Poverty, Cultural Isolation

books:


	• The House on Mango Street Sandra Cisneros Vintage, 1991 - 128 pages average customer review:based on 602 reviews view larger image
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Hairs!!!

Hairs chapter is my favorite.....it's short and sweet.....as a latina, i can really appreciate having immediate family so rich in differences....that is the beauty of being latino, is that we are so unique!

Poverty, Cultural Isolation

The House on Mango Street / 0-679-73477-5

The House on Mango Street is a touching collection of short vignettes centering around the author's childhood and childhood home. The vignettes take a long, hard look at the lives of these children and young women who find themselves lost in a poverty and a culture which makes them feel reduced in value. Basic services such as a home, clothing, and education are provided, but without love - the children feel intensely aware of the fact that they are unwanted, the designated dregs of society (the white children tell them that they are leaving the neighborhood because too many of the 'wrong types' of people are moving in.

The girl children are also introduced - sometimes violently - to the painful realities of womanhood in a poverty stricken culture. One girl is denied by her much-older husband any right to leave the house, ever, because he worries that she might find a life, interests, even love outside of him. She wastes away slowly, trapped in a life of unhappiness and monotony. Other girls are coerced into sexual activity by their peers, and the parents turn a blind eye, figuring that it has always been this way and always will.

The author's despair is evident in every word. She wants to escape, to get away, but she also feels guilty for hating so intensely her community and culture. She cannot separate the good parts of her culture from the bad parts which are less a matter of culture and more a matter of poverty, lack of education, and disease. In the end, she vows to leave, but to never forget - and, perhaps, someday to return, and help.

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reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10

Told in a series of vignettes stunning for their eloquence, The House on Mango Street is Sandra Cisneros's greatly admired novel of a young girl growing up in the Latino section of Chicago. Acclaimed by critics, beloved by children, their parents and grandparents, taught everywhere from inner-city grade schools to universities across the country, and translated all over the world, it has entered the canon of coming-of-age classics.

Sometimes heartbreaking, sometimes deeply joyous, The House on Mango Street tells the story of Esperanza Cordero, whose neighborhood is one of harsh realities and harsh beauty. Esperanza doesn't want to belong--not to her rundown neighborhood, and not to the low expectations the world has for her. Esperanza's story is that of a young girl coming into her power, and inventing for herself what she will become.

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