Although Cisneros uses language as a recurring metaphor for the gulf between Mexican-Americans and the majority culture, what keeps Esperanza Cordero and her family and friends locked in their barrio is something more obdurate than language: a confluence of racism, poverty, and shame. But unlike Americans of Slavic or Jewish ancestry, Chicanos have been systematically excluded from the American mainstream in ways that suggest the disenfranchisement of African-Americans. In some ways it resembles the immigrant cultures that your students may have encountered in books like My Ántonia, The Jungle, and Call It Sleep. The House on Mango Street is also a book about a culture-that of Chicanos, or Mexican-Americans-that has long been veiled by demeaning stereotypes and afflicted by internal ambivalence. But this apparent randomness disguises an artful exploration of themes of individual identity and communal loyalty, estrangement and loss, escape and return, the lure of romance and the dead end of sexual inequality and oppression. For example, The House on Mango Street appears to wander casually from subject to subject-from hair to hips, from clouds to feet, from an invalid aunt to a girl named Sally, who has “eyes like Egypt” and whose father sometimes beats her. It is narrated in the voice of a young girl-a girl too young to know that no one may ever hear her-but whose voice is completely convincing, because it is the creation of a mature and sophisticated writer. It is a book of short stories-and sometimes not even full stories, but character sketches and vignettes-that add up, as Sandra Cisneros has written, “to tell one big story, each story contributing to the whole-like beads in a necklace.” That story is told in language that seems simple but that possesses the associative richness of poetry, and whose slang and breaks from grammatical correctness contribute to its immediacy. I need to help them since I’m part of the majority.The House on Mango Street is a deceptive work. I now have great empathy for minority groups. Unfortunately I had some type of prejudice for some people of different ethnic groups because I had in my head a stereotype of a type of people, but this book helped me overcome these prejudices and change idea. I always knew that many immigrants or people that don’t live in their home country don’t feel as they are home, but through this book we can understand clearly what is their feelings and I was quite touched by this and made my view for some people to change. Here she says that she is from mango street, because she lived there but she doesn’t feel it hers. We see this clearly in the passage : “But what I remember most is mango street, sad red house, the house I belong but do not belong to.”. In the last vignette Cisneros reiterates on the fact that mango street is not Esperanza’s house, probably expressing what she in first person felt. Esperanza doesn’t feel the house on mango street as her home, she is ashamed of it and doesn’t have a real house. Also in Alicia I Talking on Edna’s Steps shows the same feeling and desire. I would.” Thesis Statement For The House On Mango StreetĪnother vignette that expresses the desire for another house and the feeling of not belonging there is seen in Bums in the Attic where we see Esperanza describing an idle house where she would like to go.
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