The House on Mango Street - Sandra Cisneros

1. Bibliography:

Cisneros, Sandra. THE HOUSE ON MANGO STREET. (New York: Vintage Books, 1984)

2. Genre and Awards:

Young Adult Fiction, Coming-of-Age Story

Winner of The American Book Award from the Before Columbus Foundation - 1985

3. Synopsis:

This book is written in a series of vignettes narrated by the main character, Esperanza, who is a young Hispanic girl completely out of touch with her surroundings in a Latino neighborhood in Chicago. She hates the world that she is a part of and desperately wants out of it. The very poetic pieces that make up this novel tell the story of one year of her life, highlighting the role models, both male and female, that she has to look up to and the harsh reality that is her side of town.

4. Characters:

Esperanza Cordero is the main character narrator of The House on Mango Street. She is a teenage girl who has to deal with all the difficult realities someone of her age, especially someone of her age and non-white race has to deal with. She is surrounded by her family, made up of her mother and sister – Nenny. The other important character in this novel is Sally, a close friend of Esperanza’s who grows up much faster than our protagonist. A character I would normally overlook in this novella is the neighborhood itself. By naming her book The House on Mango Street instead of The Girl on Mango Street or something of the like, Cisneros makes it clear that the space in this story has as much impact on Esperanza as any living, breathing character does.

5. Plot:

This story is all about Esperanza’s desperate desire to leave Mango Street. She wants something better for her life to the point that she completely isolates herself from her environment. The language is very lyrical and musical, which lets us into Esperanza and who she is at twelve and thirteen years old. There is a strong sense of child to this character, despite her craving to be older and wiser and better. We basically watch her grow up through the lens of her descriptions of relationships, people, places, and events. She is quick at first to want to be older and play the games that the older kids play – leaving her “kid” sister out to dry when she catches onto the rules. By the end, though, we see a girl who is very reluctant to give up these games and move into the next stage of adolescence.

6. Needs of Adolescents:

The relationship between Esperanza and Sally is one that I think many young girls can relate to. Girls mature at vastly different rates, propelled and held back by family life, sports, culture, neighborhood, and so many more variables. For this reason, many girls, like Esperanza, are stuck in friendships with girls who start dating and going into dark forests with boys before their friend has given up the night light. I have been there and it is painful to feel like everyone around you is growing up and crossing into new phases before you are ready to go there. This book would be great as a way to meet those girls and show them that it is an unfortunate fact of life that happens to many young people.

7. Possible Classroom Uses:

This book would be great to give a group of girls to read and discuss. I would love to talk about some of these issues of growing up and finding one’s place in their environment that so many young girls struggle with and I think this book could be a great starting point for that. It could also be used to discuss dialect in writing, the Hispanic accent as it is communicated on the page, cultural lost-ness, broken relationships and the lack of men in this community, and poetic form – all by just using one or two of the vignettes. While it is probably best suited for girls, ome of the individual pieces could be offered to a whole class for the purpose of teaching.

8. Appropriate Age Range:

I would say this book is best for junior high or high school girls.

9. Personal Reactions:

I really loved this book. It hit most of the issues that adolescent lit should – growing up, finding one’s place, girlhood (or boyhood in some books, obviously), culture, physical and sexual abuse. It didn’t spend too much time on any of these, though, which allowed it to not be as heavy of a book as others we have read in class. It addressed each of them in such a way that would open up thought or discussion about them without forcing it. I think this book was written for teachers in the sense that the vignettes each lend themselves to class discussion and teaching points. I would absolutely recommend it to a young girl to read!