Sandra Cisneros

## Biography

Sandra Cisneros was born in Chicago on December 20, 1954, the third child in a family of seven children. The only daughter of a Mexican father and a Mexican-American mother, she was educated in the Midwest before moving to the Southwest in 1984. She has worked as a teacher to high-school dropouts, a poet-in-the-schools, a college recruiter, an arts administrator, and as a visiting writer at a number of universities around the country. (incluido en la novela)

Sandra Cisneros is an established twentieth century American novelist, poet and short story writer. Born on December 20, 1954, Cisnero grew up in Chicago, Illinois. Cisneros’ father developed a travelling proclivity and her family had to constantly move back and forth between Chicago and Mexico City. Due to constant travel they had to keep switching school and find new place to live every time. The instability in the family made six of Cisneros’ brothers to form a bond among themselves excluding their sister. The feeling of isolation aggravated as her father looked at his children as six sons and a daughter. In fact, the growing loneliness played a key role in developing her interest in writing. Her mother was the only one around her with an avid reading habit and social awareness and she made sure that her daughter would become an independent woman unlike herself.

Cisneros received her early education from a Catholic school Josephinum Academy. Here she polished her writing skills under a teacher’s supervision. She wrote poems on the Vietnam War when she was ten and won recognition for her work. According to herself, she truly began writing when she got enrolled in a creative writing course in college. In 1976, she graduated from Loyola University, Chicago and two years later she earned Master of Fine Arts degree from University of Iowa.

She attended the Iowa Writers’ Workshop where she was struck by a sudden realization that she had an advantage over her fellow writers for her rich cultural heritage. Being a Mexican woman instead of making her an outsider gave her the benefit to write differently without conforming to literary style of American canon which her classmates adopted. Her cultural diversity became a model for her writing in which she shared her experiences living in the Puerto Rican neighborhood of Chicago.

In her novel The House on Mango Street she drew inspiration from Mexican and Southwestern popular culture. She tried to depict the lives of the people she could relate to. Her stories were drawn from real life conversation she had heard from the people, especially the ones who were trivialized. She even confessed to recording the conversation in writing she had with people which she would later adapt into her writings.

The publication of Cisneros’s first novel earned her huge popularity and Writer-in-Residence posts at US universities. She taught at a number of universities which include University of California and University of Michigan. Subsequent to writing her first novel, she published a collection of stories, titled Woman Hollering Creek and Other Stories, in 1991. It contains 22 stories and incorporates a wide range of narrative techniques. Each story employs different narrative style such as, first-person and third-person and omniscient narration. Besides that the theme of her works often addressed construction of female identity and sexuality which was repressed during her time by the patriarch society.

LITERARY STYLE

She began her life as a writer at age ten, much like the young Chicana narrator of The House on Mango Street (1984), the volume of interrelated vignettes from a child's perspective that brought Cisneros her first major attention. In brief, sharply drawn but quietly expressed segments, the narrator, Esperanza, conveys the ambience of growing up in a street in Chicago's Mexican American community. The social bond of this neighborhood eases the contrast between Esperanza's nurturing family and the more hostile forces of poverty and racism. Cisneros cultivates a sense of warmth and naive humor for her protagonists, qualities that are evident in the story printed here, which forms an introductory part to Woman Hollering Creek ( 1 9 9 1 ) , a volume that also deals with more troublesome aspects of young women facing hostile forces in the world. **Sex is a topic in all Cisneros's work**, including her **poetry collected as My Wicked Wicked Ways ( 1 9 8 7 ) and Loose Woman ( 1 9 9 4 )—** sometimes **gentle and even silly, other times brutally assaultive**. What remains constant is **the author's view that by romanticizing sexual relations women cooperate with a male view that can be oppressive, if not physically destructive**.

