The House On Mango Street Analysis

Throughout the book the protagonist tries to distance herself from her Hispanic tradition; she wants to escape Mango Street, misery, poverty and Chicano community which damages women beyond repair. In order to do so, Betz argues that Esperanza have to separate herself from her Hispanic roots; Spanish tongue and community, so she can truly free herself from Mango Street. (LETO)

growing up in the Latino section of Chicago, Esperanza condemns her culture…? although she grew up in a Spanish-speaking community, she favors English language and voices a slight aversion to her culture. She implies this when she says, “In English my name means hope. In Spanish it means too many letters. It means sadness, it means waiting.” (10). The English meaning is positive and pleasant, whereas the Spanish one is gloomy and does not give her any hope. The same goes with characters in the novel; the ones who are

Nameless Geraldo dies before anyone can identify him. Marin gets tired of describing what has happened and as well “can't explain why it mattered, the hours and hours, for somebody she didn't even know.” (66) It is explicitly shown how “[a]nonymity becomes a marker of one’s disposability” (Burcar 56).

He was just “another brazer who didn’t speak English” (66). He did not matter and was yet one more stereotype of a migrant worker. He was not important enough for the doctor to be disturbed, as there was “[n]obody but an intern working all alone” (66).

Since he does not speak English, Esperanza portrays him as a redundant human being. There is no translation of the word “brazer” and the readers consider the boy to be “just another foreign, distant object” (Betz)

In the vignette “No speak English” Cisneros shows us precisely just how important acculturation is. Everybody notice the arrival of “huge, enormous, beautiful” woman Mamacita, who soon becomes rather