It has been difficult to find what’s my favorite book until now. To be honest, I was not really happy when reading the first two books. But since Down These Mean Streets until now, it is very difficult to choose one that I have liked the most, because all of them were really good. The last three books have surprised me and helped me analyze some social issues and topics trough different perspectives.

However, when it comes to The House on Mango Streets, I feel this book touched a very sensitive point inside me. One part that really makes me identify with Esperanza is when she fights so fiercely for going out from Mango Street. She wants to go away and have a nice house of her own. But, she is not only dreaming about that, as her mother used to do. Esperanza does not leave anything by chance,  she is persevering and determined to achieve that; and eventually it is nice that at end of the book she achieves this dream.

Yet, another common message that this book outlines, is  that Esperanza should not forget who she is and where she comes from. Almost at the end of the book, we can read this: “You will always be Esperanza. You will always be Mango Street. You can’t erase what you know. You can’t forget who you are. […] You must remember to come back. For the ones who cannot leave as easily as you” (p. 105). This part of the book is kind of repetitive. Esperanza is always expected to come back to her origins and don’t ever forget that. It is as if she has, in a sense, “the duty” to help the ones that are still in Mango Street, the ones that do not born with the same destiny of Esperanza, and who sadly have to live hard moments in that special but also difficult neighborhood that characterizes Mango Street.

This message is kind of intriguing because I’ve also had the need to come back to my country and help those people who did not have the opportunity to go abroad and study in a University like UBC. However, in the case of Esperanza it is difficult to know for sure if this is a personal duty she imposed for herself, or if it is more like a duty that society expects her to meet.

One final though I have in my mind is that it is confusing to know for sure if Esperanza  is the one that achieves his goal, meaning that she has the agency to carve her own destiny, or if it is luck that plays on her favor and permits her to go out of Mango Street because “she is special”, as one of the three  old women  told her.

I think it is needed more blogs to talk about this book. I have focused more on Esperanza and on the topics mentioned before. But, there are many stories more in this book that are also valuable to analyze. Esperanza’s neighbors have also very interesting, and (some even sad) lives. Sally is one of the characters that really caught my attention in this book, as well as Ruthie.

I really enjoyed this book, hope you also enjoyed it

This blog post is going to be a bunch of random thoughts mushed together!

I remember one of my little sisters bringing home “The House on Mango Street” in grade 7 and asking me for help with the assigned questions.  She kept saying she didn’t understand the point of the book, and didn’t know why the chapters were so short.  Looking back, I can understand why someone in grade 7 might not understand the ‘point’ of this particular book.  The problem is that they are always looking for a point.  It’s interesting that at the beginning Sandra Cisneros even says that she didn’t want to write a book that “a reader won’t understand and would feel ashamed for not understanding” (xvii).  On the topic of shame, one of the biggest ‘themes’ (not sure if it’s a theme in the book but whatever) that stood out to me throughout this book was in fact shame.  Esperanza talks about her aunt being ashamed, herself being ashamed, etc.

Just like with Piri and Antonio, we are able to follow Esperanza’s  ‘journey’ and witness her growth; however with this book, for first time we are presented with a female protagonist.  One part that really stood appears in what’s perhaps one of the shortest chapters I have ever seen: “Those Who Don’t” (28). The chapter begins with the following: “Those who don’t know any better come into our neighbourhood scared.  They think we are dangerous.  They think we will attack them with skinny knives.  They are stupid people who are lost and got here by mistake.” (28).  It’s interesting that Esperanza uses “we”; she clearly identifies very closely with her community, but on the other hand, we see later on that her own community also causes her problems.  What’s clear at the beginning is that she wants to be involved and play an active role in her community.  Esperanza is also always talking about what she wants in the future; it’s as if she is rushing the experience of growing up.  I think this is a very relatable feeling for many young girls.  On page 73 she says: “I want to be all new and shiny”.  In other chapters she talks about wanting to own her own house, being held by a boy, etc.  She also doesn’t consider herself like other girls, and she makes it clear; she doesn’t even “cross the street like other girls” (72).  Esperanza seems to like having responsibilities, no matter how small or big they are.  “One day I’ll own my own house, but I won’t forget who I am or where I came from.” (87).  This is just one example where I began to think about the whole idea of ‘pride’ and the role it has played in this book, as well as the others.  My question is: what role does pride play in this book?

On page 56 we learn that her abuelito has died and because she is the oldest, the responsibility is on her to tell the others.  She has never seen her father cry before, she has never seen him vulnerable; now she is holding him in her arms. I remember seeing my dad cry for the second time when my grandmother died; it’s such a strange feeling seeing your parents in a vulnerable state, and having to comfort them instead of the other way around.  I don’t think Esperanza ever thought she would see her father like that and have to comfort him, after all, he is a ‘man’.

I was thinking about a question Jon asked us last week:  is this Esperanza’s story or is this every young female Chicano’s story?

I can honestly say that The House on Mango Street was not what I expected when I began reading the book. Perhaps this is because I kind of did it backwards, as I read analyses on the book for the Wiki Project before reading the actual text, so I was expecting more of a novel that was written like others we have read in the class. So, its short, poetic-like narrative caught me by surprise.

