Analysis Of Boys And Girls On Mango Street

“We teach girls to shrink themselves, to make themselves smaller. We say to girls, you can have ambition, but not too much. You should aim to be successful, but not too successful. Otherwise, you would threaten the man. Because I am female, I am expected to aspire to marriage. I am expected to make my life choices always keeping in mind that marriage is the most important. Now marriage can be a source of joy and love and mutual support but why do we teach girls to aspire to marriage and we don’t teach boys the same? We raise girls to see each other as competitors not for jobs or accomplishments, which I think can be a good thing, but for the attention of men. We teach girls that they cannot be sexual beings in the way that boys are.” These

In this short story, Esperanza is talking about how the boys in girls on Mango Street live in separate worlds. The boys get to go out and play together, and they are all each other's best friends. The girls have to stay inside and help with work and take care of their younger siblings. In Esperanzas case she has to stay inside and help take care of her younger sister, Nenny, who she is not very fond of. She wishes she had a best friend and she knows that Nenny will never be her best friend, because she is her sister. The boys, on the other hand are best friends. Esperanza's brothers Kiki Carlos are best friends because they always get to go out and play together. They are not Esperanzas or Nenny's best friend because they do not hang out nor play together as the girls are always inside, working and taking care of one another, because in this world that is what ladies do. Women, ever since they were just little girls are told they have to stay inside, clean the clothes, wash the dishes, set the table. Men go to work, they have everything mad for them, they come home and are never judged for lying down and not helping with whatever cleaning is going on. Women are supposed to stay in the kitchen, to cook, to clean, to make, to bake, to wash and feed. Men are supposed to go to work, to do their job, to be smart, to be the best, and come home with

However great this book may be, Sandra Cisneros puts deeper messages and meaning into every short vignette, making it even better than before. The House On Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros is important and in the book she suggests that women are oppressed in the world no matter what age. This is evident in many different vignettes in the book, such as in “Rafaela who drinks Papaya juice and Coconut water on Tuesdays”, “What Sally Said”, and in “Boys and Girls”. Cisneros uses mood, tone, and personification to convey thoughts ideas, and overall tell a beautiful story of trust, family, and friendship. You learn so much from every page, and in every chapter. In “Rafaela who drinks Papaya juice and Coconut water on Tuesdays”, you see how an abusive relationship oppresses a woman in a world where she can do nothing to get out of it. In “What Sally Said”, you see how a young girl is taken advantage of, nonetheless by her own father, and no one even bothers to blink an eye. In “Boys and Girls”, you see how gender roles and stereotypes are pushed on young girls and boys, even when they are as young as five years old. By reading this book you can see why we can no longer stand still. We have to get up, out of our privileged bubble we live in, out of the blatantly untrue lies the media tells us, and