The Help And The House On Mango Street Essay

Words: 2480
Pages: 10

Racial inequality among the main characters in The Help and The House on Mango Street
Discrimination and segregation have been around for the longest time and unfortunately, it will never go away. Past, present, and future events have helped shape people and history to the way it is currently. Gender roles and racial expectations have always been a problem for humankind. For every white man’s dollar, women get about seventy nine cents. These gender roles are some of the many that have been agitated by people who have wanted equal rights. The authors Kathryn Stockett who wrote The Help and Sandra Cisneros who wrote The House on Mango Street have established these outlooks on racial and gender inequality among their books.
In the book The Help
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Esperanza is a young hispanic girl who struggles with bullying and living in poor conditions with her family members but she eventually overcomes it with her escape: writing. Esperanza doesn’t want to live in the conditions she’s currently living in, forever. She wants a house that she can earn herself by achieving her goal as a writer. Cisneros writes, “But when the kids are asleep after she’s fed them their pancake dinner, she writes poems on little pieces of paper that she folds over and over and hold in her hands a long time, little pieces of paper that smell like a dime. She lets me read her poems. I let her read mine. She is always sad like a house on fire—always something wrong. She has many troubles, but the big one is her husband who left and keeps leaving. One day she is through and lets him know enough is enough. Out the door he goes. Clothes, records, shoes. Out the window and the door locked. But that night he comes back and sends a big rock through the window. Then he is sorry and she opens the door again. Same story. Next week she comes over black and blue and asks what can she do? Minerva. I don’t know which way she’ll go. There is nothing I can do”