KidLit Forum

This is a book that deals with the problem of migrants. We find out, from the very beginning, that the protagonist is a chicana, a Mexican-American girl. We learn that her family have moved several times, from place to place almost every year. Due to this context the girl had to endure the labeling of otherness, loneliness, isolation, sense of not belonging anywhere. The neighborhood is not what she wanted, so she dreams to ”have not a flat, not an apartment in back. Not a manʼs house. Not a daddyʼs. A house all my own. With my porch and my pillow, my pretty purple petunias. My books and my stories. My two shoes waiting beside the bed. Nobody to shake a stick at. Nobody garbage to pich up after. Only a house quiet as snow, a space for myself to go, clean as paper before the poem”.
I really liked the episode in which Esperanza talks about her name which in English means hope. What is strange is that, according to her view, in Spanish the word has negative conotations (sadness, waiting, too many letters). Because she associates her name to her grandmother, we can find more details about chicana-females condition. We learn that she was born in the horse year, which is said to have bad luck. Actually this is a social prejudice because Mexican-men discourage women from being strong like horses or possessing any kind of power. The effect was that her grandmother ”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 couldnʼt be all the things she wanted to be. Esperanza. I have inherited her name, but I donʼt want to inherit her place by the window”.
What is surprizing about this book is its structure and musicality. It is really –readable- because it consists of short chapters that seem to be randomly connected to each other. These ”lazy poems” seem to create a story like a collage. As the author mentions in the introduction: ”the language in Mango Street is based on speech. It is very much an antiacademic voice-a childʼs voice, a girlʼs voice, a spoken voice, the voice of an American-Mexican. Itʼs in this rebellious realm of antipoetics that I tried to create a poetic text with the most unofficial language I could find. This kind of writing has, of course, its benefits: I wrote these stories that way, guided by my heart and by my ear. Writing in a younger voice allowed me to name that thing without a name, that shame of being poor, of being female, of being not quite good enough, and examine where it had come from and why, so I could exchange shame for celebration”.
Related to musicality and rhythm, we can notice from the beginning sentences that seem to be part from a poem. For example in the chapter Hairs, if we select some sentences we can obtain lines of poetry: ”there was a family. All were little. Their arms were little and their hands were little, and their heights was not tall, and their feet very small”.

This book focuses on the problems of being a woman in a patriarchal society. The women are living in the dark of their own husbands, fathers or brothers. The women are treated as work and sexual objects, but few of them try to do something for escape from this condition. The Chicana women get used with that condition from many generation, and they are waiting from a rich husband to take them away. These women do not even try to be able to take care of theirself without men's help. Espereanza is afraid to not become as her grandmother but she does nt use her skills to develop. The name of the main character suggests that she is the hope of that street, she is the one who should try to make a change.

Language in this book becomes a real force because those who don't speak English are isolated and they get to stand at a window and watch down the street. Observing people around her, Esperanza believe tha language has power and mastering it gives her power. Writing is what keeps her free, because putting her experiences into words, gives her power over them. She wants to change her name because she wants to define herself in her own terms. Eventually, she decides she does not need to be a different person by changing her name, and she stops forcing herself to develop sexually, which she isn’t fully ready for. She accepts her place in her community and decides that the most important way she can define herself is as a writer. As a writer, she observes and interacts with the world in a way that sets her apart from non-writers, giving her the so much wanted new identity she’s been searching for.

This novel describes the problems that Latino women face in the society. A society that values women for what they look like and are regarded as objects by men wheter they are boyfriends, fathers or husbands. Sandra Cisneros gives us many examples of women abused by men like Rafaela, who is locked in the house by her husband because he is afraid that she will run away. Sally who gets married before eighth grade in order to get away from all the troubles she has with her father. Minerva ia a woman abused by her husband and she throws him out and she takes him back and this cycle starts all over again.

The book is very nice but I think that it is a little bit sad especially at the beginning when Esperanza shares to us her dreams. She tells us that her biggest dream is to live in a big white house because her house was very small. Unfortunately she and her family moved into a small house on Mango Street but anyway it was better than the old one. It is interesting the part when she says that boys and girls live in separate worlds. They can only speak inside the house. It is not very good for them to be seen speaking with girls. I think that this is very weird. In this novel we can notice the differences between boys and girls. The part in which she talked about her great-grandmother made me sad. She told us that her great grandmother did not want to get married. Her great-grandmother was independent and wild. But one day she met a man( her great-grandfather) who threw a sack over her head and since then she has not spoke to him. She used to stay near the window, wainting for something. Esperanza confessed that she does not want to become like her great grandmother, she wants to have a different life.
The characters’ names have also a great significance in this novel. Each character has two names. Esperanza is the only one who has just one name.
The House on Mango Street is a bildungsroman because it presents Esperanza’s development. She changes during the novel. At the beginning she does not know very much about boys or sex. The first time when Esperanza was aware of her sexuality was when she went in the neighborhood wearing high heels.
At the beginning, Esperanza’s priority was to have a house of her own, she wanted to escape from that neighborhood but at the end her priorities have changed.

This is a very sad story of Esperanza, an unhappy and dissapointed girl because her life conditions.Experiences of her life transform Esperanza from an innocent girl into a mature girl.She is dissapointed, at first, because the house was not what Esperanza dreamed of,then at school feel ashamed because her family's poverty, but in the top of all is that sexual assault.Even this traumatic experience cement her desire to escape Mango Street and to have her own house,she discovers her emotionally and realises that she will never be able to leave Mango Street behind because she wants to help the women from that place,to help them to change and see the life in a different way.
I think she is a very strong girl, because after all the things she suffered, has a great power and this special desire to help other persons, because she realises how dramatic is their situation.

Not only the problem of migrants is debated in the book. Women status in that particular community is also discussed. Esperanza in English means hope but in other cultures the meaning of the word is quite the opposite meaning pain.
This young girl wants to be independent and to have a house of their own. She doesn't want to rely on a man. Imagology is also a concept which deals with the book. The feminine beauty and the idea of self image.South Americans prefer curvy body shape. Women are used to be abused in that community. They don't complain about what happens to them and accept their fate. Any woman who start to express her feminity is exposed to lust coming from men. The main character Esperansa has hopes she aspires to become independent, but suffers too after she was raped.
This book as I see it encourages women to accept their body to embrace an independence and to aspire at a better social status.