She has used **her position as a writer and an educator to expound Chicana feminism, especially as this movement combines cultural issues with women's concerns.** **A dissatisfaction with the politics of publishing has made her an advocate of small-press dissemination**. Most of all, as in the stories reprinted here, she is eager to **show the rich dynamics of characters existing in the blend of Mexican and American cultures that begins with speaking two languages and extends to almost every aspect of life.** **Spanish words, Mexican holidays, ethnic foods, and localized religious practices punctuate the narrative; her characters have a facility with cultural play that reflects what for others would be an anthropologically enhanced understanding.**

## Historical & Cultural Context

**Mexican immigration to the US**

Mexicans are currently the single largest group of foreign-born residents in the country. In 2013, the United States counted 41.3 million individuals of foreign birth; 28 percent, or 11.6 million, were Mexican. If census data are aggregated more broadly, adding together the foreign-born and persons of Mexican ancestry who are citizens, the number totals 31.8 million in 2010, or roughly 10 percent of the country’s total population of 308.7 million. What has nativists and those eager to restrict immigration particularly concerned is that the Mexican origin population has been growing rapidly, by 54 percent between the 2000 and 2010 censuses, or from 11.2 million to 31.8 million persons. This pace of growth has slowed, but not enough to calm racial and xenophobic fears of the citizenry fearful of foreigners and terrorists.

Mexican immigration to the United States officially began in 1846 and has continued into the present without any significant period of interruption, also making it quite distinct.The geographic proximity between the two countries, compounded by profound economic disparities, has continuously attracted Mexican immigrants, facilitated by a border that is rather porous and that has been poorly patrolled for much of the 20th century. The United States and Mexico are divided by a border of over 1,945 miles is poorly marked. In many places, only old concrete markers, sagging, dry-rotted fence posts with rusted barbed wire, and a river that has continually changed its course, mark the separation between these two sovereign national spaces.

Since 1924, when the U.S. Border Patrol was created mainly to prohibit the unauthorized entry of Chinese immigrants, not Mexicans, American attempts to effectively regulate entries and exits has been concentrated only along known, highly trafficked routes that lead north. The inability of the United States to patrol the entire length of its border with Mexico has meant that any Mexican eager to work or live in the United States has rarely found the border an insurmountable obstacle, and if they have encountered it temporarily so, they have simply hired expensive professional smugglers (known as coyotes) to maximize safe passage into the United States without border inspection or official authorization. In 2014, there were approximately 11.3 million such unauthorized immigrants in the United States; 49 percent, or 5.6 million of them were Mexican.

Over the long course of history Mexican immigration is best characterized as the movement of unskilled workers toiling in agriculture, railroad construction, and mineral extraction; for the last two decades, they have worked in construction and service industries as well. This labor migration has evolved through five distinct phases, each marked by its own logic, demands, and governance.

**Chicana/o Literature**

**The rise of Chicana/o literature took place in the late 1960s, as** **part of the Chicano movement and the upsurge in awareness of the presence and cultural contributions of people of Mexican descent in the U.S.** The word “Chicano,” as Raymund Paredes explains, refers to “**people of Mexican ancestry who have resided permanently in the United States for an extended period**. Chicanos can be native-born citizens or Mexican-born immigrants who have adapted to life in the United States.” Although “Chicano” and “Mexican-American” are often used interchangeably, the former indicates an added political sensibility; an asserted self-awareness of a cultural identity that cannot be separated from social and material struggles for equality and inclusion. Originally a derogatory name for Mexican-Americans, “**Chicano” was reappropriated by young civil rights advocates in the 1960s and 1970s as a way to reclaim both the power of self-definition and the pride in a rich, bilingual, cross-cultural heritage.** Because of the implicated limitations of the Spanish masculine form, an emerging recognition of gender equality has insisted on modifying the term so that it includes the feminine form. Hence, art, literature, theater, film, and other cultural productions are currently referred to as Chicana/o.

