Only Daughter - Sandra Cisneros

 Only Daughter

                    - Sandra Cisneros

Only Daughter is a narrative essay where the writer Sandra Cisneros her own experience being a daughter in a Mexican American family. According to the writer, she was privileged to be the only daughter and she was deprived of a few aspects of life because she is only a daughter. She describes the vivid memories from her childhood and ends her essay with her father appreciating Cisneros for her new book.

Sandra Cisneros's “Only Daughter” describes the condition of an only daughter in a Mexican- American family of six sons. Cisneros thinks being an only daughter explains everything because historically, sons have been valued over daughters in most cultures. So it's difficult for her to grow up among her six brothers. In Mexican culture, women are secondary to men. There are limited employment opportunities for women which results in women’s financial dependency on men. Thus, Cisneros means that it was hard because you were the only one who was looked down upon among the children in your family, and all your brothers were seen as being more important. She is lonely and of less importance than her brothers in her family.

She differentiates two situations being the only daughter and only a daughter. These situations explain the pros and cons of being a daughter. She finds herself in both situations. She explains being the only daughter with 6 brothers, she is unique. Her brothers wouldn’t play with her. Eventually being the only daughter made it possible for her to be left by herself to think about things and start writing. Whereas being only a daughter meant that she would have to marry to have “value” in her father’s eyes. In both of the situations, she could plan to become a writer that’s the advantage Cisneros sees.

She writes that being an only daughter in a family of six sons "explains everything". In other words, like in every other Mexican American family, she was not valued as her six brothers.

Since sons are so much more highly valued than daughters in many cultures, this statement says a lot about how the author's life while growing up and her relationship with her family. One can gather from this note that she has been undervalued by her family because of her gender growing up, a conclusion that the author confirms to be true as the essay continues.

"The only daughter" simply means that she was the one daughter among seven children. Being an "only daughter" gave the author a lot of time to herself. She sees this alone time as something that benefited her as a writer for the time it gave her to daydream and read.

When the author restates this as "only a daughter," she is emphasizing her family's preference for male children, and how she was made to feel as if she was beneath them. Being "only a daughter" gave the author more freedom. Because her father assumed that she would become financially stable by marrying a husband, there was less pressure on her to pursue a profitable degree. She cites this for the freedom she felt when pursuing a career in writing.

The author's father believes that the purpose of higher education for women is to make them more desirable for marriage. Because the author has not gotten married, he sees her degree as a waste. The author doesn't agree, but is insecure about this; she wants to gain his approval and says that her persistence in her writing career is largely for him.

The author has spent her entire life feeling dismissed and undervalued by her father. She talks earlier in the article about how much of her motivation for writing professionally is driven by the desire to finally gain his approval. Previously, her father has shown no interest in engaging in the author's work. When he finally reads it and openly appreciates it for what it is, the author finally gets what she has been yearning for since she was young.

By including Spanish words, she is noting her cultural background as well as its prevalence and importance to her life. Explaining these words in English shows that she writes for a wide audience; her purpose might be to raise a wider understanding of the experience of someone raised in a Mexican-American family to those who did not grow up in that context.

Cisnero's thesis is, "I am the only daughter in a family of six sons. That explains everything." The writer supports her thesis by citing her experience from childhood to adulthood. She was neglected by her brothers and father. She was waiting for the approval of her father until her father read her book who used to opine that her college degree was to find a good husband. 

Even though the author stresses that her father's sexism caused her a great deal of pain throughout her life, she writes about him in a way that feels loving and attributes his bias to the traditional culture that her father grew up in. When she talks about the pain she felt when her father said that he had "seven sons", she says:

"My papa. He didn't mean anything by that mistranslation, I'm sure."

The author never talks about her father in a hateful way; she makes it clear that she wanted something different from him and clearly has been longing for his respect for many years. But the gentle language she uses when discussing him and her emphasis on his cultural heritage make her resentment feel like it is directed more at society at large than her father.

The author's thesis is that being raised as the only daughter in a family of six sons-- specifically a Mexican-American family-- has presented unique challenges that have stayed with her into adulthood. She supports this thesis by citing times she was undervalued throughout her childhood and adolescence (her brothers shunning her because she was a girl, her father viewing her goals and desires through the lens of her becoming a wife). She talks about her pervasive desire to impress her father with her professional accomplishments, which is a struggle unique to her among her siblings.

The author interrupts the narrative to reflect quite often throughout the essay: after talking about her brothers shunning her as a child; discussing her father's views on her college education; after describing her father's reaction to her early writing. She follows many of her paragraphs with a brief analysis.

This strategy helps the reader to understand why these details are important. Her additional comments give the reader insight into how these moments impacted her emotionally and developmentally, and their long-term effects on her life.

The essay does not follow chronological order; it skips around quite a bit. The author begins by referencing an anthology she published several years ago, then jumps back to her early childhood. She then discusses finishing graduate school, after which she jumps back to her childhood experiences. After this, she discusses her post-college experiences once more and moves on to very recent events when she speaks about her time with her father at Christmas.

Cisneros often uses time-related expressions, like "when" or "last year" to introduce new episodes of the story.

From his quoted dialogue, it is clear that the father often speaks in Spanish; this helps emphasize his heritage and upbringing and aligns with the author's description of her father reading only material written in Spanish. Most of his dialogue is positive; he speaks about his children in a positive manner, though most of what he says seems quite terse, implying he is not overly talkative. His longest quoted lines are when he is speaking about the author's work at the end of the article. The contrast between the short sentences scattered throughout the rest of the article with these long lines at the end makes his interest in her work feel more profound.

.In paragraphs 17-21, the author's father has suffered a stroke and it seems that it has impacted his life greatly; he seems to be physically weaker and requires more rest in this stage of his life. He spends most of his time lying down. This contrasts with how he behaved before in paragraphs 9-11, where the author talked about how often her family moved around as a result of her father's whims, and how energetic he was. Despite this, he does not seem unhappy when he is described near the end of the essay; he just seems more mellowed out. He is still enjoying the same types of comforts that he enjoyed in the past.