Sandra Cisneros "My Name'

"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."

In the first stanza Esperanza compares her name to unhappiness. I find it interesting that she notes the  American meaning of her name and how it sounds better in English. It could symbolize the inner conflict of her culture versus America. Her name symbolizes her waiting for something better. I've read that the number nine can symbolize judgement or finality. It's important to make the connection between the number nine and how Esperanza feels as though her name represents finality. 


"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 supposed 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 by the window."

This sections touches on the misogynist attitudes Latin men have towards women.Women are viewed as objects, for example Esperanza's great grandmother was carried off like a fancy chandelier.  It also introduces the character of her great grandmother, which is where she gets her name from.  I feel as though Esperanza sees herself in her great-grandmother. The theme of superstition, which is also huge in Latin culture is also touched upon.




"At school they say my name funny as if the syllables were made out of tin and hurt the roof of your 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. 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."

I feel like Esperanza is the definitely a wild horse of a woman. She is flamboyant and extreme in her personality. She does not choose tame name to baptize herself with, instead she chooses one that almost completely erases the name Esperanza.