THE HOUSE ON MANGO STREET

SUMMERAISE
On a series of vignettes, The House on Mango Street covers a year in the life of
Esperanza, a Mexican American girl, who is about twelve years old when the novel
begins. During the year, she moves with her family into a house on Mango Street.
Before they moved into the house on Mango Street, the family moved around a lot.
However, the house is not what Esperanza has dreamed of, because it is run-down and
small. The house is in the centre of a crowded Latino neighbourhood in Chicago, a city
where many of the POOR AREAS ARE RACIALLY SEGREGATED. Esperanza
does not have any privacy, and she resolves that she will someday leave Mango Street
and have a house all her own.
Esperanza matures significantly during the year, both sexually and emotionally. The
novel charts her life as she makes friends, grows hips, develops her first crush, endures
sexual assault, and begins to write as a way of expressing herself and as a way to escape
the neighbourhood. The novel also includes the stories of many of Esperanza’s
neighbours, giving a full picture of the neighbourhood and showing the many possible
paths Esperanza may follow in the future.

IDENTITY

The House on Mango Street revolves around one girl and her struggle to fit the puzzle
pieces of her identity – ethnicity, gender, cultural inheritance, sexuality, and economic
status, to name a few examples – into a coherent whole. All of these facets come into
play as Esperanza learns that, more than anything else, what defines her is her ability to
tell stories. Her writing allows her to reconcile herself to those aspects of her
background that made her feel uncomfortably different from her peers, and she emerges
a confident writer with ambitious plans.

Questions About Identity

 How does Esperanza identify herself? Do ethnicity, cultural heritage, sexuality,

and gender play a part in forming her identity? What about her place of
residence, her relationships to her family, and her interest in writing? Which of
these aspects are the most important?
 How does Esperanza's identity change over the course of the novel? Do you see
a difference in the way she presents herself in the first chapter and the last?
What has changed?
 Why does Esperanza feel like changing her name? What does her name have to
do with her identity? Why do you think she feels that Zeze the X would be more
appropriate?
  What aspects of the protagonist's identity could we change without dramatically
altering the narrative? Could we make the protagonist male? Could we change
the protagonist's race, age, or sexual orientation? What if her family were
wealthy, instead of poor? What if we made her a musician instead of a writer?
What if she were the youngest child instead of the oldest? Which of these
changes would alter the story the most? How do you think they would affect the
overarching message of the novel?

Chew on This: Though The House on Mango Street explores many facets of
Esperanza's identity, the most central element of her identity is the role she adopts as a
writer.

DREAMS AND HOPES

The dreams, hopes and plans of the characters in The House on Mango Street are often
symbolized by a house. For Esperanza's Mama and Papa, the idea of happiness and
security is summed up in the image of a white house, big enough for their whole family.
They pass this dream down to their children, but Esperanza takes it and makes it her
own – her dream becomes having a house all to herself, in which she can be free to
write.
Questions About Dreams, Hopes, and Plans
 When does Esperanza begin to have a dream that's different from that of her
parents? What direction does her dream take, and how does it become different
from her parents' dream?
 What characters other than Esperanza have big plans for the future? How do
these characters influence or inspire Esperanza?
 At the end of the novel, are we left with the feeling that Esperanza will achieve
her goals? What makes us think so?
 Why do you think the idea of a house is so central to Esperanza's dreams for the
future? What are some of the key features of Esperanza's dream houses? Why do
these particular dream houses inspire her?
Chew on This: Solitude is an essential component of Esperanza's plans for the future –
without a space to call her own, she'd be unable to fulfil her goals of being a writer.
Social activism has always been a part of Esperanza's dreams and hopes, though she
doesn't realize it until the end of the book. When Esperanza says she "won't forget who
[she is] or where [she] came from," and pledges to let bums stay in the attic of her
dream house, she's envisioning doing her part to create a better society.

