Point of view in literature is the narrator’s position and relation to the storyline. Fiction is typically written in the first or the third person. First person is when the main character is telling the story. An author uses third person when the narrator is not a character in the story and is telling the story from the outside.

“Mericans” by Sandra Cisneros is told in the first person point of view. The narrator is a young girl who tells the story in her perspective. The pronoun “I” is often used in the first person point of view. For example, “I’d rather play flying feather dancers, but if I tell my brother this, he might not play with me at all.” The first person narrative helps put us in the shoes of the young narrator, who is struggling with her heritage and understanding the customs of her grandmother. Because the story is written in the first person, we are unable to access the feelings and motivations behind the grandmother’s actions.