Abuelito Who Summary and Analysis

Overview Sandra Cisneros is an American writer of Mexican heritage and a key figure in the Chicana literary movement. She is best known for her 1983 novel The House on Mango Street. Cisneros’s work, reflecting her own childhood experiences, explores cultural hybridity and identity while navigating poverty, classism, and racism. Her 1987 poem “Abuelito Who” typifies her style—characterized by simple language and syntax—and depicts the changing relationship between a grandfather (Abuelito) and his grandchild. Told from the grandchild’s point of view, “Abuelito Who” is a 23-line run-on sentence comprising a series of descriptions and associations about her grandparent, who is sick and possibly approaching death. However, one of the poem’s central tensions is the speaker’s childlike confusion around the circumstances surrounding her ailing Abuelito. The Spanish abuelito, and references to the Spanish language, highlight the cultural heritage of the speaker and her family, placing the poem within the canon of Chicana literature. Poet Biography Sandra Cisneros was born in Chicago in 1954. She grew up as the only girl in a lower-income family of six brothers. Her parents migrated routinely between the United States and Mexico, leaving Cisneros feeling as if she never truly belonged anywhere. This lack of belonging, or the idea of belonging partially to two cultures but never entirely to either, is a common Chicana experience and defines much of Cisneros’s writing. Cisneros graduated from Loyola University Chicago in 1976 and received her Master of Fine Arts from the prestigious Iowa Writers’ Workshop at the University of Iowa in 1978. During her graduate studies, she began developing her characteristic writing style drawing on Mexican and Southwestern culture. Cisneros started writing about the people in her life with whom she most identified and discovered her passion and commitment to writing about marginalized communities. Cisneros has taught at high schools and universities and has been called the most famous Chicana writer. Not only did her novel House on Mango Street (1983) receive an overwhelmingly popular response, but her subsequent collection of short stories Woman Hollering Creek (1991) also received critical acclaim. As a pioneer of the Chicana literary movement, Cisneros’s work has been instrumental in bringing Mexican American writers out from the margins of American literature and creating a distinct space for Mexican American women writers who have been traditionally underrepresented. Summary The speaker refers to her grandfather, “Abuelito” (a Spanish term of endearment, “granddaddy”) and says he throws coins and has a habit of asking people if they love him. The speaker describes him as soft and squishy like dough and light and fluffy like feathers. He reminds her of a watch, a glass of water. She thinks his hair is fur like a dog or a stuffed animal. He is ”too sad” (Line 6) to get out of bed and come downstairs to meet the speaker. He speaks Spanish and English and compliments her kindly in both languages. His eyes are tiny and like string, again resembling a stuffed animal. He “can’t come out to play” (Line 10) whenever she wants him to because he often sleeps in his room all day and night. His laugh has a distinctive “k” sound, and the speaker asserts that he is sick. The speaker says Abuelito “is a doorknob tied to a sour stick” (Line 14) and, when he’s tired, he wants the door shut. Then, the speaker says he “doesn’t live here” anymore (Line 16) and that he hides under the bed. The speaker can hear him talking to her in her head. He reminds her of “blankets and spoons and big brown shoes” (Line 19), and he snores a lot with a very distinct movement. Abuelito is “the rain on the roof” (Line 21) that reminds her of the coins he used to toss when he asked people if they loved him. Poem Analysis Analysis: “Abuelito Who” “Abuelito Who” presents associations filtered through the lens of a child’s mind. The speaker shifts back and forth between memories and the present day, between personal items and other objects. The unadorned diction creates a childlike tone: the use of brevity, incomplete sentences, repetition, and simple phrases uncluttered by modifying clauses reinforces a sense of the speaker’s naïveté and youth. The 23-line poem is one long, run-on sentence with no punctuation aside from the single question mark at the very end. Each line builds upon the character of Abuelito. Abuelito doesn’t particularly care about money. He prefers to make wishes with his spare change. The idea that he “throws coins like rain” (Line 1) demonstrates that he treats money as if it is something that falls from the sky. Instead, he is concerned with love. It is the first and last feature that comes