The document discusses the book 'Eleven' by Sandra Cisneros, highlighting her background and the influences on her writing, particularly her experiences of cultural migration and economic inequality. The story follows a girl named Rachel on her eleventh birthday, where she reflects on her feelings of inadequacy and embarrassment related to a red sweater incident at school. It illustrates themes of personal growth, maturity, and the complexities of childhood emotions.

1. “Eleven” by Sandra
Cisneros.
By; Marcos Okecki, Trinidad Porretti
and Abril Teran.

2. Title:
Eleven
Author:
Sandra Cisneros
Published;
1991
Point of View;
1rst person-protagonist
About the book

3. About the Author
Sandra Cisneros was born on 1954 in the US, although she has Mexican roots.
She is a novelist, poet , teacher and short-story writer. As a child, she was
accustomed to migrate from one country to another(Mexico and the US). Events
of her early life provided experiences that influenced her writing later on, such as
the fact that that she grew up surrounded by different cultures, and economic
inequality. In addition, in her novels, she explores issues of race, class, and
gender through the lives of ordinary people belonging to multiple cultures. She
had a very lonely childhood, because her six brothers left her because of the
instability of the family. During her childhood, one of Cisneros’ teachers helped
and encouraged her to begin writing.

4. Plot.
The story moves around the birthday of a girl called Rachel. She begins retelling
the story pointing out that when you are eleven, you are also all of the ages
leading up to eleven. When you wake up on your eleventh birthday you feel as if
you are still ten. She associates life with an oniontree trunk, every ring
represents a year, each one inside the other. On her eleventh birthday Rachel
wishes she were 102, in order to know what she should have done in an
embarrassing situation at school. Her teacher implied that a red, old, stretched
and raggedy sweater belonged to her, and it didn’t, and furthermore, she forced
her to put it on herself. Rachel tried as hard as possible to restrain the tears that
wanted to break out from her body, but it was impossible for her to do this.
Although she tried to remind herself that a cake and her family awaited her
home, she still felt miserable about her birthday and not eleven at all.

5. Tenses we can find in the story.
Present Simple; “You don’t feel smart eleven”
Present Continuous; “...I open my eyes, and the red sweater's still sitting there like a big red
mountain,”
Present Perfect; “...because she sees I’ve shoved the red sweater to the tippy-tip corner”
Present Perfect continuous; “It’s been sitting in the coatroom for a month.”
Past SimpleWish ;“Only today I wish I didn’t have only eleven years...”
Conditionals; “If I was one hundred and two I’d have known what to say when Mrs Price put the red
sweater on my desk.” (mixed conditional)

6. Main Character
Rachel
Rachel is the protagonist of the story, she is a girl who is turning eleven years old. While reading the novel
we can identify she is shy and insecure, bashful and not self-confident at all. Moreover, we can see Rachel
has some very mature thoughts for an eleven year old, such her thought of aging as an accumulation of
personal experiences feelings and tendencies. When she was in the embarrassing situation of the red
sweater, she was dumbfounded and unable to speak her mind . Although she may have some mature
thoughts, she is very childish and sensitive too, as she constantly wanted to cry and everything people said
would affect her. Of course, kids cannot be depressed, but we think she is in a very similar state to that
condition. For instance, the fact that she was very sad during her birthday and kept making a fuss about
very silly things. She is very a very shameful person.

7. Skinny: Very lean or thin
Raggedy: (Clothes) not in good
condition/torn
Itchy: Uncomfortable feeling or
sensation on the skin.
Vocabulary

8. The book's
message
(our
interpretation);
Life is an accumulation of years each one
inside the other, every year of your life builds
your personality and also changes it.