¿Donde Esta Mango Street?

Sandra Cisneros’s coming-of-age novel “The House On Mango Street” follows Esperanza Cordero through the trials of being a young girl coming to grips with her Latina-hood in a hood of Latinos. Cisneros doesn’t specify if she is a Mexican Latina or a Puerto Rican Latina or a Dominican Latina; she omits all identifiers of parks, neighborhoods, buildings, and could be set in any myriad of Latino neighborhoods spread throughout the country, such as New York City, Detroit, Atlanta, Los Angeles, and all of Texas, yet anyone who’s ventured into apartment hunting in Chicago will immediately be punched in the face by the fist of recognition by the clump of streets listed on page one, chapter one, and know that this story wholly Chicagoan.

“We didn’t always live on Mango Street. Before that we lived on Loomis on the third floor, and before that we lived on Keeler. Before Keeler was Paulina, and before that I can’t remember.”

*Paulina is pronounced Paw-Lie-Na, to all you outsiders.

But Mango Street is a fictional street, and the town in which it is set is unnamed. Writers have a tendency to borrow ideas from real-life experiences, however, and Cisneros is a Chicago based writer, so the location of the real-life counterpart of Mango Street annoyed me like the sound of sirens outside my apartment window in five minute intervals. I decided enough was enough! I had to know where Mango Street was.

Ethnicity

Knowing ethnicity to maneuver your way through Chicago is as essential as identifying neighborhoods in Chicago identifying the toe protrusions of your shoes to know which one is left and which is right. The Chinese have Chinatown in Bronzeville; the Koreans have Korea-town on Lawrence next to Jefferson Park; the Jews have Touhy Ave. and Rogers Park; the Puerto Ricans in Humboldt Park down the westside on North Ave.; Mexicans have Pilsen on 18^th Street; African-Americans have the southside, and the list goes on and on. The fact is that Chicago is an extremely diverse and, in turn, extremely segregated city. So much so, in fact, that sociologist coined a new term to describe Chicago’s ethnic borders, Hyper-segregation.

So what’s Esperanza’s ethnicity? Cisneros doesn’t readily identify her as anything, but there is one little excerpt that implies her great-grandmother was Mexican while talking about her ethnic name:

“It was my great-grandmother’s name and now it’s mine. She was a horse woman too, born like me in the Chinese year of the horse – which is suppose to be bad luck if you’re born a female- but I think this is a chinese lie, because the chinese, like the Mexicans, don’t like their women strong.”
-from the chapter “My Name”

She compares the sentiments of the Chinese to that of Mexicans, implying that she has inside knowledge of the inner-workings of Mexican sentiments.

Great! Now we have an ethnicity.

Neighborhood

Due to this new found evidence, I’m going to take a calculated gamble here and say its most likely set in Pilsen, a predominately Mexican-american community. How can we be sure we’re dealing with a Hispanic neighborhood and not just a Hispanic family in any neighborhood? White Flight of course!

Esperanza experiences this after she becomes friends with one of her white neighbors, Cathy:

“Cathy’s father will have to fly to France one day and find her great great distant grand cousin on her father’s side and inherit the family house. How do I know this is so? She told me so. In the meantime they’ll have to move a little further north from Mango Street, a little farther away every time people like us keep moving in.”
-from the chapter “Cathy, Queen of Cats”

The movement North by Chicago’s most prestigious family’s and residents is nothing new. Since the days before the great fire of 1871, the areas north of the business district were where the movers, shakers, and money makers decided to build their residences, leaving the southern portions to immigrants flocking to Chicago to work in the most industrialized areas.

“…people like us” means that Esperanza lived in a neighborhood quickly filling up with Mexicans, so much so that Cathy’s family had to move “north.”

Pilsen is situated southwest of Down Town, and predominately white neighborhoods lie north, such as the West Loop, Little Italy, Wicker Park, Bucktown, Lincoln Park.

