Potomac's eighth grade English students read and discuss The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros. The book is a series of short vignettes that together capture the characters, setting, and stories of a particular neighborhood in Chicago. The vignettes are written from the perspective of a fictional narrator and are based loosely on Cisneros's own experiences as well as those of her students. Some of the vignettes are humorous or action-packed; some are heart-wrenching or shocking. All are deliberate in their use of figurative language, poetic elements, grammar conventions, and pacing.

Each eighth grader composed at least one vignette for inclusion in this digital collection. They wrote in the style of Sandra Cisneros, as they interpreted it based on their notes and our class discussions, yet they set it in a time and place of their own choosing. While some of these vignettes are based on the author's personal experience, many of them are purely fiction, an imagining of characters and circumstances that seemed ripe for this assignment. Students also used this assignment to experiment with new vocabulary words and techniques involving punctuation and sentence structure.

We encourage you to leave comments below vignettes that strike you in some way. Please keep your comments positive and specific; this is not the place for critiques or suggestions. Enjoy the creativity and vibrancy of these students' literary efforts.

Wednesday, December 24, 2014

Annual Agony

Most people only go through this once. Most people endure this torture while they are small, an unaware child. Most people have familiar faces to help them through this. This agonizing pain. I am not  like most people. I fight the same war every year. Same demon. Same enemies. Same one man team, on a different battle field. 

 A thousand bricks on a scale is nothing compared to the weight of this perennial torment.

 Year after year. When the sun hides behind clouds, and the leaves change. Every. Single. Year. You would think I would be numb to this annual ritual by now. That its pain would barely register after close to a decade. You would think that the pain would be gone.

 But it’s not.

 Not even close.

 Each time is like the first. Each time is like a sharp knife creating a new wound. A new wound on a body covered in scars.

 Stares. Taunts. Cliques. Hierarchy. Mouths wide open, all waiting to swallow me whole. 

 I hate school.

 ~ Daija Y.

9 comments:

  1. AnonymousJanuary 8, 2015 at 9:13 AM

    Your ending is a great twist. Your descriptiveness led me to believe that you are a tree describing the fall.

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  2. AnonymousJanuary 8, 2015 at 9:21 AM

    The last sentence is gold

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  3. AnonymousJanuary 8, 2015 at 9:27 AM

    The beginning is really ominous and I had no idea what you were talking about but when you got to the end everything made sense and that made the whole story worth wild.

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  4. AnonymousJanuary 8, 2015 at 9:29 AM

    This vignette is extremely entertaining. This is from the different metaphors, your writing, and just the humor and plot twist in the end. I LOVE IT!!!!

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  5. AnonymousJanuary 9, 2015 at 10:08 AM

    True

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  6. AnonymousJanuary 9, 2015 at 10:24 AM

    Jeez. this scared me at first, I love how you built it up and then ended with just a simple sentence.

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  7. AnonymousJanuary 9, 2015 at 10:47 AM

    Love the plot twist. This is an amazing story

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  8. AnonymousJanuary 9, 2015 at 10:58 AM

    Great description and plot twist. Nice work!

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  9. AnonymousJanuary 9, 2015 at 12:52 PM

    Nice

    ReplyDelete

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