The House on Mango Street: Sandra Cisneros

"Acclaimed by critics, beloved by readers of all ages, taught everywhere from grade school to universities across the country, and translated all over the world, The House on Mango Street is the remarkable story of Esperanza Cordero.  Told in a series of vignettes--sometimes heartbreaking, sometimes deeply joyous--it is the story of a young Latina girl growing up in Chicago, inventing for herself who and what she will become.  Few other books in our time have touched so many readers."

Yet again, this is a book that was assigned for my Multicultural American Novel course I am enrolled in at my university.  This book was an extremely quick read for me, due in part because I am such a quick reader, but probably also because it was easy.  I don't mean "easy" in the sense that it was simply written in the "poorly done" sense, but that its structure was pleasingly simple to read.  As stated in the synopses above, it is told in a series of vignettes.  While I went into reading the book knowing this, I do not think I would have appreciated it nearly as much had I not read the introduction.  If memory serves me, the author stated that she intended for the book to be accessible to someone who does not have a lot of time to read.  The book was structured so it could be picked up sporadically and at any point, and the reader would still be able to understand and enjoy it.  I tested out this theory and opened the book to a random page before I began my initial reading of the work.  It was a little one-page passage and I was surprised that I understood--and even enjoyed it a little bit--without having any backstory or context.  As an avid reader and writer, this structure was an entirely new concept to me.  I believe that it is what made this book interesting.  To be honest, I think it's what made me finish it so easily.  Here I go again sounding like I don't really enjoy multicultural literature, but I feel like I've heard this "struggling Latina girl" story so many times before.  The fact that this one was told in a new fashion made it fresh.  There wasn't really a cohesive story being told, so I don't feel right in commenting on "plot" and whatnot.  I do believe that the snippets (that seems like an excellent descriptor here) were relatable and--while they seemed to sometimes chronicle the most mundane of things--they managed to maintain my attention because they didn't linger on themselves for too long.  The fact that they were most often not longer than a page meant that a new story would begin shortly; and, if I didn't like the one that was currently being told, then something else would start in a few lines.  Esperanza appears to be the story's narrator but, because of the unorthodox way this story was told, it makes it difficult to really know a lot about the other characters and get a "feel" for them.  I had a bit of a difficult time even determining who Esperanza was, other than the Latina girl who wanted to be free of the bad neighborhood.  Overall, this was not a bad read.  To those that are apprehensive, I want to remind you that this book is a quick read.  If you don't like it, it doesn't take up too much of your time.  I didn't think it was a bad read, but I don't think it was "excellent."  I know there are many out there who would disagree with me, but I DID give this book a chance and I believe I am giving Cisneros her dues for the unique and interesting writing style.

The Help: Kathryn Stockett

"Aibileen Clark is a black main in 1962 Jackson, Mississippi, raising her seventeenth white child.  She's always taken orders quietly, but lately it leaves her with a bitterness she can no longer bite back.  Her friend Minny Jackson has certainly never held her tongue, or held onto a job for very long, but now she's working for a newcomer with secrets that leave her speechless.  And white socialite Skeeter Phelan has just returned from college with ambition and a degree but, to her mother's lament, no husband.  Normally Skeeter would find solace in Constantine, the beloved maid who raised her, but Constantine has inexplicably disappeared.

"Together, these seemingly different women join to work on a project that could forever alter their destinies and the life of a small town--to write, in secret, a tell-all book about what it's really like to work as a black maid in the white homes of the South.  Despite the terrible risks they will have to take, and the sometimes humorous boundaries they will have to cross, these three women unite with one intention:  hope for a better day."

This book was assigned for my Multicultural American Novel course.  I was excited as soon as I saw it on the syllabus, but wished we were going to read it earlier in the semester.  This past week was Spring Break, so I took advantage of the respite from my incessant homework and essays to read this book.  I had already signed up to analyze the book and compare it to the film (which I have yet to see) for my final project and told myself that reading ahead of the syllabus was only going to help me have a better final.  I picked up the book as soon as I was able and read it in a matter of only a few days.  Overall it was extremely captivating.  The characters were rich and the writing was very enjoyable to read.  I love it when it just feels natural to read a book.