Final Conclussion

After hours of close reading the text, triangulation of Loomis, Keeler, and Paulina, the three streets we know Esperanza definitely doesn’t live anymore, and deducing those possible neighborhoods from the list, I was able to pin point the exact location for the inspiration of Mango Street.

Drum Roll Please:

1525 N. Campbell St., in the Humboldt Park neighborhood.

Actually no, I didn’t do all that, I just looked it up on Sandra Cisneros’s website. But it was a fun journey and I hope you read the book. It’s rich with vivid characters and language, and it is definitely a piece of the canon of Chicago Literature.

Chi-Raq in Literature: Exhibit A

Cover of "Freedom" by Jonathan Franzen

“The south side of Chicago," starts Jim Croce’s 1973 hit song “Leroy Brown,”  “is the baddest part of town. And if you go down there, you best beware of a man named Leroy Brown.”

Now, I’m not sure about Leroy Brown, but Chicago’s south side has definitely garnered a nasty reputation. To refer to “The south side” is to refer to an entire general portion of the city that draws connotations of strict racial polarization, poverty, and rampant crime; and, though it technically begins anywhere south of the down town area, around Roosevelt Rd., those familiar with the city landscape will argue that it refers to just about anywhere south of the Bronzeville neighborhood, inhabited by predominantly African-American communities. 

"Chicago South Side has long had a distinct identity. Often identified in the second half of the twentieth century with the city's African American population..." 

- Encyclopedia of Chicago, Chicago Historical Society

Area consisting of Chicago's South Side

Statistically, this area has been the breeding ground for a high percentage of violent crimes, as shown in this map.Yet crime in this part of town is more historical than racial. Prior to the turn of the 20^th century, and into the 1970's, this section was home to Chicago’s vast shipping docks, slaughter houses, rail yards, and shanty towns which invited labor workers from all over the country, citizens and immigrants alike, which, in turn, was the spring board to brothels, gambling houses, and to rampant violent crime. You could read more about the South Side's history on the Chicago Historical Society's website. 

Residents of Chicago's south side have historically been collateral damage in the city's gentrification process around the down town business district, or the Loop, and in turn have felt victimized by a much larger socioeconomic structure. This sentiment has prompted much anger and pain in these communities and the feeling that there is little to no help in sight from the city's political structure.  

Violence here is so prominent it's even prompted the use of the term “Chi-raq,” a combination of the words “Chicago” and “Iraq,” a suggestion that conflict in Chicago is comparable to that of a military war zone. It's debatable where the term came from, but Chicago rapper Chief Keef popularized in his "Chi-raq" mixtapes. Recently renowned film director, Spike Lee, has brought it to the national consciousnesses by (and has been scrutinized for) further glorifying the moniker in his new film, Chi-raq, which takes place, where else? You guessed it, in the city's south side.

Which brings us to Jonathan Franzen. The National Book Award winning writer from Western Springs, Il., a southwest Chicago suburb, is known for his novels "The Corrections," "Freedom," and most recently "Purity." Fanzen is a master at shining the spotlight on the drama of common dysfunctional families. His novel "Freedom" brought him much acclaim and earned him a feature in Time Magazine at it's release.

"Freedom" is about the horribly unsatisfied Berglund clan. Each and all of the members of this selfish family can never seem to get a grasp of the satisfaction of life's beautiful opportunities dangling in front of their eyes, and are constantly searching the next best alternative. (Read the book!)

Chicago's south side was not lost on Franzen. In this college flashback scene from Chapter 2, page 111(HC version), Walter Burglund's girlfriend, Patty(later his wife), decides to take a cross-country road trip with his less stable, wannabe rock star roommate, Richard, with fantasies of wooing him into bed and dumping the more educated and politically ambitious Walter. 

