Monique and the Mango Rains is the compelling story of friendship than a decade of author Monique, an extraordinary midwife in rural Mali. It is a story of Monique’s unquenchable passion to improve the lives of women and children in the face of poverty, unhappy marriages, and endless hard work and his tragic and ironic death. In the course of this very personal story because readers immersed in village life and learn firsthand rhythms Monique would come to know her as a friend, a mother and a woman who inspired struggled to find its place a male dominated world.
Evaluation of the book
The book is about the West African state, which is landlocked almost three times the size of Japan, Mali has a GDP per capita of only $ 900 million according to the latest almanacs. Holloway mentions the average yearly income of $ 210, apparently referring to the years he spent there
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The next step was that Dembele began to discuss with indigenous women in their own way. The book also discuss the emotional shock as well. The bitter irony is that one out of every twelve Malian women who died due to childbirth (Holloway, 2006).
The book "Monique and mango rains: two years with the midwife in Mali" gives the the opportunity to inform them about nutrition, health and safety. In a country with one of the highest infant mortality rates in the world, the basic survival was the main concern.
The story is simple and in the direct way to teach local mothers how to make mashed baby food for their children. As at that time the custom was to directly change the babies’ breast milk as food for adult’s younger brother's birth. Because the average Malian woman has 6.8 children in her lifetime, according to Holloway, some children have to pass through a sudden change before they have enough food from their mother.
Themes and issues discussed in the “Monique and the Mango Rains: Two Years with a Midwife in
In the book ‘The Bite of the Mango’ by Mariatu Kamara and Susan Mcclelland, a group of individuals in Sierra Leone that call themselves the revolutionary united front (RUF) started a civil war to get back at the president of sierra leone. The RUF raped, murdered, and torchered innocent sierra leone people. ‘The Bite of the Mango’ is about a fourteen year old sierra leonean girls life during the civil war. Kamara describes the horrors the RUF put her and others through. Without the help of other countries she would have stayed in an unsafe environment and could have died.
Crystal Serrano U11387176 Cultural Anthropology November 24, 2017 Monique and The Mango Rains The book Monique and The Mango Rains is a book that is focused on the friendship between the author, Kris Holloway and Monique Dembele. Monique is a midwife in Nampossela, Mali; she has focused her life on making childbirth easier on many of the women in her community. Due to Mali being in terrible conditions birth became a life of death situation when death was predominately winning.
Odilia and her family resided in Mukoboina, a community in the Delta Amacuro rainforest of eastern Venezuela (Briggs 290). There is a stress on inequality as demonstrated through Briggs’ quotation, “the couple spent some 20 days traveling with sick children, seeking help, comforting them, and providing care, in addition to the painful work of lamentation and burial” (294). Without being provided with proper knowledge, as well as, the means for efficient health care, an extensive amount of debt emerges, spending money on gas, food, and other materials for long journeys to different doctors questioning their child’s sickness (Briggs 294). Ultimately, suffering is elevated through such trials and tribulations, many of which could be avoided by proper means of communication in health care
Her mother had started teaching her how to catch babies. Her mother traveled from village to village, catching babies in trade for food, cloths, animals and dishes’. One day on their way back to their village of Bayo, they were ambushed by Toubab’s (white men) and tied up.
It is also a story of intercultural marriage, the foreign population of Addis Ababa in the early 1970s, and a descriptive narrative of the early years of the Ethiopian revolution. The book keeps repeating the descriptions of ritual and village life, rural travel, problems for women in a society
However, much like Esperanza, in recent years people have offered their own views to the world in hopes that traditional and considerably out-dated women’s roles will change. These individuals hold a key to a better home for themselves and for others far away from Mango
Many girls desire a female role model from a young age. The way these women are treated, and deal with this treatment can heavily impact the way young girls view themselves, and their future as well. Sandra Cisneros’ The House on Mango Street brings attention to issues of sexism and gender roles. This is done through a series of vignettes about the main character Esperanza navigating life by the example of her many role models. Each role model impacts Esperanza in a special way, Sally who is married at 13, Marin who is waiting to be rescued by a man, and Alicia who is balancing school and home responsibilities.
The House on Mango Street is a touching and timeless tale told in short vignettes. It tells the story of a young Latina girl growing up in Chicago. Her life, and the lives of the people around her, are laid bare to the readers in this touching novella. In the beginning, Esperanza is not accepting of herself. Her family’s poor financial situation, the sadness of the people around her, and the problems she faces in her daily life make her very cynical.
Beauty is a very powerful and prominent thing. It’s what makes you get out of bed in the mornings and makes the world go round. Despite all that, there are some negatives of it as well. “The House on Mango Street” by Sandra Cisneros gives a window back in time to a point where a little girl named Esperanza grows up on the streets of Chicago. Through the numerous rapes, abusive relationships, and the absence of respect for women, Cisneros portrays a theme that beauty is a double edged sword through the characters Esperanza and Sally.
In Monique and the mango Rains, there are many connections to course concepts. This book connects to the anthropological perspective which includes holism, cross culturalism, and cultural relativism. She also experiences culture shock. This book can be related to the Anthropological Perspective because there are examples of holism, cross culturalism, and cultural relativism thought the book.
“No, this isn’t my house I say and shake my head as if shaking could undo the year I’ve lived here (Cisneros 106).” This quote shows Esperanza’s unwillingness of accepting her poor neighbourhood because of the violence and inequality that has happened in it. In the House on Mango Street, the author, Sandra Cisneros, shows that there is a direct link between inequality, violence and poverty. The House on Mango Street shows women are held back by the inequalities that they face. Cisneros shows that racism prevents individuals from receiving job opportunities which leads to poverty and violence.
Sethe embraces the dominant values of idealised maternity. Sethe’s fantasy is
The House on Mango Street is set in a poor, primarily Hispanic neighborhood. Author Sandra Cisneros creates an atypical, yet easily digestible world for the reader to experience while learning about Esperanza’s childhood. The culture of her environment influences Esperanza’s development as she becomes a young woman, and contributes to the book’s driving theme of self-empowerment. Mango Street is the source of Esperanza’s growth through her childhood, and it hides sadness and longing underneath stereotypes of Hispanic people. The characters that live in the broken-down neighborhood all seem to represent pigeonholed views of Latino individuals.
There are many aspects of life which we desire such as materialistic desires and happiness. Among the things that we desire, freedom is the most abstract and indispensable one. In The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros, Esperanza, the main character, struggles trying to escape from poverty and getting restricted by men. From Esperanza trying to get out of Mango Street by education, to Esperanza’s mom giving up education, to Sally escaping from her dad by marrying a man, Cisneros suggests that only independence can offer a better life and freedom. Alicia and Esperanza are the only characters in the book who hope to find freedom through writing.
The Story of the Vargas Family “Rosa Vargas’ kids are too many and too much. It’s not her fault, you know, except she is their mother and only one against so many” (Cisneros 29). In the novel The House on Mango Street, the author, Sandra Cisneros, touches on the many negative consequences of a single, impoverished mother raising an overwhelming amount of children. Poverty, discrimination, parental and neighborly responsibility, and respect are all issues and social forces that act upon the family; their presence or lack thereof cause several grisly occurrences to take place. Poverty was almost like a curse given to Rosa Vargas by her husband, who “left without even leaving a dollar for bologna or a note explaining how come” (29).