The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros Essay Example for Free

The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros Essay The book The House on Mango Street written by Sandra Cisneros is merely a collection of different (and in some ways similar) traits, experiences, cultures, traditions, values and points of views of the girls and boys living at Mango Street. From these collections collating in 44 inter-related chapters create a single topic of how the main character in the story Esperanza Cordero evolves, empowers herself, dreams and struggles to have a life she is aspiring of someday while still focusing herself to remain her feet standing on the ground.   The story also tackles some human rights issues although it is laid not in a tragic or overly dramatic situation since lightness and simple poetic style of narrating events and describing characters through short outline and vignettes are the manner the author has used.   Hence, the book is intentionally written for young mind readers for them to know and understand serious issues in a light touch. As a young preadolescent girl, Esperanza Cordero manages to identify herself in each of the character lives in her neighborhood although not exactly in the same manner.   She successful shows through her descriptions of the place and people in her life the not-so-good and not-so-bad experiences of the dual citizenship inhabitant in the city like the Latin – Americans.   She is most likely referring to females.   These females are what she actually provides us to be able to identify her as herself, or someone she wishes she could be or someone she hates exactly being a member of minority gender living in a minority community, in each of the characters given. Esperanza Cordero belongs to a family of six composed of a mother, a father, two brothers named Kiki and Carlos, and with only one sister Nenny.   Like many other kids, she has inner hopes and aspirations.   One of them is having a house she owns someday, and described as a white big one with lots of free space and bathrooms, perhaps due to her own experiences of living in a house of only one bedroom and bathroom.   After some changing of locations, her family decided to acquire a house to call their own to be free from rental obligations and irritating experiences of having landlords and landladies.   The house is situated at Mango Street.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   Some of the characters in the story are Cathy described as a typical rich girl who easily gets annoyed with the rudeness of people especially Esperanza’s male neighbors, Sally who at a young age forced to get married just to be free from domestic violence at home, another rich girl Alicia who always gets horrified with rats in their house, Elenita the fortune-teller, the materialistic girl Marin, Ruthie and Rafaela who always keep on telling Esperanza the disadvantages of marrying at a young age, and sisters Lucy and Rachel who are her playmates and companions in biking and in some memorable adventures along with her sister Nenny.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   Empowering herself is passively done as it is only a shadow which reflects her girly actions through her noting down of observations and understandings.   It means that the struggle of Esperanza to be free over power and superiority does not mean that she has to gain it over others or at the expense of others.   It only suggests that being true to oneself, as what she does, is enough to make things change for betterment. R E F E R E N C E S Cisneros, Sandra. The House on Mango Street. New York: Random House Inc. 2005