The House on Mango Street

Cisneros, S. (1984). The house on Mango Street. New York, NY: Random House, Inc..

I chose The House on Mango Street at the suggestion of the media specialist in my building for a multicultural novel. The author, Sandra Cisneros, is the daughter of a Mexican father and a Mexican-American mother who grew up in Chicago. She uses the experiences from her childhood days in her Chicago neighborhood as the inspiration and foundation for this story, which is about a young Latino girl growing up in a white neighborhood in Chicago and the trials she faces. Bebe Moore Campbell, from The New York Times Book Review, states that "Cisneros draws on her rich [Latino] heritage...and seduces with precise, spare prose, creating unforgettable characters we want to lift off the page. She is not only a gifted writer, but an absolute essential one."

The setting of this story is both integral and a back-drop. It is integral because the experiences the main character, Esperanza, tells of would not be significant if the setting was rural. When she talks about being forced into an alley by a group of boys while she waited on her cousin reveals the harshness and unforgiving nature of life on the streets of a large city. And the simple things such as walking to and from school would be entirely different if she was walking in the wide-open space of rural Kansas or Iowa. In the same essence, these are the same things that set the stage and mood of the story (back-drop).

The style of Cisneros's writing is unique. While this would be considered a chapter book, the chapters are all short. Some are extremely short, such as the chapter "Hair" which is only two paragraphs long, contains 10 sentences, and is made up of approximately 140 words. Along with this is the actual sentence structure. Most are short and simple, such as in the passage from page 6: "Everybody in our family has different hair. My Papa's hair is short like a broom, all up in the air. And me, my hair is lazy. It never obeys barrettes or bands. Carlos' hair is thick and straight. He does not need to comb it. Nenny's hair is slippery--." She also write in a manner that mimics the actual dialogue of a small girl with her word choice. The entire story is told from a first-person perspective through the eyes and mind of Esperanza.

Cisneros also makes use of imagery that she creates with her word choice, similes, and sensory details. One such instance occurs when Esperanza is describing her mother's hair. She states, "But my mother's hair, my mother's hair, like little rosettes, like 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."

All of these details would make this a suitable book for younger children as a teacher read book. The simple structures and the short chapters would lend themselves to a shorter attention span. At the same time, this would be appropriate as an independent reading book for middle school aged students. The text contains enough abstract ideas to keep them interested and actively reading, such as in the chapter "Red Clowns" when she talks about being touched by boys inappropriately. This book is an easy read and offers many opportunities for leassons about literature and life.