The House on Mango Street 287school “[b]ecause I didn’t have nice clothes.” Finally,
Esperanza is aware that she does not wish to be
trapped like her friend Sally, whose much-older
husband is okay, “Except he won’t let her talk on the
telephone. And he doesn’t like her to look out the
window. And he doesn’t like her friends, so nobody
gets to visit her unless he’s working.” Sally sits at
home because she “is afraid to go outside without
his permission.”
Cisneros makes a simple statement in the last
vignette that sums up the entire story of Esperanza
on Mango Street. Esperanza is planning to leave
home, planning to have a house of her own, and
planning to write. She says, “I like to tell stories. I
am going to tell you a story about a girl who didn’t
want to belong.” Esperanza wants to create her own
life, her own world, and she breaks free of Mango
Street. She is Hispanic, but not just Hispanic; she is
a woman, but not just a woman.
Elizabeth Malia
innOcence and experience in The House
on Mango Street
Sandra Cisneros writes powerfully of a young girl’s
coming of age in the modern era in her debut
work, The House on Mango Street. She eschews any
romantic or flowery prose as she tells the story of
Esperanza Cordero, a young Hispanic girl who
moves to Mango Street, grows up there, loses her
innocence, and finds herself.
Esperanza’s family is intact and whole, and they
are living in their own house in an inner-city neigh-
borhood evolving from lower middle class to almost
poverty ridden. As a small girl, she is protected
and safe, naive and trusting. Esperanza displays
her innocence when describing her mama’s hair as
“sweet when you put your nose into when she is
holding you, holding you and you feel safe.”
Despite this feeling of safety, she is aware that
not everyone wants Hispanics in the neighbor-
hood. Her friend Cathy tells her they are friends
only “until next Tuesday,” and then Cathy’s family
will be moving because of families like Esperanza’s
arriving. Later, Esperanza will describe how outsid-
ers show fear when entering the neighborhood in
their cars. She says, “Those who don’t know any
better come into our neighborhood scared. They
think we’re dangerous.” The residents feel safe in a
nearly homogenous area: “All brown all around, we
are safe.” Already Esperanza’s innocence has been
damaged by prejudice and ignorance.
Playing dress-up with her friends, Esperanza
learns that actions can be misinterpreted. Walking to
the store in her mother’s high heels, she is told those
shoes are “dangerous,” which she disregards in her
naïveté. They come across a derelict they christen
“Mr. Bum.” He tries to convince Rachel to give him
a kiss and promises her a dollar. Frightened, the girls
run away; they do not know what the danger is, but
they feel it. At home, safe, they decide they are “tired
of being beautiful,” and the shoes are forsaken. The
natural urge to grow up too fast is dealt a blow, but
it is not permanent.
When Esperanza begins to develop physically
and discovers she has hips, Lucy says that besides
holding babies while cooking, hips are needed “to
dance. If you don’t get them you may turn into a
man.” Esperanza, already enlightened by Alicia,
adds, “It’s the bones that let you know which skel-
eton was a man’s when it was a man and which a
woman’s.” And, “One day you might decide to have
kids, and then where are you going to put them? Got
to have room. Bones got to give.”
On her first job, Esperanza is accosted by an
Asian man she hardly knows. “He grabs my face
with both hands and kisses me hard on the mouth
and doesn’t let go.” She is bothered by this, but
does not understand it. In the neighborhood and at
school, she realizes that a certain boy is looking at
her, all the time. Ironically, his name is Sire. She is
frightened but also excited. She feels, “Everything is
holding its breath inside me. Everything is waiting
to explode like Christmas. I want to be all new and
shiny. I want to sit out bad at night, a boy around my
neck.” She is envious of the bad girls, “the ones that
go into alleys,” like Sire’s girlfriend. Esperanza wants
“to love and to love and to love and to love, and no
one could call that crazy.”
Sally shows Esperanza how boys treat her. She
lets the boys tease her and steal her keys. Sally has
to kiss them to get the keys back, but she does not
seem to mind. “It was just a kiss, that’s all. A kiss for
each one. So what, she said.” Eventually, the kisses
lead to further sexual exploitations.