Identity Of The Family In Esperanza's House On Mango Street

Alicia is one of Esperanza’s strongest role models. She exhibits dedication to her studies by taking two trains and a bus to get to school and intelligence in being knowledgeable enough to attend college. She seems to be the only female in Esperanza’s life that values education highly, thus providing Esperanza with a powerful female figure to look up to. When Esperanza is having a conversation about hips with Rachel and Lucy, Rachel says, “[Hips are] good for holding a baby when you're cooking (P 49).” This implies that women’s anatomy is built solely for the purpose of them meeting their gender role expectations of cooking and being a mother. Esperanza responds with, “But most important, hips are scientific, [Esperanza says] repeating what Alicia already told [her]. It's the bones that let you know which skeleton was a man's when it was a man and which a woman's (P 50).” By using biology to explain the purpose of having hips, Esperanza asserts her thoughts that having intelligence is far superior than conforming to a gender role. Hence,

Someone’s outward appearance never fully shows their true self. Sandra Cisneros uses the novella, The House on Mango Street, to show that people need to be accepting of themselves. Esperanza does not see the good things in herself. She tries really hard, but can not find them. She later learns that she is perfect just the way she is. Esperanza’s negative view on herself slowly changes as she begins to focus on her larger community and her place within it. Through this, Cisneros shows that knowing and accepting where one comes from is an important part of growing up and determining one’s identity.

In today’s world there are countless social problems. People are often treated as an inferior or as if they are less important for many different reasons. In The House on Mango Street, the author Sandra Cisneros addresses these problems. Throughout the story Cisneros does a thorough job explaining and showing how these issues affect the public. This novel is written through the eyes of a young girl, Esperanza, growing up in a poor neighborhood where the lifestyles of the lower class are revealed. Cisneros points out that, in today’s society, the expectation of women and their treatment, discrimination based on poverty, and discrimination because of a person’s ethnicity are the major

A boy comes up to ask her to dance and she declines, still focusing on how her feet don’t fit her shoes. Later, however, she is forced to dance with her Uncle Nacho and she notices that, “All night the boy who is a man watches me dance. He watched me dance” (48). The boy she declined watched her dance gracefully with her uncle and this made her feel unconformable. It seems she is just understanding what girls, or women, represent to boys, or men. She doesn’t need to be told because she is now more aware. There is a feeling that she doesn’t like it and it makes her more self conscious of how she looks, but that comes with growing up. In the last vignette, “Hips,” Esperanza is connecting the information she has been told by Alicia to her new experiences. Esperanza continues to inform everyone else what she has learned, saying, “They bloom like roses. They just one day open. Just like that. One day you might decide to have kids, and then where are you going to put them? Got to have room. Bones got to give”

Some people think that others aren’t as bright as they truly are and this is changed by how they have grown and developed. For instance, this is revealed in the book by a character named Darius, a kid who doesn’t like school who most others believe isn’t very bright, is developed by the quote, “Darius, who doesn’t like school, who is sometimes stupid and mostly a fool, said something wise today, through most days he says nothing. Darius, who chases girls with firecrackers or a stick that touched a rat and thinks he’s tough, today pointed up because the world was full of clouds, the kind like pillows...That one there. See that. That’s God, Darius said”(33). This develops Darius and how everyone believes that he isn’t bright and as he grows, starts to become brighter and becomes very deep in his thoughts. This is related to how people imagine that Darius and others is often not how they grow as a human being. This is also developed by the quote, “One day I’ll own my own house, but I won’t forget who I am or where I came from”(87). This quote explains how Esperanza wants to eventually own her own house and grow as a person but still know who she is. Others may not know that she wants this and this causes her to grow as a person which the develops into the claim, how people visualize others and how they act versus how they grow and this is an aspect of maturity.

Esperanza is not comfortable with exposing her friend Sally and portraying her as an object, but no other women care about it. She decided to take matters into her own hands but only ended getting laughed at. She was not ready to be developed sexually and would rather remain at a slow pace. This idea is different compared to many women in her society who are ok with being mistreated like this.

Esperanza is new to the neighborhood, and was never proud of her previous houses, but the negative intonation that the nun uses on her makes her feel like she is being judged, not on who she is, but what her family can afford. There is the place Esperanza now has to call home and the degrading presumption that the neighborhood already has causes her to accept that she can’t change her image without money and let her personality shine through. She seems to accept her label as poor in the story, “A Rice Sandwich”, where she believes the special, also known as rich, kids get to eat in the canteen and she wants to be part of that narrative, so she begs her mother for three days, to write her a note to allow her eat in the canteen. When she couldn’t endure her daughter’s nagging anymore, she complied. Thinking this would be enough affirmation, Esperanza went to school the next with the note and stood in the line with the other kids. She wasn’t recognized by the nun who checks the list, and has to face Sister Superior, who claims that she doesn’t live far enough to stay at school and asks Esperanza to show where her house is. “That one? She said, pointing to a row of ugly three -flats, the ones even the raggedy men are ashamed to go into. Yes, I nodded even though I knew that wasn’t my house,”(45). Esperanza was compared to the most raggedy men, and had to accept

