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 novella is written is described by Cisneros as a "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. Interestingly, Cisneros doesn't use quotation marks around speech in The House on Mango Street.
[edit] Plot summary
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 over the family's previous apartments. The family owns this house, so they are no longer controlled by the inclinations of landlords. 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 a strong sense of community and affection for the people living there.
[edit] Major themes
These stories deal with the conditions of living in the poor Mexican ghetto. Some themes discussed in this book include racism, racial stereotypes, sexism, substance abuse, estrangement and loss, the concept of home, and escape and return. These themes are discussed by the encounters Esperanza has with other people or herself. Though the vignettes are never said to be in chronological order, the events of the story seem to imply this because the encounters later in this book deal with more mature issues than those dealt with earlier in this book.
Although Sandra Cisneros has stated that the story is not an autobiography, her experiences are similar to those of the protagonist. The story also contains many elements from the lives of the author's students. [1].
This book may be considered a Bildungsroman.
[edit] Symbols
An important symbol in this book is the four trees outside of Esperanza's window. Throughout the book, she compares herself to them and admires them for growing while being anchored to the ground.