Along with the “birth” of Chicana coming of age stories, **new issues are brought to light, for instance an issue such as domestic violence which did not typically exist within this genre.** The gender roles r**eflecting the patriarchal system** deal explicitly with **the theme of home and homelessness,** which will be further discussed in the analysis. For the first time, t**he cries of Chicana women are being heard through their writing.** **The typical Chicana literature addresses and criticises social problem such as racism, class prejudice as well as the gender roles within the Mexican-American culture.**

(Department of Humanities, Education and Social Sciences English The Hidden Value of House and Home http://www.diva-portal.se/smash/get/diva2:918001/FULLTEXT01.pdf)

Multiethic Poets

**The second half of the 20th century witnessed a renaissance in multiethnic literature that has continued into the 21st century.** In the 1960s, following the lead of African Americans, **ethnic writers in the United States began to command public attention.** The 1970s saw the founding of ethnic studies programs in universities. In the 1980s, a number of academic journals, professional organizations, and literary magazines focusing on ethnic groups were initiated. Conferences devoted to the study of specific ethnic literatures had begun, and the canon of “classics” had been expanded to include ethnic writers in anthologies and course lists. I**mportant issues included race and ethnicity, spiritual life, familial and gender roles, and language. Minority poetry shares the variety and occasionally the anger of women’s writing.** It has flowered in works by **Latino and Chicano Americans** such as Gary Soto, Alberto Rios, and Lorna Dee Cervantes; in Native Americans such as Leslie Marmon Silko, Simon Ortiz, and Louise Erdrich; in African- American writers such as Amiri Baraka (LeRoi Jones), Michael S. Harper, Rita Dove, Maya Angelou, and Nikki Giovanni; and in Asian- American poets such as Cathy Song, Lawson Inada, and Janice Mirikitani. **Chicano/Latino Poetry Spanish-influenced poetry encompasses works by many diverse Groups.** A**mong these are Mexican Americans, known since the 1950s as Chicanos, who have lived for many generations in the southwestern U.S. states annexed from Mexico in the Mexican-American War ending in 1848.** A**mong Spanish Caribbean populations, Cuban Americans and Puerto Ricans maintain vital and distinctive literary traditions.** For example, the Cuban-American genius for comedy sets it apart from the elegiac lyricism of Chicano writers such as Rudolfo Anaya. New immigrants from Mexico, Central and South America, and Spain constantly replenish and enlarge this literary realm. **Chicano, or Mexican-American, poetry has a rich oral tradition in the corrido, or ballad, form.** Seminal works stress traditional strengths of the Mexican community and the discrimination it has sometimes met with among whites. Sometimes **the poets blend Spanish and English words in a poetic fusio**n, as in the poetry of Alurista and Gloria Anzaldúa. Their poetry is much influenced by oral tradition and is very powerful when read aloud. Some poets have written largely in Spanish, in a tradition going back to the earliest epic written in the present-day United States — Gaspar Pérez de Villagrá’s Historia de la Nueva México, commemorating the 1598 battle between invading Spaniards and the Pueblo Indians at number of academic journals, professional organizations, and literary magazines focusing on ethnic groups were initiated. Conferences devoted to the study of specific ethnic literatures had begun, and t**he canon of “classics” had been expanded to include ethnic writers in anthologies and course lists.**

The West of multiethnic writers is less heroic and often more forward looking. **One of the best-known Chicana writers is Sandra Cisneros (1954- )**. Born in Chicago, Cisneros has lived in Mexico and Texas; **she focuses on the large cultural border between Mexico and the United States as a creative, contradictory zone in which Mexican-American women must reinvent themselves.** Her best-selling The House on Mango Street (1984), **a series of interlocking vignettes told from a young girl’s viewpoint, blazed the trail for other Latina writers and introduced readers to the vital Chicago barrio.** Cisneros extended her vignettes of Chicana women’s lives in Woman Hollering Creek (1991). Pat Mora (1942- ) offers a Chicana view in Nepantla: Essays From the Land in the Middle (1993), which addresses issues of cultural conservation. Native Americans from the region include the late James Welch, whose The Heartsong of Charging Elk (2000) imagines a young Sioux who survives the Battle of Little Bighorn and makes a life in France. Linda Hogan (l947- ), from Colorado and of Chickasaw heritage, reflects on Native-American women and nature in novels including Mean Spirit (1990), about the oil rush on Indian lands in the 1920s, and Power (1998), in which an Indian woman discovers her own inner natural resources.

