Poverty and Health: Insights from 'The House on Mango Street'

Did you know that children living in poorer communities have a higher risk of gaining physical health problems, such as Chronic, poor nutrition, or risky behaviors? There are many social issues that have occurred in our history. One of them is poverty, and that lifestyle is not a good thing to have, although many Americans have had to deal with it, some including full-time workers, children, seniors, disabled Americans, and veterans. The House on Mango Street, written by Sandra Cisneros, is a book that represents many social issues including this one. It is about a young girl who lived to the United States in search for the American dream, only to find that it is nothing but a nightmare for her. Poverty is a serious issue and connects to the

vignette in the book, “The House on Mango Street”, and the issue still persists today, although it has gotten worse.
At the present time, as this issue of poverty is serious today, the article “How Does Poverty Affect a Teen’s Lifestyle?” (Ayra Moore) gives us more information about the topic and how it has affected our lives. The article was last updated in August 29, 2013 and talks about how poverty affects a teens way of life such as physical health, mental health, academics, and deviance. The article is aimed for parents of teens. “Poor health can be influenced by not having access to nutritious foods, adequate health care and parental monitoring of eating habits, according to the American Physiological Association.” (Moore). She states in the article. With teens and families in poverty, it is hard to pay for health care or to go to the doctors all the time, or to even by a decent meal for dinner. Some families have a hard time getting all three meals on the table at home. In addition, she also states in her article, "Issues such as low parental monitoring, living in high crime neighborhoods, witnessing violence in the home and lack of financial stability can contribute to teen problems." (Moore). Living in poverty can cause kids to fall into depression, giving them more encouragement to do bad things, such as alcohol, drugs, and self-harm. They may fall into depression because they know there are kids out there who have it better than them, and they are constantly living in a world with no hope. It teaches kids that violence is okay. The article explains in very well content how poverty is represented in our lives today.
To connect this articles to the vignette of “The House on Mango Street” (Sandra Cisneros), poverty affects the characters in the book as well as us.

As it is written in the book, “Where do you live? She asked. There, I said pointing up to the third floor. You live there? There. I had to look to where she pointed-the third floor, the paint peeling, wooden bars Papa had nailed on the window so we wouldn’t fall out. You live there? The way she said it made me feel like nothing. There. I lived there. I nodded.” (Cisneros). As can be read there in a small part of the vignette, it talks about how the nun is pointing as Esperanza’s house and says it kind of in an uncomfortable way. It makes Esperanza feel like she is a nobody, below everyone else, as she lives in the poverty state. This connects to the article by showing how miserable teens can be when their family live in poverty. Along-side that, another quote from the vignette, “But the house on Mango Street is not the way they told it at all.” (Cisneros). The author explains in more detail how the house is nothing they dreamed of, and that it is all old and beat up. In attachment to the article, this also explains that some people can only dream of things that they can’t have, somewhat sending the teens into a depression. If they can’t have health care or in Esperanza’s case, a nice house, then they could start doing things that they don’t know is right or simply get things that are much easier to get, such as drugs or alcohol.

In ways, the vignette, “The House on Mango Street”, is connected to the article by showing us that the characters in the book are suffering of poverty as well as ourselves.
Venturing onto some more about Poverty, the article, “Government Programs Are Not the Solution to Poverty.” (Poverty in America) talks about how the serious issue of poverty still persists today, and even worse.

As they write in the article, “Whether by default or conscious implementation, a variety of institutional policies contribute to ongoing poverty. These include federal policies around poverty assistance and student debt, institutional barriers to upward social mobility and criminalization of poverty.” It states in this that these institutions help to decrease poverty, but they aren’t working because poverty has gotten worse. “In 2011, according to a US Census Bureau report, the official poverty rate in the United States was 15 percent, amounting to 46.2 million people in poverty. The poverty rate for children under the 18 was even more sobering, with more than one in five kids living in poverty.” As it is said, poverty is a serious issue and many people suffer with it. Maybe even half the world’s kids live in poverty, and that’s not good, because they are our future, and without a good education or a promising life, they won’t get the health and future they deserve. And again, “Further, the numbers indicate that things have gotten worse over the past decade. Poverty hit a 17-year high in 2010, and remained at that rate in 2011. Rates are substantially worse for blacks and Latinos, more than a quarter of whom live in poverty.” This proves even more that poverty has

increased as time passes. Poverty is a serious issue and still persists today.
Prior to the vignette, the article above connects by stating that Esperanza, am immigrant, is also in Poverty, and it is worse for her Latino life. “The house on Mango Street is ours, and we don’t have to pay rent to anybody…” She doesn’t have to pay rent to anybody because they live in poverty. They had moved quite a lot before, each time to a smaller house, because of a life with poverty. As it is said before, the article connects to the vignette by giving people the idea that American’s aren’t the only ones who live in poverty.
As shown above, poverty is a serious issue in today’s lives and it connects to the vignette, “The House on Mango Street”. As of today, the issue of poverty has gotten worse in the series of events that occur today.