During this road-trip from Minnesota, the party van drives through Chicago's south side to look for one of Richard's grunge buddies:

“She had about three hours to entertain this fantasy-staring at the taillights of the traffic rushing down and down toward the great metropolis, and wondering what it would like to be Richards’s chick, wondering if a woman he respected might succeed in changing him, imagining herself never going back to Minnesota, trying to picture the apartment they might find to live in, savoring the thought of unleashing Richard on her contemptuous middle sister, picturing her family’s consternation at how cool she’s become, and imagining her nightly erasure-before they landed in the reality of Chicago’s southside. It was 2 a.m. and Richard couldn’t find Herrera’s friends’ building. Rail yards and dark, haunted rivers blocking their way. The streets were deserted except for gypsy cabs and occasional Scary Black Youths of the kind one read about.”

-Freedom, Jonathan Franzen

 This is a minor example in relation to authors we'll look at later, such as Sandra Cisneros, Lorraine Hansberry, James Baldwin and Studs Terkel; yet this little excerpt exhibits so many subtle innuendos.

Analysis:
1) Contrast:
 Notice the first, long sentence. Patty's daydreams are embossed in between two hyphens, then the sentence suddenly ends when she is snapped to as they "landed in the reality if Chicago's southside." Period. End of sentence. Do not pass go, do not collect $200. Franzen does not elaborate what the consequences of the driving through the southside at 2 a.m. are, but they can't be good if it's enough to snap Patty from her daydreams. This is such a clear and contrasting example that the reader immediately feels sense of urgency to get indoors.

2) Adjectives:
His use of adjectives describing the rivers and the taxi cabs aren't flattering. They aren't just rivers, they are "dark, haunted rivers." And they aren't just cabs, but "gyspy" cabs. What would a Northside river and cab look like in Franzen's novel? But check for your wallets, everyone!

3) Capital Letters:
What do writers normally capitalize? Titles, brands, and proper names. Let's say I was reading "Freedom" by Jonathan Franzen on the El on the way to Doctor Martinez's office for an appointment, while listening to "Serial" on my Sony Walkman(dated, I know).

When something is capitalized one can readily identify a specific functional purpose to the capitalization; it becomes a  proper noun. So in this passage Franzen capitalizes "Scary Black Youths," and describes them of the "kind one read about." This is no accident.

He does this to highlight the general perception of being a young black person in the south side. Scary Black Youth is their title that they can't shake, because if you haven't been to the southside, you should've at least "read about" them.

Thank you for reading and come back as we discuss further discuss Chi-Raq in literature in future posts.

Sandburg's Song: Part 3

Part 3: The Aftermath

Link to art page

Carl Sandburg died on July 22, 1967 in Flat Rock, North Carolina, at the age of 89. He was thirty-five years old when he published "Chicago" in 1914, and would be the first of what would later be a nine poem collection titled "Chicago Poems," published in 1916.

Before his death, however, and after his success with "Chicago," Sandburg would go on to win three Pulitzer Prizes(1919, 1940, 1951), one Robert Frost Medal(1952), and even a Grammy(1959) for "Best Spoken Word." Yet with "Chicago," he had landed into the world of letters like a raging meteor coming for the dinosaurs, enjoying a celebrated life to come.

His birth home on Galesburg, Illinois was turned into a memorial during his lifetime; he is the only known poet invited to address congress, which he did in 1959; he appeared on a variety of television shows such as "The Ed Sullivan Show," the "Texaco hour," and the "Today Show" to name a few; and even managed to have Gene Kelly dance to one of his poems. The nation knew of him and celebrities doted over him, yet with all his super-stardom, he would always be the workingman's poet. His simple and direct words for the layman would resonate with even the most exulted of readers and critics.

Sandburg meeting with Marilyn Monroe

In "Chicago," Sandburg would do more for the city than simply bestow an inadvertent moniker; he would give the people a sense of youthful pride, an undaunting swag, and a wholly unique identity rivaled only by the '85 Chicago Bears and the Michael Jordan era Chicago Bulls. 

