The House on Mango Street

“Good lucky you studied…you mean my office, my life.” 

For Sandra Cisneros’s mother (and Esperanza’s by extension), the key to success in life is a good education. When she visits her daughter, who finally has a house of her own under the wide-open sky and more money than anyone in their family, she attributes this incredible success to her pursuit of education. Her mother always regretted not finishing school and pursuing higher education, so she is very proud of Cisneros for achieving her dream. The phrase “good lucky” appears repeatedly throughout the novel. 

“You live there? The way she said it made me feel like nothing. There. I lived there.” 

Esperanza is deeply ashamed of her family’s house on Mango Street. She knows that it is a place for impoverished people, and she wishes she lived in a stereotypical American home with a yard. Essentially, she is ashamed to be poor, and their house is a constant reminder of how poor they are.

“My mother’s hair, my mother’s hair…sweet to put your nose into when she is holding you, holding you and you feel safe…” 

Esperanza loves her mother dearly. Her mother’s hair represents comfort and love. This passage also demonstrates how young and innocent Esperanza is in the beginning of the novel. She is still cuddling with her mother and burying her face into her hair. Her mother continues to be a great source of love and security throughout the novel.  

“The boys and the girls live in separate worlds. The boys in their universe and we in ours.” 

Esperanza notices that as the children age, they are separated by gender. Her brothers no longer play together with the girls at school or in public because that would embarrass them. Part of growing up in her culture is the segregation of genders. This makes childhood lonely for Esperanza because she doesn’t feel satisfied with only her sister Nenny’s company. 

“In English my name means hope. In Spanish it means too many letters. It means sadness, it means waiting…It is the Mexican records my father plays on Sunday mornings when he is shaving, songs like sobbing.” 

Esperanza doesn’t like her name because it makes her stand out from other American children. She wishes for a name that would not give away her identity or link her so directly to her heritage. She is jealous of people with beautiful names. She also doesn’t want her name, which is inherited from her grandmother, to act as a prophecy for her life. 

“In the meantime they’ll just have to move a little farther north from Mango Street, a little farther away every time people like us keep moving in.” 

White people are fleeing her neighborhood in urban Chicago as immigrants move in. Esperanza is aware of the racism. She feels anger toward the way people view her family and community. 

“Down, down Mango Street we go. Rachel, Lucy, me. Our new bicycle. Laughing the crooked ride back.” 

These poetic lines capture the way Cisneros illustrates Esperanza’s youth. She captures the voice of the child as she describes Esperanza’s first friends and their joyful ride on a shared bicycle. 

“Nenny says: Yes, that’s Mexico all right. That’s what I was thinking exactly.” 

Although Esperanza and Nenny don’t always get along, Nenny understands Esperanza deeply because of their shared Mexican American identity. Rachel and Lucy don’t understand what Esperanza means when she sees qualities of Mexico in their neighborhood, but Nenny understands implicitly.

“Marin, under the streetlight, dancing by herself, is singing the same song somewhere. I know. Is waiting for a car to stop, a star to fall, someone to change her life.”

Marin fascinates Esperanza. She is the first beautiful young woman that introduces Esperanza to the complexities of femininity and sexuality. Marin hopes for escape from her life, just as Esperanza does. However, Marin hopes a man will provide her with an escape, while Esperanza stakes her hopes on education.

“Those who don’t know any better come into our neighborhood scared. They think we’re dangerous. They think we will attack them with shiny knives. They are stupid people who are lost and got here by mistake.” 

Esperanza describes the stereotypes that people hold for her community. They assume that because they are Mexican American, they are also gang members or violent and dangerous. Esperanza is angry at their stereotypes. She goes on to point out how scared her community feels when they enter another neighborhood, implying that there is more to be afraid of outside of their community than within. 

“You can never have too much sky. You can fall asleep and wake up drunk on sky, and sky can keep you safe when you are sad.” 

Esperanza loves nature and feels spiritually connected to wide open skies. She doesn’t have access to much nature where she lives, and crowded urban buildings block the sky. She longs to live where she can get lost staring up at the sky. She comes to understand that, in America, having access to nature is determined by class. The working class and poor people that she knows don’t have the time or space to live where they can see the sky or spend time daydreaming. 

“We are tired of being beautiful.” 

After playing dress up with high heels, the girls realize that being older and beautiful is less fun than just being children. They are excited and frightened by the way that their legs transform with high heels on, and the way men perceive them. After a homeless man asks them for a kiss, they feel particularly afraid of the power and dangers of sexuality. They are relieved to be able to shed the trappings of womanhood and go back to childhood.

