...HE HOUSE ON MANGO STREET BY SANDRA CISNEROS SHORT PLOT / CHAPTER SUMMARY (Synopsis) The story is told by Esperanza, and begins when she first moves to Mango Street, a poor, Hispanic neighborhood in Chicago. Esperanza says that she has lived in many different places. She implies that she is close to her family, and describes their interactions and even their hair. She tells us she does not like her name, because it is too long and because it was her grandmother’s name. Her grandmother did not want to get married, but was forced to by Esperanza’s grandfather. Slowly, Esperanza begins to meet people in the neighborhood. She meets Cathy, a stuck-up girl, and Lucy and Rachel, who live across the street. Sisters, these two will become Esperanza’s best friends on Mango Street. They are loud and sassy, just the opposite of Esperanza, but this is what she likes about them. Esperanza talks about her younger sister, Nenny, to whom she feels close in a strange way, even though sometimes they annoy each other. For example, when they visit a used furniture store and the owner plays a music box with music so beautiful Esperanza begins to cry, Nenny naively tries to buy the box. The man says it is not for sale, and Esperanza is embarrassed by her sister. Esperanza describes other people from the neighborhood. Meme Ortiz has a dog that is big and clumsy, just like him. Louie’s cousin got arrested for stealing a car. Marin is waiting for some rich man to find her and take her away from...
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...Herrera-Sobek, María. "On the House on Mango Street." Critical Insights: The House on Mango Street, Salem Press, Oct. 2010, pp. 3-8. EBSCOhost, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=lfh&AN=57353698&site=lrc-live. Maria Herrera- Sobek received a Ph.D. in hispanic language and taught at Harvard and Stanford University. She is a associate vice chancellor for diversity, equality, and academic policy and a professor of Chicana/o studies at University of California. The House on Mango Street was published in 1984. The book blew up literature for Chicana/ Latina authors in the 1980s, acknowledging other writers such as Ana Castillo, Helena Maria Viramontes, Julia Alvarez, and many more. The triumph of The House on Mango Street stayed relevant...
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...The House on Mango Street The House on Mango Street portrays a young Latina, Esperanza Cordero, dreams, hopes, and plans for the future. This coming-of-age novel has her growing up in Chicago with other Chicanos. But she is determined to do better for herself and her family. At the beginning of the book Esperanza is ashamed of the house she has. When people look at it she feels embarrassed that it is the place that she calls home. She wishes that she could live in a "real" house, one that she would be proud of. The house that her parents promised her with a green yard, real stairs, and running water with pipes that worked. She dislikes the house on Mango Street because of its sad appearance and cramped quarters are completely contrary to the idealistic home she always wanted. "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. For the time being, Mama says. Temporary, says Papa. But I know how those things go."I totally understand her feelings. I was embarrassed by my neighborhood. I would tell people I lived in the “ghetto”. My mother would get mad because it wasn’t true. We lived in a very nice two-bedroom apartment on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. Nowadays, people would kill to live in that location. At the end of the story, Esperanza knows she is going to leave The House on Mango Street, but she also realizes that she is going to come back because it did play a huge role in her childhood and...
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...Tiffany Scott English 1020 Dr. Hall 5/10/2015 The House on Mango Street The house on Mango Street was based on the life of a little girl named Sandra Cisneros. She wrote the book based on her life growing up. She was born in Chicago in 1954 where she had six brothers and was the only daughter. Growing up, her mother and father moved Cisneros and her brother around a lot. “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” Cisneros said when explaining all her moves as painful experiences. She found a way to deal with her life by writing. This led her to writing the book, The House on Mango Street. As the story began the writer explained why she had her name. That girl’s name was Esperanza. She was named after her great-grandma. She never knew her great-grandma but she would have really like to have known her. She never liked her named but it did have some meaning to it. Other than it being the name of her great-grandma it also means hope in English and sadness in Spanish. She then explained how they didn’t always live on Mango Street. Before that they lived on Loomis and before that they lived on Keeler Street. But even before that they lived on Paulina Street and that’s all she can remember. This book is written in a very different manner, it seems a lot like a personal diary. The technique of the book is according to a story told from a girl's point of view...