After his death Sandburg left an indelible mark on, not only the literary world, but Chicago itself. His name graces the the walls and halls of Carl Sandburg Middle School in Elmhurst, IL., and the Carl Sandburg High School in Orland park, IL., both renamed during his lifetime. And aside from various other malls, libraries, and landmarks bearing the poet's name, he is also the inspiration of the "Carl Sandburg Award" promoted by the Chicago Public Library. And, in December 2011 in only its second annual induction ceremony, Sandburg took his rightful place in the Chicago Literary Hall of Fame with other giants of Chicago literature. His ashes are buried along his wife's at his childhood home in Galesburg, Illinois.

Note: there is so much more information on Carl Sandburg. If you're curious to learn more I attached a couple of links below. Also, PBS produced a great "American Masters" episode of Carl Sandburg. It's a high honor, this. Check out the embedded video 

Work Cited:

http://www.neh.gov/humanities/2013/marchapril/feature/workingmans-poet

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Sandburg

Sandburg's Song: Part 2

Part Two: The Poem

        If you read part one of this post, you had the opportunity to mull over Carl Sandburg’s “Chicago.” To understand the bulk of this poem, it’s important also to understand a bit of Chicago history and geography. 

            See, when Chicago was first incorporated as a town in the 1830’s, it was already a bustling trading post due to its smack-dab-in-the middle-of-the-country locale and, with Lake Michigan as its geographical dance partner, was an ideal hub for all the nations trading activity. Cargo of merchandise would arrive from the east on trains or ships worming their way through the great lakes, be processed in Chicago Union Stock Yards, then continue west on trains or boats navigating the various rivers, and vice versa.

               

General Drawing of Chicago Union Stock Yards, 1901

 The Stock Yards were home to large companies like Sears-Roebucks, Pullman Rail Company, and slaughterhouses and meatpacking companies like Armour, Oscar-Mayer, and Swift(which is the central focus of Upton Sinclair’s “The Jungle”). These slaughterhouses would dump excess animal waste into the rivers which would then flow into Lake Michigan, that freaking st…REEKED! But I digress, where was I? Oh yeah, Sandburg. So in the first stanza we see what he’s talking about:

“Hog Butcher for the World,

   Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat,

   Player with Railroads and the Nation's Freight Handler;

   Stormy, husky, brawling, 

City of the Big Shoulders:”

"American Masters" PBS Promo Poster 

But one more, very important, description appears in this stanza: Sandburg personifies Chicago, meaning he gives it human qualities. But not just any elderly human with a bad back and poor eyesight, but one with vigor, a “stormy, husky, brawling” human; a strong human with “big shoulders.” Sandburg’s likening Chicago to a young, brash man is the crux of this poem.

 In 1914 Chicago was approximately 80 years old; Old, but not as old as other world cities such as Tokyo, London, New York, and Mexico City, yet it was growing like a teenager with an overactive pituitary gland, almost twice as fast as any of its predecessors. This rapid growth in commerce and population exceeded the growth of government, which made Chicago ripe with debauchery and vice, teeming with criminals and greedy politicians, and overrun with freebooters from all over the country looking to exploit the city’s youth and inexperience. In the second stanza we’ll witness this, then see how the young Chicago (we’ll call him ‘Little Chi-City’) responds to his critics: 

“They tell me you are wicked and I believe them, for I have seen your painted 

women under the gas lamps luring the farm boys. 

And they tell me you are crooked and I answer: Yes, it is true I have seen the 

gunman kill and go free to kill again. 

And they tell me you are brutal and my reply is: On the faces of women and 

children I have seen the marks of wanton hunger. 

And having answered so I turn once more to those who sneer at this my city, and 

I give them back the sneer and say to them: 

Come and show me another city with lifted head singing so proud to be alive and 

coarse and strong and cunning. 

