1. A little background of The House on Mango St. and its author…
Sandra Cisneros

3. Sandra Cisneros Background Info
Born in Chicago in 1954 and is still writing and teaching
only girl with six brothers, grew up in a cramped apartment, and often felt alone
moved around, shuffling between Chicago and Mexico City
found refuge from loneliness by reading
raised in a barrios structure - a patriarchal type structure
raised in an environment that denied women equality at every level

4. More Background Info
Determined as a teen to fight machismo (Latin-American for chauvinism)
Wrote stories in grade school and never showed anyone
Editor of high school literary magazine
Attended Loyola University and took creative writing class junior year
Returned to the barrios to teach high school drop outs
Recruited and counseled minority and disadvantaged students at Loyola
Currently writing (six novels or collections of poems since Mango St. was published in 1984)

5. Cisneros’s Writing History & Style
The House on Mango St is currently in the process of being made into a movie
House on Mango Street has a patchwork quilt style (short pieces combined into larger work)
Contains beauty and simplicity in language and honesty in the narrator’s voice
portrays characters (especially female characters) who lack power—socially, politically, economically, and sexually

6. Themes of the novel are centered around…
Individual Identity
Communal Loyalty
Estrangement and Loss
Escape and Return
Lure of Romance
Sexual Inequality
Sexual Oppression

7. Further Explanation…
“The House on Mango Street is a book about a culture – Chicanos or Mexican-Americans – that has long been veiled by demeaning stereotypes and afflicted by internal ambivalence.”

8. Further Explanation…
“Esperanza Cordero (our main character) and her family and friends are locked in their barrio by a confluence of racism, poverty, and shame.”

9. Further Explanation…
Cisneros has said that her book is about “the shame of being poor, of being female, of being not-quite-good-enough but that the book shows how this can become a cause for celebration rather than shame.”

10. Further Explanation…
“The House on Mango Street is an occasion for students to think about their own experiences: their houses, their families, their neighborhoods, their dreams and disappointments, about the way they relate to the other sex, about the kinds of lives they want and the kinds they fear they may end up living.”