Analysis Of The House On Mango Street By Sandra Cisneros

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The House on Mango Street

Author:
Sandra Cisneros was born in Chicago in 1954. She was the third child and the only daughter in a family containing seven children. She grew up and came to study at the Loyola University of Chicago and later on at the University of Iowa. Cisneros is the founder of two organizations, the Macondo Organization and the Alfredo Cisneros del Moral Foundation, whose goal is to serve writers. Sandra Cisneros has been writing for more than 45 years, publishing for over 35, and selling her own books for well-over 18 years. She has received the MacArthur Fellowship, two National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships, and a Texas Medal of the Arts. Cisneros is currently living with her multitude of pets in Central Mexico.

Form, Structure, and Plot:
This short story is organized …show more content…

Cisneros criticizes her own culture through the eyes of Esperanza. She shows the reality of men who beat their wives and daughters and the crime and poverty in the average Latino community during that time. Through this all, Cisneros uses Esperanza to show that there is still hope for the people in these communities to rise above their situations they are cast into. Esperanza is hopeful of a future for herself that is different from the ones around her.

Themes:
Through the course of the story, Esperanza considers her home to be a part of herself. She defines her own identity with where she lives, which makes her want to move into her own dream home even more. “Not a flat. Not an apartment in back. Not a man’s house. Not a daddy’s. A house all my own.” (108). She wants to be herself, but she cannot in her neighborhood. She doesn’t want to be like the women she is growing up around. She wants to be independent of everyone. Esperanza believes that one way to become independent is to have her own home just for her.

Significance of

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