The House on Mango Street

Review of Sandra Cisneros' popular coming-of-age novel

Aug 25, 2007 M. B. Levine

In Sandra Cisneros' novel, The House on Mango Street, a young girl finds her way home before taking the first step out of the door.

The Home She Despised

Esperanza is ashamed of her home. If she had her druthers, she would take her family and run away to the type of house she believes is acceptable. The House on Mango Street is an often amusing, frequently sad collection of vignettes that come together to tell the story of Esperanza Cordero and her family of six. The house they live in is old and small in a poor area of Chicago. The house Esperanza wants is “…on a hill like the ones with the gardens where Papa works.” She spends her adolescence becoming reluctantly intimate with the neighborhood: its structures, its people, and the sadness and poverty that run through the allies and circles around the edges of what passes for front yards. Through her discovery of the neighborhood, Esperanza learns that it is the people of Mango Street that make the place home.

People on the Street

“Those who don’t know any better come into our neighborhood scared.” Esperanza is a young version of an aging widow who spends her days rocking on the front porch watching the movements of her neighbors. She knows about everyone living on Mango Street. Her short tales about incidents that have occurred in the lives of Louie and his cousins, her girlfriends Rachel, Lucy, and Sally, and the odd woman on the block who is locked in her house by a jealous husband roll across the pages like mini documentaries filmed in secret; revealing intimate moments to a world that only sees despair. Sandra Cisneros fully grasps the mix of emotions a young Latina girl growing up poor in America faces and uses this understanding to deliver short bursts of stories, effectively mimicking the attention span of someone in Esperanza’s age range.

Cisneros expands Esperanza’s experience on Mango Street from that which is specific to her large family (learning English, finding sufficient housing, keeping food on the table) to a broader scope by taking on issues that all young girls struggle with as they progress to young adulthood (acceptance by family and peers, coping with the development of their bodies, and finding their place within the community and society).

Believing in Home

During the wake for Rachel and Lucy’s baby sister, Esperanza is offered words of advice by the girls’ aunts: “You will always be Mango Street. You can’t erase what you know. You can’t forget who you are.” This is where Esperanza begins her transformation. She continues to long for a house of her own and the fulfillment of goals that extend further than what is expected of her; but Esperanza also allows a place in her heart for Mango Street and submits to the idea that she will return. Since its publication in 1984, The House on Mango Street has been incorporated into middle, high school, and college curriculums, but its message of embracing where one comes from and developing power through belief in one’s abilities is applicable to all ages.

The copyright of the article The House on Mango Street in American Fiction is owned by M. B. Levine. Permission to republish The House on Mango Street in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.

The House on Mango Street