House on Mango Street By Sandra Cisneros

The Author: Born: Chicago, l 954 Early life: ◦ 6 brothers, felt isolated ◦ constant migration of her family between Mexico and the USA was "always straddling two countries. . . but not belonging to either culture. "

Cisneros's work deals with: qformation of (Chicana) identity qchallenges of being caught between Mexican & Anglo-American cultures qfacing the misogynist attitudes in both cultures qexperiencing poverty

Education & Experience B. A. English and M. F. A. Creative Writing ◦ Teacher-creative writing ◦ counselor to high-school dropouts ◦ artist-in-the schools ◦ college recruiter ◦ arts administrator ◦ visiting writer at a number of universities including UC, Berkeley

Cisneros Books & Trivia Other works: ◦ ◦ ◦ Bad Boys My Wicked, Wicked Ways Woman Hollering Creek Hairs/Pelitos Caramelo House on Mango Street- first published in 1984, won American Book Award in 1985, and is required reading in middle schools, high schools and universities across country San Antonio, Texas “Mexican-pink” house She also built her office in the backyard & painted it Mexican-marigold because the “colors make [her] happy”

Genre Autobiography- A little girl tells the story of growing up in a bad neighborhood, and how poetry becomes her ticket out of there. Coming-of-age story: difficult teenage years and learning about what it means to be an adult

Narrator young girl, Esperanza Cordero ◦ from her point of view ◦ explains what her new house on Mango Street looks like and shares her personal feelings of loneliness and shame with us. ◦ sometimes a paragraph or whole chapter, Esperanza provides us with a seemingly impossible perspective. She writes about things she couldn't possibly have seen, because she wasn't there. Unreliable?

Setting Esperanza and family just moved to a poor, Latino neighborhood (author’s hometown, Chicago) Late 1960 s- clues: the car Louie steals, the song Marin is constantly singing to herself Most action happens elsewhere in the neighborhood – on the street, on Edna's back porch, in Gil's junk shop, in the tree in Meme's backyard, at school, the monkey garden next door. Esperanza's community plays a large part in establishing her home. Esperanza is free to run around the neighborhood shows her independence ◦ Other women in community are confined to the home (husbands, familial obligations, or, foreignness and fear

Title The House on Mango Street is about a home, a family, and a girl who wants to feel like she belongs to community as our vision of suburban cuteness is crushed, so is Esperanza's. And ultimately, this isn't the story of a house – it's the story of a girl, her disappointment, and where it leads her.

Theme 1: Identity The House on Mango Street revolves around one girl and her struggle to fit the puzzle pieces of her identity – ethnicity, gender, cultural inheritance, sexuality, and economic status, to name a few examples – into a coherent whole. Esperanza learns that, more than anything else, what defines her is her ability to tell stories. Her writing allows her to reconcile herself to those aspects of her background that made her feel uncomfortably different from her peers, and she emerges a confident writer with ambitious plans.

Theme 2: Dreams, Hopes, and Plans symbolized by a house For parents, happiness/security is a white house, big enough for their whole family. Esperanza’s dream is to have a house to herself to write in

Theme 3: Society and Class Reader figures out that characters are poor by pulling clues from the text. Ex: crumbling, run-down apartments/houses. ◦ Envy beautiful, well-kept houses in nice neighborhoods of the city.

Theme 4: Innocence a coming-of-age story about a young girl loss of innocence and familiarization with sex. ◦ Esperanza tries to cling to a childhood, , but threatened by sexual violence (rape) as soon as she enters adolescence.

Theme 5: Gender Female characters are oppressed. ◦ Men beat wives/daughters, and confine them to the home. Refuses to conform to the female expectations by getting married or acting feminine. Defies gender roles and remains independent as an act of rebellion, and a source of power.

Themes 6: Women & Femininity Beauty=source of feminine power, she admires and envies beauty in her female characters But the beautiful women suffer the most at the hands of men. Esperanza seeks a new forms of feminine power that will allow her to be independent

Themes 7: Foreignness and 'The Other' explores loneliness, isolation, shame, and a sense of not belonging. describes social attitudes towards foreignness, from fear on the part of white people who venture into the Latino neighborhood by mistake, to apathy on the part of hospital workers called on to tend to a dying Mexican man, to condescension on the part of neighbors like Cathy who are eager to make themselves look superior in some way.

Theme 8: The Home overcome isolation and experience belonging, (she needs to feel at home) a home can explain a past that she can be proud of, and inspire her to have a vision of a home in her future

Theme 9: Family a sense of belonging BUT she doesn't always feel close to her family. ◦ She thinks her little sister Nenny is a drag, she rolls her eyes at her parents' long-shot dreams of winning the lottery, and part of her hates going to visit her sick aunt in her smelly old apartment.

Theme 10: Friendship wide variety of friendships over the course of the novel that seem to increase in intensity and meaning. babysitting her sister, to connections made with neighborhood girls over a shared bicycle, to the empathy and advice offered to her by Alicia, Esperanza grows more and more mature in her friendships.