Background
Cisneros has discussed the relationship between her own personal experiences and Esperanza's life as depicted in ''The House on Mango Street''. Like her protagonist, Esperanza, Cisneros is Mexican-American and was born and raised in a Hispanic neighborhood in Chicago. Yet there are differences; for instance, where Esperanza has two brothers and a sister, Cisneros was "the only daughter in a family of seven children". Earlier, Cisneros suggested that as the only girl in a family of boys, she often felt isolated. Cisneros attributes "her impulse to create stories" to "the loneliness of those formative years". While completing an MFA in creative writing at the Iowa Writers Workshop, Cisneros first discovered a sense of her own ethnic "otherness", and at this time she felt marginalized "as a person of color, as a woman, as a person from working-class background". In an interview, Cisneros stated that during her graduate studies, when she began writing ''The House on Mango Street'', she found the academic atmosphere highly discouraging. She remembered finding her classmates' backgrounds very different than her own and realized she had little in common with them: "I was so angry, so intimidated by my classmates that I wanted to quit. But ... I found a way to write … in reaction to being there I started to have some Mango Street almost as a way of claiming this is who I am. It became my flag". Cisneros created Esperanza from these personal feelings of displacement.Synopsis
''The House on Mango Street'' covers the formative years of Esperanza Cordero, a young Chicana girl living in an impoverished Chicago neighborhood with her parents and three siblings. The book opens with Esperanza, the narrator, explaining how her family first arrived on Mango Street. Before the family settled in their new home, a small and run-down building with crumbling red bricks, they moved frequently. The family has been wandering from place to place, always dreaming of the promised land of a house of their own. When they finally arrive at the house on Mango Street, which is, at last, their own house, it is not the promised land of their dreams. The parents overcome their dejection by saying that this is not the end of their moving, that it is only a temporary stop before going on to the promised house. While the house on Mango Street was a significant improvement from her family's previous dwellings, Esperanza expresses disdain towards her new home because it is not a "real" house, like the ones she has seen on TV. Esperanza constantly daydreams of a white, wooden house, with a big yard and many trees. She finds her life on Mango Street suffocating and frequently expresses her desire to escape. She begins to write poetry to express these feelings. Esperanza begins the novel with detailed descriptions of the minute behaviors and characteristics of her family members and unusual neighbors. Her descriptions provide a picture of the neighborhood and offer examples of the many influential people surrounding her. She describes time spent with her younger sister, Nenny, such as when they paraded around the neighborhood in high heels one day with their friends Rachel and Lucy. She also befriends two older girls in the neighborhood: Alicia, a promising young college student with a dead mother, and Marin, who spends her days babysitting her younger cousins. Esperanza highlights significant or telling moments both in her life and in the lives of those in her community. She mostly focuses on moments that show the difficulties that they experience, such as when Louie's cousin was arrested for stealing a car or when Esperanza's Aunt Lupe dies. As the vignettes progress, the novel depicts Esperanza's budding maturity and developing her own perspective of the world around her. As Esperanza eventually enters puberty, she develops sexually, physically, and emotionally. With these changes, Esperanza begins to notice and enjoy male attention. She quickly befriends Sally, an attractive girl who wears heavy makeup and dresses provocatively. Sally's father, a deeply religious and physically abusive man, prevents her from leaving their home. Sally's and Esperanza's friendship is compromised when Sally ditches Esperanza for a boy at a carnival and Esperanza is raped by a group of men. Esperanza recounts other instances of assault she experiences, like when an older man forcibly kissed her on the lips at her first job. Esperanza's traumatic experiences and observations of the women in her neighborhood, many of whom are constantly controlled by the men in their lives, only further cement her desire to escape Mango Street. It is only when Esperanza meets Rachel and Lucy's aunts, the Three Sisters, and they tell her fortune, that she realizes that her experiences on Mango Street have shaped her identity and that it will always be with her, even if she leaves. As the novel ends, Esperanza vows that after she leaves, she will return to help the people she has left behind.Structure
The novel is composed of forty-four interconnected vignettes, of varying lengths, ranging from one or two paragraphs to several pages. The protagonist, Esperanza, narrates these vignettes in first-personCharacters