Her writing frequently engages with the construction of feminist Latina identity, folding Spanish phrases into a **hybrid, spiraling syntax that crosses languages as her characters shift between cultures**. In an interview for the New York Times, Cisneros discussed **the experience and power of shifting between cultures and languages**, stating, "I'm a translator. I'm an amphibian. I can travel in both worlds. What I'm saying is very important for the Latino community, but it is also important for the white community to hear. What I'm saying in my writing is that we can be Latino and still be American."

Therefore, her **unique writings style is enriched by her bilingualism and biculturalism treasure.** Being familiar with two cultures enriched her work as she employed an array of experiences, thoughts and feelings with the help of diction from two different languages.

In an interview with Sandra Cisneros in the “Chicago Public Library,” Cisneros says, “I think my work still has a distinctive voice that is uniquely mine—and that voice is one of a person speaking Spanish in English. By that I mean that I write with the syntax and sensibility of Spanish, even when there isn’t a syllable of Spanish present. It’s engrained in the way I look at the world, and the way I construct sentences and stories.” When I write in Spanish and English in my poetry, I feel an authenticity which I’ve only engaged in when around my family. I remember long hours spent on my abuelita’s bed ,lovingly nicknamed “Wita”, as she stroked my hands and called me *mi hijita*, blurring the words until I became *mijita* or *mija*. While I normally feel distant when looking back at my childhood, I am comforted by Cisneros’ discussion of feeling “clear '' when we are far away from the story we’re trying to write. Perhaps we are responsible for creating the linkage between the past and the present—a webbing of memories, like algae, connecting us between lifeliness"

## Bibliography

Cisneros is the author of several poetry collections, including Bad Boys (1980), My Wicked Wicked Ways (1987), and Loose Woman (1994). Her debut novel, The House on Mango Street (1984), won an American Book Award (Before Columbus Foundation); her second novel, Caramelo (2002), was selected a noteworthy book of the year by the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the Chicago Tribune, and the San Francisco Chronicle. Her story collection Woman Hollering Creek and Other Stories (1991) won the PEN Center West Award for Best Fiction, the Lannan Foundation Literary Award, the Quality Paperback Book Club New Voices Award, and the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award. Cisneros is also author of the children’s book Hairs/Pelitos (1994). Cisneros’s work has been translated into more than a dozen languages; Vintage Cisneros (2003) offers a selection of her writing.

## *The House on Mango Street*

Genre: Novel

Year: 1984

Form: It is made up of **an introduction and  44 vignettes**.

**Vignette,** any brief composition or self-contained passage, usually a descriptive prose \*SKETCH,  \*ESSAY,or \*SHORT  STORY. The term also refers to a kind of decorative design sometimes found at  the beginning or end of a chapter in a book; these were often based on vine-leaves. (Concise dictionary of literary terms)

Setting: Chicago, Illinois

The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros **paints a vivid picture of Latino culture in the United States.** Cisneros tells the story of **her experience growing up and coming of age in the impoverished immigrant communities of Chicago during the 1960's and 70's through the eyes of Esperanza,** a young child. The book was written nearly thirty years ago when Cisneros was emerging as a professional author and expresses t**he cultural barriers s**he struggled with that many in her community could not overcome in **pursuing the American Dream**. The House on Mango Street describes i**mmigrant communities that have preserved their Chicano and Boricua roots.** While there is great beauty to continuing unique traditions, Cisneros highlights how many of the customs and conflicts that arise from them are limiting, with especially harsh consequences to women.

**PLOT**

Set in Humboldt Park, "The House on Mango Street" is a coming-of-age story that shares one year in the life of Esperanza Cordero, a young Chicana struggling with questions of identity. Living in a Latinx neighborhood, Esperanza attempts to come to terms with her surroundings. The novel opens as a nun asks Esperanza in an exaggerated tone, "You live there?" Esperanza then explains, "There. I had to look to where she pointed-the third floor, the paint peeling, wooden bars Papa had nailed on the windows so we wouldn't fall out. You live there? The way she said it made me feel like nothing. There. I lived there. I nodded" (Cisneros 5).

