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It is only when she meets Rachel and Lucy's aunts, who tell her fortune, that she realizes her experiences on Mango Street have shaped her identity and will remain 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. She is excited when boys on the street or at a dance look at her; however, two instances of sexual violence destroy Esperanza's illusions of true love and her first kiss. So too, her promiscuous friend Sally's behavior also contributes to Esperanza's cynicism and caution when dealing with the opposite sex. Nevertheless, Esperanza still dreams of sitting outside at night with her boyfriend, but she has set her standards higher than most of the women around her.
Domestic and sexual abuse
As she grows older, Esperanza has troubling glimpses of the adult world.When they are playing with the shoes, a vagrant approaches Rachel and asks herfor a kiss. Later, when Esperanza has her first job, an older man makes thesame request of her, claiming that it is his birthday. When she is about tokiss his cheek, he twists her face around and kisses her hard on the mouth.Esperanza also sees the pain and drudgery in her parents’ lives. When hergrandfather dies, her father breaks down in tears, and she thinks for the firsttime about what it would be like to lose him. The House on Mango Street is a coming-of-age novel by SandraCisneros that follows the life of Esperanza Cordero, a young Latina girl, asshe navigates her life in a low-income Hispanic neighborhood in Chicago. The House on Mango Street is a collection of vignettes by Sandra Cisneros that explores Esperanza’s perspectives on the residents of Mango Street, a predominately Latino neighborhood.
The House on Mango Street Study Tools
As the new girl on the block, Esperanza observes many of life's most joyous and harsh realities while meeting her Mango Street neighbors. Her first friend, Cathy, is a short-lived friendship because Cathy's father soon moves the family away because the neighborhood is getting bad, or in other words becoming more inhabited by lower-class Latinos like Esperanza's family. Two other young sisters, however, adopt Esperanza into their circle when she chips in money to help them buy a bicycle. Lucy and Rachel help Esperanza ponder the wonders of growing up by inventing rhymes about hips and parading around Mango Street in high-heeled shoes. They have published ananthology of their work, called Emergency Tacos because they gather at atwenty-four-hour taquería on Belmont Avenue. During the day, sheteaches at a school in Pilsen, on the South Side of Chicago.
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All the time these events are going on, the woman in the photograph iswriting, experimenting with her stories and rearranging elements of real lifeto create complete and satisfying narratives. She borrows events and charactersand phrases but not emotions, since all the emotions in the stories are herown. One of her firstpublishers, Norma Alarcón, brings together an influential group of femaleLatin American writers and introduces her to the work of Sor Juana Inés de laCruz, Elena Poniatowska, and others.
She develops an interest in a boy called Sire, who stares at her whenevershe passes his house, and imagines what it would be like to hold him and kisshim. Esperanza continually notices that the women on Mango Street lead severelyrestricted lives while the men can do whatever they like. Her neighbor Earlbrings a series of women back to his apartment, while Mamacita, across thestreet, never leaves the house, and Rafaela, a beautiful young woman, is lockedup by her jealous husband. Esperanza and her family (Papa; Mama; her two brothers, Carlos and Kiki; andher sister Nenny) have moved around from rented house to rented house, untilthey were able to acquire their own home on Mango Street.
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Sandra Cisneros
Esperanza was named after her great- grandmother, who was tricked into marriage and doomed to a life of sadness afterwards. Esperanza vows that she will not end up like the first Esperanza and so many women do- watching life pass by through the window. To break free from her name connotations, she longs to rename herself "Zeze the X," a choice she finds more reflective of her true self. The character is impressed upon by these forces and they guide her growth as a person. The House on Mango Street is considered a modern classic of Chicano literature and has been the subject of numerous academic publications in Chicano studies and feminist theory. The book has sold more than 6 million copies, has been translated into over 20 languages and is required reading in many schools and universities across the United States.