to mind when the speaker thinks of him, described in the second line as well as the last two, “asking who loves him / who loves him who?” (Lines 22-23). He often asks who loves him, desiring to hear it reaffirmed as much as possible, which helps the reader better understand this man. Next, the speaker associates her grandfather with “dough and feathers” (Line 3). These items are soft, fluffy, joyful, and possibly allude to a slight body weight. The speaker then lists a few associated objects, “a watch and glass of water / whose hair is made of fur” (Lines 4-5). The speaker provides small glimpses, like puzzle pieces, of the many parts of this dearly beloved man. Because she is just a small child, she can hardly grasp her grandfather as a whole picture but instead remembers him and understands him through the personal items he wears or the objects he typically uses. The seemingly random, disjointed descriptions actually combine to paint a very nuanced and dynamic picture of Abuelito. While the poem’s highly impressionistic, “coded” quality initially obscures an immediate narrative, the reader can infer that the story is there and that its memory is rich with personal meaning and detail. However, Abuelito is not always available to the speaker, who may be too little to understand why. It is unclear whether Abuelito is actually “too sad to come downstairs today” (Line 6) or if it is his ailing health described later in the poem. Although the reader knows only fragments of the story, something is changing with Abuelito. The word “today” (Line 6) infers there was a time when he was not “too sad” (Line 6) to come downstairs. Although the speaker is a young child, she notices and tries to make sense of this change. Thus, in the immediately following line, the speaker thinks about his kindness toward her. The mention of Spanish and English demonstrates a personal and communal understanding between them. They are both of Mexican heritage; they have a shared sense of culture and identity. With childlike reasoning, the speaker attempts to comfort herself by thinking of her grandfather at his kindest and most loving, the times he “tells me in Spanish you are my diamond / who tells me in English you are my sky” (Lines 7-8). The speaker makes a few comparisons between her grandfather and stuffed animals. She describes her grandfather’s hair as being “made of fur” (Line 5), and his “little eyes are string” (Line 9). In many ways, as a child, the speaker cannot fully grasp her grandfather’s humanity, seeing him as this eternally loving stuffed teddy bear that will give her cuddles whenever she needs them. This is why when he “can’t come out to play” (Line 10), it comes as a big disappointment. The speaker is becoming very aware that her grandfather is not a stuffed animal. For reasons she cannot understand, he “sleeps in his little room all night and day” (Line 11). The next line reflects her confusion as she recalls his laughter: “who used to laugh like the letter k” (Line 12); the statement is past tense. Her grandfather no longer laughs like that, or perhaps at all. At the midpoint of the poem, the speaker finally addresses what is wrong with him. Assuming the noun and relative pronoun from the first line, Line 11 states, “is sick.” The speaker’s relationship with her grandfather now begins to change. The following two lines feature imagery of a door, “is a doorknob tied to a sour stick / is tired shut the door” (Lines 14-15). As a small child, the speaker would probably have been barred from her grandfather’s bedroom, the location of all his medical supplies. The speaker may have often found herself staring at closed doors and closing doors behind her. The speaker also seems to not be privy to important details surrounding her grandfather’s health because shortly after she is told that he is simply tired, he then “doesn’t live here anymore” (Line 16). It is unclear whether this implies that her grandfather passed away. It is clear nonetheless that the speaker doesn’t understand where he is but still feels his presence: She believes him to be “hiding underneath the bed / who talks to me inside my head” (Lines 17-18). The statement that Abuelito is beneath the bed is ambiguous, but certainly expresses her childlike illogic; to a very young child, “underneath the bed” (Line 17) would likely seem the best explanation for where a missing person is. The line also suggests that, while the speaker can’t physically see her grandfather, she believes he is still there. Abuelito’s presence persists in Line 18 as the speaker internalizes his voice—evidence of the closeness of their relationship. Additionally, these two lines suggest an overactive imagination in a child who misses her grandfather very much. If her grandfather died, however, there is the