In the chapter "And Some More" of Sandra Cisneros' The House on Mango Street, Esperanza and her sister Nenny are having a conversation with their neighbor girls, Rachel and Lucy. The conversation begins with Esperanza trying to show off a little bit by mentioning that she read in a book about how the Eskimos have thirty different names for snow. The conversation is quickly distracted from names for snow to talking about names for a variety of things.
Esperanza seems to be talking about the concept of naming things based on different characteristics they have. Her initial comment about the thirty names for snow implies that those names all have slightly different meanings or at least bring our attention to different qualities of the snow. The same is true of the names for clouds, cumulus and nimbus being specific types of cloud formations.
This is contrasted with the comments of the other three girls, who are merely naming things for the sake of calling them something. Nenny spends the majority of the chapter simply listing different human names and attributing them to various clouds she sees in the sky.
Lucy is mostly just chattering in a mindless but insulting sort of way, and says rather off-handedly that Esperanza's mama is ugly. Esperanza becomes very offended by this, and starts to escalate the conversation into an argument in an effort to make the other girls see what they've said. The chapter ends with saying that all four girls are stupid.
This chapter underscores the vast difference between the childish behavior of Nenny, Lucy and Rachel, and the very serious mind that Esperanza has. She interprets a casual and silly comment as a severe insult and is sufficiently wounded by it to choose not to be friends with Lucy and Rachel anymore.
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