Goodreads Monday is a weekly meme that was started by @Lauren’s Page Turners but is now currently being hosted by Emily @ Budget Tales Book Blog. This meme is quite easy to follow – just randomly pick a book from your to-be-read list and give the reasons why you want to read it. It is that simple.
This week’s book:
The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros
Blurb from Goodreads
Acclaimed by critics, beloved by readers of all ages, taught everywhere from inner-city grade schools 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.
Why I Want To Read It
Happy first day of the week everyone! I can’t believe that today is the last Monday of September. In a couple of days, we will be welcoming October. Where did the time go? With the start of a new week, I hope it was not a manic one. I hope you started the week on the right note and I hope that the rest of the week will go great for everyone. More importantly, I hope that you are all doing well and are in a good state of health, both in your mind and body. As we approach the last quarter of the year, I hope that you all get repaid for all the hard work you’ve poured in. I hope that all your prayers get answered. My biggest wish, however, is for COVID-19 and monkeypox to be finally eradicated. With this, I remind everyone to be diligent in observing minimum health protocols. I wish that everyone will have a great week ahead!
To kickstart the blogging week, I am posting a new Goodreads Monday update. For September, I have immersed myself in the works of American literature. I decided on this path after I have resolved to focus on my ongoing reading challenges for the year. Toward the end of August, I realized how I have been lagging behind in most of these challenges. To avoid cramming toward the end of the year, I have been ticking off books from these challenges. Surprisingly, or maybe not, most of the pending books in these challenges are works of American literature, hence, my current reading journey. To align with this month’s motif, I have been featuring works of American literature in this month’s Goodreads Monday updates. This week, I am featuring Sandra Cisneros’ The House on Mango Street.
If there is something certain about American literature, it is as vast and diverse as the culture the nation has attracted over the course of its history. With the United States developing into a melting pot of different cultures, American literature has, over time, become equally diverse. One can literally find works from every walk of life and from every racial background within the vast ambit of American literature. As such, I have been featuring the works of writers from this vast sphere. For instance, last week, I featured the work of an African American writer while the week before that, I featured the work of an American Indian and an Asian-American writer even further down the road. For this week, I am featuring the work of a Hispanic American writer. The long history of Hispanic (and basically every part of the world) diaspora was one of the major drivers in turning the United States into the melting pot that it is now today. Over the years, Hispanic-American writers have also been capturing various facets of both cultures and how they have integrated.
One of these writers is Sandra Cisneros. Born and raised in Chicago, Cisneros was the only surviving daughter born to a family of Mexican immigrants; she had six other brothers. Apart from being a novelist and short story writer, Cisneros held a variety of professional positions, working as a teacher, a counselor, a college recruiter, a poet-in-the-schools, and an arts administrator. As a writer, she rose to prominence with her debut novel, The House on the Mango Street, which was published in 1983. It is also a book I keep on encountering whenever I drop by the bookstore. Unfortunately, I am yet to obtain a copy of the book. I originally thought that the book was written by a Filipino writer. I also thought that it has shades of another popular work by a Hispanic writer, Laura Esquivel’s Like Water for Chocolate. But if indeed the story was told in a series of vignettes, then it would echo some facets of Esquivel’s works. Nevertheless, I am looking forward to reading the book.
How about you fellow reader? Are there works of African/Black American literature you want to recommend? Do drop it in the comment box. For now, happy Monday and, as always, happy reading!
The Pine-Scented Chronicles 