House On Mango Street Identity

Words: 840
Pages: 4

The House on Mango Street was written by Sandra Cisneros, Published in 1984 (Arte Público Press) and in 1991 (Vintage Contemporaries). This is a novel of a young girl that is coming of age and is learning to find herself and become the person she is meant to be while facing the struggles of being Latino. The novel “The House on Mango Street” has a magnificent way of portraying how confusing and complicated it can be for a youthful individual to mature and find themselves through many different obstacles, and it succeeds in demonstrating how one can overcome these obstacles by making the themes relatable.
The themes in this novel are that of identity and the difficulty of finding oneself not only as a young adult but as being part of an “inferior” race. That is a representation of what pre-teens go through and how they develop in different aspects. When Esperanza says “in English my name means hope. In Spanish, it means too many letters. It means sadness, it means waiting. It is like the number nine. A muddy color,” it contributes to her feeling of not belonging. For example, when Esperanza goes to school and the teachers cannot pronounce her name, she feels like her Hispanic name complicates a lot for her. Esperanza even ponders in changing it, not knowing how much it really contributes to her persona. Her Mexican heritage, she believes is what is ruining her school life and
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The author making Esperanza Latina, or Hispanic is what makes the story more relatable to people of that race and shows them that many other individuals have been through and surpassed situations that they may find themselves in. I feel that this really does make Latino people feel better about themselves. To know that not only have others been what we may go through, but that due to this they grow even