Esperanza Rising

The drawing I chose was the making of the blanket by Esperanza, I believe this blanket represented such a huge cultural identity of who Esperanza and her family really are. The blanket was given to Esperanza from her grandmother Abuelita before they left Mexico to come live in California, this way they can escape Romona’s marriage to the mean uncle. “Look at the zigzag of the blanket. Mountains and valleys. Right now you are in the bottom of the valley and your problems loom big around you. But soon, you will be at the top of a mountain again. After you have lived many mountains and valleys, we will be together.”(51) This blanket was such a huge emotional support mechanism for Esperanza during all her trials in California. So in this paper I want to focus on what the blanket means to Esperanza and how it helped her deal and cope with all the ups and downs. This paper will show why I drew her crocheting the blanket with different colors and what similarities there are between Esperanza and the blanket. When she first received the blanket it was just a few stiches and bag of yarn, and she was given instructions to follow the pattern. The blanket was parallel to that of her own very life at that age, very young in growth and a mess with all that had happened up to that point and all that was about to happen with them escaping to California. The blanket represented a little of the immaturity of Esperanza in experience and in life and would comfort her when she needed it. The little rich girl who had everything to the little girl who had to work for everything was such a huge swing and transition in this book. I think in the beginning of the book after her father had died the house had been burned down and the mother Romona had agreed to marry her uncle, after all of this Esperanza still felt in my opinion that they would only need to leave temporarily and that them being poor would not be permanent. I just got the feeling she was so real in her ideas as a child