The House On Mango Street By Lakshmi Summary

Lakshmi is twelve years old and has lived her whole life in poverty and in a small village on a mountain in Nepal. She has a mother named Ama, a baby brother, a lazy gambler for a stepfather, and a cherished goat named Tali. She still has hope and dreams to continue to be the number one girl in her class at school and earn money as a maid in the city like her school friend Gita, so her family won't be so poor. The monsoons that last for 40 days hits Lakshmi’s mountain village. It kills everyone of their crops and leaves them unable to make money and desperate. They eventually end up selling her mother’s earrings. One day Lakshmi’s father tells her that she needs to go out and work to support the family. He ends up selling her to a stranger called Auntie Bimla who takes her to the city. To avoid opposition, he tells everyone that Lakshmi is going to work as a maiden in a house of a rich family. Lakshmi sees a part of the world she never began to experience of imagine in her small village. Auntie Bimla then introduces Lakshmi to a man called Uncle Husband. He takes Lakshmi across the border to a place called Happiness House in India. Once there, Uncle Husband and a woman named Mumtaz exchange money, and Lakshmi is taken to a room where a man tries to rape her. She finally pieces together that she had been sold into prostitution by her family.

Finally, Mumtaz tells her that she can join the rest of the girls in the house, which means she has to compete with them. She must have sex with men until her debt is paid off, Mumtaz tells her. She attempts to adjust to life in Happiness House, but is desperately homesick. Shahanna, a fellow Nepali girl and one of the most mature, becomes protective towards Lakshmi and introduces her to the other girls in the