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

Refrigerator

It keeps things fresh.  It keeps things cool.  Sometimes it’s so cool it freezes. That's ok, sometimes its better to have it freeze thing than rot.  My refrigerator is very important to me.  I love  food as much as I love my refrigerator, but food doesn't last.  My refrigerator makes them last.  A refrigerator is like a bank, you make withdrawals and deposits.  You buy food and you eat food.

They come in many different shapes, sizes and colors, just like people.  We are like refrigerators.  Some big, some small.  New and old.  Some treated fairly, some treated poorly.  We leave them out on the streets to rot, call them broken, old, useless.  People never realize they are all the same on the inside, each one does the same thing.  We should treat refrigerators with more care.  We try to make them better with new versions and new styles.  I don’t need a fancy refrigerator, all I need is something to keep my food fresh.  A good refrigerator is a necessity that every person needs. 

~ Edward H.

6 comments:

  1. AnonymousJanuary 9, 2015 at 10:08 AM

    Deep but not

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  2. AnonymousJanuary 9, 2015 at 10:11 AM

    it was deep and cool how you compared refrigerators to people.

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  3. AnonymousJanuary 9, 2015 at 10:12 AM

    You really get into the feelings of the refrigerators.

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  4. AnonymousJanuary 9, 2015 at 10:15 AM

    Deep great concept

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  5. AnonymousJanuary 9, 2015 at 11:05 AM

    I liked it and I can really relate to it!

    ReplyDelete
  6. AnonymousJanuary 9, 2015 at 12:46 PM

    Great topic, so true

    ReplyDelete

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