The way the author chose to tell her story through the points of view of Aibileene, Minny, and Miss Skeeter was brilliant.  Rather than an omniscient narrator, the first-person narration and its limitations made the story much more interesting.  I found myself wrapped up in the characters.  It was so much easier for the reader to put herself in the shoes of the characters and fall in love with the story because of this narration choice.  The reader sees and experiences only what that singular character does.  Rather than feeling jumpy and disjointed, the story felt much more--for lack of a better description--“comfortable” and inviting.  The characters really felt alive, like the story that I was reading was brought to life by their unique personalities.  If asked who my favorite “heroin” was, I do not know if I could choose between the three main characters.  Aibileen was such a mother figure that it was difficult not to fall in love with her.  The way she cares for poor little Mae Mobley really tugged at my heart--perhaps due mostly to the way that the little girl was treated by her mother, Elizabeth.  I cannot imagine anyone I know would treat their child in that exclusionary manner.  What really hit me, though, was that--after reading this book--I’m sure it happened (even happens) a lot more than we think.  For all those children who feel smothered by their mothers, there opposite side of the spectrum seems to be an even worse alternative.  I enjoyed reading Minny’s passages as well.  She puts up such a hard façade and it was nice to see another side of her.  I found her job working for Miss Cindy particularly interesting.  Her new employer is shrouded in mystery, which only made me want to read more quickly so I could find out what was really going on with that odd woman.  The contrast of Minny’s home-life with how she behaves in public was another facet of her character that interested me.  The juxtaposition of her strength in public coupled with the way she coped with her husband felt very (depressingly) real.  In a backwards way, it endeared Minny to me.  (Having not been in a situation like Minny’s, I know it is easy for an outsider to say how easy freedom could be.  I’m a little bit ashamed to say that I am disappointed in Minny in that aspect.  I did especially loved finding out about the Terrible Awful Thing Minny did to Miss Hilly…I won’t give it away though!)  Miss Skeeter was enjoyable because she was so relatable.  I think almost every reader can relate to her in some way (being an educated woman when it’s not something that is necessarily embraced, losing love over an inability to see eye-to-eye, a pushy mother, the pressure to conform to society’s norms and what one’s friends expect of her, or even just being that awkward girl who took awhile to come into her own).  It sounds cliché, but I can see a little bit of myself in Skeeter and I think that’s what made it so much fun to read.  She was extremely easy to connect with and the fluidity of her passages was refreshing after the dialectical elements of Minny and Aibileen’s.  (That is another thing that I really appreciated about the writing:  The fact that the author took the time to make each of her characters literally sound different!)

The plot was unique and controversial.  While I do not have the authority to say that it’s never been done before, I will say that the way it was written and the brilliant characters definitely made it stand out.  Apart from the shining main narrators/characters, the “villains” were remarkably interesting as well.  They helped make the story so much more believable.  Hilly’s cruelties were numerous and shocking.  The fact that she managed to hurt or control practically everyone who appeared in the book was fascinating.  The depth of her manipulation and depravity and her lack of conscience were appalling.  I couldn’t help but hate her.  I love it when there is a character like that!  Elizabeth Leefolt, while not exactly a villain, was made cruel by her inaction when it came to her children and her maid, and her weak will when it came to Miss Hilly.  The only times she ever showed any emotion toward her children were when Mae Mobley was “bad”.  These scenes broke my heart because I know that there is some child out there that has had these experiences.  (It only solidified the resolve I already had to speak to my children the way Aibileen spoke to Mae Mobley.)

If you cannot tell from my review, I absolutely loved the book.  (I wish the ending had been a little bit more satisfying, but I think that would have made it less realistic.  There was not always a happy ending in the struggle for Civil Rights.)  I am so looking forward to watching the movie now--I’ve even made my boyfriend promise to watch it with me.  Sweet torture.  I laughed so many times while reading this book because the humor managed to lighten the piece without diminishing its dramatic impact.  Not to sound racist or uncaring, but I’ve always had a hard time staying interested while studying the Civil Rights Movement.  This book brought it to life for me in a way that history class was never able to.  Though a work of fiction, there was enough historical impact in this book to make me feel like I was being exposed to a time that I’d never before really cared for.  And I enjoyed it.  I absolutely recommend this book on so many levels and to so many different people.  This book has the remarkable ability to be read for entertainment as well as for something more sober like an analysis of Multicultural Literature (as I did).  While I would not recommend this book to someone as young as I’ve seen read it (I know some girls around thirteen who have picked up this book because of Emma Stone’s involvement in the film adaptation) purely for the reason that I do not believe they’re able to grasp all of the nuances just yet or understand why some acts of violence are described, I believe this novel is a fantastic tool for a great variety of readers to witness (and subconsciously learn) acceptance and appreciation.  I would LOVE to hear what others have thought about this book!  Please feel free to comment with your interpretations, input, and thoughts on this work.

*I will be watching this movie soon so I may be updating my review with my opinions of the movie adaptation!  Keep an eye out for it! 

