publication, and distribution, and readership of stories of trauma and healing. Working with Anzaldúan frameworks, I apply concepts of radical storytelling to Cisneros’s masterpiece, considering her formative work through a new lens. The collection of vignettes features an adolescent protagonist and her circle of friends and acquaintances who grapple with the everyday lived realities of racism, sexism, and violence in their working-class Chicago neighborhood. They discover what it means to cross the boundary from girlhood to adulthood, in sometimes funny, sometimes heartbreaking ways. Cisneros writes about body image, puberty, marriage, pregnancy, domestic violence, the bonds of sisterhood, power of friendship born of female relationships, and sting of betrayal that can leave lasting scars. Sexual assault and harassment frame the experiences of many young women in the book, standing as critical turning points in their character development. Their subsequent coming of age experiences are in direct response to these violations. I read the novel through the lens of Anzaldúa’s Coyolxauhqui imperative to examine how the main character transmutes trauma into the self-resolve to change her life and her situation and thereby effect change in the world around her.
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