The House on Mango Street | Sandra Cisneros
"As a girl, she dreamed about having a silent home, just to herself, the way other women dreamed of their wedding."
(It is simply uncanny just how much I find myself in this sentence.)
I first heard of Sandra Cisneros back in college. I was looking for a short story to translate for an assignment and stumbled upon this book. Alas, the stories in here were too short and so I simply had a flick-through and went on to search for something else. Still, I never forgot this title and have wanted to read Esperanza's story ever since. And voila - thanks to Book Depository and their free worldwide delivery system I now own this little book.
"It was my great-grandmother's name and now it is mine. She was a horse woman too, born like me in the Chinese year of the horse - which is supposed to be bad luck if you're born female - but I think this is a Chinese lie because the Chinese, like the Mexicans, don't like their women strong."
"I had to prove to me I wasn't scared of nobody's eyes, not even his."
This book is actually a series of vignettes that span a short time of Esperanza's life. She is a girl of Hispanic heritage that lives in a bit of a rough neighborhood. We see her experience as a daughter, a sister, a girl, a minority and an aspiring writer. Cisneros has said that this is not an autobiographical account but that Esperanza is a part of her in a way. Esperanza ruminates on many things - her parents' hard work, her friends and school experience, the interesting neighbors, the issues that she faces just by being a girl...
"She looked out the window her whole life, the way so many women sit their sadness on an elbow."
I feel that this is a book everyone should read at least once. I don't have much in common with Esperanza but I still found myself empathizing and there were certain times I felt as if I was reading about myself. I suppose there are certain things that all girls experience in their lifetime.
In the end, the protagonist's name means 'hope' and that, I find, is the message of this little book of snippets of a life. You have to have hope that everything will work out.
"Not a flat. Not an apartment in back. Not a man's house. Not a daddy's. A house all my own."
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