The House On Mango Street (1991) - Plot & Excerpts
"I like to tell stories. I tell them inside my head. I am going to tell you a story about a girl who didn’t want to belong."(109)Where is home? Is your home the people who love you, or is your home a physical space where you are most free? This is the story of a woman who builds her own home in her head until she is able to escape and build a house of her own. Sandra Cisneros has written 46 vignettes that form a story about the life of a Mexican-American girl in Chicago in the sixties. Cisneros writes that she thought of her vignettes as “a jar of buttons, like mismatched embroidered pillowcases and napkins tugged from the bin at Goodwill.” At the end of this review, I have included my favorite vignette, in its short entirety, to give you a taste of Cisneros’ writing. Esperanza Cordero lives in a sad-looking red house at 4006 Mango Street, Chicago, with her parents, two brothers and sister. But this house is Esperanza’s residence– not her home. She narrates these vignettes from age 8 and continues until she is ready to leave Mango Street as an adult who is able to find her own house where she will have the freedom to write. Papa beams with pride in the first house that the Cordero family ever owned, but little Esperanza writes, “I knew then I had to have a house. A real house. One I could point to. But this isn’t it. The house on Mango Street wasn’t it.” Her parents are loving, but it is not enough. This woman has a purpose. She is a creator and she will have freedom. Esperanza means “hope” in Spanish, but it also has the connotation of sadness and waiting. “Everything is holdings its breath inside me. Everything is waiting to explode like Christmas.” (73) Later on, Esperanza reads her poetry to her dying aunt. “I want to be like the waves on the sea, like the clouds in the wind, but I’m me. One day I’ll jump out of my skin. I’ll shake the sky like a thousand violins.” Aunt Lupe replies, “ you just remember to keep writing. It will keep you free.”Esperanza visits Elenita, “the witch woman,” who blends “los espíritus” of the occult with Old-World Catholicism; Elenita implores her to find “a new house, a house made of heart.” Esperanza begins her own quiet war for freedom. “I have decided not to grow up tame like the others who lay on the threshold waiting for the ball and chain. One day I will own my own house, but I won’t forget who I am or where I come from.” (87)Finally Esperanza declares, When you leave you must remember to come back for the others. A circle, understand? You will always be Esperanza. You will always be Mango Street. You can’t erase what you know. You can’t forget who you are.” One day they will look for Esperanza, but she has gone away to come back.This book hits me close to home. My girls are growing up. Soon, I must let them go with my love and blessing. For more than a decade, I have built my emotional life around them and invested them with all my dreams. Now, I am no longer the center of their universe and they must have their freedom. Perhaps it is no accident that I am stumbling across books that are teaching me my proper place in the new world order. I have learned that I must allow them to find their own voice and to be authentic individuals and that they are not designed in their loving father’s image. I have always believed that we find the books that we need. My girls, my dearest Maclarkenda, I give you my blessing. Go forth and build your own homes and remember the one you will leave behind.June 30, 2012
"I make a story for my life, for each step my brown shoe takes."Have you been ashamed? Did you get that abortion? Did you ever lie and cheat because truth seemed too expensive? Have you been that man who can't find a job? Did someone ever grab you all on a sudden and inhaled your life away? Did you leave college & have your heart broken? I ask you again, Have you been ashamed?If yes, then this book is YOU.Esperanza Cordero, a Mexican-American girl presumably 13, lives in a red house at 4006 Mango Street, Chicago with her parents and 3 siblings. She is poor. She is young. She is oppressed. But she is brave. And she decides to write the story of her life to set free her life itself."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, but what I remember most is Mango Street, sad red house, the house I belong but do not belong to."Esperanza's parents promised they will have a house of their own one day with a green yard, real stairs, and running water with pipes that worked. But that day never seems to come and they have settled into mango street where hardly anyone sings of a new song or lives for a new dream. Her soul wants more. Her soul wants freedom. Her soul wants to soar in the sky. And mango street has failed her.At one time or another, we all have felt other.Esperanza gives voice to a multitude of characters who otherwise would remain in the dark. For instance, the woman Rosa Vargas who can't do anything for herself because she has too many children. Minerva who has an abusive husband she is constantly fighting with. Or the guy who keeps on saving money for his mother to be able to come to America one day. Or the unknown boy who died in the party. It's the same old picture. A story within a story within a story. The same glory and the same tragedy. Everyone has given up, except Esparanza, the storyteller."When you leave you must remember to come back for the others. A circle, understand? You will always be Esperanza. You will always be Mango Street. You can't erase what you know. You can't forget who you are."We are who we are. The roots make us 'us'. Esperanza decides to leave the mango street. Because she knows the house she wants, will not be given to her. Instead she will have to work hard for it by the sweat of her own brows. Because it is a sacrifice every free spirit has to make. And then she will come back. For the ones she left behind, for the ones who could not get out or sing or wake.“I want to be like the waves on the sea, like the clouds in the wind, but I’m me. One day I’ll jump out of my skin.I’ll shake the sky like a thousand violins."I am 17. I am not poor. But I live in a place where no one cares for literature or art or freedom. This town I was born in, doesn't have one decent library. Everyone has slept long ago. And I wonder what it will take for them to wake up. I have left my house and got to Dhaka. Back home they told me to stay, to sleep like others have. I could not. Now I live alone, with no one I know by blood. But I am delightfully awake. And I will never forget the street that shaped me or the house that built me.
