The House on Mango Street
In the book The House on Mango Street, author Sandra Cisneros presents a series of vignettes that involve a young girl, named Esperanza, growing up in the Latino section of Chicago. Esperanza Cordero is searching for a release from the low expectations and restrictions that Latino society often imposes on its young women. Cisneros draws on her own background to supply the reader with accurate views of Latino society today. In particular, Cisneros provides the chapters "Boys and Girls" and "Beautiful and Cruel" to portray Esperanza's stages of growth from a questioning and curious girl to an independent woman. Altogether, "Boys and Girls" is not like "Beautiful and Cruel" because Cisneros reveals two different maturity levels in Esperanza; one of a wavering confidence with the potential to declare her independence, and the other a personal awareness of her own actions and the decision to take action and wage her "own quiet war (Cisneros 89). Author Sandra Cisneros was born in 1954 in the Latino section of Chicago (Encarta 1). Cisneros is an "American novelist, short-story writer, essayist, and poet (Encarta 1)." Her works have brought the perspective of the Mexican American woman into the "mainstream of literary feminism (Encart
------------------------------------------------------------------------ a 1)." She earned her Bachelor's Degree from Loyola University in 1976 and her Master's Degree from the University of Iowa in 1978 (Encarta 1). The House on Mango Street is Cisneros' first novel, and "is her most critically acclaimed (Encarta 1)." The novel is constructed with a "series of short interconnected chapters (Encarta 1)." Cisneros writes of the "hopes, desires, and disillusionments of a young writer growing up in a large city (Encarta 1)." After reading The House on Mango Street, the reader is left with a greater sense of the everyday oppressions the "roles created for women in Hispanic society (Encarta 1)." Cisneros decides to accept the oppression as part of culture, but also d! In both vignettes, Esperanza looks to others for answers, first to the boys in her neighborhood and then to the movie vixen. She does not necessarily make her own conclusions or solutions to her problem of dependency to her restrictive culture. In The House on Mango Street, there are some similarities, but more differences that separate Esperanza's character, as she grows more mature and aware of the situation that surround her. power from men, Esperanza looks to the example of the movie vixen "with (the) red red lips who is beautiful and cruel (Cisneros 89)." Esperanza gains strength in herself by accepting the situation she is in as it is, be acquiring a determination to leave it as week, much like author Sandra Cis
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Approximate Word count = 1006
Approximate Pages = 4 (250 words per page double spaced)
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