Sandra Cisneros

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 suppose 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 great-grandfather threw a sack over her head and carried her off. Just like that, as if she were a fancy chandelier. That’s the way he did it.

And the story goes she never forgave him. She looked out the window her whole 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 the window.

At school they say my name fanny as if the syllables were made out of tin and hurt the roof of you mouth. But in Spanish my name is made out of a softer something, like silver, not quite as thick as 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 Lisandra or Maritza or Zeze the X. Yes. Something like Zeze the X will do.

Cisneros, Sandra. “My Name.” The House on Mango Street.

Mi familia se ha pasado mi vida entera intentando descifrar qué es lo que me gusta y porqué, y nunca he sido capaz de darles una respuesta decente. No tengo una idea clara de qué exactamente despierta mi interés, si es una cosa o una combinación de varias, pero aún así sé reconocerlo cuando lo veo; no antes. Y es que no es algo que piense, simplemente lo siento y ya. Así de simple.

En este caso en particular, me bastó con leer las tres primera páginas de The House on Mango Street para sentirlo. Aunque debo admitir que el que su autora sea Sandra Cisneros ya me lo anticipaba desde mucho antes de la primera línea. Hay algo es su forma de narrar que me atrapa. Tal vez sea que con pocas palabras y sin muchas vueltas es capaz de decir mucho. Lenguaje simple y que me deja ver mucho más allá de las palabras usadas. Odio cuando al escritor le da por usar palabrería innecesaria sólo para impresionar al lector, para, según él, deslumbrarlo con detalles y darle “visión clara”. Prefiero mil veces los silencios. Dicen mucho más que todo ese laberinto léxico.