A World of My Own

Inspired by their reading of The House on Mango Street, by Sandra Cisneros, English I students crafted vignettes that some students shared during a Community Meeting presentation. Here is Kathryn ’22's submission.

The bedroom on a dirt road in Sandisfield, Massachusetts, is completely normal. A bedroom that is very small and has purple, pink, and white walls. The bedroom has a full bed, a dresser, some shelves with some stuff on them, a closet, and a bean bag. The bedroom also has books, ordinary books, but once I dive into them, they aren’t so normal anymore. For they aren’t just books, they are hundreds and hundreds of pages that possess knowledge so strong and valuable that they influence the way I see the world. And, that normal bedroom with normal furniture and a not so normal sister constantly invading it, becomes a world of its own.

The world is silent for hours and hours on end with no noise, minus the turn of the pages, the sounds outside, or the occasional cough or sneeze. But, other than that, the bedroom is a silent retreat where my mind is nourished and can think deeply, creatively, or adventurously.

The books are a path; they take me on a journey through a wide variety of environments that possess many different elements that can lead me to unknown places. So, if I read about the lush green hills of Ireland or the white sandy beaches and crystal clear waters of the Caribbean, my path is guiding me to explore these new and dreamy environments. Generally the path takes me to the unexpected, a place I never thought existed in my whole life, or to discover a feat I thought was inhumanly possible. But sometimes that unexpected leads to a wide ravine that takes a lot of deep thinking and resilience to navigate.

A book is a path. It leads you to the unexpected, with surprises around every corner. But reading a book in a normal bedroom is unlike any path I will ever actually walk on, it’s really just a path in a world of my own. A world packed full with fourteen years of memories and unexplainable experiences that shape me every day. All of which take place in the normal bedroom on a dirt road in Sandisfield, Massachusetts.