A Mercy: Toni Morrison

"In the 1680s the slave trade in the Americas is still in its infancy.  Jacob Vaark is an Anglo-Dutch trader and adventurer, with a small holding in the harsh North.  Despite his distaste for dealing in "flesh," he takes a small slave girl in part payment for a bad debt from a plantation owner in Catholic Maryland.  This is Florens, who can read and write and might be useful on his farm.  Rejected by her mother, Florens looks for love, first from Lina, an older servant woman at her new master's house, and later from the handsome blacksmith, an African, never enslaved, who comes riding to their lives.

"A Mercy reveals what lies beneath the surface of slavery.  But at its heart, like Beloved, it is the ambivalent, disturbing story of a mother and daughter--a mother who casts off her daughter in order to save her, and a daughter who may never exorcise the abandonment."

This was another book that I read for my Multicultural American novel course.  I can certainly see why Toni Morrison is the winner of the Nobel Prize.  Her writing has something about it that is profoudly deep and almost lyrical.  This book took me only a few days to read.  While I enjoyed parts of it, there were the passages from the point of view of Florens that really, really...baffled (is that the word I want to use...I'm not so sure) me.  I practically got to the point of actually disliking the portions from the girl's point of view.  I really do understand that the point of these passages was to breathe life into the character, Florens, and show that--while she knew how to read and write some--she was still untrained and "simple"-for lack of a better word.  The plot was extremely jumpy and was hard to follow, but I was able to catch up after re-reading passages.  It is very difficult for me to say whether or not I enjoyed the book.  I liked it better than a lot of books that I've had to read for other classes in the past, but it certainly was not my favorite.  The wrting--while rich and interesting--was sometimes difficult to follow.  I genuinely believe that the only reason that I somewhat liked the book was only because I forced myself to look deeper than the words.  I will not try to dispute Morrison's status as a well-known and widely touted brilliant author, but this book was not really the most delicious cup of tea for me.  Like I said earlier, I liked portions of the book.  The work as a whole was not bad.  I am just not sure if I will--by my own choice--choose to read a book by Morrison in my free time.  I recommend this book for the conditions under which I read it--in a classroom/educational setting.  It was a decent book with interesting situations and history to the plot, but one really has to be open to it.

Shell Shaker: LeAnne Howe

“Why was Red Shoes, the most formidable Choctaw warrior of the eighteenth century, assassinated by his own people?  Why does his death haunt Auda Billy, an Oklahoma Choctaw woman, accused in 1991 of murdering Choctaw Chief Redford McAlester?  Moving between the known details of Red Shoes’ life and the riddle of McAlester’s death, this novel traces the history of the Billy women whose destiny it is to solve both murders—with the help of a powerful spirit known as the Shell Shaker.”

As you may have guessed, this was another book that was not of my own choosing.  It was another novel for my Multicultural American Novel course.  My instructor has Native American blood, so this course has a couple of Native American books assigned.  Shell Shaker was obviously one of them.

I must say that the first chapter did a pretty good job of drawing me in.  I love historical fiction, so the portions told from Shakbatina’s and the other eighteenth century Native Americans’ points of view were interesting to me.  I was expecting to feel the same way about the “modern” portions of the story, but, unfortunately, I did not.  As much as I appreciated the unique way that the story was told—flipping back and forth between the past lives of the characters and the present—I did not feel any sort of attachment to them.  They felt very flat.  I think this is perhaps because the author spent so much time working on making connections between the characters’ past and present selves that there was not enough time to really round them out.  On top of it, the story had so many different characters and was told from several different points of view.  This hindered my creating an attachment to any one or two characters.  I felt very little sympathy for anyone other than the first character I was introduced to:  Shakbatina.  Even Auda, who has terrible things done to her and does suffer, seemed very “fake”. (I’m sure there’s a better word to be used here, but I cannot find it.  I simply mean that she wasn’t fleshed out enough for me.)  Rather than sympathy, I felt pity.  I know it is easy for me to say that it’s stupid because I have never been in such a situation, but I have a hard time connecting with female characters who allow themselves to be led on, tricked, abused, and they choose to remain in that situation.  Overall, I would have to say that I connected the most with Isaac Billy.  His kind heart and quick wit were very endearing.

I wish I had enjoyed this book more.  It was a fairly quick read, but I wish I’d relished the process.  I am not a fan of “magic” books and this was one of those.  I’m not against the supernatural, but this one was a little bit too over the top for me.  I’m sure that there are those out there who love this book—more power to them.  This one was just not for me—not terrible!  Just not for me.