possibility that she is witnessing his ghost or spirit—but the poem lingers on this notion only briefly, as the speaker’s attention moves quickly elsewhere. The speaker names a few more associated objects in the next line, “blankets and spoons and big brown shoes” (Line 19). However, these items lack a positive connotation and represent his sickness. She lists the blankets that kept him warm when he slept “in his little room all night and day” (Line 11), the spoons that fed him his medicine, the shoes now empty. Her grandfather was such a constant in her life, however, and the sound of his snoring is something she remembers clearly—and the memory leads into the suggestion of wind before a storm, as the next line introduces rain. Now, instead of tossing coins like rain, the rain on the roof reminds her of the coins he used to toss, “is the rain on the roof that falls like coins” (Line 21). And she remembers him at the end of the poem the same way she remembered him initially, asking who loves him, consumed with the idea of love. Contextual Analysis Authorial Context Sandra Cisneros is known for a modern, imagistic writing style characterized by brevity, incomplete sentences, repetition, and uncluttered phrases. The writing’s unusual sparseness creates a descriptive simplicity and clarity that is sharply evocative in its use of imagery. Cisneros uses this technique to articulate the child’s voice and perspective. Her style is greatly influenced by her own experiences growing up in a lower income family with a somewhat chaotic childhood. Later, her experiences as a teacher hearing her student’s stories compelled her to write from the perspective of kids and teens. This is, in part, because the stories they told carried so much weight due to their young age. Cisneros’s sparse syntax and simple diction work throughout “Abuelito Who” to convey the youth and experience of the speaker. The tone is childlike, but this ingenuousness creates distance between the speaker and the poem’s events, producing an irony. The irony doesn’t buffer the realities presented, but instead underscores the gravity of the experience on a naïve child still figuring out the world. This literary technique is apparent in “Abuelito Who,” with the simple diction and the long run-on sentence. The childlike perspective emphasizes the complex and confusing nature of loss; losing a grandparent when you are a child is a much different experience than losing one as an adult. Literary and Cultural Context Sandra Cisneros is considered a major influential figure in contemporary Chicana literature. Chicano/a literature is the name of the genre associated with Mexican-American writing and poetry. The word “Chicano” is essentially different from the more general term “Latino,” which refers to language and cultural ties with Latin American countries more broadly. The genre extends to both American-born people of Mexican ancestry like Sandra Cisneros and those who have emigrated from Mexico to the United States. The Chicano Movement, also referred to as “El Movimiento,” was a social and political movement during the 1940-70s inspired by the Civil Rights movement for Black Americans. The movement pushed for embracing the Chicano identity, combating racism, and rejecting cultural assimilation. The origins of the Chicano movement can be traced to the Mexican American War in 1848, during which the United States annexed a large part of what was once Mexico. This annexation involved incorporating many Spanish-speaking territories like California, Nevada, Utah, Arizona, Colorado, and New Mexico into the greater United States of America and subsequently turning thousands of former Mexican citizens into citizens of the United States. Chicanos are therefore unlike other “immigrants,” as they have never moved or relocated, yet some consider them to be foreigners or outsiders. Therefore, although Chicano culture is inherently associated with Mexico, it is uniquely American because it is defined by its association with the United States. Chicano culture, literature, and art are generally concerned with the lack of fully belonging to one place or the other, one country or the other, and one language or the other. Themes Change One of the poem’s most impactful themes is the idea of change, and even someone as young as the speaker must learn its harsh lesson. Things do not stay the same even though the speaker wants them to, even expects them to. Nearly all of the verbs within the poem are in the present tense, “throws coins” (Line 1), “is dough and feathers” (Line 3), “sleeps in his little room” (Line 11). The speaker presents nearly everything about the grandfather as if it is habitual or perpetual. For the young girl, her grandfather is a monumental figure, a steady and unwavering presence in her