The House on Mango Street

In The House on Mango Street, Sandra Cisneros tells about her experiences in a series of vignettes. She writes about her life while living on this street we have all become so familiar with, Mango Street.  In the book Esperanza struggles to believe that the house on Mango Street is truly her home. “I knew that I had to have a house. A real house.  One that I could point to. But this isn’t it. The house on Mango Street isn’t it.”(pg.5). She wants more, not a house that she is ashamed to live in. And although Esperanza hopes for and wants more, for now she is only a child and when growing up, there are certain limitations to being a women in her culture. But Esperanza soon finds out she does not want to let the limitations get to her.

The house on Mango Street is not her home, Esperanza dreamed of so much more.  Her parents would tell her about the house they would eventually own for themselves, a good life style. But unlike the house that her parents mention, this house lies of Mango Street; it’s a sad red house with small spaces and the bricks, that are supposed to be compact, crumbling.  Her neighborhood is filled with neighbors who are evidentially not

wealthy; many of them showing the same cultural background as Esperanza and her family.

While living there Esperanza is surrounded by many female figures. But all of them have been tamed. All have been tamed by their husband or father. She tells about her great-grandmother, who she is named after. She was a “wild horse of a woman” but when Esperanza’s great-grandfather became her husband all that freedom and independence was thrown out the window. She sat at the window all her life thinking of what could have been, never forgiving Esperanza’s great-grandfather.  And like her great- grandmother, many of the women in Esperanza’s family and on her street share the same story. “I have inherited her name, but I don’t want to inherit her place by the window” (11) This is one of the lines that I like most in this memoir because It shows Esperanza starting to be independent and knowing what she wants in the future. It shows the path she wants to take is a successful one unlike most of the women around her.

Esperanza knows of women who cry into the night, cry for their home, women that are abused by their father or husband, women that sit at their window wishing for more.  And it is these women that impel Esperanza to wanting more. Esperanza knows that her future does not consist of any of these things. She doesn’t  want it to consist of any of these things, she wants to be free, make her own profit; she does not want to be tamed, stopped by anything or anyone. She then realizes what will set her free is her writing. What had been just a pass time and something she enjoyed doing would be her future and hope of exceeding the expectations there was for a women in her neighborhood and culture.

At the end of the book it is truly Mango Street that has changed Esperanza. The people there have shaped her dreams and hope of becoming a free woman. At the end of the day, Esperanza decides, the house on Mango Street is truly her home. Where she will come back to after many years, and think of as her childhood, where she belongs. “They will not know I have gone away to come back.”(110)