SOCIETY AND CLASS

Like many of the issues that come up in The House on Mango Street, social and class
distinctions are discussed in a sort of oblique way. They're never given a name. Our
protagonist, Esperanza, never comes out and says, "Hey, my family is poor!" No. That
would be way too easy (and way too boring). Instead, we figure out that poverty and
class distinctions are an issue by pulling clues from the text. The residents of Mango
Street live in crumbling, run-down apartments and houses. They envy the beautiful,
well-kept houses in nice neighbourhoods of the city. And no one, not even the mayor,
seems to want to help them resolve their problems.
Questions About Society and Class
 Why is Mango Street considered to be in a "bad neighbourhood"? What events,
attitudes, or social conditions cause people to perceive the neighbourhood as
bad? Are these perceptions false?
 Esperanza dismisses people's fears of her neighbourhood as totally unfounded. Is
she right? What about her fears of going into a white neighbourhood? Do those
fears have any basis in reality, or are they based purely on prejudice?
 Why are there so many single mothers in Esperanza's neighbourhood? Is this a
problem that has to do with social class?
Chew on This: Though this novel poses categories of class difference, it's not a novel
about class warfare or revolution. Esperanza's plans for social activism and reform
involve helping individuals, including herself, to pull themselves out of the poorer class
and enter the wealthier class.

INNOCENCE
The House on Mango Street is a coming-of-age story about a young girl named
Esperanza. Like many coming-of-age stories, this one deals with Esperanza's loss of
innocence and familiarization with sex. Tragically, her education in these matters isn't
voluntary – while Esperanza tries to cling to a childhood that she's not really ready to
leave behind, she's threatened by sexual violence as soon as she enters adolescence.
Esperanza is forcibly initiated into the world of sex when a group of boys rapes her at a
carnival.
Questions About Innocence
 In the chapter "The Family of Little Feet," why does Mr. Benny describe the
high-heeled shoes the girls are wearing as "dangerous"? Where else in the text
do we hear an adult describe a child's clothing as dangerous? What sort of
danger does grown-up clothing pose to the children? Where does the danger
come from?
 What happens to Esperanza in the monkey garden? How can this be read as a
loss-of-innocence experience?
 Why is the story of Esperanza's rape followed by the story of Sally getting
married? What connection do you see between Esperanza's forced sexual
 experience and Sally's young marriage? What is the tone of the novel at this
point?
Chew on This: Esperanza's environment, in which she moves freely as a child,
becomes a threatening place as soon as the girl enters the gendered and sexualized
world of adulthood.
For Esperanza, sexual interactions with men are never voluntary, and always pose a
threat to her independence. Esperanza is constantly pressured to accept the greater and
greater infractions of her freedom posed by sex.

GENDER
Esperanza is not a big fan of the gender roles that keep women in her community
oppressed. Men on Mango Street beat their wives and daughters and confine them to the
home. Just being a woman is sometimes cause enough for abuse – a fact that we observe
in the beatings that Sally constantly receives, and in Esperanza's rape. Esperanza offers
us a critique of the way men and women relate to one another and refuses to conform to
the expectations placed on her sex by getting married or even acting in a feminine way.
For our protagonist, defying gender roles and remaining independent is an act of
rebellion, and a source of power.
Questions About Gender
 Some critics have complained that Cisneros's portrayal of sexism in this novel is
a slander of Latin American culture. Do you think that gender and gendered
relations are linked to culture in the book? Is sexism portrayed as an integral
component of Latino culture?
 Women are constantly portrayed as occupying a place by the window in this
novel. What does their position say about the role of women in this society?
 How does Esperanza defy the gender roles that her society endorses? What
effects does her refusal to abide by traditional gender roles have?
Chew on This: In The House on Mango Street, gender is portrayed as a social
construction – something that people learn as they grow up, not something they're born
with. Men have it easy on Mango Street – it's much easier for the male characters of the
novel to live up to the gender role prescribed for them than it is for women.

WOMEN AND FEMINITY

Women occupy a central role in The House on Mango Street. Almost all of the major
characters are women, and the protagonist's understanding of her own femininity
motivates much of the story. Esperanza perceives beauty to be a major source of
feminine power, and she admires and envies beauty in her female relatives and friends.
But she also notices that beauty is not an infallible weapon, and that it can backfire – the
beautiful women in the novel are often the ones who suffer the most at the hands of
men. In her struggle to define her own femininity in a society that is often oppressive to
women, Esperanza seeks new forms of feminine power – ones that will allow her to
maintain her independence.
Questions About Women and Femininity
 Why do you think this book is dedicated "To the Women"?
 How does feminine beauty function in the novel? How is beauty used as a
source of power? What are the pitfalls of beauty?
 What roles do women occupy in The House on Mango Street? Do any of the
female characters act in ways that contradict traditional gender roles?
 How does Esperanza come to identify her own femininity? Is she a feminine
character, or does she see femininity as a source of weakness? In the end, is
Esperanza comfortable with her gender?
Chew on This: Esperanza ultimately rejects beauty as a source of power because she
sees it as a double-edged sword that can both control men and trap women under men's
control.
By the end of the novel, Esperanza is poised to become what is, in her society, a kind of
New Woman – soon to attain a level of independence that was unheard of for women in
earlier generations, and possessing the confidence, education, and means to exist in the
world without relating to men in a hierarchical way.

