The House on Mango Street Esperanza Cordero is a young girl growing up in a Hispanic family in Chicago. Poverty forces them to move more times than she can count. By the time they move to the Mango Street house, there are six of them: "Mama, Papa, Carlos, Kiki, my sister Nenny and me." Esperanza likes the new house because it belongs to them. They don’t have to worry about landlord problems, like broken water pipes that don’t get fixed. Esperanza has always felt ashamed of living in apartment buildings, and was happy to move into a house. However, the house isn’t exactly the fantasy that Mama and Papa have always promised their children: there’s no yard, the front door sticks, the windows are tiny, and there are only three bedrooms. Her parents tell her the house is temporary, but Esperanza doesn’t believe them.
Hairs Esperanza describes the hair of each of her family members: Carlos' is thick and straight, Kick’s is like fur, her father's is like a broom, her own is lazy and won’t obey pins, and her mother's hair is "like little rosettes." Based on the highly specific and artful descriptions (Nenny's hair is "slippery--slides out of your hand"), the family is clearly very close and Esperanza feels attached to each of them, especially her mother. She remembers lying in bed with Mama, feeling safe and smelling her skin and her hair.
Boys and Girls Esperanza describes the boys and girls as living "in separate worlds"-- her brothers, Carlos and Kiki, refuse to be seen talking to their sisters outside the house. Her brothers are best friends, but Esperanza thinks her sister Nenny is too young to be her best friend, yet she feels responsible for her. Esperanza is an intelligent girl who longs for a best friend her own age, one who will understand her jokes, one she can tell secrets to.
My Name The name Esperanza means "hope," but she hates her name. She feels it means "sadness, it means waiting." She explains that it was her great- grandmother’s name--a woman who was born in the Chinese Year of the horse, like Esperanza. This is supposed to be bad luck, according to the Chinese, but Esperanza thinks it is a "Chinese lie," because Chinese people, like Mexicans, don’t like strong women. Esperanza’s great-grandmother would not marry, but was stolen away by her great-grandfather, who threw a sack over her head and forced her to marry him. She did not forgive him, however, but spent the rest of her life staring out of windows. Esperanza worries that this will happen to her too. Her other frustration with her name is its foreignness. At school, English-speaking people say her name in a way she hates, "as if the syllables were made out of tin." In Spanish, she thinks, it sounds better. She longs for a new name, one more like "the real me," like "Zeze the X."
Cathy, Queen of Cats Cathy is Esperanza’s neighbor. She explains who is dangerous in the neighborhood, like Joe the baby-grabber, how to act around the men who own the corner store, which girls her age not to play with, and many other things. She gives Esperanza a sense of the neighborhood, past and present. She owns many cats, and says she is the "great great grand cousin of the queen of France." She says she will be Esperanza’s friend until Tuesday, when she moves away, down the street. She claims that one day, her father will fly to France and inherit the family house.
Our Good Day The sisters Cathy warned her against, Lucy and Rachel, ask Esperanza to give them five dollars so that they can buy a bicycle to share between the three of them. They tell her they will be her friends forever, which Esperanza accepts, taking two dollars from Nenny on her absent behalf. Lucy and Rachel are dirty and sassy, obviously poor, but good-natured. Rachel is bolder and talks more. They don’t laugh when Esperanza tells them her name. Esperanza is nervous and somewhat intimidated by her new friends, but when the three girls pile on the bike and ride around the neighborhood together, she has a lot of fun. They ride through places Esperanza knows are dangerous, and Rachel teases a fat woman. Esperanza, a polite and shy girl, is quietly shocked.
Laughter Esperanza describes how similar she is to her sister Nenny--not in obvious ways, like their facial features, but how alike their laughs are, for example. They see a house that they both agree looks like Mexico in some way. They can’t explain how, and no one but the two sisters understand it.
Gil’s Furniture Bought & Sold Esperanza describes a junk store in her neighborhood that she and Nenny visit sometimes. It is dirty and a little mysterious (the owner will only turn on the lights for serious shoppers, and the aisles are narrow and maze-like). One day the owner shows them a music box: not a pretty little toy with a ballerina on top, but a wooden box, and when he winds it up it makes beautiful and mysterious music, “like if you were running your fingers across the teeth of a metal comb.” Esperanza is so moved she turns away, and Nenny doesn’t understand how special it is and tries to buy it, but the man tells them it isn’t for sale.
Meme Ortiz Meme Ortiz, whose real name is Juan, lives with his mother in the house Cathy left behind when she moved away. Meme has a sheepdog, and the dog and his owner are as clumsy and strange as the house they live in, which was built by Cathy’s father and has slanted, crooked floors and stairs. In the backyard is the tall thick tree that the neighborhood kids used for the “First Annual Tarzan Jumping Contest,” which Meme won--breaking both his arms.
Louie, his Cousin and his other Cousin Louie is a Puerto Rican boy who is friends with Esperanza’s brother and lives with his family in the basement of Meme’s house. He has a girl cousin named “Marin or Maris or something like that”; she is older and wears dark nylons and makeup. Louie’s other cousin showed up one day with a big new yellow Cadillac and told everybody to get in. They rode up and down the block until they heard sirens, and then Louie’s cousin told everyone to get out. He drove away quickly but smashed into a lamppost, and the police put handcuffs on him and took him away.