Flinging magnetic curses amid the toil of piling job on job, here is a tall bold slugger set 

vivid against the little soft cities;”

So apparently Little Chi-City gives no fucks for criticism. The narrator sees validity in the condemnation of all its vices: murder, crooked politicians, prostitutes, and homelessness, but praises Chicago’s strength and “cunning” in the face of adversity. Little Chi-City “with lifted head” sings, “proud to be alive.”

"American Masters" PBS promo poster

And the most vivid description comes in the last sentence which continues Little Chi-City’s characterization not only as young brash man, but a “tall, bold slugger set vivid against the little soft cities.” Bam! You could almost see Mohammed Ali vs. Pee-Wee Herman. 

In the last portion Sandburg continues, unabashed, to build Little Chi-City as a force on the world stage, unrestrained and hungry. And, in one masterful stroke, ends the poem with the beginning stanza yet, by this point, the tone has changed so dramatically from that of a city whose reputation stinks like its slaughterhouses to one whose audacious strength and pride stem from the same forum as its initial degradation, challenging and taunting.

“Fierce as a dog with tongue lapping for action, cunning as a savage pitted against the wilderness,

   Bareheaded,

   Shoveling,

   Wrecking,

   Planning,

   Building, breaking, rebuilding,

Under the smoke, dust all over his mouth, laughing with white teeth,

Under the terrible burden of destiny laughing as a young man laughs,

Laughing even as an ignorant fighter laughs who has never lost a battle,

Bragging and laughing that under his wrist is the pulse, and under his ribs the heart of the people,

                   Laughing!

Laughing the stormy, husky, brawling laughter of Youth, half-naked, sweating, proud to be Hog Butcher, Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat, Player with Railroads and Freight Handler to the Nation.”

         

"American Masters" PBS Promo poster

So this is  how Sandburg saw Chicago. Not as a large, sophisticated, cultured world city; only because it wasn't that yet. At the time, he saw it for exactly what it was: A young, dirty, crime-ridden town, growing, busting at the seams with world potential.

If you have any questions or comments about the poem or Sandburg, I'd love to hear from you. Also please check back for “Part 3: The Aftermath,” Thank for reading!

Sandburg's Song: Part 1

Part One: The Poet

Oh Boy, I might’ve bitten off more than I could chew on this one.  But we’re all in now! So where to begin digging in on this masterpiece of lyrical lasciviousness; this parlance of pride; this music of mockery and ballad of the “Big Shoulders”? Let’s start with the man himself.

Carl Sandburg

CarlSandburg (1878-1967) was a man of letters. Born in Galesburg, Il., a small town far west of Chicago, to Clara Mathilda and August Sandberg( he later changed the “-berg” to “-burg”) a young Carl later moved from the sleepy town to the bright gaslights of Chicago to write as a cub reporter for the Chicago Daily News and the Day Book. What he saw during his time in Chicago would be the inspiration to Sandburg’s greatest contribution to the realm of Windy City literature, and simultaneously gifting it one of its most known nicknames, the “City of Big Shoulders.”

First appearing in the famous Poetry magazine in March 1914, to primer the ensuing discussion I present to you Carl Sandburg’s tour de force, Chicago, in its entirety:

Chicago

First publication of "Chicago" in Poetry, 1914

Hog Butcher for the World,
Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat,
Player with Railroads and the Nation's Freight Handler;
Stormy, husky, brawling,
City of the Big Shoulders:


They tell me you are wicked and I believe them, for I
have seen your painted women under the gas lamps
luring the farm boys.
And they tell me you are crooked and I answer: Yes, it
is true I have seen the gunman kill and go free to
kill again.
And they tell me you are brutal and my reply is: On the
faces of women and children I have seen the marks
of wanton hunger.
And having answered so I turn once more to those who
sneer at this my city, and I give them back the sneer
and say to them:
Come and show me another city with lifted head singing
so proud to be alive and coarse and strong and cunning.
Flinging magnetic curses amid the toil of piling job on
job, here is a tall bold slugger set vivid against the
little soft cities;