MIGRATION
Set in a Latino community in Chicago, The House on Mango Street contains many
characters who are or have been foreigners in some way. The novel explores the
feelings associated with foreignness and exile, like loneliness, isolation, shame, and a
sense of not belonging. It also describes some of the social attitudes towards
foreignness, from fear on the part of white people who venture into the Latino
neighborhood by mistake, to apathy on the part of hospital workers called on to tend to
a dying Mexican man, to condescension on the part of neighbours like Cathy who are
eager to make themselves look superior in some way.
Questions About Foreignness and 'The Other'
 How does a foreigner become un-foreign? What examples do we see in the
novel of characters who manage to assimilate into a new society? What sorts of
sacrifices do they have to make to be successful? What do they gain?
 Does Esperanza feel like a foreigner in her own community? How is her feeling
of not belonging similar to the experience of being a foreigner? How is it
different?
 How does the use of language in the novel indicate a character's foreignness?
Chew on This: For Esperanza, the experience of being an adolescent bears a lot of
similarities to the experience of living in exile – she feels isolated, misunderstood, and
lonely, and thinks she doesn't belong. Foreignness in this book is characterized by an
inability to communicate, and foreigners are able to overcome their isolation only when
they learn to communicate in a new language. Like a foreigner who assimilates into a
community, Esperanza overcomes her feelings of isolation and grows more connected
to her environment through the mastery of language – in her case, through writing.

HOME
The idea of home and houses are central to The House on Mango Street, as you may
have noticed when you read the section "What's Up With the Title?" and our discussion
of houses under "Symbolism, Imagery, Allegory." Esperanza's major challenge in this
novel is to overcome her feelings of isolation and experience a sense of belonging,
which is another way of saying she needs to feel at home. For Esperanza, it's important
both to have a home that she can point to as a way of explaining a past that she can be
proud of, and to have a vision of a home in her future – something to inspire her.
Questions About The Home
 How do Esperanza's ideas of home change over the course of the book? When, if
ever, does she finally come to feel like she has a home?
 If we think of "home" as a sense of belonging, what other characters do we see
in The House on Mango Street who don't have a home?
 Do the homes that Esperanza envisions for herself differ from the home that she
envisions for Sally? How so? What kind of dream home do you think Sally
would envision for herself?
Chew on This: Esperanza needs both a house she can "point to" to legitimize her past
and give her a way of explaining where she comes from, and a house that she can keep
all to herself – one that allows her privacy and isolation – in order to inspire her and
enable her to create.

FAMILY
Esperanza's relationship with her family provides her with a sense of belonging – even
when she does her best to deny it. Like a lot of adolescents, Esperanza doesn't always
feel close to her family. She thinks her little sister Nenny is a drag, she rolls her eyes at
her parents' long-shot dreams of winning the lottery, and part of her hates going to visit
her sick aunt in her smelly old apartment. But every once in a while, Esperanza betrays
her feelings of love and connectedness to the people she's related to. Esperanza's
connection to her family is a major reason she ends up feeling like she does – at least
part of the time – belong to the house on Mango Street.
Questions About Family
 What kinds of things does Esperanza inherit from her family members?
Consider her great-grandmother, her Mama and Papa, and her Aunt Lupe.
 Does Esperanza seem to have a close relationship with her brothers? What do
you think are the factors influencing this?
  Besides the Cordero family, what other families do we see in The House on
Mango Street? How do they affect our understanding of the relationships that
Esperanza has with her family members?
Chew on This: Though Esperanza inherits an attitude of independence from her mother
and paternal great-grandmother, her family's tendency to challenge traditional gender
roles does not extend to the men in the family – Esperanza's brothers, in particular, seem
to act within the bounds of traditional masculinity, and this prevents Esperanza from
being close to them.