As the novel progresses, Esperanza introduces the readers to her family and neighbors, who each reveal aspects of Esperanza's growing understanding of her own identity. There's her father who's "hair is like a broom, all up in the air," and her mother with hair "like little rosettes, like little candy circles," both of whom Esperanza can't seem to measure up to since her "hair is lazy." Her brothers, Carlos and Kiki, "can't be seen talking to girls." And her younger sister Nenny "is the color of a bar of Naptha laundry soap, she is like the little brown piece left at the end of the wash, the hard little bone" (Cisneros 51-51). Esperanza hasn't found her place, even within her family, for she is "a red balloon, a balloon tied to an anchor" she can't escape.

Esperanza then tries to become friends with her neighbor Cathy, but Cathy insists that she is a "great, great grand cousin of the queen of France," and that she is too good for the residents of Mango Street. Luckily, Esperanza soon meets Lucy and Rachel, two Latinas with whom she can relate. The vignettes continue as Esperanza, Lucy, Rachel, and Nenny ride their wobbly bike around town visiting the local pawn shop, playing double dutch, wearing high heels to impress the boys, and looking up at shapes in the clouds, dreaming of another world. Esperanza even meets Sally, a seemingly promiscuous girl with "eyes like Egypt," but Esperanza learns that Sally's life is not as charming as it seems, for her father doesn't like the way boys look at Sally, and consequently, he beats her with "the buckle and the belt."

Esperanza quickly realizes that she doesn't want to become like the women of her neighborhood who "sit their sadness on an elbow" as they stare out the window and hope to be freed from their patriarchal bars. There's Marin, a Puerto Rican woman who sells Avon, wears dark nylons, and waits for the day when she'll be rescued by a man who will marry her and buy her a big house far away from Mango Street. Alicia is a young woman who takes two trains and a bus to study at university, but still, her father forces her to make tortillas every morning since her mother died. Rosa Vargas is known as the woman who can't care for her children, the woman whose husband left her without a dime and whose many children run wild. Mamacita sits upstairs and cries hysterically; she misses her home country and is afraid to leave the house since she can't speak English, but her husband just yells, and her son sings in perfect English, leaving her to feel alone and afraid.

Despite all the hardships the women must face, by the end of the novella, Esperanza seems to have gained some acceptance as she tells the reader that her house is one she belongs to, but at the same time, does not belong to. She says that she likes to tell stories, that she wants to write a story of her life she can carry with her when she leaves Mango Street. Esperanza knows that she is strong enough to escape, but at the same time, she will carry those stories with her, and one day she will come back to help the women she left behind.

**THEMES**

**House and home : The ideal or “real” house will be fully equipped, furnished and functional with all the amenities which are essential for daily living**. Necessities such as **having running water and real stairs, just as the protagonist sees on television, are all probably considered as average for most of the middle-class American families**. This aspect describes the MexicanAmerican family´s own version of the “American dream”. They move to **America to make a better life for themselves, and this improvement of living conditions is accomplished through the process of changing homes, and until they would no longer have to move again, which would be one of the most significant milestones achieved.**

**Identity and autonomy: Esperanza’s essential goal is to be an autonomous individual who controls her own choices, a desire driven by her observations of the many trapped and powerless people of Mango Street.** This desire is physically r**epresented by her dream of a new house in a different place** – at first it is a house for her family, but by the story’s end it is a house that she alone owns, where she can write. She also symbolizes her dream of agency by trying to change her name to something that better shows the “real me.”

The House on Mango Street also presents **identity and autonomy in terms of culture and gender**. The book is about coming of age as a Chicana, and it portrays the experiences of building a cultural identity in the face of suffering and prejudice. In gender terms, Esperanza wants to be loved by men, but she also doesn’t want to become a trapped woman – as most of her married female neighbors have no agency whatsoever. In the end, Esperanza’s goals focus on having a house of her own, mastering writing, and escaping Mango Street, and through these she will be able to achieve her own identity and autonomy.