Esperanza Cordero – ''The House on Mango Street'' is written through the eyes of Esperanza Cordero, who is an adolescent girl living in a working-class Latino neighbourhood in Chicago. Esperanza is intrigued by the idea of being a Mexican American woman in Chicago, which reflects the author herself just 15 years prior to publishing this book. We follow this young woman coming into her sexual maturity and observe her undying struggle to make new possibilities for herself. The reader also encounters Esperanza living between two cultures, the Mexican one which she encounters through her parents and the American culture in which she finds herself living. Throughout the book, we see Esperanza reject her Chicana community as a means to forge and establish her own identity. As her name suggests, Esperanza is a "figure of hope, a 'fierce woman' on a complex pursuit for personal and community transformation.". Esperanza uses her house in Chicago, to question her society and the cultural customs that weigh on her due to her identity as a young Chicana woman. She observes the women of her community to find a role model of her own, and she looks at both their negative and positive aspects and uses what she has learnt from her observations to form an identity for herself. Magdalena "Nenny" Cordero – She is Esperanza's youngest sister, the protagonist mentions that they are both very different from one another. She is described as having slippery hair. Rachel and Lucy Guerrero – They are sisters, around the same age as Esperanza and Nenny, from Texas but now living on Mango street. They buy an old bike together and share it between them. They are described as having “fat popsicle lips” like the rest of their family. They all share a moment in the book where they are trying out high heels together. Until a man tries to convince Rachel to give him a kiss, that is when they give up “being beautiful.” Sally – She is one of Esperanza's closest friends and mentioned in several of the vignettes in the novel. There is one full vignette dedicated to this character. The author describes her as “the girl with eyes like Egypt and nylons the color of smoke.” This is the first phrase in the chapter, and it seems to embody the type of dreams Sally holds for herself. The protagonist is attracted to Sally's way of being and considers her to be a true friend, she likes being around her. Sally seems to represent the vicious cycle of domestic violence and repression felt by women on Mango street. She is utterly desperate to find a man to marry her, to escape the beatings and maltreatment she gets from her father at home. This ‘vicious cycle’ is seen when Esperanza goes and tells Sally's mother that her daughter is in a garden with three boys and the mother completely disregards this, her mother doesn't seem surprised or worried. Her mother cares for her cuts and bruises allowing for the violence to perpetuate, both mother and daughter give excuses to the father. The bare fact that Sally marries at such a young age to a man that ends up treating her just like her father, shows how this cycle is so ingrained in the way of life of many women, and passed from generation to generation. The author pities this character, not blaming her for what happened to her, Sally was very young and immature to fully understand her surroundings, to find a way out. Marin – She is a cousin of the Louie's family, neighbors of Esperanza's family, she has come to stay from Puerto Rico. She is older than Esperanza, she wears dark nylons and a lot of makeup. She has a boyfriend back in Puerto Rico, and shows off her mementos from him to the younger girls saying how he promised they would get married soon. Esperanza looks up to her, as a figure of wisdom, of knowing many things. Marin imparted a lot of advice to the younger girls. She wore shorter skirts and had pretty eyes, received a lot of attention, yet the protagonist will always remember her as someone who was always waiting for something to change, something that never came. This character represents many of the young women in the neighborhood. Esperanza's Mother – Esperanza's mother. One of the first descriptions is that she has hair like little rosettes, like little candy circles all curly from the pins she uses for her hair. Her mother's smell made her feel safe, her mother is her pillar, wanting the best for Esperanza. The vignette “A Smart Cookie” is dedicated to her mother. Her mother can speak two languages, can sing opera, reads, writes, she is handy around the house, she could’ve been anything she wanted, yet she regrets not having gone anywhere and dropped out of school. Her mother expressed disgusted that she dropped out of school for now having nice clothes. Several times throughout the book she encourages Esperanza to keep studying. Esperanza's mother is described as obedient with an undemanding nature. Alicia – Alicia is a young woman who lives in Esperanza's neighbourhood. She attends university and has a father who is thought to molest her and leave her to do all the chores. Alicia is also faced with many challenges, as women attending college at that time, especially lower-income Latina girls, was very uncommon, and the community judged her for that. Nonetheless, Alicia is thought to be a role model for Esperanza. Alicia's attendance at university allows her to escape their community and see the outside world. Returning to the neighbourhood from school, Alicia seems to have developed a disrespect for the cultural community of Mango Street and Esperanza notices that she is "stuck-up". Throughout the novel, Esperanza wishes to learn from Alicia. Ultimately, Alicia wants to be a true American and for the community to solely be part of her past. Alicia