Cottage on Mango Street

Author: Sandra Cisneros (United States)
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2008-07-01
Features: The House on Mango Street is a beautiful and pure little book. A "prose poem," it is a story about growing up and pursuing a sense of reality and spiritual home through writing. It consists of dozens of short stories, each telling about a person, an event, a dream, a few clouds, a few trees, or a variety of feelings. The language is as clear as flowing water, dotted with scattered rhymes and novel metaphors, like a series of short songs with their own rhythms yet interconnected, forming a clear world where diverse, bustling lives unfold. All the narratives converge into a single narrative center: Esperanza, a girl living on Mango Street in the Latino immigrant community of Chicago. Born with a deep empathy for the weak and a keen sense of beauty, she observes the world with clear eyes and tells stories of growing up, of weariness, of the beauty and struggles of life, of youthful aspirations and dreams—dreaming of having her own house, dreaming of finding herself through writing, gaining freedom, and the ability to help others. The book won the American Book Award in 1985 and was soon included in the authoritative Norton Anthology of American Literature. It has since been adopted into middle and high school curricula as a required reading for practicing reading and writing, becoming one of the most celebrated contemporary classics of growth in America. In 2004, Harold Bloom, a renowned Western literary critic, compiled an introduction to the book, which was part of a series that also included introductions to classic works such as Hamlet and The Scarlet Letter, among others.