FRIENSHIP
For a girl who feels as isolated as Esperanza does, making friends becomes an urgent
and persistent goal. The House on Mango Street deals with the theme of friendship as
Esperanza struggles to form connections with her peers and thinks about what her
relationships mean. Esperanza experiences a wide variety of friendships over the course
of the novel that seem to increase in intensity and meaning. From the obligatory time
spent babysitting her little sister, to the spontaneous connections made with
neighborhood girls over a shared bicycle, to the empathy and advice offered to her by
Alicia, Esperanza grows more and more mature in her friendships.
Questions About Friendship
 How do Esperanza's notions of friendship change over the course of the book?
What does it mean to be a friend at the beginning of the book when she meets
Cathy, Lucy, and Rachel? What does it mean to be a friend to Sally at school?
What does it mean to be friends with Alicia at the end of the novel?
 Can Esperanza's pledge to come back to Mango Street after she has gone out and
made a place for herself in the world be seen as an expression of friendship?
 Why does Esperanza want so desperately to be Sally's friend?
Chew on This: Many of the friendships portrayed in this novel seem based around
something trivial – like a gift, a shared bicycle, or the loan of a hairbrush – and
something more significant. The trivial item often hints at the more significant emotion
that binds two friends together.
Over the course of the novel, Esperanza establishes friendships that grow increasingly
deeper and more meaningful. At the beginning of the book, Esperanza's friendships are
easily formed and just as easily broken. By the end, Esperanza's friendships are based
on a true commitment to improving the lives of people in her community.

ESPERANZA
Esperanza is the heart and soul of this story – she's our protagonist and narrator, and the
person who develops and changes the most over the course of the novel. Because of the
fragmentary way the book is written, she's also the character who gives the story its
unity – after all, everything's told from her perspective, so even the stories about other
characters tell us something about Esperanza.
So who is our protagonist? She's a young girl who struggles with her feelings of
loneliness and her shame at being poor. Like many teens, she gets embarrassed a lot and
wants to fit in. She's also a writer. Writing is the tool that helps Esperanza come into her
own, helps reconcile her to her past and her community, and helps her persevere when
she experiences incredibly painful events like the death of her relatives, and even rape.
Esperanza also has a trait that marks her as different. She's an ethnic minority in the
United States – she's Latina. But how significant is that quality to the story? While
Esperanza's cultural heritage plays a big part in establishing her feelings of closeness
and connection to her family and community, we still read Esperanza as a character that
pretty much everyone can identify with. Adolescence, and all the uncomfortable
feelings that come along with it, is a pretty universal experience. We've all felt lonely
and ashamed, awkward and ugly, and we all have hopes and dreams.

SALLY
The most notable thing about Sally is that she's a bombshell. She's the gorgeous girl that
all the boys at school talk about in the locker room. She's got eyes like Cleopatra, and
she wears nylons and sexy black shoes, accessories that are, in Esperanza's mom's
opinion, "dangerous" (32.4). Sally is so beautiful, in fact, that her dad says it's "trouble"
(32.2).
And with a father like Sally's, being beautiful is trouble. More than trouble, actually –
it's life-threatening. Every time Sally's dad catches her looking sideways at a guy, he
beats her. Why would he do something so cruel, irrational, and, might we add,
counterproductive (his abuse only makes Sally turn to sex to try to escape him, after
all)? Well, if we were going to psychoanalyze Sally's dad based on the sparse
information we're given about him in the text, we'd have to note that he's strictly
religious, and that he has sisters who he feels shamed the family by running away from
home. Sally says he's afraid she'll do the same thing. So we'll have to explain (but not
excuse) his violent, misogynistic behavior as a product of both culture and personal
experience.
The reason Sally's so significant in the book is the way she serves as a foil for
Esperanza. See our discussion of their relationship in the section on "Character Roles"
for details on that.
Sally's marriage to a marshmallow salesman with anger management problems and
major control issues is a serious low point for the novel. It seems like a huge waste, and
we're worried that the difficult circumstances of life on Mango Street might push our
heroine Esperanza into a similar fate.

NENNY CORDERO
Nenny is Esperanza's kid sister. Too young to get Esperanza's jokes or keep her secrets,
Nenny is more of a pain in the butt than anything else – and Esperanza is responsible for
watching out for her. But as the story progresses, Esperanza and Nenny seem to grow
closer. Esperanza begins to realize that her sister can appreciate her perspective on
things in a way that her friends can't – like when Nenny understands Esperanza's
statement that a house "looks like Mexico" (7.3). Nenny hangs out with Esperanza,
Lucy, and Rachel a lot, though she often seems much younger than they do, especially
when the other girls start to go through puberty. Esperanza is fiercely defensive of her
little sister, even when she thinks Nenny is being stupid.

