The House on Mango Street :: House Mango Street

  The House on Mango Street         This book is so powerful because Sandra Cisneros gives a first-hand circular of the everyday magic and misery of young Esperanza, simultaneously applying themes of her desire for escape and love for the people and bittersweet childhood of Mango Street. In many different novels of this sort, the dialog comes across as an extended complaint, a long and tiresome negative report of how down-trodden and hopeless is a given situation, and how arrogantly nonchalant atomic number 18 those who benefit from or cause it. The hit of this book is Cisneros deft mingling of Mango Streets poverty and low social status with its inherently human beauty and magic when seen through the eyes of a young girl. Mango Streets humanly rich qualities are what will 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 li ght might change the mayors mind. Reading Cisneros sketch biography on the last page says that she taught high school drop-outs, probably not from towns like Amherst or Acton, but from neighborhoods like Mango Street. Seldom terminate an author make a pointed social and political statement about poverty and social stratification without making it oppressive and depressing. Esperanza realizes her situation enough to essential to escape it. She sympathizes with her father who wakes up in the dark every morning and is gone before the rest of the house is awake. But she is at the same sentence 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 undated relevance, like A Rice Sandwich. This sketch tells the timeless truth that you always want what you dont have, but once you get it, its not so great 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.