The House on Mango Street

Introduction

Imagine being a 12-year-old girl who wants to leave her poor and crowded neighborhood in Chicago. You want to have a nice house, a good education, and a free life. But you are a Latina immigrant, and you face many challenges and pressures because of your culture and gender. This is the story of Esperanza Cordero, the main character of The House on Mango Street.

The House on Mango Street is a famous novel by Sandra Cisneros, published in 1984. It is written in a simple but powerful style, using short chapters that each tell a different episode of Esperanza’s life. The novel shows how Esperanza grows up and learns about herself and the world around her. She makes friends, falls in love, and sees the struggles and successes of the women in her community.

The novel is not only about Esperanza’s personal journey, but also about the bigger issues that affect many immigrants and women in America. It talks about themes like identity, poverty, and community, and how they shape Esperanza’s choices and dreams. The novel gives a unique and honest voice to a young Latina girl, who is rarely represented in literature.

The House on Mango Street is still relevant and popular today, almost 40 years after it was first published. It is considered a modern classic, and has inspired many readers and writers. In this summary, we will explore Esperanza’s story and the lessons it teaches us about growing up and finding our place in the world.

Chapter 1: Esperanza’s new home

Esperanza Cordero is a 12-year-old girl who lives in a poor and crowded neighborhood in Chicago. She and her family are immigrants from Mexico. They have just moved to a new house on Mango Street. Esperanza is not happy with the house. It is small, old, and ugly. She wishes she had a better house with a big yard.

Esperanza tells us about her family. Her mother is kind and smart, and her hair smells like bread. Her father works hard, but he is not home much. She has two brothers, Carlos and Kiki, who play together and don’t talk to her. She also has a little sister, Nenny, who is too young to be her friend. Esperanza has to take care of Nenny, but she doesn’t like it.

Esperanza also tells us about her name. It means “hope” in English, but “sadness” in Spanish. She doesn’t like her name. She got it from her great-grandmother, who was unhappy in her marriage. Esperanza doesn’t want to be like her. She doesn’t want to be sad and trapped by a man.

Esperanza and the other kids on Mango Street have to make their own fun. They don’t have much to do or play with. Esperanza sees that the boys and girls in the neighborhood are different. They don’t mix with each other. Esperanza wants a best friend, someone who understands her and shares her dreams. But she hasn’t found one yet.

The first chapters of the novel show us what Esperanza’s life is like. They also show us what the novel is about. It is about how Esperanza grows up and learns about herself and the world. It is about how she wants a home and a community where she belongs. It is about how she faces the problems of being poor, being a woman, and being an immigrant. It is about how she hopes for a better future.

Esperanza is not happy with her life, but she is not giving up. She is brave and curious. She watches and listens to the people around her. She learns from their stories. She wants to be different from them. She wants to be free and independent. She wants to have a voice. But she is still a child, and she doesn’t know how to achieve her goals. She needs a friend to help her. But she hasn’t met one yet.

Chapter 2: The people of Mango Street

Esperanza meets her first friend on Mango Street: Cathy, who likes to pretend she is very fancy and calls herself the “queen of cats.” Cathy lives with her parents and a lot of cats in a house that is old and falling apart, just like Esperanza’s. Cathy likes to make up stories to feel better about being poor, like saying she is related to the queen of France.

Cathy also tells Esperanza about the other people who live on Mango Street, but she does not like most of them. For example, she says that two girls named Rachel and Lucy are dirty and smell bad. Even though Cathy tells Esperanza not to be friends with them, Esperanza thinks they are fun and lively. She secretly gives them some money to buy a bike that they can all ride together.

Cathy’s family does not stay on Mango Street for long. They move away because they do not like that many people from different countries are moving into their neighborhood. A boy named Meme, whose real name is Juan, moves into Cathy’s old house. He becomes famous for breaking both his arms when he tries to act like Tarzan.

Meme’s family shares their house with another family: Louie, a young Puerto Rican man, and his sisters. One of his sisters is Marin, who is older and prettier than Esperanza. She sells make-up and wants to get a job in the city. She also knows a lot about boys, sex, and how to look good. She teaches Esperanza and the other girls what she knows. But one day, a boy she likes dies in a car crash, and Marin has to go back to Puerto Rico because her family thinks she is too much trouble.

Esperanza also introduces us to Alicia, who takes care of her younger brothers and sisters and also goes to college. She studies very hard, even at night, when she sees mice running around the house. Alicia’s father does not believe her about the mice, and he tells her that a woman’s job is to cook and clean.

Esperanza talks about how people who do not live on Mango Street are afraid of her neighborhood, but she feels safe and comfortable there. But she also mentions how some children who live there die or get hurt, because they do not have enough adults to watch over them. First, Meme breaks both his arms when he plays Tarzan, and then one of the wild Vargas kids falls from a high place and dies.