**The House on Mango Street is set in a Latino community in Chicago, and on one level it is about building a cultural identity in a society where Latinos are seen as foreign**. Throughout the book, Esperanza must struggle against the feelings of shame and isolation that come with living in the barrio – she is ashamed of her shabby house and how her classmates see her as “different.” E**speranza’s struggle against these prejudices leads to a dream of a house of her own—a house she owns, loves, and of which she can be proud—and finding freedom and identity through her writing.**

Language (and names): One of the most important themes of The House on Mango Street is **the power of words.** Esperanza first learns that **the lack of language (especially English) means powerlessness,** as with Mamacita, who is trapped in her apartment by her ignorance and fear of English. This leads to Esperanza understanding the power of controlling language, which first comes through the idea of names. Esperanza has only one name while most characters have several – an English and Spanish name, or nicknames – and **she tries to change her name to empower herself and show the “real me.”**

Esperanza then expands from names to language itself, and she realizes **that mastery over words brings a kind of freedom.** She can translate her bad experiences into beautiful language ,as she starts to write poetry, which both makes them less bad and helps her process them. Esperanza ultimately **hopes to find physical freedom through her writing, as she vows to keep studying and escape Mango Street,** yet part of her final promise to return for those “left behind” involves writing about their experiences and memorializing their suffering.

**Gender roles**: From the start of the book Esperanza realizes that **men and women live in “separate worlds,**” and that women are nearly powerless in her society. There is a constant conflict between being a sexual being and keeping one’s freedom, as most of the book’s female characters are trapped both by abusive husbands and needy children. Esperanza comes to recognize this dichotomy as she is caught between her own budding sexuality and her desire for freedom.

To try and reconcile the contradiction, **Esperanza decides to become “beautiful and cruel” like a femme fatale of the movies – having both sexuality and autonomy –** but she soon finds this impossible in the culture of Mango Street, as Sally is exploited by boys and Esperanza herself is assaulted and raped. Indeed, most of the men in the book are exploitative and violent, and the women rarely help each other, as Tito’s mother ignores Sally’s plight and Sally abandons Esperanza first in the Monkey Garden and then at the carnival. At the end of the book, when Esperanza imagines returning for “the ones left behind,” she is thinking of the powerless women of Mango Street.

* **Abuse:** Sally, you lied. It wasn't what you said at all. What he did. Where he touched me. I didn't want it, Sally. The way they said it, the way it's supposed to be, all the storybooks and movies, why did you lie to me? (Red clowns)
* **Women empowerment:** “Chinese, like the Mexicans, don't like their women strong” (my name)
* **Oppressed women:** “On Tuesdays Rafaela's husband comes home late because that's the night he plays dominoes. And then Rafaela, who is still young but getting old from leaning out the window so much, gets locked indoors because her husband is afraid Rafaela will run away since she is too beautiful to look at”.
* **Immigration** :"His name was Geraldo. And his home is in another country. The ones he left behind are far away, will wonder, shrug, remember. Geraldo—he went north ... we never heard from him again. ""Mamacita" also portrays what immigrants go through with relation to assimilation.

**Characters**

**Esperanza Cordero;** is the oldest of four children. Her age is never explicitly stated in the text, but she is somewhere between childhood and the teenage years, perhaps 13. She and her family live on Mango Street, an urban neighborhood in a city resembling Chicago. Esperanza feels confined by the primarily Latino neighborhood, and she is eager to grow up so she can move away and find a place that feels more like home. She hopes to be a writer someday, and she shares her love of books and poetry with her friends in the neighborhood. Esperanza doesn't discriminate when it comes to selecting friends; she is just as likely to forge relationships with the outcasts as she is the popular kids. She isn't as concerned with appearances as some of her friends, and she has a knack for seeing the goodness that resides in those who might otherwise be ignored. A friend to almost everyone she meets, Esperanza is slightly wary around the older neighborhood boys. She is torn between wanting them to notice her and wanting to blend in with the rest of the neighborhood kids. At this crucial stage of adolescence, she is still trying to figure out where childhood ends, where adulthood begins, and which side of the divide she wants to be on.

**Nenny Cordero:** is the youngest of the Cordero children. It is Esperanza's responsibility to look out for her younger sister when they are in the neighborhood, and as such she considers Nenny to be more of a responsibility than a friend. Esperanza is sometimes embarrassed by Nenny's childlike behavior, but there are also times when she welcomes Nenny's point of view (usually when it aligns with her own).

