No speak English is a short extract from the novel ‘’ the house on Mango Street’’ written by the American writer Sandra Cisneros in 1984.
The text “No speak English” is about a man who works day and night, to save the money, to bring his wife, Mamacita and their child to the United States. One day a beautiful, huge woman dressed all in pink arrives in a taxi, with her baby boy. Mamacita never comes down from the third floor apartment, the narrator in this novel thinks it’s because she doesn’t speak much English, because she only knows a few phrases in English: ‘’Not here’’, ‘’No speak English’’ and ‘’Holy smokes’’. (page 65, line 28-29)
Mamacita stays home all day, listening to Spanish radio and sings songs about her country, she is homesick for her pink house, and whatever her husband does it’s not good enough. Sometimes he grows impatient with her, and yells at her to speak English, because this is their home now. The boy learns English from commercials he sees on TV, Mamacita tells him ‘’No speak English’’.
This text’s theme is a very central theme in Cisneros’ works. She often writes about the Chicana culture in America and the difficulties living in and having a different culture and language than the majority.
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