The House on Mango Street :: House Mango Street

  The House on mango Street         This book is so justly be bear Sandra Cisneros gives a first-hand account of the everyday magic and misery of young Esperanza, at the same time applying themes of her desire for escape and love for the people and bittersweet childhood of Mango Street. In many other novels of this sort, the dialog comes across as an protracted complaint, a long and tiresome negative report of how down-trodden and hopeless is a given site, and how arrogantly nonchalant be those who benefit from or cause it. The beauty of this book is Cisneros deft mingling of Mango Streets poverty and abject social status with its inherently human beauty and magic when seen with the eyes of a young girl. Mango Streets humanly rich qualities ar what leave behind bring Esperanza back. The mayor wont help Mango Street, so who will? Clearly, at the end of the book, she will. Her telling of their story in such a positive and invigorating light mig ht change the mayors mind. Reading Cisneros sketch biography on the last page says that she taught high school drop-outs, plausibly not from towns like Amherst or Acton, but from neighborhoods like Mango Street. seldom can an author make a pointed social and political description about poverty and social stratification without making it oppressive and depressing. Esperanza realizes her situation enough to want to escape it. She sympathizes with her father who wakes up in the shady every morning and is gone before the rest of the house is awake. and she is at the same time wonderfully innocent. She and her friends believe that the Earl of Tennessees prostitutes are his wife, and no one can agree on what she looks like.   This book is like a photo album, there is no chronological story, but each snap-shot a whole story in itself. Interspersed throughout the Mango Street-specific bits, are pieces of dateless relevance, like A Rice Sandwich. This sketch tells the timeless tru th that you endlessly want what you dont have, but once you get it, its not so undischarged anymore. Canteen Even the word sounds important She doesnt belong there, and the kids who do are probably wishing they could go home for lunch.