The House on  Mango Street

Summary

 Esperanza Cordero recollects her life living on Mango Street and all the people she meets while there. Although her family has not always lived there, it is perhaps the most important place she has lived, for it represents her heritage and upbringing. In small vignettes, Esperanza tells the tales of all the people and experiences she has with her little sister, Nenny. She meets Cathy, a wealthier girl who makes Esperanza feels negatively about her home and moves away when the neighborhood gets bad. She meets Sally, a girl with painted makeup like the Egyptian Queens, who comes from a strict religious family who beats her. Sally later becomes a loose woman, lies to Esperanza, and moves away to get married before the end of eighth grade.

Esperanza and Nenny become friends with two sisters named Lucy and Rachel (from Texas), with whom they ride bikes and have many adventures. Esperanza is also friends with a girl named Alicia, who is terrified of the rats in her apartment, and later shares her poetry with Esperanza.

Esperanza also discovers boys through several women and men who live on the street. Marin, the girlfriend of Louie, tells her about makeup and nylons, before she is sent away because of bad behavior. Elenita, the fortune teller, informs Esperanza that she desires a large house and has many wishes to fulfill. Rafaela and Ruthie passively instruct Esperanza on how not to marry too young, while her own mother expresses her deep wishes and desires for her to live a better life.

As Esperanza meets people, tries to fit in, feels like an ugly duckling, and craves the touch of a man, she realizes that the neighborhood she hates and the house of which she is ashamed is not terrible. After the three sisters advise her to remember her family and remember where she came from, Esperanza realizes that she will leave Mango Street. However, despite the impending travels and stories she will create and tell, Mango Street will never leave her.

BookRags, Inc. "The House on Mango Street Book Notes Summary." Book Rags. 13 Dec. 2008
         <http://www.bookrags.com/notes/hms/sum.html>.

Author Biography

Sandra Cisneros was born in Chicago in 1954, to a Mexican father and a Chicana mother; she has six brothers and is the only daughter in the family. She moved frequently during her childhood and visited Mexico often, to visit her paternal grandmother. Like Esperanza, the main character in The House on Mango Street, Cisneros recalls these moves as painful experiences: "'Because we moved so much, and always in neighborhoods that appeared like France after World War II--empty lots and burned-out-buildings--I retreated inside myself'" (Sagel 74). Cisneros found an outlet in writing; in high school she wrote poetry and was the literary magazine editor. She earned a BA in English from Loyola University of Chicago in 1976. However, it wasn't until working on her master's degree at the University of Iowa Writers Workshop in the late 1970's that she says she found her particular voice, as a working-class, Mexican-American woman with an independent sexuality. The experience of recognizing her difference from other students at Iowa eventually led to the writing of The House on Mango Street, which was published by Arte Publico Press of Houston in 1984 and won the Before Columbus Foundation's American Book Award in in 1985. Returning to Chicago after graduate school, Cisneros worked various jobs that engaged with the Chicano community, including teaching high school drop outs; she also returned to Loyola University as an administrative assistant. In the late 1980s, she divided her time between California and Texas, earning a variety of fellowships and guest lectureships. She won two fellowships from the National Endowment for the arts, one for fiction (1982) and one for poetry (1987). During this time, she wrote her first well received book of poetry, My Wicked, Wicked Ways (1987). She also met her literary agent, Susan Bergholz, who after seeing a small packet of short stories encouraged Cisneros to develop them into what was to become Woman Hollering Creek (1991). This collection won the PEN Center West Award for Best Fiction of 1991, the Quality Paperback Book Club New Voices Award, the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award, the Lannan Foundation Literary Award, and was selected as a noteworthy book of the year by The New York Times and the American Library Journal. In 1995, Cisneros won the prestigious MacArthur Foundation Fellowship; one hour after winning the $225,000 grant, she was back in San Antonio--where she has made her home in this decade--lecturing to students at a local arts center. Much as the writer Esperanza promises to return to Mango Street at the end of that novel, Cisneros has continually returned to her community, showing the powerful connection between art, politics, and everyday life.

Juffer, Jane. "Sandra Cisneros: Biographical Note." Modern American Poetry. 24 Oct. 2008. The Univeristy of Illinois. 13 Dec. 2008
            <http://www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/poets/a_f/cisneros/bio.htm>.


