Navigating Her Idenitity in the Impoverished American Dream

Navigating her identity in an impoverished American dream. Let's get into it.

Hello, my name is Amy Jones.

And today we'll be discussing the female,

the gunwoman through the lens of second

generational American poverty and its repercussions,

teaching young readers messages of resilience and empathy

through the lens of Franci Nolan and Esperanza Cordero

and the novels of Three Girls in Brooklyn by Betty

Smith and The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros.

Let's get into it

while these novels are different in cultural backgrounds,

their places in time and their respective cities, they exist within

the themes that circulate throughout these novels.

For the protagonist and any other reader

who picks up their pages are in many ways weaved into the same cloth

abuse and abuse of substance, loneliness and upwards

home and what it means. Once you leave it community in particularly those of women

and finally grief and loss.

Through this presentation,

I seek to guide you through why and how these

novels create a unique space in classic and adult literature.

As untraditional representations of coming of age that teach lessons of

empathy and provide comfort to the ones of the female experience,

poverty and the symptomatic otherness when they feel as a child of immigrants.

So with that being said,

let me introduce you to our first novel, A Tree Grows In Brooklyn.

And our first protagonist, Fancy Nolan, the tree that grew in Brooklyn.

So who is Francy Nolan

told in a third person

cent telling an array of stories in an array of people. In 1912, Williamsburg.

This novel focuses primarily on the 18 year span

of a young scrappy girl named Francy Nolan.

In introducing you to Fancy me.

I struggled to pick just one quote that shows you how truly optimistic,

ambitious and resilient.

This young girl is after much rereading and trial and error.

I've decided to read you this passage from page 73 of my copy.

This excerpt not only passages, the likes of Franci,

but the central dynamics of her Irish Austrian family and

how she is both of and other to their chaos.

The passage reaches followed

and the child of Fancy Nolan was of all the Romneys and of all the Nolans.

She had the violent weaknesses and passion for the beauty of the Shanty Nolans.

She was the mosaic of her grandmother Romney's mysticism.

Her tale telling her great belief in everything and her compassion for weak ones.

She a lot of her grandfather,

Ramy's cruel will. She had some of Aunt

Aie's talents and then

some of

no one's possessiveness.

She had Aunt Sissy's love for life and her love for Children.

She had Johnny's sentimentality without his good looks.

She had all of Katie's Softwares and only half of the invisible steel of Katie.

She was made up of all of these good and bad things. She was made up of more too.

She was the book she read in the library. She was the flower in the brown bowl.

Part of her life was made from a tree growing rankly in the yard.

She was bit the bitter quarrel she had with her brother whom she loved deeply.

She was this Katie's secret, despair and weeping.

She was the shame of her father staggering on drugs.

She was all of these things in something more.

It was something that had been born into her in her only

the something from anyone else in the two families

with this quote.

And otherwise I could talk about francy and her ambitions and instances like when

she quit school to get a job after her father died of alcoholism.

The way she read the library down A to Z

the difficulty she found in connecting with others amidst

hunger pains and the shame of her poverty.

However,

I could not talk about francy or even a tree grows in Brooklyn

without talking about the community of women who let that tree grow.

Her books. Her roots were the books, but also the women who, who helped her grow.

While these stories of,

well the stories of the Nolan men and others in Brooklyn are told in detail.

It is the women who are the star of the shows.

This novel doesn't really have a plot.

However,

it is in the silent discussions in the swimming eavesdrop on by Francy

that we learn of the real happenings

and travesties of the Williamsburg neighborhood.

It was Francys mother Katie who worked to put

food on the table while her husband Johnny was

spending every last time at the bar and Katie

who sticks her family back together after his death,

it was Katie who read them Shakespeare in the Bible every

night and hoped that they might have a better life.

It was Katie who got them their vaccines so they could go to school.

It was the witty energy and love of aunt Sissy that brought plans and

flowers on her graduation day signed with a note from her recently deceased father.

It was Aunt Edie's kindness, kind guidance,

grandma Romley's kindness and the charitable piano lessons of the

TMO sisters that gave Frannie the will to keep trial.

While the women in this story do not yet have the

power to vote and many without the ability to read,

they're consistent in providing Francy,

her brother and all of their respective Children with

the life they had always dreamed of for themselves,

even if that meant sacrificing everything they had.

So what impact has this book had on? Why readers?

Well, I cannot speak to the testament of all young readers for the last 100 years,

I can tell you about my nana.

As you can see to the left.

I have inserted a text message I got from

my nana earlier this week telling me about how

she's going to reread a tree grows in Brooklyn for the first time since she was 15.

The reason I chose this topic at all is because of

her and the gift she gave me as a child.