short life thus far. She must reconcile the notion that he will always be present in her life with his increasing absence that finally becomes permanent. The speaker attempts to deal with the stress and confusion of losing this consistent person slowly over time. The change does not happen instantly like a car wreck, but slowly with a progressing illness— persistent, unstoppable, and unavoidable—forcing the young speaker to adapt to the painfully slow progression. The gradual change is reflected in the text, making its debut on Line 6, “is too sad to come downstairs today.” The speaker doesn’t linger on this, assuming it is a momentary blip in the accustomed routine. However, it appears again a few lines later, “can’t come out to play / sleeps in his little room all night and day” (Lines 10-11). The following line is the only memory within the whole poem, the only time the speaker can step outside of this persisting present tense: “who used to laugh like the letter k” (Line 12). Line 13 is the midpoint of the poem and finally makes the definitive statement that Abuelito “is sick.” The rest of the poem entails the speaker’s confrontation with reality, imagining her grandfather under the bed or talking to her in her mind. Eventually, she adapts to the change, hearing his memory in the rain: “is the rain on the roof that falls like coins / asking who loves him / who loves him who?” (Lines 21-23). Love Love defines the relationship between the speaker and her Abuelito, and this is evident through all the details the speaker presents, “who tells me in Spanish you are my diamond / who tells me in English you are my sky” (Lines 7-8). Even her name for him, “Abuelito,” is informal, implying their familiarity. When the speaker thinks of him, she feels that he was always concerned with who loved him, always asking people to tell him that they loved him, “and asks who loves him” (Line 2), “asking who loves him / who loves him who?” (Lines 22- 23). This fixation on love carries a particular connotation due to the cultural Chicano machismo that may discourage men from expressing these tender emotions. For the speaker, her grandfather was not so hardened, and she and valued his honest expressiveness. Abuelito’s emotional tenderness is impactful to the young, impressionable speaker, but it also makes the pain of his loss that much harder to endure. His presence in her life is so significant because he is so soft and loving, like “dough and feathers” (Line 3), and she ends up turning to fantastical explanations to cope with his absence: He is simply “hiding underneath the bed” (Line 17) or talking to her “inside my head” (Line 18). She feels a powerful connection to him; the final symbol of the rain represents the absence but persisting memory of Abuelito’s infectious love and joy. Sickness and Old Age The theme of old age is crucial to understanding the young speaker’s confusion. The speaker’s consistent use of present tense demonstrates her naïveté, and that she does not yet fully understand change and time’s passage. Viewing the world in the present tense, the speaker implies that what has been will always be. Her grandfather has always been old, but he has also always been full of love, joy, and energy. Being so young, the speaker cannot understand that her grandfather’s age will eventually catch up to him and change the way he lives his life. She has not lived long enough to understand what aging truly means aside from a birthday party, and this is possibly her first encounter with the consequences of aging. It is not just that her Abuelito is sick; it is that she watches the older man deteriorate and doesn’t fully understand what she is witnessing. This becomes clear when the items she associates with her Abuelito begin to change, “is blankets and spoons and big brown shoes” (Line 19). These objects are slightly less pleasant and charming, and after the declaration of her grandfather’s sickness, they come to represent something slightly darker. While the speaker may be too young to express her feelings or understand what’s happening entirely, the details she includes and the associations she makes effectively demonstrate her coming to terms with his aging and sickness. Symbols & Motifs Rain & Coins Rain and coins appear—symbolically and literally—at the poem’s beginning and the end, first in Lines 1-2, “Abuelito who throws coins like rain / and asks who loves him,” and again in Line 21, “is the rain on the roof that falls like coins.” Just as the memory of her grandfather asking who loves him frames the poem, so does this image of rain and coins. At the beginning of the poem, the speaker makes the simile about her grandfather showering coins, raining them from above, implying that he was willing to spend his money on the people whom he loved. Much