The House on Mango Street: Esperanza' S Diary

The House on Mango Street, by Sandra Cisneros, was first published in 1984 by “Arte Publico Press”. This is the first novel of the already mentioned author, Sandra Cisneros, which follows the everyday struggles of a young Latino girl called Esperanza Cordero.

Besides the everyday struggles of the protagonist, Esperanza, the author tried to show us the adventures of a young girl trying to escape from her daily life and desperately wanting to one day move into a house of her dreams. A house that she used to hear about in her mother’s bedtime stories. This work of modern literature is often characterized as a novel but I noticed admixtures of a fiction novel and even a bildungsroman.

The House on Mango Street is a novel in stories, and it is these stories that helped the author give the reader the impression that this was written like a journal or a diary by the protagonist herself (author’s writing style). The author’s thesis of The House on Mango Street is very often repeated in the novel and that is that you don’t need to deny one culture to be part of another. Yet another proof for the already mentioned thesis that you get the impression, the novel was written like a journal by a young Esperanza, is in the author’s writing style. Sandra Cisneros writing style is very specific in the way that she narrated these stories in a simple language but often putting hidden and controversial but not understandable, to the protagonist, meaning into doings of the people around her. Thus forcing the leading character to think up stories to atone to the weird happenings in her environment. We can clearly notice this characteristic of Sandra’s writing style in the story “The Earl of Tennessee”, where Esperanza tries to explain Earl’s promiscuous life by saying that they can never agree what his wife looks like (for no apparent reason). 

All in all this is a very thought provoking and educational novel. I enjoyed it very much, especially the ending sentences which are, in my opinion, motivational and inspiring. I would recommend reading this book, because it forces you to think about the large undertaking that is life. The House on Mango Street can motivate you to grow beyond the limitations that people or even you put on yourself.