Deceptively Simple: Don't be Fooled. Its Brilliant

Sandra Cisneros, author of The House on Mango Street, was born in Chicago, Illinois on December 20, 1954. She was the only daughter, of seven children, to a Mexican father and mother. She grew up as a poor, Hispanic girl, learning to deal with all the social consequences of being marginalized by race, class and gender. When Cisneros’ writing began to gain notoriety, she did not forget about her roots in the barrio. The House on Mango Street is their story, a story for the ones who haven’t been able to get away, though she first started it as an autobiography. “I taught Latino high-school dropouts and counseled Latina students. Because I often felt helpless as a teacher and counselor to alter their lives, their story began to surface in my “memoir”; then Mango Street ceased to be my story,” Sandra Cisneros said in a 1993 introduction to her novella. On the surface, this is a child’s book, but if you look beneath it there are some very serious topics being looked at.

Cisneros wanted to write a story that was unlike the things being written by her contemporaries. She saw that white, middle class, male views were the ones being expressed in most readings, and she wanted to read about people like herself. “Each week I ingested the class readings and then went off and did the opposite. It was a quiet revolution…but it was out of this negative experience that I found something positive, my own voice,” she said of her college experience in an English class.

Cisneros’ work is uniquely written and organized, being narrated by a child and split into 46 short chapters or vignettes. “I knew I wanted to tell a story made up of a series of stories that would make sense if read alone, or that could be read all together to tell one big story, each story contributing to the whole—like beads in a necklace,” Sandra Cisneros said. This is unusual organization for a book to have, but is very interesting and easy to read. Also, the book is not written in a traditional manner, with a clear plot set up temporally. This novella is spatially organized. Plot is background. Dialogue is less important. The short chapters lay out sketches of Esperanza’s life. Esperanza, a young girl, narrates the story. “The language in Mango Street is based on speech. It’s very much an anti-academic voice—a child’s voice, a girl’s voice, a poor girl’s voice, a spoken voice, the voice of an American-Mexican,” Sandra Cisneros said in a 1993 introduction to her novella, The House on Mango Street. The simple language is very poetical as well. The short chapters and rhythmic flow of the prose gives the feeling of poetry to this piece. As Cisneros said, “I was trying to write something that was a cross between fiction and poetry.” Cisneros’ use of tone and the underlying meaning behind her child-like narration is powerful. “The way the author uses language to tell a story conveys the quality of their mind to the reader. As we follow the story on the page we seem to hear the narration as well as understand it,” (The Elements of Fiction). This is true of Cisneros’ work. Despite the short, child-like sentences, we understand that there is a much deeper, graver tone being expressed.

“The voice of Mango Street and all my work was born at one moment, when I realized I was different,” Sandra Cisneros said. This story is very much about dealing with being different—with the social roles of “female”, “poor”, and “Hispanic”. Esperanza has to figure out a way to rise above where race, class, and gender discrimination try to place her. “Once I could name [my otherness], I ceased being ashamed and silent. I could speak up and celebrate my otherness as a woman, as a working-class person, as an American of Mexican decent,” Sandra Cisneros said. This is exactly what this novella is about. Esperanza must move from a point of ashame and silence to a point of celebration. As a child, she feels embarrassed about her status. “I asked questions I didn’t know to ask when I was an adolescent. But best of all, writing in a younger voice allowed me to name that thing without a name, that shame of being poor, of being female, of being not quite good enough,” Sandra Cisneros said in a 1993 introduction to her novella, The House on Mango Street.

