A Hearty Fruit

Sandra Cisneros's House on Mango Street is an amazing collection of vignettes which take us through the life of a young Latina girl. Cisneros's writing is as rich and elegant as heavy pastry, with a light frosting of mysticism and culturally-bound fantasy. The text is simple and straightforward and is accessible on many levels. This is a book that I used when teaching a remedial writing course at the community college level. It is also a favorite of my nine-year-old daughter. The book is slim and spare, but there are worlds within the outlines of her prose.