I love for reading

on the phone the other night with my nana.

I said, she said to me, I don't know if I should be embarrassed by this.

But looking back,

this book shaped almost everything about who I am and how I see the world,

even without being conscious of it,

this book has gotten me through everything thus far in my life.

As you can imagine, I wrote this down immediately

growing up in an impoverished Irish family of 11 in the south side of Chicago.

My nana grew up a lot like Francy Nolan brought up

by the eight strong and resilient women of her family.

Now she is successful,

retired on the shores of Lake Michigan in a house that she bought for herself.

I'm not sure she could have done it if it weren't for the stories like fancy.

Consequently, this book has had a similar effect on me

handed to me by my nana when I was only 14

and going through one of the roughest periods of my life.

I

think often about what she said to me when handing me the book,

a Testament that I have lived by for the last 10 years,

looking over the lake at her family's house in

Mich Michigan, peering down on our own tree of heaven right outside the porch.

She said,

Annie, even trees grow in concrete.

Well, I can understand how this book may not re

resonate as it has for me and my nana, for audiences like people of color,

the lessons of resilience and empathy in many ways I feel are universal.

I hope someday you too might get the chance to pick it up or re pick up its pages.

So now let me introduce you to Francy.

Nolan's counterpart, Esperanza Cordero, the girl who lived on Mango street.

Esperanza is a young witty girl that while

grappling with her concept of home and identity

observes her impoverished Chicana neighborhood of Chicago to

make sense of the world around her.

Similar to Francy.

I chose to read you a passage from the foreword of this book written by

its author Sandra Cisneros that I feel says a lot about Esperanza and consequently,

Sandra herself,

she's afraid she'll fall in love and get stuck living in Chicago.

She's afraid of ghosts, deep water rodents, nights, things that move too fast,

cars, airplanes for life.

She's afraid she'll have to move back home again

if she isn't brave enough of living alone.

And while this quote, I feel identifies with Esperanza a lot.

I don't feel I can talk about,

talk about Esperanza fully without discussing the women

that helped shape how she saw life itself.

The Chicano women of

Mango Street

similar to the house to the tree grows in Brooklyn.

The house on Mango Street while dabbling in the lives

of men tends to focus on women as mothers providers,

objects of view of abuse and mentors.

We learn of how her mother school uniforms because as a child,

she quit school due to the embarrassment of her poverty,

that was evident in the clothes.

We learned of her best friend,

Sally and the abuse of her father that led to her into an abuse of marriage.

At the young age of 15,

we learned the mother who had so many Children,

she couldn't keep track of them at all.

So no one did

we watch as girls learn that what it means to be. A woman can sometimes be dangerous.

And of all we learn the lesson through the three psychic sisters that well,

you may never leave your home, it will never leave you.

So what was the impact of the house on Mango Street?

This coming of age tale teaches young readers to have pride

in where they came from and what their culture is.

The notion that resilience and ambition will get you always get you through

and ultimately that no life is exactly what you think so be calm

all through the lens of a woman of color.

Well, being a woman of color is not all that Esperanza stands for,

it teaches other young women of color, but they are too valued in the lives

of their communities. And therefore the lives of literature

that like Esperanza,

they are capable of leaving the home that sometimes hurts them.

And so finally, where do these two intersect?

Let me tell you about Francy and Esperanza. The trees that grew together in concrete

the end.

I will read you the following passages that

come from each Esperanza in Franti and seeing themselves

as trees growing beyond and in many ways leading yet rooted in what they came from.

But Francy didn't want to get rid of it more than she wanted to get rid of her name.

And then she belonged someplace.

She was a Brooklyn girl with a Brooklyn name and a Brooklyn accent.

She didn't want to change one bit of this or one bit of that.

You will always be esperanto. You will always be Mango Street.

You can't erase what you know, you can't forget who you are.

So where do these two Branches Cross?

These books were both written in the semi auto

biographical form,

proving that these stories of struggle are not simply fictional,

but aspects of reality

and while separated by time and place,

they coincide in the ways each learns to grapple with poverty in terms of home

otherness and the need to find connection

and external materials like books or community.

These stories made by women to teach women

that there's a way out reminding young girls

and readers everywhere that you are not what happened to you or where you came from.

But the strong woman or person, you will be.

So with that being said,

tell me about a reading experience where you felt you saw yourself reflected,

did it reflect your community or family?

Did it resonate with who you are or shape how you see the world?

Why did it leave an imprint?

Was it, was it handed down to you or did you discover it on your own?

Let me know what you think in the comments.

So that is the end of my presentation. Thank you so much for listening.

I hope you have a good rest end of your session.

Navigating Her Idenitity in the Impoverished American Dream

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