is an inspiration to Esperanza and listens to Esperanza's sadness when she has no one else to talk to. Esperanza learns a lot from Alicia and her lifestyle, realizing that Alicia does not "want to spend her whole life in a factory or behind a rolling pin" and instead pursues university and studies hard. Alicia plays a big role in understanding Esperanza's identity and its relationship to Mango Street. She confirms the intimacy between the two by stating "Like it or not you speranzaare Mango Street." Aunt Lupe – Aunt Lupe is primarily present in the vignette "Born Bad," in which Esperanza scolds herself for mimicking her dying aunt. Aunt Lupe is thought to "represent the passivity that women are so revered for in Mexican culture, that passivity which makes women accepting of whatever it is their patriarchal society chooses for them." Aunt Lupe married, had kids and was a dutiful house wife. However, she suffered crippling illness that left her bedridden. Esperanza describes how her aunt went blind and her "bones gone limp as worms" She is thought to be representative of la Virgen de Guadalupe, as her proper name is Guadalupe. Aunt Lupe also encourages Esperanza to pursue writing, as she tells Esperanza that "writing would keep her free." Aunt Lupe eventually dies from her illness.Themes
Gender
Critics have noted that Esperanza's desire to break free from her neighborhood is not limited to a desire to escape poverty but also to escape strict gender roles she finds oppressive within her culture. Esperanza's discovery of her own feminist values, which contradict the domestic roles prescribed for Chicana women, are a crucial part of her character development throughout the novel. In keeping with this idea, Cisneros dedicates the novel "a las mujeres," or, "to the women." Esperanza struggles against the traditionalDomestic and sexual abuse
Episodes of patriarchal and sexual violence are prevalent in demonstrating women's issues in the Chicano community in ''The House on Mango Street''. McCracken argues that "we see a woman whose husband locks her in the house, a daughter brutally beaten by her father, and Esperanza's own sexual initiation through rape." As McCracken notes, many of the men portrayed in the stories "control or appropriate female sexuality by adopting one or another form of violence as if it were their innate right." The many stories of Esperanza's friend Sally is an example of this patriarchal violence, as mentioned by McCracken. Sally is forced into a life of hiding in her house and her father beats her. She later on escapes her father's violence through marriage where she is dependent and controlled by another man. As McCracken analyzes, "her father's attempts to control her sexuality cause Sally to exchange one repressive patriarchal prison for another." ''The House on Mango Street'' offers a glimpse of Esperanza's violent sexual initiation and also portrays the oppression and domestic abuse faced by other Chicana women. Together with Esperanza's experience of sexual abuse the "other instances of male violence in the collection-Rafaela's imprisonment, Sally's beatings, and the details of Minerva's life another young married woman whose husband beats her and throws a rock through the window-these episodes form a continuum in which sex, patriarchal power, and violence are linked."Adolescence
The theme of adolescence is dominant throughout the book. The actual timeline of the story is never specified, however, it appears to chronicle a couple of crucial years of Esperanza Cordero's life in her Chicano neighbourhood. We see her transition from a naive child into a young adolescent woman who acquires a graphic understanding of the "sexual inequality, violence, and socioeconomic disparities." Esperanza is often torn between her identity as a child and her emergence into womanhood and sexuality, especially when she witnesses her friend, Sally, enter into the Monkey Garden to kiss boys. At this moment, she looked at her "feet in their white socks and ugly round shoes. They seemed far away. They didn't seem to be my feet anymore. And the garden that had been such a good place to play didn't seem mine either." With coming of age, the young women in the novel begin to explore their boundaries and indulge in risky behaviours. When Esperanza, Nenny, Lucy, and Rachel are given high-heeled shoes, they experiment with walking like a woman. They often observe older women with a mix of wonder and fear for their futures. The attention men give them is unwanted by Esperanza, but her friends feel a bit more conflicted because attention from the opposite sex is representative of their self-worth. Esperanza is different than her friends; she wants to break free and live life by her own rules.Identity