“Nenny, I say, but she doesn’t hear me. She is too many light-years away. She is in a world we don’t belong to anymore.”

Nenny is younger than Esperanza. When Esperanza and her friends begin to mature out of childhood games, Nenny is left behind. This makes Esperanza feel embarrassed, as Nenny doesn’t understand the rules and games of older girls.

“And I think if my own Papa died what would I do. I hold my Papa in my arms. I hold and hold and hold him.” 

Nenny is younger than Esperanza. When Esperanza and her friends begin to mature out of childhood games, Nenny is left behind. This makes Esperanza feel embarrassed, as When Abuelito dies, Esperanza is called on to fill the role of oldest daughter and support her father. This passage marks an important rite of passage, as Esperanza faces her father’s mortality as well as the duties of the eldest daughter. Nenny doesn’t understand the rules and games of older girls.

“You just remember to keep writing, Esperanza. You must keep writing. It will keep you free…” 

Esperanza doesn’t understand this advice in the moment, but it will come to be very significant. Writing helps to keep her free because it gives her a mental escape as well as a means to explore her thoughts and feelings. Later, writing will literally keep her free as it gives her a profession and the ability to provide for herself, rather than live under her father or a husband. 

“His name was Geraldo. And his home is in another country. The ones he left behind are far away, will wonder, shrug, remember. Geraldo – he went north…we never heard from him again.” 

Geraldo represents the immigrants that leave their families behind in order to work in America and send money home. Geraldo is depicted as an indictment against the way many Americans view Mexican immigrants: invisible and nameless. Cisneros portrays his humanity to remind readers of prevalent inequities in American society.  

“One day I memorized all of ‘The Walrus and the Carpenter’ because I wanted Ruthie to hear me.” 

Wanting to be heard is a consistent desire for Esperanza. She uses reading and writing to give her voice a platform. The entire novel is an expression of the Mexican American community. Cisneros wants not only her individual story to be heard, but the story of her community.

“Sire. How did you hold her? Was it? Like this? And when you kissed her? Like this?” 

When Esperanza begins to awaken to her sexual desires, she expresses them in a short, dream-like vignette. She begins to imagine what it would be like to be held and kissed by a man. She uses the word “sire,” which may be a nod to the English literature that she reads and which shows her imagination at this point in her life. 

“When I am too sad and too skinny to keep keeping, when I am a tiny thing against so many bricks, then it is I look at trees.”

Identifying as a small, skinny girl in a bustling city, Esperanza identifies with the trees growing out of the cement. She takes inspiration from their ability to hold their roots firmly while reaching for the sky, an apt metaphor for a girl who wishes to ascend the social ranks, achieve, and break free of her neighborhood. 

“No speak English, she says to the child who is singing in the language that sounds like tin. No speak English, no speak English, and bubbles into tears.” 

Mamacita doesn’t want to live in America or raise her child outside of her homeland. She is afraid that if he learns to speak English, he will not learn the customs of his people, and he will ultimately reject her in favor of American life. Not speaking English is her only way to protest against cultural assimilation and a life she doesn’t want. 

“Her father says to be this beautiful is trouble.” 

Sally’s father is emotionally and physically abusive. He tries to keep Sally home and punishes her harshly if she spends time with boys. He is afraid that Sally’s beauty will attract the wrong kind of attention. He is so threatened by her beauty because it could lead to her escaping his authoritarian rule, a pregnancy out of wedlock, or her running away from home. Sally’s father represents a common parenting style in Esperanza’s community. This gives the reader a better sense of why she might want to escape the patriarchal social structure, and why her relationship to sexuality is so conflicted. 

“She lets me read her poems. I let her read mine. She is always sad like a house on fire – always something wrong.” 

Minerva and Esperanza both use poetry to express themselves. The contrast between the two girls is significant. Minerva writes poetry to escape the misery of her life as a single mother with an abusive boyfriend. Esperanza writes poetry as a means of developing an identity as a writer who will one day leave. Minerva is an example of one of those “who cannot out” (109) which Esperanza dedicates her writing to. 

“Esperanza…a good good name.” 

An old woman tells Esperanza that she will go far in life, and that her name is good. This marks an important moment for Esperanza, as she stated earlier how much she disliked her name. The three old women act as fortune tellers, assuring her that her name (and everything it represents) is not a hindrance, but rather a source of strength. Esperanza begins to integrate her feelings about her life on Mango Street with her dream of becoming a successful writer.