These chapters show how Esperanza grows up and learns more about the people and the world around her. She makes friends with different kinds of girls, like Cathy, Rachel, and Lucy. She also sees how some girls have problems because of their gender or their poverty, like Marin and Alicia.

Esperanza has to deal with many challenges and changes, but she also has hope and joy. She is curious and creative, and she wants to understand more about her home and herself.

Chapter 3: Girls and boys

Esperanza and her friends are growing up. They start to see boys differently, and boys start to see them too. One day, they find some high heels and try them on. They feel like grown-up women, but they also feel scared. They soon stop playing with the shoes.

Esperanza’s body is changing too. She and her friends wonder what hips are for. Do they help with dancing? Or with having babies? Esperanza dances with a boy at a party and feels him looking at her.

Esperanza learns that being a woman is not always fun. She gets a job at a photo shop, but she has to lie about her age. One day, a man who works there makes her kiss him. It is not a nice kiss.

Esperanza sees how other women live. Ruthie is lonely and likes to play with kids. Rafaela’s husband does not let her go out. Mamacita is married, but she stays in her apartment and does not speak English. Minerva is young, but she has two kids and a bad husband. She writes poems and shows them to Esperanza.

Esperanza likes a boy named Sire. He is older and her father calls him a “punk.” He has a girlfriend who is small and pretty. Esperanza wishes he would look at her more.

Esperanza’s grandfather dies. She sees her father cry for the first time. She thinks about death and sickness. She remembers how she made fun of her Aunt Lupe, who was sick in bed. She died that same day. Esperanza feels sorry for what she did. Aunt Lupe was nice to her. She listened to her stories and poems. She told her that writing would make her free.

Esperanza is not a little girl anymore. She is becoming a young woman. She sees things differently. She faces some hard things. But she also finds something good. She discovers that writing can help her. Aunt Lupe is like an angel who watches over her. She helps her see that she can leave Mango Street someday, and be a writer.

Chapter 4: Esperanza, the storyteller

Esperanza is growing up and makes a new friend named Sally. Sally is very pretty and wears sexy clothes and makeup. This makes people talk about her at school. Esperanza is not sure if she likes boys or not, but Sally likes to flirt with them. One day, some boys make Sally play a game where they kiss her. Esperanza wants to help Sally, but Sally laughs at her and tells her to leave.

Esperanza has a bad experience with a boy at a carnival. She does not say what he did to her, but it was very scary and hurtful. She keeps hearing him say, “I love you, Spanish girl.” She wonders if Sally lied to her about how good sex is. She does not want to be like Sally anymore.

Sally also has problems with men. Her father says she is too beautiful and hits her a lot. One time, he hits her so hard that she comes to live with Esperanza for a while. She marries an older man to get away from her father, but he is not nice to her either. He does not let her go out or have friends. She is stuck in another house, looking at the walls.

Esperanza goes to a funeral for the baby sister of Rachel and Lucy, her old friends. She meets three old ladies who are like witches. They know that Esperanza wants to leave Mango Street and say that she will. But one of them tells her to promise that she will come back for the people who are still there.

Esperanza tells Alicia, who goes to college, what she wants for her future. She wants a house that is hers only. She says she would let homeless people stay in her attic, because she knows how it feels to not have a good house.

She ends her story by saying that she is a storyteller. Writing stories will help her get out of Mango Street someday, but also help her remember how it made her who she is. And when she is far enough, she will come back for the people who cannot leave.

At the end of her story, Esperanza decides to leave Mango Street because of what happened to her and Sally. The old ladies at the funeral tell her that she can do it, but she should not forget where she came from.

Even though nothing has changed much by the end of the book, Esperanza has changed a lot inside. She is not a girl anymore, but a young woman. She knows that she is a writer and that writing will help her escape Mango Street. But she also knows that she has to come back someday. Mango Street has been good and bad for her, and she wants to make it better for the people who are still there.

Final summary

This is a story about Esperanza, a girl who is 12 years old and has both Mexican and American roots. She and her family move to a new house in a poor area of Chicago where most people are Latinos like them. She makes friends with other girls who are going through the same things as her, like growing up, liking boys, and dealing with men who look at them in bad ways.

Esperanza learns from the different women in her neighborhood how hard it is to be a woman in this society. She sees them stuck at home, doing everything for their husbands and kids.

She also has a friend named Sally who runs away from her mean dad and marries a mean man, right after Esperanza has a terrible experience with a group of boys who hurt her. Esperanza decides that she doesn’t want to live like this anymore. She wants to be a writer and use her words to escape and to help others. She plans to leave Mango Street someday, but she also promises to come back and make it a better place.

About the author

Sandra Cisneros is an internationally acclaimed poet and fiction writer known for her powerful storytelling, which often explores identity, gender, and race. Apart from The House on Mango Street, Cisneros has authored several other acclaimed works, including Woman Hollering Creek and Other Stories and Caramelo, both of which have also garnered significant attention and praise for their exploration of cultural identity and the female experience.