English For Fun

                                                       Bonnie Smith - Yackel SYNOPSIS   In the essay “ My Mother Never Worked ,” Bonnie Smith-Yackel recollects the time when she called Social Security to claim her mother’s death benefits. Social Security places Smith-Yackel on hold so they can check their records on her mother,  Martha Jerabek Smith . While waiting, she remembers the many things her mother did, and the compassion her mother felt towards her husband and children. When Social Security returns to the phone, they tell Smith-Yackel that she could not receive her mother’s death benefits because her mother never had a wage-earning job. A tremendous amount of irony is used in this essay. The title, in itself, is full of irony; it makes readers curious about the essay’s point and how the author feels about the situation. Smith-Yack...

Summary : The story "Only Daughter" by Sandra Cisneros is about being the only daughter out of seven children. The author tells us how she sometimes felt left out because her father would always tell everyone he was the father of seven sons, not because he had seven sons but because that's how it would sound like in Spanish. She also felt left out because none of her six brothers would play with her because they didn't want to be seen playing with a girl. As they grew up all seven of them went to college and had impressive careers. The author's father would praise his sons for being doctors but was disappointed when his daughter graduated from college without a husband. The author's father was glad she had received an education but always expected her to be married and have her own family. To know her father's expectations of her the author was glad that her father never gave her a hard time about her decision to major in English, even though she would hav...