In the collection of vignettes, The House on Mango Street, Sandra Cisneros develops the theme that people should not be devalued because of their financial circumstances through metaphors of classism, the motif of shame, and the contrast between minor characters Alicia and Esperanza’s mother. Esperanza, the protagonist, is a Mexican-American adolescent living in the rural Chicago region. She occupies a house on Mango Street with her father, mother, two brothers, Carlos and Kiki, and little sister, Nenny. Mango Street is filled with low-income families, like Esperanza’s, trying to adapt to their difficult circumstances. Esperanza realizes it is difficult, but she dreams of leaving her house and Mango Street altogether.

Sandra Cisneros has been criticized by many for her depiction of Mexican Americans in her novel The House on Mango Street. Critics claim that Cisneros portrayal of Mexican Americans sustains an image of negative stereotypes. Those negative stereotypes being men who are dominating over women and women who are submissive. Throughout Cisneros’ story we meet many characters who are portrayed as the critics claim – in a way that suggests the dominance men have over the home and the family. Despite this, I believe this representation is not ment to enhance those negative stereotypes, but to better heighten the feelings of oppression, otherness, and helplessness Esperanza has. One of the most prominent examples of the negative stereotypes being displayed

In “The House on Mango Street”, the young daughter desires to leave her neighborhood as a way to escape her Mexican-American culture. One of the cultures which are most powerful in this story is the Hispanic culture that Esperanza and all of her neighbors emerge from. Her Hispanic culture has such a powerful influence on her

For example, in the chapter called “Smart Cookie,” Esperanza’s mother admits to quitting school “[because she] didn’t have nice clothes,” and she continues, saying, “I could’ve been somebody, you know?” (86). In this quotation, Mama is reminding Esperanza that clothes are not what is truly important in life. Mama teaches Esperanza to value what is on the inside—to trust herself—and not to focus so much on external appearances, and this lesson empowers Esperanza throughout the novel. Additionally, early in the novel, Esperanza describes her mother and her hair by saying that it is “sweet to put your nose into it when she is holding you, holding you and you feel safe” (6). Here Mama and the smell of her hair serve as important symbols to Esperanza: they represent the safety of family. Esperanza recognizes her mother—and the smell of her hair—as symbols of family, and Esperanza’s family will always love and support her no matter where she goes in life. Esperanza is able to rely on herself because she learns that what’s on the inside matters most, and she learns that she’ll always have the support of her family if she needs

As a final point, Esperanza’s siblings also played an important role in her stages of growing up. The author uses this sentence to express that, "And then I don't know why, but I have to turn around and pretend I don't care about the box so Nenny won't see how stupid I am." (Pg. 20). This shows how Esperanza wants to be a role model for her younger sister Nenny, and this helps Esperanza become a strong independent woman as she grows up. If she never had a younger sister, Esperanza would have never learned how to become a role model for her siblings and even so other people. Without Esperanza's family and their important roles in her life, she wouldn't have become the person she grew up to be.

A poignant figure in Esperanza’s life is her own grandmother. In fact, Esperanza was given her birth name after her grandmother. A touching gesture that came from good faith. A name may have some value, but for Esperanza there was a high intrinsic quality to such a simple component. Despite, never encountering her own grandmother in person, Esperanza was grateful to have fond memories by carrying her legacy through her name. Life’s motto concerns dealing with adversity and carrying the legacy of one’s family eternally. Being confident and smart was the only way to live by. No man was needed to help raise and nurture herself. Her grandmother instilled in Esperanza a sense of fortitude and independence. It is sad that a regret of Esperanza is linked to her grandmother, further illustrating the physical and mental hardships one can endure in

     In The House on Mango Street, we see how the youth struggled with the discrimination being pushed on them by Whites. Esperanza describes how they lived in such a poverty-stricken area of the city, and did not interact with the Whites. She talks about how the Whites saw Mexicans as bad people who committed crimes. Esperanza shows how personal identity for Mexicans was made

“The House on Mango Street” was written to explain the lives of a family living in poverty in 1984. Coming from Esperanza’s point of view, this book gave her siblings and friends an idea of who the real Esperanza was and what her priorities were. In this book, Esperanza moves from city to city, house to house, with her family hoping for a real house. When she gets to the house on Mango Street, it is not what she expects. She meets new friends and has some crazy experiences. This book has many societal standards but, the most important three are responsibility, happiness, and fitting in.