The house on Mango Street

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Kristen BP

Mrs. Meadows

A-B period

December 5^st  

The house on Mango Street by Sandra Cisnero, is a memoir wrote in vignettes. This story is of a girl name Esperanza that along with her family have move to a lot of places in Chicago. In these different places, they had always had different problems and they always talked of ¨ the real house¨ they were someday going to have. This house was going to be big, with stairs, big yard etc.  So, they finally move to this house on Mango Street that was supposed to be ¨ the real house¨. For Esperanza, it was the opposite of ¨ the real house¨. Al do, they didn’t have any problem, it wasn´t pretty, didn´t had a big yard, etc.

            In the memoir she introduces us to all her family, her parents, Carlos, Kiki, Nenny, and her. She tell us different things of them for

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example: how the boys don’t let them play with them, how her mom regrets not studying, how Nenny and her don’t look like sisters but they are alike in other things like there laugh or how she is the oldest so she has to take a little bit more of responsibility.

            She goes on introducing all her neighbors and their different problems like jealousy, ¨ machismo¨ , physical abuse..  and she realized how her neighborhood is really like and why people where scared of it .

 For example Rafaela who is this beautiful woman that her husband ,because she is so beautiful,  is afraid she will run of, so he doesn´t let her go out.  So on Tuesdays because her husband comes late that day, she offers one dollar to the kids as a reward of buying her a papaya and a coconut juice so it could make her Remember the beautiful island.  This explains her husband machismo and jealousy.

   

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    Or Sally , who is this beautiful girl who was physically abused by her dad because   she is so beautiful and  for him that’s bad   for the religion they practice.    That  shows  ¨machismo¨ , and jealousy.

            By the end of the story she realized that the house on Mango Street is where she comes from really, so she is going to go study but she is never going to forget Mango Street .The title the memoir is because her house on Mango Street.  The significance of the title is because that house at the end of the story means a lot to her. And maybe because just like the mango at first,  she was green and she didn’t understand but after a while  the mango matures just like her in the end when she comes to realize everything she didn’t understand.

            The line I liked the most was the last one. ¨They will not know I have gone away to come back. For the ones I left behind. For the ones who cannot out.¨  because  she is saying that she will study and go after her dreams , but she is never going to forget where she came from .

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    I liked  how the story shows how Esperanza is  slowing realizing about the cultural differences found in her life. Before people will roll up their car windows and she wouldn’t know why but now she knows they do so because they are afraid that they would get mugged by the people living in Mango street.   This is due,  to the stereotype that follows Mexicans.  I really liked  the lessons of the story and how at the end she decides to go after her dreams  , but never be ashamed that she comes from Mango street.