Only Daughter by Sandra Cisneros

In The story Only Daughter by Sandra Cisneros, she writes about her personal life as she grew up in a hard working Mexican family. She expressed her feelings in the situation about her father; and how she always felt like her father was not proud of her. Every time he would talk about his family, he would mention that he had seven sons; when in reality he had six sons and one daughter. Cisneros had gone to college to become an English writer, but her dad was expecting her to go to college for a different reason, to find her soul mate to marry. At the end of her story she explains how her father finally took interest in a story that she had written, and for the first time in her life she had made him proud.

Reading this story made me feel very sad for Cisneros. She worked very hard in college to be where she was at, and her father never really had taken interest in her career. She wanted to go to college to make him proud, but all he cared about was that she needed to find a husband. It was like that was all she was born to be in her father’s eyes, just a “Wife”; that only his sons could actually be someone important in life.

            I think that wanting to make her father proud also helped Cisneros be where she is today. She wanted to become someone important and successful, not just a wife. Growing up in her six brother’s shadows made her want to stand out and push herself harder than all of them. This disadvantage was very sad for her growing up life experience, but at the same time I feel like it brought the best out of her.

            At the end of the Cisneros’s story I felt very happy for her. It was like she had gotten her reward for all her years of hard work. She had finally made her father proud like she had really wanted for the first time.

            Overall I think her hard work should have been enough to make her father extremely proud. Even before when she was in college she deserved her father’s support in her decision to become an English writer. Not the support to go to college to find her a husband. I personally felt her father’s thoughts were extremely ridiculous; and she is a very strong minded woman that should serve as a role model for many girls who grow up in her same situation.