House on Mango Street
Chapter 1-The House on Mango Street
"The way she said it made me feel like nothing."
It is hard for me to understand that some people have to live in poverty, and small run down houses without running water and such. When I read this quote I could just imagine a little girl sitting up looking at the nun in her tattered clothes and saying..yes this is where I live. I can just imagine her feeling like she is nothing compared to others.
Chapter 2-Hairs
"But my mothers hair, my mothers hair, like little rosettes, like little candy circles all curly and pretty because she pinned it in pincurls all day, sweet to put your nose into when she is holding you, holding you and you feel safe, is the warm smell of bread before you bake it, is the smell when she makes room for you on her side of the bed still warm with her skin, and you sleep near her, the rain outside falling and Papa snoring."
When she mentioned her mothers hair it flashed to a time when I was braiding my mothers hair. It seems that all women have a special scent in their hair, and it really is a warm scent one that makes you feel safe. The qote reminds me of a time in my childhood coming home from school and my mother making cookies for us.
Chapter 3-Boys & Girls
"And since she comes right after me, she is my responsibility."
I always thought I would never want a little sister, because of such a huge burden. But tables turned and I now have a god-sister. Ever since then me and her have gotten really close. I really enjoy her company, and she is just like my real sister. She is usually over at our house more then any of my friends come over. In a way I do take responsibility for her. She is around me a lot, and I know that I can't set a bad example. I think she might look up to me, and for that I feel responsible for her care.
Chapter 4-My Name
"I would've liked to have known her, a wild horse of a woman, so wild she wouldn't marry."
My aunt reminds me of Esperanza's great grandmother. She has married once, but then soon divorced. She is very creative and very talented, but she never seems to settle down.
In the poor slums of Chicago, a family living in poverty struggles to get by. In the book, House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros, Esperanza is a twelve year old girl who lives with her family in the Windy City. She lives with her three siblings and both parents on Mango Street. Esperanza has no control over her life and family’s poverty. People who have no control over their life desperately seek change. Esperanza seeks to change her name, her home, and her destiny as a way to control her life.
Sandra Cisneros's writing style in the novel The House on Mango Street transcends two genres, poetry and the short story. The novel is written in a series of poetic vignettes that make it easy to read. These distinguishing attributes are combined to create the backbone of Cisneros's unique style and structure.
In The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros, there is an emphasizes on how rough it is to be part of the low economic class . Through her words you can create an image about the way poverty affects children. She goes through the book making great remarks on the topic. The different experiences that Esperanza goes through have a lot to connect with her family's financial status. She specifically describes her feelings about the poverty they live in through three of her short stories. The three short stories in which poverty seems to be an obstacle are The House on Mango Street, Our Good Day, and Chanclas. When the book begins the downgrading of Esperanza's esteem begins with it.
matter how hard people wish on a star or on a candle, the wishes never seemed to be
“Someday, I will have a best friend all my own. One I can tell my secrets to. One who will understand my jokes without me having to explain them” (9). These are the longing words spoken by Esperanza. In the novel The House on Mango Street, Esperanza is young girl experiencing adolescence not only longing for a place to fit in but also wanting to be beautiful. This becomes complicated as Esperanza becomes more sexually aware. Throughout the novel, Cisneros argues the importance of beauty and how Esperanza deals with beauty as a part of her identity. When Esperanza meets Sally a new friend, Esperanza’s whole world is turned upside down. Esperanza’s views on beauty change from a positive outlook to a negative one by watching how beauty has damaged Sally’s life.
In the novel, The House on Mango Street, Sandra Cisneros describes the problems that Latino women face in a society that treats them as second class citizens. A society that is dominated by men, and a society that values women for what they look like, and not for what is on inside. In her Novel Cisneros wants us to envision the obstacles that Latino women must face everyday in order to be treated equally.
a maiden all my life; I never want to be either a beloved or a wife." This is so
In class we read the book House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros, the main character Esperanza lives in a lower working class neighborhood and street called Mango Street dealing with poverty. Her house is an important symbol in House on Mango Street. It represents Eperanza’s process of maturing as a person and the change in her perspective of poverty and struggle being shameful, to it being something to embrace and use as motivation. This is a very important part of the story because it is in many aspects where we are from that make us who we become. This is interesting to see in the book as her opinions and perspective of things inside and outside of her neighborhood are shaped by her experiences.
...s to be more than a stay at home mother and wife but feels trapped by the role that she if forced to play.
The narrator spends her young childhood drunk with love for her mother. She happily sleeps late on school holidays, follows her mother ar...
She stands a staggering 5 feet 2 inches tall, weighs a massive 95 pounds, and has short, brown hair and brown eyes. I see my older sister Leslie. Others see a model of perfection. Don't get me wrong, my sister and I are close and have been inseparable since birth. My mother has kept pictures of us ranging from the time we shared a playpen as babies to just recently at Leslie's graduation. For seventeen years, we've shared every life experience imaginable, and we've dealt with the trials and tribulations that come with growing up. But in September, she left home to attend the University of California at Irvine, leaving me to face life alone. However, it gave me the opportunity to live life by myself as Ryan, instead of Leslie's little brother.
The smell of her hair. I remembered that, I remembered the morning after finding my face softly nestled in a pillow of blonde, breathing her in. She had yet to wake, and the sun rising through her barred apartment windows painted crisscrossing patterns on her exposed back.
My sister is important to me in a numerous amount of ways. She has taught me to be truthful, kind and to never loose faith. Through her I’ve learned to have self-confidence in all that I do or I won’t limit to half of the things I am capable of. I am very thankful that she is a part of me because I know without her I wouldn’t be who I am today. She has helped mold me into the person I have become. I learn from her that making good choices is one of the most important things in life, no matter the situation. Every moment I have with ...
Ever since I can remember, my big sister Barbara has been my heroine, my role model and, when needed, my substitute mother. She's beautiful, sweet, intelligent, funny and loving. Whatever she did I wanted to do, and consciously or not I emulated her: from choices in men (she favored creative types: photographers, filmmakers and writers for her; writers and musicians for me), personal style (though my Afro was never a big as hers), taste in music and even career choices.
She was sitting down on a suitcase full of memories with her knees bent together trying not to fall. Wearing a brown flowered shirt that enhanced the color of her skin and a pair of blue jeans, she had a vague resemblance of my mother’s youth. Her head rested on her hands and her elbows on her knees. As two little birds, her eyes soared through the airport looking at nothing in specific. Her nose inhaled the sweet scent of the Nicaraguan people, while her lips quietly ...