read and asnwer the questions

English 101 Name_______________________

Cisneros and Alexie Study Guide

“Only Daughter” (1995), by Sandra Cisneros

p. 1.

1. How did Sandra Cisneros describe herself for an anthology to which she contributed? What are some other descriptions she later considered?

2. What, according to Cisneros, is one positive consequence of being an “only daughter”?

3. What, according to Cisneros, did being a daughter mean to her father?

4. Why was this convenient for Cisneros?

5. What does Cisneros mean when she says she “wanted” her father “to interrupt”?

6. Why does it bother Cisneros that her father refers to her as a “teacher”?

7. What does Cisneros mean when she says, “Everything I have ever written has been for him”?

p. 2

8. How, according to Cisneros, is her father like most people?

9. What does Cisneros think of her father’s mistranslation of “seven children” as “seven sons”?

10. What financial reward does her college education finally begin to reap?

p. 3

11. What is the real reward, though?

“Superman and Me” (1998), by Sherman Alexie

p. 1

1. How does Sherman Alexie claim he learned to read?

2. He claims he doesn’t remember the first book he read, but what does he remember?

3. How is Alexie’s background similar to Cisneros’s, and how is it different?

4. What is similar about the kinds of things Alexie’s father reads and the kinds of things Cisneros’s father reads?

5. Why does Alexie come to love books?

6. Why is it significant that Alexie “beg[ins] to think of everything in terms of paragraphs”?

pp. 1-2

7. How does Alexie teach himself to read?

8. When he is reading Grapes of Wrath by kindergarten, why, according to Alexie, is he not viewed as a “prodigy”?

9. What does Alexie mean by “A smart Indian is a dangerous person, widely feared and ridiculed by Indians and non-Indians alike”?

10. How is what Alexie says in the paragraph that follows the above quotation similar to what Cisneros experiences?

11. Is Alexie successfully discouraged from reading? Why, according to him?

12. What did the reservation school system teach Alexie about Native American writing?

13. Now that he is an established writer, what’s good in what Alexie sees in Native American youth he guest teaches today? What’s bad?

14. What does he do as a result of the bad he sees?

15. How is the ending of this reading like the ending of the Cisneros reading?