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...are put in situations that force them to chose a path of life. In The House on Mango Street, Esperanza is forced to think and hope about the future, and leaving Mango Street, because she is surrounded by women like her who are pushing her to become an adult. The first example in the book is Cathy. By Cathy leaving the neighborhood, she makes Esperanza realize how much the neighborhood is changing. And, being fortunate enough that her and her family can leave, in a sense makes Esperanza want to leave even more. The second claim is Marin. Marin came to Mango Street to live with her aunt and uncle, but she really wants to go back to Puerto Rico to marry her boyfriend. Another example of someone wanting to leave Mango Street. She wants to leave, get married, and get a job – she is another role model for Esperanza showing her that she needs to start living like an adult. Alicia, a girl just like Esperanza, already has to take care of her own children. When Esperanza sees this, she wants to leave Mango Street more than ever. Although there are plenty reasons and examples to show Esperanza why she needs to leave Mango Street and have a better life, when Esperanza goes to Elenita to read her future, she tells her that home is in her heart and that she will probably never leave Mango Street for the rest of her life, but Esperanza does not want to hear that, she wants to hear that she will leave Mango Street someday, so she asks for another reading, and pays five dollars just to...
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...Simon Adelle UCOR 102 Paper 3 Professor Marcum Making It in A Man’s World April 29, 2013 “The House on Mango Street” by Sandra Cisneros exposes the life of the main character, Esperanza, for one year as she struggles with trying to find her place in America as a Chicana young girl while also coming of age. The novel starts the day Esperanza and her family of six move into a house on Mango Street, and immediately she expresses her antipathy for not only the house, but also for the area in which they move into and the people around who judge them because of their ethnicity. The story is not told in the traditional format of a continuous story divided into chapters, but rather Cisneros uses forty-four vignettes to allow for the reader to fully understand why Esperanza has the struggles that she has. Along with Cisneros’ illustrating Esperanza’s looking for her identity through images of Esperanza’s thoughts and female obedience, symbolism of violence, legs, the Statue for Liberty, and Nenny, and diction of Spanish words, not using quotation marks, and a maturing tone, she also uses these them to permeate Esperanza’s desperation to leave Mango Street throughout the whole novel. Cisneros’ use of vignettes highlights important moments in Esperanza’s life that emphasize how she develops over the course of a year. Cisneros uses the brevity of the vignettes to enhance the imagery to give the most vivid image through her limited amount of words for...
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...Throughout the book, The House on Mango Street, by Sandra Cisnero, multiple themes appear. The most important theme that is presented throughout the book is the theme that people shouldn’t let their environment control who they are, because most people, depending on what environment they live in, will have stereotypes, and most people let this affect they way they live. Also, a lot of people in life just want to fit in, and when it’s too late, they realize that life’s not about fitting in. And lastly, life isn’t about living large and having a fancy house. It’s about making the most of what you got. To start, at the beginning of the book, Esperanza wants a new house, because the people around her told her that the house she lived in was abominable. They thought of Esperanza as trash because she lived in a poverty-filled household. This made Esperanza feel like she wasn’t adequate. An example from the book includes the time one of the nuns from Esperanza’s school dissed her on her house, saying, “You live there?” Esperanza felt awful, and realized, “The way...
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...In the novel, The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros, future opportunities are portrayed that have many obstacles due to Esperanza’s poverty and home life. Esperanza has future opportunities that could be life changing, Rachel is limited because she speaks very little English, and Sally, who is inexplicably beaten by her father, somehow finds a way to escape. There are multiple people that have a chance at having a better life, but are instead halted by obstacles in their paths. Esperanza longs for a better future. Esperanza, being as poor as she is can’t leave right away “One day I will pack my bags of books and paper. One day I will say goodbye to Mango” (Cisneros 110). She obviously can’t leave Mango street now or else...
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...There are a lot of conflicts in the novels The House On Mango Street and Of Mice And Men. From people stealing a car to killing your own best friend. These conflicts can bring even more struggles, such as not being able to make your dreams come to life. People would do a lot to make their lives happier and easier but to do that you might have to go through a lot of problems that get in your way. Just like Esperanza and George. These two characters go through a lot of problems to make their lives better and achieve their dreams. Getting raped, killing your own best friend and living in poverty are three events that are good examples of struggles hindering them form achieving their dreams. Getting raped is something nobody should have to go through. It’s sad that some people have to go through...