Review

The American Book Award winning "The House on Mango Street" (1985) by Sandra Cisneros is known as the best Chicano novel to date. It has received more critical attention than any other Chicano novel. With a background of a contemporary Latino neighborhood in a big American city, The House on Mango Street is composed of 44 interrelated stories narrated by Esperanza, the female "I" and central consciousness of the novel. In each story Esperanza states her own perception of socio-cultural context, that is, the barrio, its people, its conditions of life, and how she is inextricably connected to that context, an engagement with her immediate surroundings that brings about a consciousness into her own identity as a woman and as a Chicane. Sandra Cisneros gives voice to the ordinary experiences of a young Chicano by letting Esperanza tell her own story, thus articulating the subjective experiences of the female "I" who resists entrapment within socio-cultural norms. The narrating "I" stands in a dialectic relationship to her socio-cultural context.

The House on Mango Street
is Esperanza’s story. It begins when she first arrives at the house, a dilapidated building in a Hispanic ghetto in Chicago. She tells us about the many different times she has moved, and that she has always wanted a house, but not a house like this one, which is small and sad. This wish for a house will follow Esperanza throughout the novel. The main theme of the novel is Esperanza’s increasing maturity with time. It is evident throughout the book, as Esperanza talks to older female characters, trying to determine who her role models will be or as she overcomes her insecurities and learns about her own strengths. Esperanza attaches meaning to where she lives. She takes it personally as an extension of herself. Thus, the fact that she is unhappy at her Mango Street house is a major point of contention in the novel, and her dreams of another home parallel her dreams of becoming who she wants to be.

Lastly, chapter 3 concludes with a vivid metaphor; the author describes her status of waiting for a best friend. This description reveals that the narrator singles herself out for her differences, of which she seems keenly aware. She also considers her distinctions as a source of isolation, as she is alone, visibly different, and raised high for all to see. The narrator longs to escape; her way of being, like that of a helium balloon, demands it. The second component of this metaphor is the anchor hindering the red balloon''s flight. On the clearest level of meaning, this anchor is Nenny. The narrator''s responsibilities to act as both friend and guardian to her little sister are a chore which limit her possibilities for finding other friendships. As Nenny is a family member and the narrator''s responsibility for her sister''s well being is mandated by the family structure and separation of duties along gender lines, the anchor is also a metaphor for her family.

In the 4th chapter we finally learn the narrator''s name, Esperanza, which in English means " hope." The meaning of Esperanza''s name is a series of metaphors and similes. In Spanish, Esperanza means "too many letters"; on the literal level, this means that Esperanza feels her name is too long. So too, this is also a metaphor for hope and expectation, as "letters" could also indicated correspondences full of promises. Esperanza also portrays her name as mundane with the metaphor "the number nine", a symbol of the ordinary that indicates just how many letters comprise "too many". Hence, the metaphor "a muddy color" indicates that Esperanza sees no beauty or uniqueness in her name. Once again, the narrator resents her perceived commonality. Esperanza''s name is also related to nostalgia. Esperanza sees her link in a legacy, she hears her own sadness and that of her family in her father''s weekly tradition and she recognizes the uncanny parallels of name, fortune, and ches with her great-grandmother.

The second to last paragraph enlightens the reader as to why a name that means "hope" could transmit such a sense of loss. The contrast between the harsh English mispronunciations to the melodic sounds of Spanish is another music metaphor celebrating the poignant emotion invoked by the sounds of Spanish. The repetition of metaphors indicates that the name Esperanza symbolizes the hope for the future that took Papa out of Mexico, and the disillusionment he, and consequently his family, experienced when the dream was translated, its strength and beauty destroyed, into English.

Finally, The House on Mango Street appears to wander casually from subject to subject, from hair to hips, from clouds to feet, from an invalid aunt to a girl named Sally, who has "eyes like Egypt" and whose father sometimes beats her. But this apparent randomness disguises an artful exploration of themes of individual identity and communal loyalty, estrangement and loss, escape and return, the lure of romance and the dead end of sexual inequality and oppression. The House on Mango Street is also a book about a culture, that of Chicanos or Mexican-Americans, that has long been veiled by demeaning stereotypes and afflicted by internal ambivalence.

Alam, Syed S. "The House on Mango Street Book Review." Shvoong: Summaries and Short Reviews.
            17 Nov. 2007. 13 Dec. 2008 <http://www.shvoong.com/books/novel/1707321-house-mango-
            street/>.

Historical Links

Cisneros plays on her dual Mexican American heritage throughout her work, and The House on Mango Street in particular reflects the experience of Mexicans in the United States. In the midnineteenth century, Mexico ceded its northern territories (present-day California, Arizona, and New Mexico) to the United States at the end of the Mexican War, and Mexican landowners lost many of their rights under the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. From about 1900 to 1920, immigrants from Mexico were actively recruited into the United States as low-cost labor for railroad, mining, and other industries, especially throughout the southwestern United States. Mexican immigration was widespread and unregulated through the 1920s, when immigration from Mexico and some other countries hit its peak. Between World War I and World War II, however, Mexican immigration came to a halt due in part to the pressures of the Great Depression, and Mexican Americans faced repatriation, poverty, and rampant discrimination.