MAMA AND PAPA

It's clear from her description of her parents that Esperanza feels a lot of affection for
them – Esperanza's Mama and Papa are the forces that make the house on Mango Street
a home, even when Esperanza feels ashamed. They dream of winning the lottery and
being able to buy a beautiful white house for their family. But, in the meantime, Papa
works in the gardens of wealthy homes in the city, and Mama cooks and cares for the
children. Esperanza's Mama gave up her studies because she says she was ashamed of
not having nice clothes. She encourages her daughter not to let shame stop her from
achieving her goals, to stay in school and study hard.

ALICIA
Alicia is an older girl in the neighborhood who studies at the university. Alicia's mother
died, and Alicia is forced to take up many of the chores that her mama used to do, like
making the tortillas for the family in the morning. She works hard at school in order to
make a better life for herself than the one her mother had. Esperanza considers her to be
very brave, despite her fear of the rats that infest her family's apartment. Alicia serves as
a role model and friend to Esperanza – she's the one in whom Esperanza confides her
feelings of un-belongingness, and who makes Esperanza see that she has a
responsibility to her home and community.

CARLOS AND KEEKY CORDERO

Esperanza doesn't say much about her little brothers, Carlos and Keeky, except that they
follow the supreme law against fraternizing with children of the opposite sex when
they're outside the house. The boys like to act tough – they're patrol boys at school, and
like to stand outside in the cold and rain because they think it makes them tougher.
These manifestations of their budding masculinity are cute and all, but we wonder if the
gender roles that they're learning to imitate contribute to the problems of sexism and
violence that we see later in the novel.

CATHY
Cathy is a big snob. She befriends Esperanza when the Cordero family moves to Mango
Street, but tells her their friendship will be short lived – her family is moving on
Tuesday because the neighborhood is "getting bad" (5.3). Of course, Cathy is just as
insecure as Esperanza about her family's status. But Cathy tries to cover up her humble
origins by inventing a royal pedigree and explaining away her house's crookedness as an
intentional element of the design. Cathy quickly abandons Esperanza's company when
Esperanza befriends the girls from across the street, who, Cathy says, are smelly.

LUCY AND RACHEL

Esperanza meets Lucy and Rachel shortly after moving into the house on Mango Street.
The sisters quickly become Esperanza's constant companions – well, sometimes Nenny
tags along, too. Esperanza feels comfortable around them because they're not
pretentious. Their clothes are crooked and old, and they don't laugh at her name. They
come from a large family from Texas, and it's their baby sister who dies in the chapter
"The Three Sisters."

AUNT LUPE
Esperanza's Aunt Lupe used to be beautiful like Joan Crawford, until she was struck
down by a mysterious disease that left her bedridden and blind. Aunt Lupe is confined
to her dirty, yellowing apartment, where Esperanza and her friends work up the nerve to
visit her. Esperanza likes her Aunt Lupe because she listens to her poems and
encourages her to keep writing. When Esperanza and her friends get caught making fun
of Aunt Lupe and her illness, they feel horrible – and then Lupe dies. Esperanza is
pretty much convinced that she's going to hell.

MEME ORTIZ
Meme Ortiz is the new kid on the block. His real name is Juan, but he goes by Meme.
Just like Meme, his dog has two names – one in English, and one in Spanish. That's
really all we know about Meme (well, OK, we also know about his tree-jumping skills),
but his dual name is a commentary on identity for the Latino residents of Mango Street,
especially the younger generation.

MINERVA
Minerva is a girl not much older than Esperanza, but she's already married and has two
kids. Minerva and Esperanza hang out and read each other's poetry. But Minerva always
has a lot of drama going on – first her husband leaves, then he comes back. Then he
leaves again. Etcetera. Esperanza says Minerva is always "sad like a house on fire," a
phrase that we really like – it totally conveys the stress and drama of Minerva's
domestic life (33.2). After a particularly tumultuous breakup and reunion with her
husband, Minerva shows up at Esperanza's house covered in bruises, asking for advice.
Esperanza feels powerless – we get the feeling she'd like to tell Minerva that she's the
one who needs to get her act together and tell her loser husband to leave for good.

SIRE
Sire is the first boy who stares at Esperanza in the way that boys stare at Marin. He
makes her sort of uncomfortable, but she also enjoys the attention. Esperanza pays
attention when Sire gets a girlfriend. She notice's the girl's makeup and the delicate
femininity of her pink toes and long lady's bones. Sire gets Esperanza thinking about
sex and wondering what he and Lois do together. It's Esperanza's first expression of her
sexuality in the novel, and a major growing-up moment for her.