What do You think about The House On Mango Street (1991)?
I did not care for the style of writing...each small chapter(1.5-2 pgs.)(vignette), is a snippet of what life is like on Mango Street for Esperanza. Tbe idea of these snippets (vignettes) is great, but they never kept my attention or painted a vivid picture for me.It is not a continuous plot, that keeps you hanging. I'm not used to this style, so it really didnt "grab" me.I was hoping that throughout the book I would connect with the character or "feel" something...I never did.I was not impressed. It's jut not a writing style I connect with.
—Rose Ann
This book is GREAT ! This book is about a Mexican Girl named Esperanza. She is mexian american. She lives on a house on mango street. Basically Esperanza goes through stuff every teenage girl probably would go through. Shewnt through stuff like puberty, Making friends and more.Theres one thing that happens to Esperanza that could change any teenager's life forever. At twelve esperanza was molested. Esperanza felt alone and sad. She felt like she didn't belong in this world.I would rate this book 5stars because if you are a girl you would understand how esperanza is feeling everytime something bad or good happens to her. I would recommend this book to any girls who want to here about oher girl's lives.
—Kathy
Let me tell you one story my dear fellow readers. A story about a young girl who is able to portray her life as an immigrant in the most simple way. It's not an easy life I assume but the way she portrays it in simple descrptions cause a havoc in my brain. Born as a girl in the society where strong women are not acceptable, she inherites her great-grandmother's name but she refuses to inherite the defeat her great-grandmother had suffered. She's young, so are her little sister and her two young girlfriends and somehow the quite crowded neighbourhood is not a safe place for them. Their ethnicity, their skin colour, their customs, somehow put them deeper in a troublesome world. It begins with a house, a house on a Mango Street, although it's not her family first house. She then introduce us to her family members, her friends, the neigbourhood and the people who live there. You can identify the problems they have in the neighbourhood from her writings, the likes of a mother with lots of children to take care -alone- as the father left without a word. Of another mother who prefers ironing the shirts rather than saving her daughter who is with boys that want to take advantages on her. Or when a guy, drunkdard or not, molested her when she's waiting for her best friend.It ends with a house too, a house of her own away from the Mango Street. Somehow she manages to get away from that neighbourhood with her books and her writings. She let homeless people to come in, offer them the attic and ask them to stay, because she knows how it is to be without a house.*** Aku punya satu kisah untukmu, sebuah kisah tentang seorang gadis kecil yang mampu dengan sangat sederhana menggambarkan kehidupannya sebagai seorang imigran. Menurutku pasti tidak mudah menjalani kehidupan seperti kehidupannya. Terlahir sebagai perempuan di masyarakat yang tidak menerima perempuan-perempuan kuat, dia mewarisi nama nenek buyutnya namun dia menolak untuk mewarisi kekalahan yang dialami oleh nenek buyutnya tersebut. Dia seorang gadis kecil, adik perempuan dan kedua teman perempuannya juga masih kecil dan menurutku lingkungan tempat tinggal mereka yang cukup padat itu bukan tempat yang aman bagi gadis-gadis kecil. Etnik mereka, warna kulit, kebudayaan mereka malah semakin membuat mereka terjebak dalam dunia yang penuh masalah.Semuanya diawali oleh sebuah rumah, rumah yang terletak di Mango Street, walau itu bukan rumah pertama keluarganya. Kemudian dia mengenalkan kita pada anggota keluarganya, kemudian pada teman-temannya, lingkungan tempat dia tinggal dan orang-orang lain yang tinggal di sana. Saat mulai membacanya kita bisa langsung mengenali ragam permasalahn yang terjadi di lingkungan tersebut, misalnya seorang ibu yang memiliki banyak anak dan harus mengurus mereka sendirian karena suaminya pergi entah kemana. Kemudian seorang ibu lain yang lebih memilih menyetrika pakaian daripada menyelamatkan anak perempuannya yang pergi bersama anak-anak laki-laki yang berusaha mengambil keuntungan darinya. Atau ketika seorang pria, pemabuk atau bukan, melakukan pelecehan seksual padanya saat dia menunggu sahabatnya di suatu tempat hiburan. Kisah ini pun berakhir dengan sebuah rumah, rumah miliknya sendiri yang berada jauh dari Mango Street. Entah bagaimana caranya akhirnya dia bisa meninggalkan lingkungan tersebut bersama buku-buku dan semua tulisannya. Dia juga membiarkan para gelandangan masuk ke rumahnya, menawarkan mereka tempat di dekat perapian dan bahkan meminta mereka untuk tinggal karena dia tahu rasanya tidak memiliki rumah.
—miaaa
