Mango Street

For the 2013-2014 academic year Ivy Tech Community College’s Northwest and North Central regions along with Indiana University Northwest are using the book as their “One Book. One Campus. One Community.” common reading experience. I was asked to facilitate a book club type event on Angela Cisneros’ book House on Mango Street (Amazon).

I don’t remember the first time I read the book, but I remember meeting the author at a conference in college. We wanted to try and bring her as a speaker but it never worked out, and maybe now I might finally get to meet her as they are trying to bring her to South Bend. This was a great excuse for me to read the book again, and it was nice reflecting on the stories again, with more life experiences under my belt.

For the first program in the series I decided to just cover the first half of the book. I think my two favorite vignettes are in that half, “My Name” and “Rice Sandwich” so it was a fun half of the book. We had about 30 students show up which was great! I had students select a vignette to read out loud, and then we discussed them.

The event coordinator got mango themed snacks that was really cool and of course snacks in general are always welcome! People really got into the discussions, the book is just such a great cross section of topics to discuss from language, to poverty, to education, cultural roles of women, religion, etc. So it doesn’t take much to spark up good conversation and discussion.

It has been a busy fall semester, but I am glad that I took on this additional program. I am looking forward to the second event and hope the group is just as engaging.