The following passage comes from the book The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros. In this excerpt, we find the main character talking about her name, Esperanza. She explains its history and meaning, how she was given this name and why, and then tells how she feels about it.
At the beginning of each school year, I have used this tale quickly and effectively to learn the names and faces of my students in each new class. I begin by telling the history of my own name, those of my sons and often of my wife too. Next we read the passage from the book.
These provide ample examples that the students can use as models for completing their first homework assignment in my English class.
Their assignment is to research their own name, explaining the history and meaning and why they were given this particular name. They conclude by telling how they feel about it. Of course, we do not only do the first name, but the full name of each student. Students must write an expository essay on the topic and prepare a presentation to be given in class in two days’ time. This gives us one class period to work together individually and in small groups as I go from person to person. This accomplishes a number of things.
First, it gets the kids to go home and speak with their families about what they did in their new English class. It gives me a writing sample and an oral presentation to assess/grade. Most importantly for me is that I have each student standing before the class for several minutes telling about his name. I easily match name to face and then know each one when I see them later in the hallways and elsewhere. It means a lot t the kids to be recognized this way, and it makes my knowing who’s who so much easier.
Anyway, with school beginning this week or next, I thought I’d give you this lesson plan as a good icebreaker. It can even be used in week two if you’re set to begin with other things. True, it is ideal to use in an English class, but it can work with any subject. I have even had Math and PE teachers steal my idea. So give it a try, and let me know how it goes.
Esperanza
In English my name means hope. In Spanish it means too many letters. It means sadness, it means waiting. It is like the number nine. A muddy color. It is the Mexican records my father plays on Sunday mornings when he is shaving, song like sobbing.
It was my great-grandmother’s name and now it is mine. She was a horse woman too, born like me in the Chinese year of the horse – which is supposed to be bad luck if you’re born female-but I think this is a Chinese lie because the Chinese, like the Mexican, don’t like their women strong.
My great-grandmother. I would’ve liked to have known her, a wild horse of a woman, so wild she wouldn’t marry. Until my great-grandfather threw a sack over her head and carried her off. Just like that, as if she were a fancy chandelier. That’s the way he did it. And the story goes she never forgave him. She looked out the window her whole life, the way so many women sit their sadness on an elbow. I wonder if she made the best with what she got or was she sorry because she couldn’t be all the things she wanted to be. Esperanza. I have inherited her name, but don’t want to inherit her place by the window.
At school they say my name funny as if the syllables were made out of tin and hurt the roof of your mouth. But in Spanish my name is made out of a softer something, like silver, not quite as thick as sister’s name-Magdalena-which is uglier than mine. Magdalena who at least can come home and become Nenny. But I am always Esperanza.
I would like to baptize myself under a new name, a name more like the real me, the one nobody sees. Esperanza as Lisandra or Maritza or Zeze the X. Yes. Something like Zeze the X will do.
Global English Tutor - Paul Cuadrado 