I’ve been trying of late to raise my general awareness and knowledge of the history and literature of people who aren’t white men like me. I generally believe that the more you know about other people and their experiences, the better off you generally are. Knowing more is always a good thing. That brought me to The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros. I’d seen the title short story in multiple literature anthologies I’ve used in the classroom, and a friend recommended it as a good starting point for Latino literature.
That was a good assessment, actually.
The House on Mango Street is written less as a novel and more like a series of short stories, most of them two to three pages long, but the longest of them appears to be about five. The stories are narrated by a girl named Esperanza and represent a year of her life after he family moved into a small house in the title location. That’s the first story. It establishes over the course of three pages that Esperanza is old enough to be disillusioned, young enough to still hold onto dreams of her own, a Latina judging by the names of her various family members, and poor. Esperanza herself doesn’t reveal her own name for a few more stories.
Essentially, the “plot” to the book is mostly about Esperanza growing up a little. She’s not quite ready for things like boys, but she has a friend or two is. She’s starting to see how much her circumstances might limit her and she doesn’t like it, but all that means is she has her first job about a year before she is old enough to legally work. That sort of limbo she exists in sets up how many of these stories are written. Things may seem innocent enough as she starts off with a childlike situation, but there’s usually some twist to the end of many of these stories emphasizing something deeper. For example, one titled “No Speak English” sounds like it should be about how a man moves his Spanish-speaking mother to America without the older woman being able to speak English, but then the story shows something else is going on when based solely on who the woman says it to.
That’s what makes the book work as well as it does, and it is a beautiful piece of work. It’s a year in the life of a girl, told over a little over 100 pages, as she learns a thing or two about herself and the world around her, especially as it relates to her gender, race, and class. It’s the sort of book where I don’t think I have a lot to say about it aside from it’s very well done and very much worth a look.
Grade: A
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