by: Lazy & EntitledPosted on:

Friday Links: A Nation Made Of Mango Streets Edition

“Then as if she forgot I just moved in, she says the neighborhood is getting bad.” – Sandra Cisneros, ‘The House On Mango Street’

Another Friday Links that I’m pre-writing. Two days ago, my time, the US and Israel launched air strikes in Iran, killing 100 schoolchildren who were just trying to get through their day. Apparently the school was telling parents to “be patient until we can see if we can get the girls from under the rubble.” Sloppy drunkard Lindsay Graham1is thrilled. Of course, there’s no strategy. Just killing people who aren’t white, because that is what the project of the United States is and has always been for.

I’m sure it’s gotten worse in the last 11 days! I’ll probably update this part.

UPDATE as of Monday, 3/9: it has gotten worse! So much worse! The United States and Israel blew up oil refineries and water desalination plants! They have done untold damage to Tehran! Iran is bombing every one it can, and the only reason they’re not bombing U.S. soil is their government is made of better people than our government! I’m so fuckin pissed and scared! Trump is talking about re-instating the draft, so burn your Selective Service cards. Are you gonna die at the whims of a demented pedophile?

UPDATE as of Thursday, 3/12: apparently oil is going to go up to $200 a barrel and a bunch of sea mines might get dumped in the Persian Gulf. Which do I hate more, mines or the U.S. Government?

What I’ve Been Reading This Week

Two mericfully short books, given that books in the Great Cities duology are 440ish and 350ish pages, respectively, and I’ve been traveling. I didn’t just read this novel for its length, though. This is a book that belongs in the pantheon of Great Chicago Short Novels. I happen to be editing what I hope will eventually be a Great Chicago Short Novel at the moment, and when you’re editing something? Helps to study the masters. One of next week’s book will reflect this attitude, too, even if that book isn’t a Chicago book. Oh, and I crammed in an AWP purchase on the plane home. This week? This week we’re talking The House On Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros.

The House On Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros and Childless Millennial by Chiara Di Lello
The House On Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros and Childless Millennial by Chiara Di Lello

The House On Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros: goodNIGHT what a wonderful little book. Literary pointilism. I know it’s often taught in middle school but I believe writers at all stages can benefit a great deal from reading this book. So much show don’t tell, so much iceberg theory here. So much left off the pages that nevertheless populates in a reader’s head—I’m gonna go cut 50 pages from my manuscript.

And so much horror that people without means live with, as a matter of course. There’s a part at the end where Esperanza laughs out loud at the idea of the mayor ever visiting Mango Street. If you think this country has a pedophilia and misogyny and racism and xenophobia now, check out this book written by a woman born the year before my dad. That the novel doesn’t dwell on these horrors—or explicitly spell out what “moving every year, and further west each time,” means in Chicagoan—is partially due to its prepubescent narrator and partially due to the nature of their lives. So some old man took your 13-year-old friend to state where that’s old enough to marry. What’re you gonna do about it? Leave Mango Street? Better go down to whatever store is hiring and lie about your age so that you can start making minimum wage. Actually, the more I think about it, the more it sounds like the kind of country Republicans are trying to build.

If you haven’t read it, the book isn’t as depressing as that paragraph makes it out to be—can a Bildungsroman, by its nature, even be depressing? More like, this is a book about people, as they are, as perceived by a middle schooler. It’s not unlike a Gwendolyn Brooks book, and not not in the Carl Sandburg lineage. Check it out. You can read it in an afternoon.

Childless Millennial by Chiara Di Lello: if everything that happens in The House On Mango Street sounds like too much to deal with, you can always not have children. Seriously, though, I believe more people should consider the prospect of childlessness with as much rigor as Chiara Di Ello. If you’re imagining what some Boomer Fox News watcher is probably imagining from the title? There’s no brattiness here, just honest assessment of capitalism and the current moment and a desire to maintain a sense of self. I can’t remember if I’ve written about this before or not, but that was a big desire for me when my kid was born. I wanted to be a good dad, I wanted to be his dad, but I did not want to lose myself. Another thing about me: I didn’t think I wanted kids from about age 19 to age 24. I don’t think you should have kids if you’re not certain about it. As much as I love being a dad, I encourage my childless friends to stay that way if they want to, encourage parents with “only one” to not feel the pressure of manufacturing siblings just because.

Chiara’s book references—mostly in disgust—this word “nulliparous,” which is apparently the term for childless people. “There is no word / for what I am, / so I have taken / what I could find,” one poem begins, and we learn that this term has connotations about not contributing. As a teacher and writer, Chiara contributes. As a person, Chiara asserts that passing on your genes is not the only route to a meaningful or worthwhile life. This is important stuff, and more people should read and think about it.

LINKS!

Something to listen to while you browse? I don’t think I’ve posted this yet, but I’ve been sending it around and am obsessed with it. Here’s Joshua Domfeh adding some flourishes to “Clair de Lune.”

What’re you still doing here? The first video YouTube’s front page pulled up for me was Jason Pargin talking about John Cazale’s perfect IMDb page.

If you work in the service industry, may you clean up in tips this weekend. Remember that you, too, deserve dignity. Even if you’re poor, even if you’re childless, even if you play for a tanking NBA team. Maybe not if you’re the owner or GM of a tanking NBA team tho.

Sorry you got an email,

Chris

  1. not fixing the spelling of his name because fuck that guy ↩︎

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