The House on Mango Street

The House on Mango StreetEssential Questions

1. What role does our family, culture, and community play in shaping us?

1. How can reading one woman’s story of self-acceptance and purpose help us find our own while telling it in an honest, authentic voice?

1. How can a writer use creative writing techniques to express point of view and voice?

About Sandra Cisneros• Born: Chicago in l954 • the third child and

only daughter in a family of seven children.

• Occupations: teacher and counselor to high-school dropouts, taught creative writing at every level except first grade and pre-school, a college recruiter, an arts administrator, and as a visiting writer

Growing Up in Chicago• Born in the Hispanic Quarter of

Chicago in 1954• Mexican-American (Chicana)• She was the only girl in a family of

seven, and grew up in poverty• Her parents emphasized

education• Her family moved often; she was

shy and introverted, but connected with her community privately through writing

• http://www.galegroup.com/free_resources/chh/bio/cisneros_s.htm

• http://www.sandracisneros.com/html/about/bio.html

What is a Vignette? • A short, well written sketch or descriptive scene. • It does not have a plot which would make it a

short story, but it does reveal something about the elements in it.

• It may reveal character, mood, or tone.

• It may have a theme or idea of its own that it wants to convey.

• It is the description of the scene or character that is important.

• By linking these vignettes, Cisneros attempts to reveal the life of a young girl, a daughter of Mexican immigrants, growing up in the inner city of the United States.

The House on Mango Street: Structure

• The novel is told as a series of vignettes, 1-4 pages each

• There is no real chronological plot, but a series of insights into Esperanza’s thoughts and feelings.

• The vignettes show the trends in behavior in the community and provide a contrast between strength and weakness, between freedom and bondage.

• The novel is dedicated A Las Mujeres, To the Women.

Structure of Vignettes• 1-39…Introduces narrator

and establishes setting• 43-70…Esperanza

describes the world beyond Mango St. Despites disappointments, she enjoys life.

• 72-84…Focus on Esperanza and the people around her; portraits of other women emerge.

• 86-90…Esperanza describes her family & her interactions with them.

• 92-101…Esperanza continues to dream and mature…& the progression with Sally (note juxtaposition)

• 103-109…Return to Mango Street & home as the subject of Esperanza’s thoughts.

• Based on these abstractions, what might be the thread (thesis) that holds these beads (vignettes) together?

The House on Mango Street: Narrator• The work is narrated by Esperanza

Cordero, thirteen, a Chicana girl in Chicago.

• Although told in the voice of a young girl, it addresses mature subject matter.

• In English, Esperanza means hope, and also, waiting.

• This choice of name is significant in the novel: the character and her independence represent a way out of the slums.

• As she watches her neighborhood, she decides that she will not become like the women she knows, trapped and powerless in a man’s world.

The House on Mango Street: Setting

• Mango Street symbolizes both Esperanza’s ball and chain and her inspiration.

• In the beginning of the novel, she is disappointed with the house on Mango Street.

• She finds that she is not like the other residents of Mango, that she can and will find the strength to leave her life there.

• She realizes that Mango is a part of her, and where she comes from is as important as where she’s going.

• She knows she must come back, to help the others who are trapped there.

• Cisneros’s writing is very imagistic. She makes unexpected comparisons between things to give connotations to what she describes.

The House on Mango Street Themes

1. Individual identity and communal loyalty

2. Estrangement and loss

3. Escape and return

4. Lure of romance and the dead end of sexual inequality & oppression

 

Otherness

• Mango suggests from where that otherness comes and shows how it can become a cause for celebration rather than shame.

“You, the reader, are Esperanza…you

cannot forget who you are.”

-Sandra Cisneros

The House on Mango Street: Significance

• This is Cisneros’s first novel.

• It is a way to relate her cultural identity to her life and the lives of others.

• Cisneros seeks to break the cycle of defeats that women suffered due to social and religious stereotypes.

• Esperanza is an outlet for the author’s views on the perceptions of women in her milieu.

Life Lesson According to Cisneros1. The world does not love

you the way you are loved at home.

2. Pain gives you a special vision—a vision to help others who are suffering….

3. Horrible experiences are there to guide you.

4. Welcome rage, shame, and grief especially if you have a reason to feel them.

5. Humility is essential to finding your voice and hearing others.

The House on Mango Street: Characters

• Alicia, the medical student who is still bound to her old fears.

• Marin, who waits.

• Beautiful Rafaela, the modern-day Rapunzel.

• Rosa Vargas, with too many children, crying for the husband who left.

• Mamacita, who dreams of the pink house she left behind and refuses to speak English.

• Sally, the subject of abuse until she marries, to escape, before eighth grade, and moves from Mango Street into into another sort of trap.

• And then there is Esperanza, who is like the skinny trees outside her tiny window, who longs for a house all her own, who starts her own quiet war.