**Carlos Cordero:** One of Esperanza’s brothers. Carlos rarely appears, and Esperanza acknowledges that her brothers live in a separate world of boys.

**Kiki Cordero**: Esperanza’s other brother, who also rarely appears.

**Sally:** is around the same age as Esperanza, but their maturity levels are quite a bit different. While Esperanza still wants to play games with the younger neighborhood kids, Sally is focused on attracting the attention of the teenage boys. This isn't hard, as Sally (according to Esperanza) is gorgeous, with her long black hair and "eyes like Egypt." Sally's father also recognizes his daughter's attractiveness, which is why he insists she be home when she's not at school. His protection hasn't helped; Sally has a reputation among the boys at school. Esperanza wants to be Sally's friend because she thinks they both want more out of life than the barrio can offer them, but it turns out Sally just wants to leave her father's home, even if it means getting married before she's in high school.

**Mama and Papa**: It's clear from her description of her parents that Esperanza feels a lot of affection for them – Esperanza's Mama and Papa are the forces that make the house on Mango Street a home, even when Esperanza feels ashamed. They dream of winning the lottery and being able to buy a beautiful white house for their family. But, in the meantime, Papa works in the gardens of wealthy homes in the city, and Mama cooks and cares for the children. Esperanza's Mama gave up her studies because she says she was ashamed of not having nice clothes. She encourages her daughter not to let shame stop her from achieving her goals, to stay in school and study hard.

**Mamacita:** An overweight neighborhood woman. Her husband worked hard to bring her from Mexico, but once she arrives on Mango Street, Mamacita never leaves the apartment and refuses to learn English

**SYMBOLS**

**Women by Windows :** “looked out the window her whole life, the way so many women sit their sadness on an elbow” (). The window is a symbol of the patriarchy present in Mexican-American culture, which is also seen in Esperanza’s close friend, Sally, who flees her abusive father by marrying a man who forbids her to talk on the phone or look out the window. Esperanza realizes she does not want to become a woman who sits by the window; she wants a house of her own, “only a house quiet as snow, a space for myself to go, clean as paper before the poem.” (108)

**The house:** is a major symbol in the book, as it represents Esperanza’s roots and identity and her eventual acceptance of them

**Metaphor:** At the beginning of the story, Esperanza Cordero dislikes her new house and neighbourhood. Even though her Mexican parents seem to have accomplished the “American Dream” of buying a house, Esperanza describes it as “small and red with tight steps in front and windows so small you’d think they were holding their breath” ( 4). Through this metaphor, it is explored how Esperanza feels confined by the primarily Latino neighbourhood and she is eager to grow up so she can move away and find a place that feels like home.

**Alliteration:** "With my porch and my pillows, my pretty purple petunias" (Cisneros ...).

**Simile:** "Can't you see they smell like a broom" (Cisneros ..).

**Irony**: "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 isn't it" (Cisneros ...).

**Imagery:** "I had to look where she pointed — the third floor, the paint peeling, wooden bars Papa had nailed on the windows so we wouldn't fall out" (Cisneros ..).

## Intro Paragraph

Sandra Cisneros (1954- ) is an American writer and a central contributor to Chicano literature, which emerged during the Chicano Movement that took place in the United States in the 1960s. Chicano literature explores themes of identity, discrimination and cultural -hybridity, emphasizing the validation of the Mexican-American culture in the United States. As a postmodernist author, her writing style is self-reflective and focused on giving a voice to a marginalized group: Mexican-Americans, particularly Mexican-American women. The House on Mango Street (1985) tells the story of Esperanza Cordero, a twelve-year-old Mexican-American girl whose parents bought a house in a Latin neighbourhood in Chicago. As she tells her story, she talks about herself, her dreams, her family and her neighbours. In her coming-of-age novella, made up of an introduction and forty-four vignettes, the author explores through **the use of metaphor asn symbolism** the narrator and main character’s quest for self-knowledge and self-acceptance within her working-class community of Latinos, blacks and immigrants living in a Latino Chicago neighbourhood in Chicago.

### MLA citation

Cisneros, Sandra. *The House on Mango Street*. 1984. Vintage Books, 1991.