She has to escape from Mango Street. She feels trapped there. She realizes that her culture, and that of Mango Street, forces women into a subordinate position. She talks about her grandmother as being a strong woman, which was discouraged. “[My great-grandmother] was a horse-woman too, born like me in the Chinese year of the horse—which is supposed to be bad luck if you’re born female—but I think this is a Chinese lie because the Chinese, like the Mexicans, don’t like their women strong,” (My Name). All around her girls fall into bad situations, where they are dominated by males. They are manipulated sexually, they are forced into marriage and live in the home, and abusive husbands keep some of these women trapped indoors and secluded from talking to others. Her friend, Sally gets married before she is even in the eighth grade to a controlling man. “She sits at home because she is afraid to go outside without his permission. She looks at all the things they own: the towels and the toaster, the alarm clock and the drapes. She likes looking at the walls, at how neatly their corners meet, the linoleum roses on the floor, the ceiling smooth as a wedding cake…She says she is in love, but I think she did it to escape,” Esperanza comments (Linoleum Roses). Sally’s case can be seen as a microcosm for many of the women on Mango Street. Sex is used as a tool in the book to keep women down. We see Sally being coerced behind a car to be fondled so she can get her keys back. We see Esperanza being sexually abused on at least two occasions, by the old man at her place of employment and by a boy at the carnival. She is crushed by the way she has been mislead by the media and her friend Sally. She thought sexual activity was going to be like the movies, but for her it is reduced down to something foul and offensive. “Sally, you lied. It wasn’t what you said at all. What he did. Where he touched me. I didn’t want it, Sally. The way they said it, the way it’s supposed to be, all the story books and movies, why did you lie to me?” Esperanza questions (Red Clowns). Sexual harassment is just another way that women’s power is being taken away from them in this book.

Esperanza’s poverty also limits her opportunities. Esperanza’s own mother is a victim of this. She says to her daughter when lamenting about her life gone wrong, “Shame is a bad thing, you know? It keeps you down. You want to know why I quit school? Because I didn’t have nice clothes. No clothes, but I had brains,” (A Smart Cookie). Esperanza’s mother allowed poverty and the implicated shame to stop her ambitions and strip her of her power. Esperanza feels shame as well. The family drives around on Sundays and looks at nice houses, but Esperanza decides not to go anymore. “I don’t tell them I am ashamed—all of us staring out the window like the hungry. I am tired of looking at what we can’t have. When we win the lottery… Mama begins, and then I stop listening,” (Bums in the Attic). She wants to leave Mango Street, where poor people around her are trapped. Esperanza wanted to take back the power that Mango Street had seized from her; she needed a space of her own, and that space was not the house on Mango Street.

All around her people are trapped in sad lives. She vows that she will not go quietly, like they have. Esperanza says, “I have decided not to grow up tame like the others who lay their necks on the threshold waiting for the ball and chain…I have begun my own quite war. Simple. Sure. I am one who leaves the table like a man, without putting back the chair or picking up the plate,” (Beautiful and Cruel). She draws comparisons between herself and some withering trees near her house. Referring to what she described as “excuses planted by the city”, Esperanza said, “Their strength is their secret. They send ferocious roots beneath the ground. They grow up and they grow down and grab the earth between their hairy toes and bite the sky with violent teeth and never quit their anger. This is how they keep,” (Four Skinny Trees). Her strength is a secret too and it is how she keeps. No one knows that she will one day leave Mango Street. Another way she remains strong is by writing poetry, and this is hinted at in the novella. It is clear, here, that having a voice is having power (See Key Scenes...).

Esperanza wanted to rise above her economic, gender, and racial limitations, but she knew that she would not forget Mango Street or the trapped souls there. She promised herself that she would not forget the ones that could not leave. She understood this responsibility to herself and others. There are several passages in the book where she vows to do just this. “One day I’ll own my own house, but I won’t forget who I am or where I came from. Passing bums will ask, Can I come in? I’ll offer them the attic, ask them to stay, because I know how it is to be without a house,” (Bums in the Attic). The last lines of the novella echo just this sentiment. “I am too strong for [Mango] to keep me here forever. One day I will go away…They will not know I have gone away to come back. For the ones I left behind. For the ones who cannot out,” (Mango Says Goodbye Sometimes).