Despite their contribution and service to the U.S. Army during World War II, Mexican Americans continued to face discrimination upon returning home after World War II. For example, many Mexican Americans were treated like second-class citizens. And throughout the fifties and sixties, despite their eagerness to integrate more fully into American society, Mexican Americans were still treated as "outsiders" by mainstream American culture. Despite their push for civil rights throughout the 1960s and the 1970s, many Chicanos still faced discrimination that limited opportunities for advancement. By 1983, when The House on Mango Street was published, stringent U.S. immigration laws had long limited the number of Mexicans who were allowed to immigrate to the United States. Those who had immigrated legally or been born in America still experienced stereotyping and biases in American culture at large. In "Those Who Don't," Cisneros evokes the stereotyping of Mexican Americans: "Those who don't know any better come into our neighborhood scared. They think we're dangerous. They think we will attack them with shiny knives."

Because of the discrimination often leveled at Spanish-speaking populations by English-speaking Americans, many Mexican Americans choose to resist speaking Spanish except among family within the privacy of their homes. Cisneros, for example, remembers that she only spoke Spanish with her father at home, while otherwise being fully integrated within the mainstream American educational system. On the other hand, other Mexican Americans, particularly those of the older generations who retained a nostalgia for their mother country, never relinquished the use of Spanish as their primary tongue. In The House on Mango Street, for example, Mamacita consciously refused to speak English because for her it represented a blatant rejection of her past and her identity, and she limited her English vocabulary to "He not here," "No speak English," and "Holy smokes." Esperanza's father remembers eating nothing but "hamandeggs" when he first arrived in the United States because it was the only English phrase he knew. In the United States today, there is a renewed interest among the younger generation of Mexican Americans to learn and more fully appreciate the Spanish language.

The largest number of Mexican Americans in the United States are concentrated in southern California and Texas, with another sizable population in New York City. As one of the largest cities in the United States, Chicago historically has also attracted immigrants from around the world, including those from Mexico. Cisneros and her mother were born in the United States, as are many of the characters in The House on Mango Street. Nevertheless, they retain strong ties with their Mexican heritage and are integrated into the Mexican American communities throughout the country. In different parts of the country, these groups are referred to as "Mexican American," "Mexicanos," "Chicanos," and sometimes by the more general terms "Hispanics" or "Latinos," which collectively describes people from those cultures colonized by Spain from the fifteenth century to the present, including Cuba, Puerto Rico, Mexico, and many other countries. The population of Hispanics in the United States continues to swell, and by some estimates, they will make up about thirteen percent of the nation's population by the early years of the twenty-first century.

Historically, Mexican American men and women have suffered negative stereotyping and prejudices that prevented them from securing desirable jobs and being upwardly mobile within the society. Therefore, many remain concentrated in low-income neighborhoods like the one portrayed in The House on Mango Street. Poverty is a reality faced by many Mexican American populations living in the United States. In The House on Mango Street, the theme of poverty pervades the stories. In "Alicia Who Sees Mice," for example, the mice are a symbol of poverty. Alicia, who stays up late studying because she "doesn't want to spend her whole life in a factory or behind a rolling pin," sees the mice scurrying around after dark, a symbol of her circumstances in the neighborhood. In The House on Mango Street, the source of Esperanza's embarrassment about her house and her circumstances derives from the poverty that many Mexican Americans face. In "Bums in the Attic," the economic disparity between "people who live on hills" and those who live in the barrio is clear.

The role of women within the history of the Hispanic community is significant. Although in The House on Mango Street and other works by Cisneros, some Mexican American women are portrayed as trapped within a cycle of socialization, Cisneros noted in a 1992 interview in Interviews with Writers of the Post-Colonial World, "I have to say that the traditional role is kind of a myth. The traditional Mexican woman is a fierce woman. There's a lot of victimization but we are also fierce. We are very fierce."

Cisneros says she was influenced by American and British writers throughout high school, and she remembers reading works such as Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. But only when she was introduced to the Chicago writing scene in college and graduate school did Cisneros come in contact with Chicano writers. Later, Chicano writers like Gary Soto, Loma Dee Cervantes, and Alberto Ríos were also among her circle of colleagues. Today, Sandra Cisneros stands foremost among Chicana writers who emerged in the 1980s, including Ana Castillo, Denise Chávez, and Gloria Anzaldúa.

"The House on Mango Street (Historical Context)." Notes on Novels. Answers Corporation, 2006. 
            Answers.com
13 Dec. 2008.http://www.answers.com/topic/the-house-on-mango-street-novel-5