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This book tells the story of a young Mexican-American girl named Esperanza. Through a series of Vignettes the reader learns about Esperanza and her family and their new house on Mango Street. Essentially this is a coming of age story as it focuses on Esperanza as she transitions from childhood into womanhood. The reader watches as she struggles with her desire to leave Mango Street and achieve a more prosperous life for herself. I read this book as part of one of my sophomore year Spanish classes and I have chosen to include it because I think that the story of self empowerment and the desire to over come the barriers set in her path by, gender, race and poverty encapsulates the experience of being a young first generation female immigrant
The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros is about a girl who struggles finding her true self. Esperanza sees the typical figures like Sally and Rafaela. There is also her neighbor Marin shows the “true” identity for women on Mango Street. She also sees her mother is and is not like that at the same time. The main struggle that Esperanza has is with beauty. This explains why most of the negative people that Esperanza meets on Mango Street, and her gender, helped her see the mold she needed to fill in order to give herself an identity.
Symbolism is the key to understanding Sandra Cisneros’ novel, “The House on Mango Street”. By unraveling the symbolism, the reader truly exposes the role of not only Latina women but women of any background. Esperanza, a girl from a Mexican background living in Chicago, writes down what she witnesses while growing up. As a result of her sheltered upbringing, Esperanza hardly comprehends the actions that take place around her, but what she did understand she wrote in her journal. Cisneros used this technique of the point of view of a child, to her advantage by giving the readers enough information of what is taking place on Mango Street so that they can gather the pieces of the puzzle a get the big picture.
In the poor slums of Chicago, a family living in poverty struggles to get by. In the book, House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros, Esperanza is a twelve year old girl who lives with her family in the Windy City. She lives with her three siblings and both parents on Mango Street. Esperanza has no control over her life and family’s poverty. People who have no control over their life desperately seek change. Esperanza seeks to change her name, her home, and her destiny as a way to control her life.
Gabriela Quintanilla Mrs. Allen A.P English 12 12 March 2014 The House on Mango Street Sandra Cisneros once said “'Hispanic' is English for a person of Latino origin who wants to be accepted by the white status quo. ’ Latino' is the word we have always used for ourselves.” In the novel I read, The House on Mango Street, by Sandra Cisneros, the main character, a twelve-year-old Chicana (Mexican-American girl), Esperanza, saw self-definition as a struggle, this was a major theme in the novel through Esperanza’s actions and the ones around her. Esperanza tries to find identity in herself as a woman as well as an artist throughout the novel through her encounters.
Maria Elena de Valdes writes her review based upon the novel The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros analyzing the identity of the main character, Esperanza, and how the text relates to Mexican-American individuals. Valdes’ review evaluates The House on Mango Street with a feminist view on to show the struggles of a young chicana girl coming of age and how she chooses to establish her own identity.
The short story, “The House on Mango Street” is a fiction writing focused on a family as they move from house to house. The story is written by Sandra Cisneros. This paper will focus on three literacy elements that are significant in “The House on Mango Street.” Literacy elements are important, in fiction writing, because the different components allow the author to become more creative within their writing. The first literacy element that will discussed in this paper is the point of view, the second element will be the theme, and the last element will describe important symbolism throughout the story.
The plot of The House on Mango Street symbolizes an immigrant family moving to the United States in hope of a future with more opportunities. It is a story about a girl by the name of Esperanza and the retelling of the events in her childhood. Esperanza faces many challenges growing up in an underdeveloped neighborhood of inner city Chicago. Through her experiences at home, school, and with people she starts to blossom into the young woman she always wanted to be. Esperanza encounters many unjust acts as a result of living in an urban neighborhood. These encounters make her want to move to a different neighborhood because she feels like she does not belong on Mango Street. She feels trapped because she has a dream to attend college and become a writer. Her hope is that she will be able to live a prosperous American life and be able to come back to Mango Street to help those who cannot escape on their own. It is, most importantly, the story of a girl maturing into a woman an...