Fierce as a dog with tongue lapping for action, cunning
as a savage pitted against the wilderness,


Bareheaded,
Shoveling,
Wrecking,
Planning,
Building, breaking, rebuilding,


Under the smoke, dust all over his mouth, laughing with
white teeth,
Under the terrible burden of destiny laughing as a young
man laughs,
Laughing even as an ignorant fighter laughs who has
never lost a battle,
Bragging and laughing that under his wrist is the pulse,
and under his ribs the heart of the people,


Laughing!


Laughing the stormy, husky, brawling laughter of
Youth, half-naked, sweating, proud to be Hog
Butcher, Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat, Player with
Railroads and Freight Handler to the Nation.

Please check back for "Sandburg's Song: Part 2" for more on the poet, his legacy, and his poem

Oak Park, Il. Earnest About Hemingway

Hemingway's 1923 Passport photo 

It seems disingenuous to begin a blog about Chicago’s presence in literature by discussing Ernest Hemingway, seeing as the genius bastard never wrote a sentence about it in his fiction. Well, not exactly. Born and raised in Oak Park, Il., a suburb just past Chicago’s westside, Hemingway had a love-hate relationship with his home town, reportedly having said it was a place of “wide lawns and narrow minds” in a letter to his sister begging her to leave Oak Park and experience the world. Leaving in his teens for Kansas, and later to the front lines of the Great War, Hemingway only returned a few times as a famished 20 year old to speak to small crowds about his overseas experiences before finally vanishing for good to become a cherished citizen of the world.

Though the list of his much romanticized residences reads like a Jim Varney filmography (Ernest Goes to Spain; Ernest Goes to Paris; Ernest Goes to Cuba; Ernest Goes to... you get the point), the fact remains that Hemingway is a Chicago-area writer. Born on July 21^st , 1899, to Dr. Clarence Hemmingway and Grace Hall-Hemingway, The young Ernest’s literally career could be argued began in Oak Park River Forest High School where he wrote for the school paper, The Trapeze. Yet it was his family vacations to their cabin in upstate Michigan, near the town of Petosky, that had lasting impressions on the young Hemingway, making a bulging cameo in his first collection of published short stories, In Our Time, where Chicago and Oak Park are practically left out in the cold.

However one shining sliver of acknowledgement appears at the end of his short story “A Very Short Story”, which revolves around the unfulfilled love of a young Italian nurse and an unnamed military officer she met as a patient.

“The major did not marry her in the spring, or any other time. Luz never got an answer to the letter to Chicago about it. A short time after he contracted gonorrhea from a sales girl in a loop department store while riding in a taxicab through Lincoln Park.”

CTA Loop

It’s a subtle reference, but it’ll have to do. Now Chicagoans will nod in recognition at the mention of the “loop”, or where Lincoln Park is located in Chicago’s geography. But to the uninitiated here’s a little primer: the Loop is the central node where all the lines of the CTA(Chicago Transit Authority) meet then  circle above the streets and through business district’s skyscrapers before shooting back out to their respective neighborhoods. This area is named thus because of the literal loop the El (Elevated Train) creates through downtown.

Arial View of Lincoln Park

Next, Lincoln Park is a neighborhood located north of downtown Chicago. An affluent neighborhood, it’s home to DePaul University and the Lincoln Park Zoo.

Me at Hemingway's birthplace

Though his descriptions of exotic places around the world whet the imaginary appetite much more than this passage, Hemingway found little need to consistently use Chicago as the primary backdrop of his fiction, unlike other writers we’ll discuss later. Yet the residence located at 339 N. Oak Park Ave, Oak Park Illinois holds the singular distinction of being the birthplace of one of the most beloved writers in history.

Note: If you discover other moments where Chicago appears in Hemingway’s writings, post a comment.