A Study Guide for Sandra Cisneros's "My Lucy Friend Who Smells Like Corn"

By Gale and Cengage

A Study Guide for Sandra Cisneros's "My Lucy Friend Who Smells Like Corn," excerpted from Gale's acclaimed Short Stories for Students. This concise study guide includes plot summary; character analysis; author biography; study questions; historical context; suggestions for further reading; and much more. For any literature project, trust Short Stories for Students for all of your research needs.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Cengage Learning - Gale
• Release date: Jul 27, 2016
• ISBN: 9781535829229

Book preview

11

My Lucy Friend Who Smells Like Corn

Sandra Cisneros

1991

Introduction

Sandra Cisneros's short story My Lucy Friend Who Smells Like Corn, is only three pages long and is told through the eyes of a very young girl, possibly between the ages of eight and ten. The language of the story is very distinctive and, at times, very funny. Readers might imagine sitting down in some hidden place where no other adults are around and listening to the unrestrained thoughts of a loving—but somewhat insecure—girl commenting on her limited but whole-heartedly-felt view of friendship.

While working toward her master's degree in creative writing, Cisneros was challenged by the typical writing style of her peers, and this short story is a prime example of how Cisneros battled against the standards of mainstream writing by creating her own unique way of voicing a story. She does not worry about sentence structure or proper grammar. Rather she recreates characters as she has seen and heard them in real life—her life, which does not fit the mainstream model. The main character of My Lucy Friend Who Smells Like Corn is never named, but there is no need to do so. The young girl is present on the page through her observations of her friend Lucy, the emotions she feels for Lucy, and through her dreams.

My Lucy Friend Who Smells Like Corn was published in 1991 in the short story collection Woman Hollering Creek, which won the 1991 Lannan Foundation Literary Award. This short story is the first in the collection and helps define the first section, which contains stories with young protagonists.

Author Biography

Cisneros was born in Chicago, Illinois, on December 20, 1954. Her father, Alfredo Cisneros de Moral, was born in Mexico but immigrated to Chicago, Illinois, where he met and married Elvira Cordero Angulano. Cisneros is the third of seven children and the only girl. As she grew up, her family moved back and forth between Mexico City and different places in the United States. The constant difficulties of readjusting to new neighborhoods and schools led her to reading and the more interior world of writing. Her parents finally settled in a Mexican American neighborhood in Chicago. The house was old and the outbuildings around the house were falling apart. It was this house and the years she spent living there that inspired Cisneros's first novel, The House on Mango Street, published in 1984.

Cisneros began writing poetry in high school and became the editor of the school's literary magazine. In 1976, she graduated from Loyola University in Chicago, earning a bachelor's degree