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...Why Minerva Opens the Door for Her Husband The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros is a novel about escape and identity for many characters, including Minerva, a poet. As Esperanza grows up on Mango Street, she meets many potential role models. From Rafaela to Mamacita, many of the women on Mango Street are waiting by windows. One of them is Minerva, who writes poems, a teenager trapped in an abusive relationship, with kids and her own guilt stopping her from fighting back. She writes poems to provide a semblance of freedom to herself, but never actually believes in her ability to leave. Because Minerva’s only escape from her abusive husband is inside her head, she lacks the self-efficacy she needs to break free. Minerva has only one...
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...In the book called, “The House on Mango Street” by Sandra Cisneros, the main character, Esperanza has to share a room with her siblings because her family is broke. Esperanza talks about how she is poor growing up in a Chicago neighborhood. She was always sad to point at her house when others asked where do you live. She always wished for the stairs on the inside of the house and not on the outside. This made make her upset, and that might have changed her way of thinking. It then accelerates to a house to herself. The theme of the book is, being poor may lead to thinking selfishly. In the vignette, “A House of My Own”, Esperanza lead to thinking selfishly and now she only wants things for herself. On page 108, she states, “not a man’s house”...
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...The House On Mango Street. In this book, The House On Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros. Writes about a latina girl names Esperanza who shares her struggles in showing who and what she will become. What I need to prove in this essay is that, Esperanza’s negative view of herself slowly changes through out the story and that she begins to focus more on her community, place and that she begins to focus more on her community, the people , the community and the places within it. First, “There I had to look where she pointed – the third floor, the paint peeling, wooden bars papa had nailed to the windows so we wouldn’t be able to fall out. You live there? The way she said it made me feel like nothing. There. I lived there. I nodded.” Esperanza feels...
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...In the coming of age story by Sandra Cisneros, The House on Mango Street, covers a year in the life of a 12 year old girl named Esperanza. This novel, a series of vignettes, explores the life of a young girl in a poor Latino neighborhood in Chicago. Esperanza is destined to escape the run down, crowded home on Mango Street one day. She yearns for freedom, money, safety, friendships, boyfriends, and most importantly a nice home of her own. This is a story of a young girl’s struggle to find her own identity, conveyed through a vast array of complex themes. How do you express yourself as a native Spanish speaker in an English speaking world? “No speak English,” “No habla Español.” How do you eat, how do you get directions, make friends, succeed in school, or scream for help? In The House on Mango Street, the characters feel suffocated at times from their powerlessness over an alien language. They are lowered into the pit of society. They become prisoners...
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...The House On Mango Street, written by Sandra Cisneros, follows a young girl named Esperanza through her coming of age. The Absolutely True Story of a Part-Time Indian, written by Sherman Alexie, also follows their young protagonist, Junior, throughout his coming of age. The setting, conflict, and characterization of both novels intertwine and build up one another. The final picture created in each book, once these three aspects come together, have little differences; and overall leave the reader with a similar take away. Mango Street, the setting of The House On Mango Street is a poor neighborhood. The setting of The Absolutely True Story of a Part-Time Indian, is an indian reservation, which is also impoverished. The state of poverty in this indian reservation is shown when the author writes, “My school and my tribe are so poor and sad that we have to study from the same dang books our parents studied from. That is absolutely the saddest thing in the world.” (Alexie 31). In the quote the author is describing the moment Junior opened up his geometry book and saw his mother’s name written on the cover. The fact that both settings are poor expose...
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...The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros is a fictional novel about a twelve year old girl, Esperanza Cordero, growing up in a poor Latino neighborhood in Illinois, on Mango Street. Esperanza dislikes and is ashamed of her house on Mango Street because it represents her family’s poverty. During this time, in the 1980s, all women’s freedoms are restricted and controlled by the men. In her neighborhood, most women are restrained by their fathers or husbands, leading them to wait for someone to change the present society and let women be free. However, Esperanza is different from all of the women and strives to be independent of her poverty and men. Esperanza tells the story about her struggling to live in her neighborhood on Mango Street...
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