The House on Mango Street
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The House on Mango Street is a 1984 novella by Sandra Cisneros and illustrated by Nivia Gonzalez. It deals with a young Latina girl, Esperanza Cordero, coming of age in the Chicago ghetto.
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[edit] Writing Style
The style in which the novela is written is described by Cisneros as an "poetic style," which she invented by glorifying and giving personification to elements generally seen as mundane and even ugly. Cisneros uses a series of poem-like vignettes which together create an over encompassing view of Esperanza and her experiences on Mango Street. Issues on mango street include gender and all the troubles she has with her family and coping with her situation.
[edit] Plot
In the first chapter, Esperanza dictates to us how her family came to live at the house on Mango Street. When the pipes broke in their previous apartment and the landlord would not fix them, she moved with her parents, her brothers Carlos and Kiki, and her sister Nenny to a new house on Mango Street. In addition to this move, the family had often relocated in the past.
Esperanza had dreamed of a white house with lots of free space and bathrooms, but the house on Mango Street has only one bedroom and one bathroom. Esperanza notes that this is not the house that she had pictured; although her parents tell her the situation is only temporary, she doubts they will move anytime soon. The house, however, does have some huge improvements over the family's previous apartments. The family owns this house, so they are no longer controlled by the inclinations of landlords; in addition, at the old apartment, a nun made Esperanza feel ashamed about where she lived when she exclaimed, "You live there?" The house on Mango Street is an improvement, but it is still not the house that Esperanza wants to point out as hers.
Despite Esperanza's spoken desire to move out of her house on Mango Street, her actions and descriptions of her street show her endearment for the people and a sense of community.
[edit] Themes
These stories deal with the conditions of living in the poor Mexican ghetto. Some themes discussed in this book include racism or racial stereotypes, sexism, drug abuse, excessive drunkenness, estrangement and loss, the concept of home, and escape and return. The book is also sometimes seen as autobiographical, seeing as Sandra Cisneros and Esperanza had many shared experiences.
These themes are discussed by the encounters Esperanza has with other people or herself. Though the vignettes are never said to be put in chronological order, these events of the story seem to imply this, because the encounters later in this book are more mature issues than those dealt with earlier in this book.
This book is what one may consider a Bildungsroman.
[edit] Symbols
Several symbols exist in this story, however one important one is the 4 trees outside of Esperanza's window. Many times throughout the book, she compares herself to them, and admiring them for growing while being anchored to the ground.
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