The House on Mango Street Reading the House on Mango Street was very interesting. It was fascinating to read someone else's story and be able to relate to someone with a completely different life than me. It also compelled me to look at life through a different culture and growing up experiences than mine and challenged me to think about things I initially would not think about. I enjoyed reading it because I was able to mentally create a timeline of all the different vignettes, each of them showing me different little snippets of her growing up and figuring out how to exist in the world. There was a reason for each story. Some of them had very clear lessons that she learned, others were experiences she went through that she never forgot. Some were happy, others not so much. All of them combined made the story of her life growing up in the house on mango street. This is why I think the dominant theme to this book is growing up. The struggles and the experiences one goes through to figure out themselves and the world around them. A lot of the vignettes she wrote seemed to be her retelling parts in her life from a very young age all the way into adulthood, but there are three in particular that stood out to me as stories that revealed her growing up. The first Vignette that I think really backs up my theme is The Family of Little Feet. It depicts how Esperanza and her friends learn a lesson through a not very comfortable experience. They seem to be teenagers at the time,
Next is Marin; she is a beautiful green-eyed Puerto Rican woman. She sells Avon products and babysits to make a living. Her family lives in Puerto Rico and she’s living with her cousin, saving money for when she goes back to Puerto Rico. Alike Esperanza, Marin is hardworking; she desires a real job where you could wear nice clothing and look beautiful. Marin often relishes in singing and dancing and dreams of getting married to a wealthy gentleman that will take her to a large house far away, altering her life forever, unlike Esperanza who doesn’t wish to be tied down in
Question #1: Explain how the house on Mango Street is different from the other places Esperanza has lived.
The Novel, The House on Mango Street, was based on the writer Sandra Cisneros. She was writing this when she was living in Chicago. She was like Esperanza. She want though poverty. She has been heartbroken and deeply joyous. She inventing for herself who and what she will become. This is the life of Esperanza Cordero and based on Sandra Cisneros to all women out there.
In the book “The House on Mango Street” by Sandra Cisneros we are advised the story of the protagonist Esperanza over a sequence of short scenes. Esperanza is a adolescent lady who moved out of her old home along with her parents into a new area called Mango Street. The new house is not what Esperanza wanted, she anticipated a big, white, provincial house with a backyard. Rather, she got a tiny, red, recap apartment in a Latino area in Chicago. It is a coming of age story where Esperanza blooms in many attitudes, all over the whole book we appreciate she wants to move out of Mango Street into her own house. One of the complications that Esperanza faces is the experience of shame. This happens through House on Mango Street, Rice Sandwich, Bums in the Attic, and Monkey Garden; the first three have to do with her despise of the new house. In the scene Rice Sandwich, Esperanza ambitions to eat in the canteen with the other “special kids” rather of having to walk back home to make lunch. She asks her mom to write a letter to the nun who is the principal of the school, she doesn't accept the letter as the grammar was amateurish and asks Esperanza where she lived.
Mark Haddon once said, “Reading is a conversation. All books talk. But a good book listens as well.” Although, there are many children's adventure books, The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cineros is the best by far. The book is intriguing, funny, heart-warming and full of adventure. The book paints a vivid picture of Esperanza and her family living in their new house on Mango Street. Sadly, the house doesn’t meet up to Esperanza’s expectations, but she learns to adjust to her new home. The character of Esperanza in The House on Mango Street expresses the difficulty, adventure, friendships, and maturity in her lifestyle. While living on Mango Street, Esperanza faced many challenges. She acclimated to the consistent move from place to place with her family. In The House on Mango Street page.3, it says, “But what I remember most is moving a lot.” Esperanza moved about four times before moving on Mango Street. She transitions from apartment to apartment, but now her family finally has a home they can call their own. Unfortunately, the house isn’t the house Esperanza dreamed of or seen on T.V. It wasn’t the luxurious three bathrooms, big flat screen television, and large backyard kind of house. This house was small, red with tight steps and small yard. The red bricks are crumbling, the door was swollen, and everyone shared bedroom. Currently, the house accommodates six people: Mama, Papa, Carlos, Kiki, Esperanza and her sister, Nenny. Learning to adjust to her new home,
Growing up on Mango Street, girls had to take two steps backward to take one forward. Just like ballroom dancing, women let men take the lead and sacrifice an extra step to continue moving on the floor. When Sally escaped from her father and married the marshmallow salesman, she had to give up her youth and femininity.
