Sandra Cisneros The House On Mango Street

Sandra Cisneros’ novel, The House on Mango Street, examines various key issues within established social systems. As a bildungsroman story, not only is there much growth and development experienced by the character, but from the reader as well. This is because the novel challenges false preset notions that one may have of the main character’s culture. In tearing down custom barriers and voicing out painful truths, there is a deeper understanding of Latina culture in the United States of America. Sandra Cisneros empowers the women who are living in a patriarchal society and her main character, reinforced by her name, Esperanza, gives women just that, hope.

One mark of great storytelling is the portrayal of characters’ development or metamorphose throughout the plot. All great literary characters gradually transform, for better or for worse, as their journey progresses. Sandra Cisneros’ novella, The House on Mango Street, centers around Esperanza Cordero, a young girl living in a poverty stricken area of Chicago. The story follows Esperanza’s thoughts through several vignettes, showing her maturation from adolescence to early adulthood. Through the change in tone and juxtaposing vignettes, Cisneros shows how maturity is derived from the loss of innocence and the gaining of knowledge.

The House on Mango Street Cisneros's Style Sandra Cisneros's writing style in the novel The House on Mango Street transcends two genres, poetry and the short story. The novel is written in a series of poetic vignettes that make it easy to read. These distinguishing attributes are combined to create the backbone of Cisneros's unique style and structure. The novel has confused many critics and readers because it reads like poetry, yet in actuality it is a narrative.

Sometimes in life, people wish for things they do not have. No matter how hard people wish on a star or on a candle, the wishes never seemed to be answered. Everyone has felt that bitter disappointment on Christmas morning when they finally realize that they were never going to be able to get what they wanted. This is the same exact feelings that the characters in Cisneros' The House on Mango Street. Unlike us, the disappointment for these characters last throughout their childhood.

The pervasiveness of passive heroines in popular versions of fairytales and folklore has long afforded feminist critics a rich hunting ground to criticize the roles forced on women by patriarchal societies. In The House on Mango Street, Sandra Cisneros uses allusions to female heroines in children’s tales in many of the novel’s vignettes to create a portrait of expected feminine roles within a Latino patriarchal community and recasts the tales to “reveal the true-to-life consequences for women who are socialized to live their lives waiting for the happy ending” (Spencer 278). The women of Mango Street are shown to conform to the traditional roles espoused by quintessential fairy and folk tale heroines. However, their lives, as described through the voice of young Esperanza, are far from magical. Instead The House on Mango Street is suggestive of a social reality in which the women’s lives are constrained by gender roles and social mores. This research paper will endeavour to demonstrate how Esperanza’s coming-of-age transition to an empowered Chicana can only be achieved by rejectin...

Sandra Cisneros’ The House on Mango Street, written in 1984, and Anzia Yezierska’s Bread Givers, published in 1925, are both aimed at adolescent and adult audiences that deal with deep disturbing themes about serious social conditions and their effects on children as adults. Both books are told in the first person; both narrators are young girls living in destitute neighborhoods; and both young girls witness the harsh realities of life for those who are poor, abused, and hopeless. Although the narrators face these overwhelming obstacles, they manage to survive their tough environments with their wits and strength remaining intact.

Sandra Ciseneros It was a cold and windy day, a perfect day to uncover secrets and truths about writers I had heard of, but new little about. I entered the library to escape the weather and lose myself in books about Sandra Ciseneros and the characters she creates in her poems and stories. I began my search at a computer resource station, and then absorbed myself in the materials it provided, which were biographies, criticisms, and the works of Cisneros. Initially, the computer resource station provided me only with Cisnero's texts or simple the books she had written. They were all listed in the card catalogue, and I was reassured that if the library had her books, than they had to have biographies and criticisms on her as well.

In the story of “The House on Mango Street” the story is narrated by Cisneros which she tells the story in first person. She focused on her day to day activities throughout her life. Through the story, she talks less of herself and more about the people around her, where she starts to tell her imagination of the different houses. The setting of this story is taken place in a poor Latino neighborhood in Chicago, where the period is over a year in each house. In this story, we find out that the narrator struggles to find her place in her new neighborhood and most importantly in the world.

Esperanza, the main character of The House on Mango Street, a novella written by Sandra Cisneros in 1984, has always felt like she didn’t belong. Esperanza sought a different life than the ones that people around her were living. She wanted to be in control of her life, and not be taken away by men as so many others around her had. Esperanza wanted to move away from Mango Street and find the house, and life she had always looked for. Through the use of repetition, Sandra Cisneros conveys a sense of not belonging, that can make a person strong enough to aspire to a better life.

Introduction Through American Literature many writers have given a voice to the once silent. Sandra Cisneros, a writer was one of those contributors. Very few writers of her time, explored and brought to light what she did. She started a movement in the United States and within her community to bring to light the issue that once were overlooked. The Stories, poems, novels and essays she wrote touch the lives of many people, of all walks of life.