<!-- please note that only "Name", Author", "Publisher" and "Pub date" are mandatory, "Genre" although technically optional is really strongly recommended. Each of the other field can be input as blanks and input can be marked with wiki links (e.g.
Author name). Also any edition specific information should prefer the first edition information if available. This can make use of Hardback and Paperback 1st editions.-->
The House on Mango Street is a coming-of-age
novel by Mexican-American writer
Sandra Cisneros, published in 1984. It deals with a young Latina girl, Esperanza Cordero, growing up in a
Chicago ghetto full of
Chicanos and
Puerto Ricans. Esperanza is determined to "say goodbye" to her impoverished Latino neighborhood. Major themes include her quest for a better life and the importance of her promise to come back for "the ones I left behind."
Format
The House on Mango Street is made up of
vignettes that are not quite poems and not quite full stories. Esperanza narrates these vignettes in
first-person present tense, focusing on her day-to-day activities but sometimes narrating sections that are just a series of observations. The vignettes can be as short as two or three paragraphs long and sometimes contain internal
rhymes. In
The Family of Little Feet for example, Esperanza says:
"Their arms were little, and their hands were little, and their height was not tall, and their feet very...
Read More