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Dear Esperanza,
I regret my decision to marry greatly. It took me a while, but I’m now finally opening up. Esperanza, do not marry early! Forget tradition, this is hell. I’m trapped in my own home, not able to set foot outside of my prison. He doesn’t even like it when I look out the window because he fears ill start dreaming again. Sometimes he comes home drunk, more drunk than a bum with money. He comes home drunk and does mean things, very mean things. He won’t let any of my friends come over, either. I no longer have a life. I am a slave to his biddings, I have no free will anymore. I wish I was exaggerating but unfortunately I’m not. I had dreams of becoming a doctor. Get through high school and go to a junior college, do good and move on to a better collage. Once I became a doctor, I would have been free of this poverty trap. I could have walked away and never have looked back. However, in high school my grades started dropping and other things started getting my attention. I got distracted by petty desires and now I’m paying for it. A life sentence in this jail with a monster I once loved. I was foolish back then and I lost it all. Esperanza, do not make my mistake! Shoot for the stars and worry about that petty stuff later. Love will find you when its time, but opportunities only come once. The door to freedom is just around the corner for you, Esperanza. Go do something impressive.

Love,
Sally

In Sandra Cisneros’s vignette, Hips, she uses symbolism in the form of hips to express the theme: maturity is as much mental as it is physical. In Hips, Esperanza and her friends are jump roping when a conversation dealing with maturing hips occurs. For these young ladies, hips and their growth during puberty become a symbol of maturing physically. With its increasing attractively sexually, hips become a focus for sexual maturity. However, these concepts are limited by age, as seen in Ninny’s response to the conversations. Because she is younger than the rest and these concepts are foreign to her, she is unaware of the real significance of the physical maturity of hips. This unawareness forces her to become excluded socially from the conversation, but more importantly, it becomes the real life example of the theme, suggesting that the maturity of the mind is just as significant as the maturing of the body. But, with deeper inspection, the reader can find that there is yet another example of this theme in the text. Esperanza, Rachel, and Lucy are all deciphering the significance of the maturing of hips while jump roping, a game commonly associated with children. As they begin their jump roping session, the topic of hips comes up as a thought and they continue with their normal singing. During the middle of the session, everyone, excluding ninny, joins in singing about hips and the songs become more and more geared toward sexual maturity. By the end of the session, they begin to see and realize how immature one of their members is and begin to self-examine their selves. They realize how childish their game of jump rope is and eventually abandon the situation entirely. Maturing of the mind and body.