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The House on Mango Street By Sandra Cisneros ( Vintage )
Release Date: 1991-04-03
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Product Description
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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 A seventh grade view
"I knew that I had to have a house. A real house. One that I could point to. But this isn't it. The house on Mango Street isn't it. `For the time being,' Mama says. `Temporary,' says Papa. But I know how those things go." For Esperenza Cordero, living in a cramped, tiny, crumbling house on Mango Street in Chicago is not the kind of life she wants to live. There is nothing that she can do except stay put, while trying to make her boring life interesting by enjoying any small goodness she can find in her neighborhood, whether it's a physical object or just a thought.
Many people who accidentally get lost in Esperenza's neighborhood are scared that people like Esperenza and her family will come and hurt them. This is because most of the people on Mango Street are job-seeking immigrants from Mexico or Central America. This false judgment is one of the reasons why Esperenza doesn't want to live on Mango Street. However, Esperenza eventually accepts it along with her friends Lucy, Rachel and Sally as they learn that they don't need others' opinions to tell them who they are.
This book tells about a young girl who faces problems with racism and social prejudice and, at the same time, strives to find out who she wants to become and what she wants to do in the future. Sandra Cisneros truly captures the beauty and rich culture with her concise and poetic language. This book may express some of her Latino heritage and what her life was like growing up.
I recommend this book to readers of any age. They will find themselves lost in each chapter as they learn about how Esperenza Cordero discovers how she will live her life.
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 Lyrical indeed ( kayzpen )
I have read this book with my high school students year after year, and I love it every time. Please understand, dear reader, this is a book of incredibly lyrical prose, and at times it is really more of a narrative poem. In fact, I read it as such with my students. At first they complain: 'I don't get it!' But as time goes on, and I continue to read the short vignettes (and we discuss such things as names, as hair, as beloved grandparents, as the places we've lived), they begin to see the portrait of Esperanza's life being painted for them with words... beautiful words. My favorite chapter is Darius and the Clouds. Just gorgeous writing there....
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 The House On Mango Street
The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros was a very good and well plotted book. It was written by a pretty low educated hispanic girl who has a lot of clear feelings about herself and others. The book starts in Esperanza's childhood and gradually escalates to her teenage/adult years. Now since the main character isn't well educated you can tell by how random the book is. She moves from one topic to the other in a very abrupt random way. You can also tell that she is uneducated by the way she uses her punctuation. She has many sentences where the only thing she says is "Yeah." or "That's right." So as one can see, she doesn't have much of the proper schooling that one should have. Another main point of the story is the poverty she is raised in. She lives in an old brick house that is crumbling down and doesn't function like a normal house should. She grows up in a neighborhood that some people would call ghetto. It is a very poor neighborhood. One in which some are scared of the people that live there. Where the rich upper class people roll up their windows and lock their doors so none of the ghetto kids that has no money to provide the basics steels anything. The last thing is that Esperanza has very low self esteem. She is embarrassed to point out her house. She is also embarrassed about everything about herself and her appearance. So much so she even hates her own hair. So i thought The House on Mango Street had a very good and creative plot. Also that any one of the age 13 and up should read.
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poetry to my ears ( md50043 )
This is a beautifully written book about a girls who lives in a house on Mango street, a house that is far below her expectations and a neighborhood she does not want to belong to. This book reads more like a poetic form in a novel. There's a lot of wonderful details about how some people in the neighbor hood live and their cultural nuances. The book captures a moment of a child's life very well.
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gorgeous ( lilhoneybee )
the novel is written in brief vignettes that read like poetry and combine to create a rich story. i've read it now in english and in spanish, and it is one of my favorite books of all time.
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