as rain is a blessing, the coins her grandfather showered down were blessings too. Therefore, when the speaker hears the rain by the poem’s end, it reminds her of her grandfather’s generosity and kindness. The rain is a bittersweet reminder of the joyous and loving way her grandfather lived his life, and she can imagine his voice in the sound of it falling on the roof, “asking who loves him / who loves him who?” (Lines 22-23). Dough & Feathers The young speaker describes her grandfather with vivid, associative imagery. One of her first metaphors is her assertion that her Abuelito is “dough and feathers” (Line 3). Dough is soft and sweet and rises with heat, turning into bread, cookies, or other delicious treats. Feathers are also soft, but they are lightweight and associated with freedom, flying, and birds. Feathers can also be used to stuff pillows or toys, suggesting the idea that her grandfather is a stuffed teddy bear. This reinforces that the speaker has trouble understanding change, growing old, and sickness, and is still too young to understand death and its permanence. This specific association to dough and feathers objectifies her grandfather in a very innocent and childlike way. It allows him to exist for her as ageless and timeless—a fantasy that is transmuted by the end of the poem, as Abuelito is gone but remains present and alive in the speaker’s memory. Blankets & Spoons Just after the speaker announces that she can sense her grandfather under the bed or talking to her in her head, she again describes her Abuelito in the continuous present tense as “blankets and spoons and big brown shoes” (Line 19). Because the reader knows that he “doesn’t live here anymore” (Line 16), the items’ connotations are very different than for the poem’s other metaphors. The items now represent suffering and absence. The blankets are associated with the state of being bedridden—which was obliquely alluded to earlier with the metaphor “watch and glass of water” (Line 4), items commonly seen on a bedside table, and which may also call to mind a scheduled pill regimen. The blankets are further associated with chills or fevers, coldness due to frailty, malnutrition, hunger. The spoons are also associated with medicines and liquefied food for easy ingestion. The big brown shoes not only imply that he once walked around in these shoes that now sit empty, but also perhaps his immobility at the end of his life, as the speaker describes earlier, “can’t come out to play” (Line 10). Literary Devices Form & Meter Cisneros’s poem “Abuelito Who” utilizes a loose iambic pentameter and is written in free verse as one stanza. The syllables within each line vary at random intervals, and the shortest being “is sick” (Line 13) with two syllables. Up until the end of the last line, the poem lacks any punctuation, and this stream-of-consciousness single-stanza form emphasizes the undifferentiated quality of a child’s thought; the speaker says not that Abuelito reminds her of “dough and feathers” (Line 3), for example, but that he is these things. Abuelito, and experiences associated with him, form a single imaginative entity—and the poem’s form mirrors this. The single stanza with no regular meter additionally reinforces the child’s voice; more traditional forms would bring an element of restraint and sophistication at odds with the tone and overall world of a child’s imagination. Cisneros does not attempt to align herself with tradition, although her simple syntax and stream of associations do refer to writers like Gwendolyn Brooks and Gertrude Stein. In one stanza, the poem demonstrates how an individual person or thing can change into something new without a definitive break to represent that change. Rhyme The poem does not have a consistent rhyme scheme but utilizes rhyme as a literary device in the center of the poem, with no significant rhymes at the beginning or end. The major rhyme scheme begins with “can’t come out to play” (Line 10), and the following two lines are end rhymed, “sleeps in his little room all night and day / who used to laugh like the letter k” (Lines 11-12). The following six lines continue with the end rhymed couplets: “sick” (Line 13) and “stick” (Line 14), “door” (Line 15) and “anymore” (Line 16), and “bed” (Line 17) and “head” (Line 18). The rhymes come at a time in the poem where the speaker is actively processing the traumatic change with her grandfather. The rhymes work specifically within the section of the poem directly dealing with Abuelito’s sickness, and once the sickness is over, the rhyme tapers off completely. Thus, the rhyme builds momentum during the most stressful and challenging part of this experience with her grandfather. Almost like a coping mechanism, the rhyme acts as a vehicle that helps move the speaker