Vignette #2
Vignette Option A
Using “Four Skinny Trees” on page 74 as a model, compare yourself to something you find in nature. Decide what you’d like to reveal about yourself and then think about where that’s found in nature. What does it mean to be like a delicate flower? What about a strong oak tree? What about a thunderstorm or a particular animal? This should be symbolic of your personality, not what you look like. This whole vignette should be an extended metaphor!
MODEL VIGNETTE:
They are the only ones who understand me. I am the only one who understands them. Four skinny trees with skinny necks and pointy elbows like mine. Four who do not belong here but are here. Four raggedy excuses planted by the city. From our room we can hear them, but Nenny just sleeps and doesn't appreciate these things.
Their strength is secret. They send ferocious roots beneath the ground. They grow up and they grow down and grab the earth between their hairy toes and bite the sky with violent teeth and never quit their anger. This is how they keep.
Let one forget his reason for being, they'd all droop like tulips in a glass, each with their arms around the other. Keep, keep, keep, trees say when I sleep. They teach.
When I am too sad and too skinny to keep keeping, when I am a tiny thing against so many bricks, then it is I look at trees. When there is nothing left to look at on this street. Four who grew despite concrete. Four who reach and do not forget to reach. Four whose only reason is to be and be. (Cisneros 74-75)
Vignette Option B
Using “A House of My Own” on page 108, construct a vignette in which you reveal something you really want in life. This can be an object you’d like to own, a future goal you’d like to achieve, or a relationship you’d like to develop.
This vignette should be rich in poetic language. You may use your literary device notes to refresh your memory or re-read the chapter for help as well. Some of the following devices are found on page 108: approximate rhyme, imagery, alliteration, simile and exact rhyme.
MODEL VIGNETTE:
Not a flat. Not an apartment in back. Not a man’s house. Not a daddy’s. A house all my own. With my porch and my pillow, my pretty purple petunias. My books and my stories. My two shoes waiting beside the bed. Nobody to shake a stick at. Nobody’s garbage to pick up after.
Only a house quit as snow, a space for myself to go, clean as paper before the poem. (Cisneros 108)