[.ca] The House on Mango Street (ISBN 067943335X)

Childhood and lost innocence:
As you weave your way through the web of this book you will find many themes that all seem to be woven into one...and that one them is brutal loss of innocence. In the book Sandra Cisneros describes for us in poetic form the importance of ones childhood and that how in an instance it can all be taken away from us and all we are left with is our memories, whether they be good or bad. Sandra Cisneros has written this book with women in mind, but men will enjoy it too, in hopes that all those who read it will escape their own Mango Street or Royal Circle or wherever your childhood was spent and innocence lost. Also very highly recommended-------THE CHILDREN'S CORNER by McCrae and a book titled SHES COME UNDONE by Wally Lamb.

A Masterpiece -- Buy this book!:
THE HOUSE ON MANGO STREET Sandra Cisneros paints a picture for us of life of a Latin-American girl growing up in the Hispanic section of Chicago. We learn that, for this little girl, Mango Street is not a place of dreams which would " have running water and pipes that worked. And inside it would have real stairs, not hallway stairs, but stairs inside the house like on T.V." Instead, the house on Mango Street is "small and with tight steps in front and windows so small you'd think they were holding their breath." The house on Mango street is the place she and her family moved to when the pipes broke in their last apartment and the landlord refused to fix things. The book is written as a series of vignettes by Esperanza Cordero. The short essays/articles that make up the book have a flavor of a journal or diary entries. Rather than a single story, these journal entries are a series of vignettes which alternate stories of things that happened with description of people and things. As we read, we not only learn about the house, but the neighborhood of Mango Street and the people who inhabit it. Though not preachy in the least, the book brings us into a reality of life for a poor Latina child facing the challenges of living in a tenement, the differences in life based on class and gender. She comes face-to-face with the reality of racial enmity and some self-hate for her own differences. As she learns about life, we are hearing her voice and we are learning, too. I can't say enough about this book, except to highly recommend you buy it! Also recommended: THE LOSERS' CLUB: Complete Restored Edition by Richard Perez, another Latin-flavored book (glossary in the back), about love and loss and the lighter side of dating.

mango:
I picked this up on a whim and I couldn't stop reading it. Ultimately a sad tale with sprinkles of humor and wanting in between. Good book for anyone that wants to read a tale that feels so real.

Title:
Just an obnoxious test... ignore this

Juicy:
My favorite quality of Cisneros's work is her precision. By this I mean, her ability to give a brief yet descriptive account of a portion of her life. For instance, "The house on Mango Street is ours, and we don't have to pay rent to anybody, or share the yard with the people downstairs, or be careful not to make too much noise, and there isn't a landlord banging on the ceiling with a broom. But even so, it's not the house we'd thought we'd get." This is a brief yet very descriptive family, from these fifty six word we learn that her family is of low income, they are making progress in the world of economics, that she has very high hopes, and she is disappointed that these hopes have not been met. Yet even though she is disappointed she is very thankful for what her and her family have. Another quote to support my position, is the entire chapter/metaphor of "My Name". This entire chapter is one huge metaphor, she is comparing her name to all that she wants her name to be, everything she doesn't want her name to be, why she likes her name, and why she despises of it. In this chapter Cisneros captured my attention with opening line, "In English my name means hope." At this point as the reader you're captivated by the intriguingness of the statement. Almost like she has taken a statement and stated it as if it were a question. I immediately found myself asking, What is she hopeful for?, upon reading the opening remark. The only thing that I did not enjoy about the book was that many of the chapters were irrelevant and not interesting to me as the reader. I feel as though some of the chapters were thrown in there just to take up space. The chapter about hair, for instance, I found very random and not pertaining to much of the rest of the book. One thing that I had mixed feelings about was the significant lack of a plot. At times you think this is boring, what is her point, wow this is out the blue. However, I have found that this type of writing is more captivating to the audience, and in fact more is learned by using this structure of writing.