Skip to main content

The House on Mango Street

Image result for the house on mango street cover
by Sandra Cisneros

PLOT SUMMARY

Esperanza, the protagonist, is about twelve years old at the novel’s opening. She lives in a small Chicago community where most inhabitants are of Latin descent. Her house is situated on Mango Street; however, Esperanza would hardly call her abode a house. While the house is much better than her previous place, the dwelling is a small flat with crumbling brick and mismatched materials. In this small apartment, Esperanza has no space specifically dedicated to her. Cisneros’s dreamt-up neighborhood creates the perfect, cramped lifestyle in which Esperanza is forced to turn to her neighbors for experiences, new thoughts, and inputs: good and bad. Esperanza quickly makes friends with Rachel and Lucy who enter puberty right along-side her during this year in Esperanza’s life. The group of friends, plus Esperanza’s tag-along kid sister, Nenny, explore the neighborhood and have many adventures including wearing high-heels around town, buying a bike, and playing car-tag in a junkyard near Mango Street.

The second half of The House on Mango Street details Esperanza’s transition into adulthood. As the year goes on, Esperanza meets Sally. Sally shares Esperanza’s age and neighborhood; however, the surface comparison stops there. Sally’s escape from her abusive household is pursuing boys. Her beautiful hair and mature attitude make her pursuits successful. Esperanza quickly befriends Sally for her mature nature but is not completely comfortable. Signaling the turn toward early adulthood, Esperanza’s friendship with Sally and the death of two adults in her family, Aunt Lupe and her grandfather, bring her closer to the adult world. She is kissed by an older man at her first job and sexually assaulted by a group of boys when Sally leaves her alone at the fair. During and after her friendship with Sally, Esperanza investigates the women of her community and learns from their past and present to develop her future.

Esperanza’s experiences being Sally’s friend and her observations of older women in her neighborhood make her desire for a house and space of her own stronger than ever. While she has wanted an actual house for a long time, Esperanza wanted it for a different reason like having to share a room with her sister or wanting her bathroom. After the year in The House on Mango Street, Esperanza wants her own space because she has seen what being corralled does to a woman’s mind and soul. She realizes her own space to think, learn, and write will be her best coping mechanism.

RATING AND REASONING

The House on Mango Street is the typical school read: short, but deeply meaningful. While I only moderately enjoyed the book upon first read, I believe that delving into the book with a class, reading club, or group of people will make it more enjoyable.


LINKS

Surface Summary by SparkNotes - https://www.sparknotes.com/lit/mangostreet/summary/

Videos with Sandra Cisneros about her inspiration for the novel - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nXO8a6HYttw & https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Pyf89VsNmg

Penguin-Random House’s teacher’s guide to The House on Mango Street -  https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/27844/the-house-on-mango-street-by-sandra-cisneros/9780679734772/teachers-guide/

SparkNotes full book practice quiz - https://www.sparknotes.com/lit/mangostreet/quiz/


Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Author Spotlight: Kimberly Brubaker Bradley

Kimberly Brubaker Bradley At my school, I am a Library Leader. (Library Leaders promote reading in the middle school and recommend books for the younger grades.) The Library Leaders had the fortunate opportunity of eating lunch and meeting with Kimberly Brubaker Bradley. We got to ask her questions and just talk with her. Mrs. Bradley also spoke to the whole seventh and eighth grade in assembly about her research. 1)      When/How does she write? Mrs. Bradley writes in the morning, but this depends on her chores for the day. She got into her routine when her children, now graduating college and out of college, were small and went to school. She would always wait until her husband took them to drop them off at school. She likes for her writing space to be very quiet. She prefers typing when she when she writes as to writing. (This may be pretty common; I do not know what the common format among writers is today. I just thought I would include eve...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Great Literary Trip: Day 1

Hello everyone, and welcome to 16 days on the road with Between the Pages! I am traveling the east coast for around two weeks finding the best bookstores, exploring literary sites, and plundering my way through roughly 2,000 miles of land, through hamlets and cities, through rain and sun. This reader is up to the challenge. Are you? As promised, I will supply a daily report of my wanderings including the cities we explored, the sites we discovered, and the shops we visited. Without further adieu, here is day 1! (More exciting reports are to come, as driving was today's main {*only*} activity.) Day 1 CITIES We made it to three main cities today: Bristol, TN , Knoxville, TN , and Charlottesville, VA . Again, today's main activity was driving (and driving and driving and driving). Today was not my first journey to any of the three cities; however, this road trip shed new light on each one. BOOKSTORES Our first literary stop of the entire trip was a spontaneous one. The original pl...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Southeast's Best Bookstores

      Southern Living's  The South's Best Bookstores highlights five bookstores in the southeastern United States that the publication deems noteworthy based on a wide range of traits. While the article does not go into much detail nor has a central theme besides telling readers of good bookshops, the bookstores look credible after further research. While I have only been to one of the stores (Sundog Books in Seaside, which I love), I did research on the others and found four more bookshops to put on my bucket-list.        THE ALABAMA BOOKSMITH      While not very old, The Alabama Booksmith in Birmingham has a long history of literary predecessors. Even so, The Alabama Booksmith holds its own among its successful precursors considering it opened its doors in 1999. The shop makes it its mission to sell all signed copies.  "Every book in the store is now signed!" - The Alabama Booksmith, About Our Store.  Additiona...
Post a Comment
Read more