It certainly is an interesting and intriguing way to write; not quite a novel, nor a short story. Not quiet a poem, nor a play. While it is a length of a novel, it is made up of short pieces, each of which have rhythm and rhyme, but are all connected by a unified story line. One article poses the question, “Is this a novel or a mere collection of letters?”, and this is a valid question.

The book is a testimony to her life – the poverty, cultural suppression, gender inequalities, her fears, her doubts, her bravery in overcoming obstacles and social constructs. Perhaps, then, the fragmented and unconventional way of the narrative is a reflection of the multi-faceted and fragmented life that she has experienced. One thing that I hadn’t noticed when reading this novel is the fact that each chapter (if that’s even what they’re called) can be read individually without any context. Apparently, this was purposeful on Cisneros’ part as she stated in an interview that she “wanted to write a collection which could be read at any random point without having any knowledge of what came before or after. Or that could be read as a series to tell one big story. I wanted stories like poems, compact and lyrical and ending with reverberation.” To me, this speaks to how great and skilled of a writer she really is, as making the individual parts seem whole by themselves, while also making them a congruent and continuous full story, is no easy task. This might be a stretch, but perhaps this is symbolic or reflective of her (and everyone’s) identity – we have snap shots of experiences in our lives that can be viewed as an episodic memory, one that holds part of who we are, but we can also view those memories as a continuous lifeline that makes us up as a whole person; we are both defined as those individual memories that can be recalled and retold without much context, yet we are also defined by all of them at once.

Before I end this post, I would also like to comment on the name Esperanza. On page 11, she describes the meaning of her name: “In English my name means hope. In Spanish it means too many letters. It means sadness, it means waiting. It was my great-grandmother’s name and now it is mine. She looked out the window all her life, the way so many women sit their sadness on an elbow …. I have inherited her name, but I don’t want to inherit her place by the window”. The inheritance of this name also means that she has inherited the social constructs surrounding it – submission of women in a world of patriarchy and cultural suppression. In other words, she has inherited the “sadness” and “waiting” that is present in the lives of women in the patriarchal world she lived in. However, she goes on to say that she would “like to baptize [herself] under a new name, a name more like the real me, the one nobody sees. Esperanza as Lisandra or Martiza or Zeze the X. Yes. Zeze the X will do.” I find it interest that she provides no explanation of where those desired names come from nor what they mean to her, but I think this chapter really highlights her resistance against the cultural constraints that hold her and her immense desire to break free.

As far as I’m concerned, The House on Mango Street is a book about the need to escape. Throughout the book, the narrator expresses, through various metaphors and direct allusions, her desire to be free and to escape from this miserable life in this poor neighborhood of Chicago. What does Esperanza want to escape from? The book begins with a description of her intense disappointment at the discovery of her new home on Mango Street. Throughout the book, Esperanza expresses her desire to escape the poverty and detrimental living conditions associated with her home. In addition, she wants to escape from the neighborhood in which she lives, frequently expressing her feeling that she does not belong there (even though she expresses her attachment to her community). Last but not least, Esperanza wants to escape the “traditional” patriarchal roles that oppressed Chicana women. To clarify this point, I think it is important to point out that most of the chapters begin with a female character’s name and that most of the book describes in negative terms the events that happen to these women. Every female character is trapped by abusive husband or father. It is interesting to note that Esperanza describes different ways for women to achieve their freedom, but not all of them are conclusive. One of the possible ways would be the possibility for beautiful girls/women to marry a man. However, in all cases, for example in the case of Sally, they try through this marriage to escape from a reality of misery (because of poverty or physical abuse) but end up trapped in similar conditions. In the end, by creating her own story, Esperanza creates her own solution to escape this trap. Two quotes from the book struck me. The first is on page 89: “I have begun my own quiet war. Simple. Sure, I am one who leaves the table like a man, without putting back the char or picking up the plate”. The other is page 108: “Not a flat. Not an apartment in back. Not a man’s house. Not a daddy’s. A house all my own. With […] My books and my stories”. These two sentences clearly define the message of the book. If the woman wants to escape the traditional expectations of gender roles, she must take her own destiny into her own hands and break this dependency on the male figure.

Even more interestingly, Esperanza describes the means by which she expresses her desire to escape. I noticed that the window metaphor is recurrent throughout the book. The window symbolizes the trap in which all the women in the book are stuck, because of their violent partners, but at the same time it represents their deep desire to escape from this reality. Another omnipresent symbol is that of the trees whose “only reason is to be and to be”. The trees represent Esperanza’s desire to get out of this dependency by herself and for herself. Finally, her books, stories and poems are a practical way to escape her reality and express who she really is.

(I should precise that I am writing this post at Amsterdam airport (my second Paris-Lyon flight has been cancelled and replaced by 2 other flights Paris-Amsterdam and Amsterdam-Lyon) and I have not slept more than 24 hours. So, if you could be indulgent aha).