Cisneros characterizes “home” in both No Place Like Home and Only Daughter as a place of comfort, self-acknowledgement, and growth as an individual. In No Place Like Home, Cisneros first begins the story by introducing the writer Betty Smith and her idea of a home. According to Betty Smith’s path, sometimes “you have to run away from home and visit other homes first before you can clearly see your own”(Cisneros). In defining home in this manner, Cisenros speaks of the identity and individual has and its relation to their home. She questions the authenticity of a “home”, and what it means to truly belong somewhere. And through this main theme, we are guided in Cisneros’s path of becoming a writer. While becoming a writer, Cisneros speaks of being soulfully homeless – a state in which you are unsatisfied with your being. To Cisneros, home was never about a physical location – it was a feeling, a sense – that you could feel accepted in. She found it in, “Mexican writer Juan Ruflo, the anti-poetics of Chilean poet Nicanor Parra, (and) the rage of Malcom X”(Cisneros). She notes a quote by her seemingly icon Pico Iyer, “(Home) is not just the place you were born… (but) the place where you become yourself”. In only daughter Cisneros continues this idea by explaining her relationship with her father. To her father, she has never been acknowledged as an individual equal to her brothers. She was seen as a woman, and as a woman her father wanted to see her responsibility as a wife. She remembers being called one of her brothers, and that her father was disappointed in her inability to meet his standards. But her belief in her life’s path, found her continuing to push forward in English becoming an established author, professor, and recipient of the National Endowment of the Arts award. Her proudest moment? In the home she was raised, showing her father a book that she had written herself and him finally acknowledging her.

I think of home as a place of comfort and self acknowledgement similar to Cisneros. I find that a physical interpretation of “home” obviously changes over time, but that the idea of a home doesn’t. The barriers of belonging is acceptance from others, and success in life. Acceptance is more likely within your home, as most individuals care more about their relatives opinions of them than a stranger outside their house. Success in terms of your career/j