through this difficult place, enforcing the constraint of rhyme to keep the speaker moving. The rhyme ends when the difficult time is over, letting the speaker revert back to free verse. Parallelism In grammar, parallelism is a balance within one or more sentences of similar phrases or clauses that have the same grammatical structure. The application of parallelism affects readability and may make texts easier to process. Parallelism appears throughout “Abuelito Who” with the consistent use of present tense and repeated use of “who” and “is” as lines’ beginning words. Cisneros uses repetition not only to call attention to the word being repeated, but the repetition of a word or image also contributes to semantic instability. This means that a particular meaning derived initially, when repeated, will cause the reader to revise that meaning retrospectively. The poem utilizes repetition, specifically a repeating sentence structure expanding and modifying the word “Abuelito.” Each line in the poem is a restatement or expansion on Abuelito, broadening the description of the older man and making the reader think critically about who Abuelito was to the speaker. Not only does Cisneros do this to enhance readability, but it is also another example of writing in the child’s voice. The repetitive and derivative nature of each sentence lacks linguistic creativity, and its grammatical structure is easy to imagine coming from a child’s mouth. Further Reading & Resources Related Poems "We Real Cool" by Gwendolyn Brooks (1959) One of Gwendolyn Brooks’s most famous poems, “We Real Cool” utilizes parallelism and simple syntax. First published in her poetry collection entitled The Bean Eaters, “We Real Cool” describes a group of teenagers who hang out at the pool hall, drinking and skipping school with the prophetic warning that the teenagers will die soon. The poem is both a celebration of rebellion and a challenge to authority. It is a cautionary tale about getting into trouble. "Emplumada" by Lorna Dee Cervantes (1981) Lorna Dee Cervantes is considered one of the major voices of the Chicana literary movement and is a contemporary of Sandra Cisneros. Her work explores the cultural differences between Mexican, white, and Indigenous communities in the Americas. In addition, her work tackles the issues of border identities and colonial oppression. The title poem of her collection, “Emplumada,” describes withering flowers and the hummingbirds that fight over access to them. "A Carafe, that is a Blind Glass" by Gertrude Stein (1914) Gertrude Stein is a renowned figure in literature and art for her contributions to Modernism. Her personal art collection and her close relationship with painters like Picasso and Matisse situate her as an essential contributor to the development of Modernism as a genre. Her controversially opaque poetry reflects the profound influence Modernist painting had on her writing and is characterized by associations between words, objects, and feelings. This seemingly—but not necessarily—random stream of consciousness writing leads to Stein’s somewhat confusing, open-ended, and disjointed poetic style. Further Literary Resources The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros (1983) Sandra Cisneros’s most famous novel, The House on Mango Street, is told from the perspective of a young girl named Esperanza as she enters her teens. The book explores Esperanza’s various friendships and relationships within her Mexican American neighborhood in Chicago. Told in the form of vignettes, the novella directly confronts sexism, sexual violence, classism, bi-cultural identity, and racism through the characteristically simple syntax and diction that has come to define Cisneros’s writing style. "A Room of One’s Own" by Virginia Woolf (1929) A Room of One’s Own is an extended essay by Modernist writer Virginia Woolf based on a series of lectures she delivered at Newnham College in 1928. Throughout the essay, Woolf employs metaphors and analogies to explore historical gender discrimination against women. The essay’s essential position is that all that women truly require to become writers is money and a room of their own. The essay greatly inspired Cisneros’s 1983 novel The House on Mango Street. Borderlands/ La Frontera: The New Mestiza by Gloria Anzaldúa (1987) This semi-autobiographical work by Gloria Anzaldúa is considered a pioneering piece of Chicana literature. It examines the Chicano and Latino experience through the lens of gender, race, colonialism, and identity. Throughout the text, Anzaldúa alternates between English and Spanish, demonstrating her idea of “The New Mestiza Consciousness,” a bi-cultural, bi-racial, pre-and post-colonial identity that situates itself in the middle, straddling all disparate and opposing identities.