The House On Mango Street Sandra Cisneros Essay

Amelia Fishburne Fishburne 1

Ms. Brown

Adv. American Lit.

Dec. 20, 2016

Sandra Cisneros

Sandra Cisneros is a very passionate writer. She reveals an underlying message in her

books that help the reader know a little more about her. The House on Mango Street is Sandra’s

best work to tie into her personal life. This book was written to show how it was growing up as a

latina. Sandra Cisneros’ writings use symbolism to reflect emotions, experiences, and life

lessons learned throughout her own life.

Sandra’s family was a hard one to grow up in due to the split opinion on what kind of

woman she should grow up as. “As the third

child and only daughter in a family of seven

children, she found that her mother and the rest of her family had very different ideas on what

kind of woman she should be, whether independent or traditional.” (Meyers) She often felt like

she had “seven fathers.” Her father and brothers all wanted her to be a traditional housewife,

whereas her mother wanted her to grow up independant. Sandra adored her mother in so many

ways and continued those feelings with her mother’s wishes for her to be an independent

woman. “Her relationship with her mother is a close one, and Esperanza’s tender description of

her mother’s ringleted hair, “sweet” like “rosettes,” reveal an exceptional acceptance of her

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despite her failings.” (Meyers) In The House on Mango Street, Sandra acknowledges her feeling

for her mother through the character Esperanza. “But my mother’s hair, my mother’s hair, like

little rosettes, like little candy circles all curly and pretty because she pinned it in pin curls 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. The snoring, the rain, and Mama’s hair that smells like bread.” (6-7) These are

Esperanza’s feelings for her mother.

Cisneros’ culture lacked excitement and her surrounding always seemed dull and

depressing.

Sandra was born in Chicago to a mother who was Mexican- American and a

father of pure Mexican blood. Because Sandra’s father was Mexican, he often wanted to visit

his mother who lived in Mexico. For that reason, the Cisneros family moved back and forth

many times. Mexico to America, again and again. Sandra states, “Because we moved so

much, and always in neighborhoods that appeared like France after World War ll- empty lots

and burned- out buildings- I retreated inside myself.” (Sandra Cisneros) This aspect of

Sandra’s life is as well reflected in The House on Mango Street from the quote, “We didn’t

always live on Mango Street. Before that we lived on Loomis on the third floor, and before that

we lived on Keeler. Before Keeler it was Paulina, and before that I can’t remember. But what I

remember most is moving a lot.” (3) This is how Sandra is connecting the dots between her

childhood and the fiction of her books. Turns out her fiction isn’t completely fiction.

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Sandra poured her emotional feelings into her writing because she always felt left out

and the outcast. “Shortly after participating in the Iowa Workshop, Cisneros decided to

write

about conflicts directly related to her upbringing, including divided cultural loyalties, feelings of

alienation, and degradation associated with poverty.” (Sandra Cisneros) The emotional aspect

of her life is the reason she started writing in the first place. Now she writes to show the other

latina women that it is hard in life, but if you work at it, you can achieve your dreams. Here are

examples of how Sandra allows her emotions to flow into her writings. “Everybody laughing

except me, because I’m wearing the new dress, pink and white stripes, and new underclothes

and new socks and the old saddle shoes I wear to school, brown and white, the kind I get

every September because they last long and they do.” (47) Esperanza doesn’t like her shoes,

and repeatedly expresses those feeling in The House on Mango Street. Here is another time

she brings it up. “I make a story for my life, for each step my brown shoe takes. I say, “And so

she trudged up the wooden stairs, her sad brown shoes taking her to the house she never

liked.” (109) Both theses quotes show an emotional effect. She feels left out, poor, insecure,

and embarrassed. She adds experiences where people have made fun of her for being poor.

This may have symbolized how she felt as a child. “Don’t talk to them, said Cathy. Can’t you

see they smell like a broom.” (14) Sandra also uses this quote in her book, “Here there is too

much sadness and not enough sky. Butterflies too are few and so are flowers and most things

that are beautiful. Still, we take what we can get and make the best of it.” (33) This quote

probably sums up her life the best. Always a depressing site. Nowhere to go and nothing to

do except escape through her writing.
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Sandra’s experiences shaped her writing in so many talented ways. “My classmates

were from the best schools in the country. They had been bred as fine hothouse flowers. I

was a yellow weed among the city’s crack.” (Sandra Cisneros) This is very similar to how

Esperanza feels in the book. Esperanza wants to eat in the canteen with the special people,

but she is sent to the office when she tries and is told she must go back home tomorrow. “In

the canteen, which was nothing special, lots of boys and girls watched while I cried and ate

my sandwich,the bread already greasy and the rice cold.” (45) Esperanza felt like “the yellow

weed among the city’s crack.” “Cisneros was struck by how different she was from her

privileged classmates.” (Meyers) More through out Sandra’s childhood, she found how

isolated her family was from the mainstream American culture. “Those who don’t know come

into our neighborhoods scared. They think we are dangerous.” (28) They didn’t know the

outside, and the outside didn’t know them. However, they might have been more dangerous

than they thought. Growing up in an area for such a long time around a certain group of

people, may have made Sandra blind to surrounding hazards. For example, “The Seventh

time we drove into the alley we heard sirens… Louie’s cousin stopped the car right where we

were and said, “Everybody out of the car”... and we all waved as they drove away.” (26-27)

This was a time when one of Esperanza’s neighbors cousin got arrested for stealing a vehicle

and attempting to run. Therefore, Sandra may have not seen the actual dangers of her

community.

Sandra Cisneros always wanted a home she could be proud of growing up in.

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However, that was not what her prerogative was on the barrios and run down apartments they

lived in. “As a child, she could not understand why her home could not be like the pristine,

idealized ones she saw in television on such programs such as Father Knows Best and Leave

It To Beaver, but she sensed that the difference lay in her heritage.” (Meyers) This is very

similar to what Esperanza says in the book The House on Mango Street. Esperanza says,

“And inside it would have real stairs, not hallway stairs, but stairs inside like the houses on

T.V.” (4) This is her describing her dream home and just trying to imagine what home really is.

Sandra didn’t understand that home is where the heart and family is, but she thought of it as

an actual roof over your head. One that she could be proud of. “Everyone seemed to have

communal knowledge which I did not have- and then I realized that the metaphor of house

was totally wrong for me… I had no such house in my memories.” (Sandra Cisneros) Here

was an experience where she was in her class and the teacher asked a question about home

and her answer was different than all the others. As far as Sandra was concerned, this was

how she perceived the idea of a house. “No, this isn’t my house I say and shake my head as if

shaking could undo the year I lived here. I don’t belong. I don’t ever want to come from here.”

(106) This is how she imagines a home. “Only a house quiet as snow, a space for myself to

go, clean as paper before the poem.” (108) Something she can be proud of.

With examples such as growing up poor, being the outcast at school, and longing for

independence as a woman, her life and culture definitely shows through in her writing. Sandra

Cisneros’ writings definitely use symbolism to reflect so many aspects of her life. Aspects
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such as emotions, experiences, and life lessons learned throughout her own life. Her entire

goal is to inspire those who cannot make it on their own. She leaves the audience with this

surreal quote, “They will not know I have gone away to come back. For the ones I left behind.

For the ones who cannot break out.” (110)