María Elena de Valdés argues that Esperanza's "search for self-esteem and her true identity is the subtle, yet powerful, narrative thread that unites the text." The aesthetic struggle that occurs in this piece takes place in Mango Street. This location, this world, becomes involved in the inner turmoil felt by the character. The main character uses this world as a mirror to look deeply into herself as, in de Valdés's words, she "comes to embody the primal needs of all human beings: freedom and belonging." Here the character is seen trying to unite herself with the notions she has of the world around her, Mango Street. The relationship the protagonist has with the house itself is a pillar in this process of self-discovery, the house is in itself a living being as well, as mentioned by de Valdés. Her neighborhood engenders the battles of fear and hostility, of dualistic forces, of the notion of "I" versus "them". The character is impressed upon by these forces and they guide her growth as a person. The House itself plays a very important part, especially in how the narrator reacts to it. She is fully aware that she does not belong there, everything about it is described in negative terms delineating everything that it isn't versus what it is. It's by knowing where she doesn't fit that she knows to where she might fit. It is similar to the concept of light and dark. We know that darkness is the absence of light, in this case her identity exists outside of this house on mango street.Belonging
Esperanza Cordero is an impoverished child and wishes to find a sense of belonging outside of her own neighbourhood as she feels "this isn't my house I say and shake my head as if shaking could undo the year I've lived here. I don't belong. I don't ever want to come from here." Esperanza attempts to find such belonging in the outside world as she perceives this as a safe place that would accept her. She eminants this desire to belong through little things, such as favouring English over the Spanish typically used in her community or actively desiring the purchase of a house outside of Mango Street. In other words, Esperanza's sense of belonging is absolutely dependent on separating herself from her Spanish native tongue, community and ultimately away from Mango Street. Marin is another character who is thought to lack belonging. Marin "is waiting for a car to stop, a start to fall, someone to change her life" and although she is supposed to leave Mango Street, the possibility is unlikely as she lacks the money and independence to leave. Esperanza sees Marin as an individual who is only capable of longing, but not able to really belong as her dreams and desires are romanticized and unrealistic.Language
Esperanza uses the occasional Spanish word, and as Regina Betz observes, "Spanglish frequents the pages where Esperanza quotes other characters" but "English is the primary language in Cisneros's novel." This is a sign, Betz continues, that her identity is "torn" between "her English tongue . .and her Spanish roots." Betz argues that "Both author and character claim themselves as English in order to flourish as writers and independent women." Furthermore, it is thought that the language barriers present in ''The House on Mango Street'' is a symbol of the boundary between one's self and the freedom and opportunities that are present in the rest of America. In addition, there is a certain value that is attributed to bilingualism in this book, while Spanish speakers are scoffed at and pitied.Chicano literature and culture
''The House on Mango Street'' is an example of Chicano literature and explores the complexities of its culture. Through Esperanza Cordero, the heroine of this novel, Sandra Cisneros demonstrates that the "patriarchal Chicana Chicago community that raised her will not permit her development as a female writer". Through this book, she addresses the oppression that many women feel when growing up in Chicano communities, such as Mango Street.Adaptation
On January 22, 2020,Critical reception
''The House on Mango Street'', Cisneros' second major publication, was released to critical acclaim, particularly earning praise from the Hispanic community for its realistic portrayals of the Hispanic experience in the United States. Bebe Moore Campbell of ''Challenges and attempted banning
Despite its high praise in the realm of Latino literature, ''The House on Mango Street'' has also received criticism for its sensitive subject matter and has been banned from several school curriculums. The American Library Association has listed the book as a "Frequently Challenged Book with Diverse Content". For example, in 2012 the St. Helens school board in Oregon removed the book from its middle-school curriculum, expressing "concerns for the social issues presented." In response, Katie Van Winkle, a former student at St. Helens, launched a letter-writing campaign on Facebook. Her efforts to "save Mango Street" were successful and the St. Helens school board voted to keep ''The House on Mango Street'' in its curriculum. ''The House on Mango Street'' was also one of the 80-plus books that were part of thePublication history
''The House on Mango Street'' has sold well over 6 million copies and has been translated into over 20 languages. For its 25th anniversary in 2008, ''Mango Street'' was reissued in a special Anniversary edition. * 1983, United States, Arte Público Press , Pub date 1983, paperback * 1984, United States, Arte Público Press , Pub date 1 January 1984, paperback * 1991, United States, Vintage Contemporaries , Pub date 3 April 1991, paperback An Introduction was included in the novel in 2009, it can be found in the 25th anniversary edition of the book .See also
*References
Sources
* * * . * . MA Thesis, Rice University. * * * . * Originally published as * * . * * * . * * . * . * . {{DEFAULTSORT:House 1983 American novels American children's novels American young adult novels Novels by Sandra Cisneros Hispanic and Latino American novels Novels set in Chicago Chicano literature American bildungsromans American Book Award-winning works American novels adapted into plays Censored books Obscenity controversies in literature