Instead ofreturning home, however, she goes to the cinema and watches Gentlemen PreferBlondes by herself. Esperanza describes her Aunt Lupe, who was seriously ill and dies on thesame day that the children play a game imitating her, making Esperanza thinkthat she (Esperanza) may be going to hell. She has her fortune told by Elenita,the witch woman, but is disappointed by the vague prediction that she will have“a home in the heart,” when what she wants is a physical home away from MangoStreet. A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement. Our summaries and analyses are written by experts, and your questions are answered by real teachers.
Identity
Lucy and Rachel, two sisters with whom Esperanzaclubs together to buy a bicycle, are friendlier. She also befriends Marin, anolder, more sophisticated girl from Puerto Rico, who teaches her beauty secretsand talks about boys. Esperanza shares her love of reading and writing poetry with select adults, all of whom are very encouraging. Some even tell her that she is talented and will go far, but they remind her that she must always remember her people and where she comes from. Her mother shares her own regrets about giving up on her education too soon and wasting her talents. Esperanza begins to dream of having a house all to herself; a house surrounded by nature that is quiet enough to focus on writing.
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The author moves to San Antonio, returnsto Chicago again, leaves, and returns. Although she no longer lives in Chicago,she still feels that she has Chicago stories left to write. The author begins by describing a photograph of herself taken when she wasliving in the Bucktown neighborhood of Chicago in 1980, at the time when shewas writing The House on Mango Street. She is in an office which she hasfilled with bookcases, birdcages, wicker baskets, photographs, and numerousother objects which she often buys at a nearby flea market.
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The games Esperanza plays with her friends have afluid quality, as they quickly become bored. They might begin by talking aboutthe different words for snow and clouds, and end by calling each other names.As they jump rope, the girls talk about the development of their hips and makeup rhymes on the subject. One day, a woman gives them a bag of old shoes, andthey practice being adults, walking on high heels, but soon grow tired of thisactivity. The novel is made up of a series of vignettes that capture Esperanza'sobservations and experiences, reflecting on themes of identity, gender roles,and the power of words.
As she grows older and witnesses the lives of the women around her,Esperanza becomes increasingly eager to escape from Mango Street. She knowsthat she will not achieve this through marriage; she is not beautiful, and herearly sexual experiences are painful and distressing. The white Cathy, whose house is full of cats, gossips about her neighborsand complains that the street is getting worse because families likeEsperanza’s are moving in.
Sally’sfather is very strict, and Esperanza later discovers that he beats her.Minerva, who is only slightly older than Esperanza but is already married withtwo children, is similarly abused by her husband, who keeps leaving her butalways returns. Esperanza focuses on finding a best friend of her own, as she’s unsatisfied with her little sister, Nenny. She meets two sisters named Rachel and Lucy, and they become fast friends after pooling their money together to buy a bicycle. At a carnival with Sally, Esperanza is forced into losing her virginity to a boy that she wants to escape from.
She refuses to seek out a man to "escape," because she has seen too many neighbors unhappy in marriage. Ruthie, for example, has run away from her husband and has lost her senses; young Rafaela is so beautiful that her husband locks her indoors when he leaves. Her friend, who, like Esperanza only wanted to dream and share love, is first beaten by her father to prevent Sally ruining the family with her "dangerous" beauty. To escape, Sally, though underage, marries a traveling salesman and the cycle of abuse continues. Enraged and saddened by her friend's tragedy, Esperanza vows to leave Mango street, become a writer, and build her dream home.
Esperanza eventually enters puberty and changes sexually, physically, and emotionally, beginning to notice and enjoy male attention. She befriends Sally, an attractive girl who wears heavy makeup and provocative clothing, and who is physically abused and forbidden from leaving her home by her strongly religious father. Sally's and Esperanza's friendship is compromised when Sally ditches Esperanza for a boy at a carnival, leaving Esperanza to be sexually assaulted by a group of men. She recounts other instances of assault she has faced, like an older man forcibly kissing her at her first job. Esperanza's traumatic experiences and observations of the women in her neighborhood, many of whom are controlled by the men in their lives, only further cement her desire to leave Mango Street.
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