Examines the form of The House on Mango Street and places it in the context of
other Chicano writing that experiments with the composite novel, or short-story
cycle.
Deborah Madsen, “Sandra Cisneros,” in Understanding Contemporary Chicana Lit-
erature (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2000), pp. 105–134.
A useful overview of major themes and motifs in both prose and poetry by
Cisneros.
Ellen McCracken, “‘Sandra Cisneros’ The House on Mango Street: Community-
Oriented Introspection and the Demystification of Patriarchal Violence,” in
Breaking Boundaries: Latina Writing and Critical Reading, edited by Asun-
ción Delgado, Eliana Ortega, Nina M. Scott, Nancy Saporta Sternbach, and
Elaine N. Miller (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1989), pp.
62–71.
Still valuable for its analyses of the motif of the house and of feminist and wom-
en’s issues, although its framing argument, suggesting reasons why The House on
Mango Street did not receive much critical attention, is moot now that the novel
has been well received and is widely taught.
Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg, Sandra Cisneros: Latina Writer and Activist (Berkeley
Heights, N.J.: Enslow, 1998).
Written for an adolescent audience, an overview of Cisneros’s life and works that
focuses on her development as a writer and the relationship between biography
and thematic issues in her work.
Julián Olivares, “Sandra Cisneros’ The House on Mango Street, and the Poetics of
Space,” The Americas Review, 15 (Fall–Winter 1987): 160–170.
Examines the idea of house as both literal and metaphorical space in the novel;
includes some discussion of form and genre.
Leslie Petty, “The ‘Dual’-ing Images of la Malinche and la Virgen de Guadalupe in
Cisneros’s The House on Mango Street,” MELUS, 25 (Summer 2000): 119–32.
Useful tracing of the way female figures offer models of “La Malinche” (the trai-
torous or promiscuous woman) and of the Virgin of Guadalupe (the good or pure
woman) for Esperanza and how she negotiates a role for herself that partakes of
both and neither.
Alvina E. Quintana, Home Girls: Chicana Literary Voices (Philadelphia: Temple
University Press, 1996).
Includes the chapter on Cisneros, “The House on Mango Street: An Appropriation
of Word, Space, and Sign,” which offers a clear analysis of the major themes of
the text.
—Kathryn West