| The House On Mango Street |
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The style in which the novel is written is described by Cisneros as an "anti-poetic style," which she invented by glorifying and giving personification to elements generally seen as mundane and even ugly. Cisneros uses a series of poem-like Vignettes which are poem-stories in their own right, all put together to depict Esperanza's story. In the first chapter, Esperanza dictates to us how her family came to live at the house on Mango Street. When the pipes broke in their previous apartment and the landlord would not fix them, she moved with her parents, her brothers Carlos and Kiki, and her sister Nenny to a new house on Mango Street. In addition to this move, the family had often relocated in the past. Esperanza had dreamed of a white house with lots of free space and bathrooms, but the house on Mango Street has only one bedroom and one bathroom. Esperanza notes that this is not the house that she had pictured; although her parents tell her the situation is only temporary, she doubts they will move anytime soon. The house, however, does have some huge improvements over the family's previous apartments. The family owns this house, so they are no longer controlled by the inclinations of landlords; in addition, at the old apartment, a nun made Esperanza feel ashamed about where she lived when se exclaimed, "You live there!?" The house on Mango Street is an improvement, but it is still not the house that Esperanza wants to point out as hers. Despite Esperanza's spoken desire to move out of her house on Mango Street, her actions and descriptions of her street show her endearment for the people and a sense of community. EXTERNAL LINKS |
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