"Only Daughter" - Nothing "Only" about Sandra

This was the first week of class.  Mr. Lewenstein shared one of his favorite authors.  Her name is Sandra Cisneros.  Mr. Lewenstein said she writes with an edge.  We all agree!  We worked in groups to respond to her essay "Only Daughter."  She writes about her life-long struggle to gain acceptance from her father.

Sandra’s childhood experience of being “the only daughter” proved to be a great training ground for a writing career. In fact, it was her feelings of isolation and abandonment from her fathers and brothers that pushed her towards reading and writing. When she grew older, her skill for transferring her plight to the page enabled her to enter UC Berkeley and later become on of our most renown Latino authors. Her “ House on Mango Street”, for example, reflects many of the same childhood frustrations she describes in her essay. One story after another boasts the voice of a poor young girl struggling to make sense of her loneliness. When she writes in “Only Daughter” that she values her mistreatment from being an only daughter, We believe her. She learned how to convert her pain and confusion into beautiful, meaningful stories. In my opinion, her anger is her juice.