What's a Vignette?

What is a vignette

a. A short, usually descriptive literary sketch.
b. A short scene or incident
c. A small illustrative sketch
d. A picture, illustration, or depiction in words

The vignette focuses on one aspect, mood, character, setting or object.


Lights
Stuart Dybek

In summer, waiting for night, we’d pose against the afterglow on corners, watching
traffic cruise through the neighborhood. Sometimes, a car would go by without its
headlights on and we’d all yell, “Lights!”
“Lights!” we’d keep yelling until the beams flashed on. It was usually immediate—
the driver honking back thanks, or flinching embarrassed behind the steering wheel, or
gunning past, and we’d see his red taillights blink on.
But there were times—who knows why?—when drunk or high, stubborn, or simply
lost in that glide to somewhere else, the driver just kept driving in the dark, and all
down the block we’d hear yelling from doorways and storefronts, front steps, and other
corners, voices winking on like fireflies: “Lights! Your lights! Hey, lights!” (34)

Reflect: What do you notice? What do you like? What questions does it raise for you? What does the vignette mean to you?


My Name from House on Mango Street
Sandra Cisneros

In English my name means hope. In Spanish it means too many letters. It means sadness, it means waiting. It is like the number nine. A muddy color. It is the Mexican records my father plays on Sunday mornings when he is shaving, songs like sobbing.

It was my great-grandmother's name and now it is mine. She was a horse woman too, born like me in the Chinese year of the horse--which is supposed to be bad luck if you're born female-but I think this is a Chinese lie because the Chinese, like the Mexicans, don't like their women strong.

My great-grandmother. I would've liked to have known her, a wild, horse of a woman, so wild she wouldn't marry. Until my great-grandfather threw a sack over her head and carried her off. Just like that, as if she were a fancy chandelier. That's the way he did it.

And the story goes she never forgave him. She looked out the window her whole life, the way so many women sit their sadness on an elbow. I wonder if she made the best with what she got or was she sorry because she couldn't be all the things she wanted to be. Esperanza. I have inherited her name, but I don't want to inherit her place by the window.

At school they say my name funny as if the syllables were made out of tin and hurt the roof of your mouth. But in Spanish my name is made out of a softer something, like silver, not quite as thick as sister's name Magdalena--which is uglier than mine. Magdalena who at least- -can come home and become Nenny. But I am always Esperanza. would like to baptize myself under a new name, a name more like the real me, the one nobody sees. Esperanza as Lisandra or Maritza or Zeze the X. Yes. Something like Zeze the X will do.

Reflect: What do you notice? What do you like? What questions does it raise for you? What does the vignette mean to you?