The House on Mango Street
Sandra Cisneros “The House on Mango Street” is about a young Hispanic girl named Esperanza who lives in a poverty stricken neighborhood in Chicago with her mother, father, two brothers, and her younger sister. This book provides a detailed description of several characters that seem to come alive on each page and touch your heart. You fall in love with them, but also understand why Esperanza expresses her wish to leave Mango Street in a majority of the short chapters that this book consists of.
In the first chapter “The House on Mango Street” Cisneros describes the house on Mango that Esperanza and her family have just moved in to. She explains how bad the living situation was in Esperanzas’ former residence, but doesn’t waste any time revealing the issues that create Esperanzas’ desire to leave Mango. “I knew then I had to have a house. A real house. One I could point to. But this isn’t it. The house on Mango Street isn’t it.” (Cisneros 5)
Stressing the fact of how desperately Esperanza wants to leave Mango and have a real home is important in this story, because Cisneros paints a realistic picture of the struggles the less fortunate deal with on a daily basis. She makes it clear though, that no matter how bad the circumstances may be, no one has to choose to accept these circumstances. She uses Esperanzas’ determination to leave as a perfect example of this. Esperanza dreamed about having a home of her own constantly. "When you leave you must remember to come back...Then I didn't know what to say. It was as if she could read my mind, as if she knew what I wished for..."(Cisneros 105). In this quote one of the Three Sisters is giving Esperanza advice. Here is another example of how much thought Esperanza actually put into her great escape from Mango. She suggests this when she says, "It was as if she could read my mind..." This shows that Esperanza foresees herself moving to a different home far away from Mango Street;...