One of the things Cisneros does best in her fiction is to evoke the sensations — sights, sounds, smells, tastes, palpable feelings — of being a child. The young speakers in this section (including the speaker in "Tepeyac," who "becomes" an adult only as her story ends) are excellently realized because they notice particulars and report them: the smashed-bug-on-the-windshield color inside a cat's-eye marble, the stickiness of a melting orange Popsicle, a child's shadow falling on a movie screen, every item on every table at a sidewalk flea market (or an inclusive selection). They report as well the intense emotions of childhood (from doing "loopity-loops" inside to wanting to disappear) and, all in all, capture perfectly for the reader the essence of being a child. We are reminded of Sandra Cisneros' early determination to write out of (although not necessarily about) her own particular experience and are able to see how that experience informs her characters' voices with authenticity.
Perhaps it is important, then, to remember that these stories can be read on different levels. Cisneros' characters will speak directly and honestly to young readers and will remind older readers of feelings we have — if we were lucky — known once but probably forgotten. Readers who share Cisneros' Latino background may recognize her perspective, but readers of other backgrounds will hardly be puzzled by it.
Of course, one way to read some of these stories (for example, "My Lucy Friend . . . ," "Mexican Movies," "Barbie-Q") is to see the children as "deprived": a poor, dirty little girl in 79-cent K-Mart flip-flops, sleeping in a fold-out chair in her grandparents' living room, whose best friend is one of nine children living in a shack; children whose mother, after sitting on her feet at the movies to avoid rats, must carry the little boy and girl up to their third-floor walk-up; an eight-year-old boy who shoulders the responsibility for two younger brothers; a pair of young Chicanas who must cut holes in an old sock to dress their blue-eyed Barbie dolls.
