16 pages • 32 minutes read
Abuelito Who
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Background
Authorial Context
Sandra Cisneros is known for a modern, imagistic writing style characterized by brevity, incomplete sentences, repetition, and uncluttered phrases. The writing’s unusual sparseness creates a descriptive simplicity and clarity that is sharply evocative in its use of imagery. Cisneros uses this technique to articulate the child’s voice and perspective. Her style is greatly influenced by her own experiences growing up in a lower income family with a somewhat chaotic childhood. Later, her experiences as a teacher hearing her student’s stories compelled her to write from the perspective of kids and teens. This is, in part, because the stories they told carried so much weight due to their young age.
Cisneros’s sparse syntax and simple diction work throughout “Abuelito Who” to convey the youth and experience of the speaker. The tone is childlike, but this ingenuousness creates distance between the speaker and the poem’s events, producing an irony. The irony doesn’t buffer the realities presented, but instead underscores the gravity of the experience on a naïve child still figuring out the world. This literary technique is apparent in “Abuelito Who,” with the simple diction and the long run-on sentence. The childlike perspective emphasizes the complex and confusing nature of loss; losing a grandparent when you are a child is a much different experience than losing one as an adult.
Literary and Cultural Context
Sandra Cisneros is considered a major influential figure in contemporary Chicana literature. Chicano/a literature is the name of the genre associated with Mexican-American writing and poetry. The word “Chicano” is essentially different from the more general term “Latino,” which refers to language and cultural ties with Latin American countries more broadly. The genre extends to both American-born people of Mexican ancestry like Sandra Cisneros and those who have emigrated from Mexico to the United States.
The Chicano Movement, also referred to as “El Movimiento,” was a social and political movement during the 1940-70s inspired by the Civil Rights movement for Black Americans. The movement pushed for embracing the Chicano identity, combating racism, and rejecting cultural assimilation. The origins of the Chicano movement can be traced to the Mexican American War in 1848, during which the United States annexed a large part of what was once Mexico. This annexation involved incorporating many Spanish-speaking territories like California, Nevada, Utah, Arizona, Colorado, and New Mexico into the greater United States of America and subsequently turning thousands of former Mexican citizens into citizens of the United States. Chicanos are therefore unlike other “immigrants,” as they have never moved or relocated, yet some consider them to be foreigners or outsiders. Therefore, although Chicano culture is inherently associated with Mexico, it is uniquely American because it is defined by its association with the United States. Chicano culture, literature, and art are generally concerned with the lack of fully belonging to one place or the other, one country or the other, and one language or the other.
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By Sandra Cisneros
