BOOK SUMMARY / PLOT SYNOPSIS

CHAPTER 11: Marin

Summary

Marin is saving money to see her secret boyfriend, who is in Puerto Rico. She also wants to get a job downtown, though, so that she can wear expensive clothes and meet a rich man who will want to marry her. She sits on her front steps with Esperanza. They talk a little, but mostly they wait for boys to go by, so they can see and be seen.

Notes

Marin is an exotic figure in Esperanza's young life. She has beautiful green eyes and big dreams, is always singing mysterious songs, and has many secrets: her cigarettes, her boyfriend, and all the little things she knows about sex and dating. Her friendship with Esperanza is very much based on Marin imparting her secrets to her young, impressionable friend.

CHAPTER 12: Those Who Don't

Summary

Esperanza is disdainful of people who come into her neighborhood by mistake and are afraid, thinking they will be robbed or killed. However, she admits that when she and her friends go to other neighborhoods, they are afraid themselves. Yeah, she says. That is how it goes and goes.

Notes

Esperanza says outright what the entire book implies: people whose lives are closed off enough that they only know a certain way of life are afraid when they are confronted with people who are not like them. Her own neighborhood is an example of this: all brown all around, we are safe, she says. She points out that even her own friends and neighbors, who are likely to be feared by non-Hispanic people, are afraid themselves when they leave the neighborhood. She is intelligent to the point of cynicism: her observations about prejudice are wry and ridicule everyone, including herself.

CHAPTER 13: There Was an Old Woman She Had So Many Children She Didn't Know What to Do

Summary

Rosa Vargas's husband left her, and she has too many kids, all of them disobedient. The children get into trouble so often that people give up trying to take care of them, and don't react when they injure themselves--even when one of them learn[s] to fly and falls from high above to the ground.

Notes

Rosa Vargas's life is typical of many women from the neighborhood: her situation is so difficult that everyone almost gives up, and when a young child either dies or is seriously injured--it is unclear which at the time--no one even looks up, according to Esperanza. Indeed, the way his fall is described (like a sugar donut, just like a falling star) has such a lack of gravity--it almost feels like a nursery rhyme--that the fall itself is all the more striking. The reader is unsure what has actually happened, and doesn't know exactly how to feel: we know nothing about this child, and there are so many Vargases that he hardly seems significant. This is, perhaps, what Cisneros wants us to understand: the Vargas children, unprotected by their family and community, are far more prone to attack or accident, and more expendable, than any child should be.

CHAPTER 14: Alicia Who Sees Mice

Summary

Alicia is Esperanza's friend. Her mother died and she has had to take her place as her father's servant, cooking and cleaning all the time. But he is smart and ambitious, taking two trains and a bus to study at a University. She sees mice all the time, even though her father tells her they aren't there. She is afraid of the mice--and her father.

Notes

Alicia is perhaps the opposite of Marin: her dreams are practical, and she is realizing her ambition. The images of mice, which appear in the corners of her eyes, are sinister, because they are unexplained, and their skittishness suggests Alicia's own persistent cowering fear of her father.

CHAPTER 15: Darius and the Clouds

Summary

Esperanza mourns the lack of beauty around her, saying, You can never have too much sky. She says Darius, who usually says foolish things or nothing at all, said something wise: he pointed up to the sky and said that one of the pillowy clouds was God. When a younger child questioned him, he just repeated himself.

Notes

In discussing how little beauty there is to be found in her neighborhood, Esperanza exposes the beauty that lies hidden. Darius is usually stupid, but even he can say something profound. And even though there aren't many flowers or butterflies where they live, all they have to do is look up and they can see God, in the simplest things.