I think that when Esperanza says on page 89, "I have decided not to grow up tame like the other who lay their necks on the threshold waiting for the ball and chain", she is speaking of women like Rafeala, her great-grandmother, or Sally whom traded their futures for married life. She sees how they all are trapped with their husbands and are stuck inside their homes. She feels as though these women looked toward married life to find security. She felt like the did what was expected of them; in other words they were tame. Esperanza wants her independence and knows that she will not find it the kind of lives that these women settled for. She feels that she must be different, to shirk that pre-decided type of behavior that is well accepted by the
Everyone who matures has a family and that family shapes that person into who they come to be. The main character, Esperanza from The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros, is an excellent example of that; Esperanza is an insecure young Latina girl who is shaped by her family as she grows up. In the novel, Esperanza has the perspective of life from the experience of living in poverty. Esperanza dreams of a perfect home with amazing flowers and enough rooms that everyone in her family would each have one. However, she moves to the house on Mango Street, and reality is so different from what she has dreamt of. She receives a tiny run-down house with bricks that are broken down in numerous places around the house. Throughout the
Sally is gorgeous, She wears lots of make-up and short skirts. Boys gossip about her. Her father won't let her out of the house because of her beauty Esperanza wants to be her best friend. She wishes she didn't have to go home after school. Esperanza is two years younger then Minerva. She has two children and is married. Her husband left her only to return later and then leave again.When the kids are asleep she writes poetry. Esperanza and Minerva share poems they wrote. It bothers Esperanza that after her husband comes back and beats her she still takes him back.
Hook: In the coming-of-age novel, House on Mango Street, the main character Esperanza narrates the story through her perspective of the situations she encounters as she grows older in her new neighborhood.
In a series of vignettes, The House on Mango Street, by Sandra Cisneros, covers a year in the life of Esperanza, who is about twelve years old. During the year, she moves into a house on Mango Street. It is the first home her parents actually own, however she has had a plethora apartments in her life. However, the house is not what Esperanza has dreamed of, for the reason that it is run-down and cramped. For the duration of the vignettes, the readers watch Esperanza struggle but overall mature. In the rest of the vignettes, the readers receive a glimpse of the lives of the women on Mango Street. When reading the readers get to learn and understand these women. They are extremely important because they act as character foils to help the readers better understand Esperanza. During the novel, the women on Mango Street are confined and go through many struggles. The reader also learns about Esperanza's identity.
The House on Mango Street is a collection of vignettes written by Sandra Cisneros that is about a young Mexican-American girl named Esperanza, and the struggles of her life as she transitions from childhood into adulthood. Esperanza wants to find her true identity, but the conflicts and struggles that she faces throughout the story. Her town is a part of her adventure to find her self identity. She picks herself up, learning and figuring herself out throughout the novel. The author uses symbolism throughout the vignettes to convey the deeper meaning of conflicts developed in the novel, to show the difficulties of growing into adulthood.
A theme that stood out to me is family. Sixteen year-old Chanda, has a lot of responsibility on her shoulders and has struggles which are similar to the large number
Both of these stories show a lot of maturity, or trying to be mature. In “house on mango street” Esperanza needed some money for her Catholic school so she decided to get a job. Her job was at the Peter Pan Photo Finisher on North Broadway. But everything did not go her way because while she was working there, an old man sexually harassed her and she never worked there again. An example of maturity in the movie, “Sweet 15” is when Marta saw Ramon at the carnival
The House on Mango Street is an interesting novel by Sandra Cisneros, and it was published in 1984. This novel is about a young Mexican-American girl named Esperanza who tells her story through vignettes, revealing the difficulties she experienced growing up with her Family in a low-income neighborhood in chicago. I chose The House on Mango Street because it is an interesting novel that explores race, gender, identity, culture, and socioeconomic status. In this novel, Cisneros incorporates her personal life experiences of being a young Latina female living in a society, dominated by man to describe the problems women were facing in House on Mango Street. During this period, women in the Latino culture and other cultures around the world were being treated as second class citizen, they were only valued for being wives and mothers, and were ostracized by society for wanting more in life. Throughout the novel, we see that Esperanza wants more in life, she has dreams of her own, dreams that goes against the cultural norms of Latinos. Her desire for something more than the house on Mango Street is going to help her move out of poverty by fulfilling her dreams. The negatives circumstances Esperanza endures due to the poor condition of Mango Street and the lack of role models motivated her to escape poverty and seek out a better life for herself.