Read the excerpts from Sandra Cisneros short book The House on Mango Street provided.
2. Construct a story from a street that you lived on as a child or a young adult. Perhaps it is about something or someone, or an event that sticks in your memory. Focus on something that is quintessentially urban and, if you can, something that is geographic. If you have no urban memories (which says something about how you view the world given that 80% of the US is officially urban, and urbanity touches pretty much all parts of the world), then put together something that relates to where you live right now. Use Cisneros work as your guide.
What do you identify as important and why?
What are elements of the story that relate to the urban-ness of the street
where you lived (or live)?
How do spatial relations affect the story?
What scales does the story reflect (house, garden, street, city, nation,
immigrant, world)?
Write out some bullet points that will comprise that elements of the story. Your bullets can reflect your excitement, humor, pathos, existential angst, or whatever you find interesting … and you want to hone down on something that is quintessentially urban.
3. See if you can use Cisneros lyrical style to write a short essay (~500 words) on the story of the house/person/event on your street. Cisneros is a good example of particularly engaging used of writing conventions,