Like any art form, words have the power to move us and expose us to alternate perspectives and deeper realizations. Recently, my class was studying The House on Mango Street. Writing in vignettes, short powerful scenes, Sandra Cisneros manages to capture her whole universe in a few words. She transforms the deeply personal into the universal. My students and I tried to express ourselves using the same format. Here is my attempt:

 

Growing Up Was Crowded

Growing up was crowded. One mom, five kids, and a dog in one room with a pullout and a kitchenette. It was the kind of place you didn’t admit you lived in. Actually, no one lived there. Temporary housing. More temporary for some. Our hotel was at the intersection of two worlds, set on the border between Brighton and Manhattan Beaches. The former a teeming immigrant community. The latter a ritzy enclave of expansive homes. Counterpoint to our tight, dim quarters. Wedged in between, neither would claim us. We were the chasm.

The Russian immigrants ignored us. We barely registered in the cacophonous crowd on Brighton Beach Avenue. Surrounded by the Cyrillic script and pungent smells of Little Odessa, we could easily enshroud ourselves. Immigrant and alien, each of us deftly sidestepping our way around the other. Each consumed with the eternal struggle of daily living.  

Past Corbin Place, blending in became more difficult. Shiny hair, shiny cars, shiny lives. Our dull brown lives the shadow to their sun. Stylish matrons would give us the once over from their Cadillacs as we trudged across Oriental Boulevard on our way to the park and beach beyond. Taking in our sticky hands and untied shoelaces with their pursed lips and flashing eyes. That look that turned the sky gray. That look that turned me to sludge. That look taught me to be invisible. A thoughtless reaction. A lifetime scar.