The Storyteller By Sandra Cisneros Essay

The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros is a semi-autobiography shown through the eyes of the story’s narrator, Esperanza Cordero, an adolescent Mexican-American girl who is about thirteen and growing up in an impoverished, mostly Latino neighborhood in Chicago. The novel is a coming of age story, told over the course of about a year in a series of standalone vignettes, written in a non chronological order, that use poetic and figurative language, such as metaphors and similes, to convey its themes.

Sandra Cisneros is a feminist Chicana author born in Chicago, IL on 1954. Being the only daughter in her family, they moved betwixt Mexico as well as Chicago. Most of her literary work involves her Mexican roots, in these works she creates characters that shift between two cultures(Hispanic-American) and languages(Spanish-English). In an interview for the New York Times, she describes herself as an "amphibian" that can travel between both worlds. She earn a B.A in English from Loyola University of Chicago and ab M.F.A from the University of Iowa.

A common lifelong struggle of humanity is finding oneself as well as one’s place in society. People struggle to define their identities on a global, local and personal level. For instance, a Mexican family is trying to create a living in America, while struggling for acceptance. As a member of the family, a young girl questions the true meaning of home. As she grows, she dreams of what the perfect home will be and also learns how to fight for her rights as a Chicana woman.

Esperanza Cordero is a young girl who lives in the small red house on mango street in Chicago,Illinois who dreams through the story that she would one day buy a big white house with spacious rooms and all to herself, “One that I could point to.”(pg.5). The book are separated through small chapters or vignettes about small clips about the main character,esperanza’s life that give small details that are important in the other vignettes. Esperanza’s life is filled with important people and impactful experiences.     “The House On Mango Street” starts with Esperanza painting a picture of her new house that her family just moved into,she mentions her previous residences and why they had to leave them. For an example the Cordero family had to leave their flat in Loomis because a water pipe broke and the landlord couldn't fix it because the building was too old.

Throughout The House on Mango Street, characters struggle to actualize their dreams of a meaningful life. Author Sandra Cisneros illustrates this theme through her inclusion of windows as a symbol for a longing of another life. In the novel The House on Mango Street, windows represent the book and it’s theme of struggling for satisfaction in life by acting both as a border to another life and a translucent gateway to the character’s hopes. Windows act as a border to the life the characters long for but are incapable of achieving. Esperanza tells her great-grandmother’s story in which she is whisked away from her previously eventful life only to “[look] out the window her whole life, the way so many women sit their sadness on an elbow” because “she couldn’t be all the things she wanted to be” (Cisneros 11).

Life: a particular type or aspect of people's existence. All of our problems help us identify who we are in relation to our life. In the few novels, short stories, and independent reading books that I read, I picked out three characters: Esperanza from The House on Mango Street, Madame Loisel from “The Necklace”, and Jamie Sullivan from A Walk to Remember. These three stories have a common theme in which a character struggles to figure who they are with the pressures of society. This is a struggle I feel like I go through everyday.

In Sandra Cisneros' short story, "Eleven," Cisneros introduce Rachel as an awkward, insecure, and frustrated girl o n the first day of her eleventh year. As she awakens on her birthday, Rachel becomes overwhelmed by the expectations of her age. Although Rachel is now a year older, she expects to feel like an adult and suddenly become more mature. Rachel, however remains a shy and introverted young girl, similar to the way she has felt for years of her life. Through the use of repetition, similes and a childlike tone, Cisneros defines Rachel's complex ideas through child-like language.

Growing up in a very traditional family I have experienced a patriarchal system in which my father is making the important decisions without consulting to the rest of the family. I also face pressure by my parents and the community to conform and become a housewife which requires learning how to cook properly and be submissive. I persistently defy my parents and what the communities see “best” for me by pouring all of my energy into education, which they do not support. This correlates to the vignette, “Alicia Who Sees Mice,” in The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros. Throughout the essay, it will discuss the patriarchal system and societal expectations and it’s a detrimental effect to numerous of women in the book.

From the internationally acclaimed and award winning author of Caramelo, Sandra Cisneros does not disappoint in this classic, coming-of-age story, mirroring her own childhood experiences. You will follow a young girl, Esperanza, growing up in an impoverished Latino neighborhood in Chicago – you guessed it- on Mango Street. Written in vignettes, it’s as if you are peeking into Esperanza’s diary, empathizing with her pain and joy as each story unfolds. You will find yourself rooting for her the whole way through. Aimed toward younger readers, it’s real-life challenges brings an opportunity for families to discuss dangers in society, and provides a humbling experience for readers more fortunate than Esperanza. Although she is mature, Esperanza’s

In the short story, “Woman Hollering Creek”, Sandra Cisneros employs a traumatic setting to communicate how most women in the Hispanic culture are being treated and the machismo that is seen in the United States. To start with, Cisneros makes the setting traumatic to make the character come to life and live the experiences of the typical Hispanic woman in the U.S. She illustrates this and details the events of how the couple got together and formed a life. In chronograph order, Sandra leads up to climax, the fights and decisions, Cleofinas (The Character) has to make a plan in order to find a solution to get out of an intense marriage. Cisneros quotes, "demands each course of dinner be served on a separate plate like at his mother's, as soon as he gets home, on time or late, and who doesn't care at all for music or telenolevas or romance or roses or the moon floating pearly over the arroyo, or through the bedroom window for

The story begins with a little girl who describes her life through her observations. We then learn her name is Ezperanza. Most sections in The House on Mango Street are brief and fragmented. Cisneros does this in order to reflect the characteristics of a young girl. Most children have shorter attention spans, and because of this, Cisneros strings fragments of observations together to allow her writing to match that of a young girl’s.