Sandra Cisnero's 'The House on Mango Street' and Toni Morrison's 'Jazz' compared

Seminar paper from the year 2006 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Literature, grade: 2.3, University of Freiburg (Englisches Seminar), course: Ethnic Literature, language: English, abstract: In this paper I am going to show the differences and similarities between two major works of American ethnic literature, namely Sandra Cisnero's The House on Mango Street and Toni Morrison's Jazz. In order to compare the two books I will first analyze them separately before taking a look at them side by side. To begin with, I would like to express some general thoughts on the two books. The House on Mango Street and Jazz are first and foremost works of fictional literature in the sense that their characters and the story itself are a product of the authors' imagination. Yet, on another level, they are works that bear the power to familiarize readers with their particular ethnic backgrounds, namely the Mexican- and Afro-American. In other words, the two stories can be seen as some sort of guideline for readers who are interested in the cultural and economic lives of minority groups in the USA of today and the past. Even though the novels are very different in their form as well as their content I think one can find some similarities beside all the differences. In the following chapters of this paper I will first concentrate on The House on Mango Street and afterwards on Jazz. At the end I will try to make a connection between the two novels and show some of the main differences and similarities.

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