Reading is similar to looking into a mirror: audiences recognize themselves in the experiences and characters on the pages. They see the good, the bad, and are brought back to experiences they had overlooked to learn something more about themselves. Some characters touch readers so intimately that they inspire readers to be better than they already are. House on Mango Street, by Sandra Cisneros, follows a young girl named Esperanza and her experiences while living on Mango Street. She is introduced with her desperate wish to escape her poor mostly-Latino neighborhood and live in a house of her own. Esperanza compares herself to her family, innocently knowing what she wants from a young ages. She is observant and holds insights into the lives of others, learning lessons from each person she encounters. While
Tradition in House On Mango Street In The House On Mango Street Sandra Cisneros uses diction to illustrate how Mexican-American women are forced to live traditional lives. Esperanza describes how Alice’s father says“a woman's place is sleeping so she can wake up with the tortilla star” (31). Cisneros’s usage of phrases like “a woman’s place.” and “wake up with the tortilla star.” is very powerful because it shows that most Mexican-American women are the ones that are supposed to cook and do housework.
In the novel, The House on Mango Street, the protagonist, Esperanza, has a desperate desire to leave home, but even after leaving she finds that still home remains significant in her life. The reasons for home’s continued influence in her life are that the house on Mango Street is the first her family ever owned, it is the place where she found herself and became a writer, and she feels as if she must save the women she leaves behind on Mango Street. This idea of home that Cisneros creates in Esperanza by the end of the novel illuminates the overall theme that home is not just a physical place, but an emotional and psychological place as well that one must not forget about. Although the house on Mango Street was not the house that Esperanza
Throughout the book the protagonist tries to distance herself from her Hispanic tradition; she wants to escape Mango Street, misery, poverty and Chicano community which damages women beyond repair. In order to do so, Betz argues that Esperanza have to separate herself from her Hispanic roots; Spanish tongue and community, so she can truly free herself from Mango Street. (LETO) growing up in the Latino section of Chicago, Esperanza condemns her culture…? although she grew up in a Spanish-speaking community, she favors English language and voices a slight aversion to her culture. She implies this when she says, “In English my name means hope.
Key to freedom Stuck, surrounded by a hopeless full street, where the only way to get out is through education. In the novella, The House on Mango Street, by Sandra Cisneros, she explains that life is full of poverty and misfortune, but through education, freedom can become a reality. The street is dull with no sign of different types of life. Every adult has the same boring life full of work, which only has a small outcome. The money works, but only for a bare minimum amount.
The quote provided at the top of this essay is from The House on Mango Street, it simply deals with a young girl living in a corrupt part of town. Esperanza including her family have moved countless times, in fact , even mentions that she forgot how many, “We didn't always live on Mango Street. Before that we lived on Loomis on the third floor, and before that we lived on Keeler. Before Keeler it was Paulina, and before that I can't remember.” (Sandra Cisneros, pg. 1)
Often, we paint a picture of our own ideal home in which we dream we’d eventually live in someday. For some, it is easier financially to purchase this dream home and for others maybe if we won the lottery it’s only a dream we’d hope would come true. Some may picture this ideal home to be a huge two or three-story house with lots of land, a pool, and a two-car garage. As for others, maybe something spacious enough for the family yet convenient and beautiful.
“Home is where the heart is.” In The House on Mango Street, Sandra Cisneros develops this famous statement to depict what a “home” really represents. What is a home? Is it a house with four walls and a roof, the neighborhood of kids while growing up, or a unique Cleaver household where everything is perfect and no problems arise? According to Cisneros, we all have our own home with which we identify; however, we cannot always go back to the environment we once considered our dwelling place. The home, which is characterized by who we are, and determined by how we view ourselves, is what makes every individual unique. A home is a personality, a depiction of who we are inside and how we grow through our life experiences. In her personal, Cisneros depicts Esperanza Cordero’s coming-of-age through a series of vignettes about her family, neighborhood, and personalized dreams. Although the novel does not follow a traditional chronological pattern, a story emerges, nevertheless, of Esperanza’s search to discover the meaning of her life and her personal identity. The novel begins when the Cordero family moves into a new house, the first they have ever owned, on Mango Street in the Latino section of Chicago. Esperanza is disappointed by the “small and red” house “with tight steps in front and bricks crumbling in places” (5). It is not at all the dream-house her parents had always talked about, nor is it the house on a hill that Esperanza vows to one day own for herself. Despite its location in a rough neighborhood and difficult lifestyle, Mango Street is the place with which she identifies at this time in her life.