The House on Mango Street

Short story collection novels bother me. Maybe it’s the lack of continuity, or maybe its all the reading between the lines that they force me to do. Or maybe it’s because I don’t quite get them, at least not until the very end. Whatever the case may be, I have always enjoyed novels like this once its all said and done, whether it was The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven or Fever Pitch (one of my favorite books). This one was no exception.

I’m not quite sure how I managed to read parts of this book in 9^th grade, because this story deals with some seriously dark issues. The main character, Esperanza, finds herself trapped in the dangerous and inescapable world that is a poverty-stricken neighborhood in Chicago. Some of the touchy themes, such as sexual assault, prostitution, crime, and child abuse, are much too complex for the age some students read this book at. I think those parts were necessary to help convey the overall idea of the novel, but are pretty tough to deal with at a middle school age.

For the most part, I thought this book truly encompasses the concept of the “coming of age” theme we have been dealing with this semester. Although in the end Esperanza simply affirms the belief she always had (that Mango Street was not the place for her), each of the occurances she has help her grow further. The most obvious “coming of age” event (at least physically) in the story is arguably the “Hips” chapter, where the girls discuss hitting puberty and developing their hips. However, her persona matures through various events, from trying on the high heels to getting her first job to being sexually assaulted and realized sex is not all its hyped up to be in the movies. If this story isn’t the perfect example of “coming of age” I’m not sure what else would be.

Although I liked the novel as a whole, a few things bothered me. First of all, the lack of quotation marks really irritated me by the end of the novel. Sitting down and reading a book for a few hours straight is hard enough, but without quotation marks it was nearly impossible to follow the dialogue clearly on the first read. Also, I felt Esperanza’s growth was harder to follow without reflection on some of the tougher issues she deals with. In other words, something would happen to her, and I would expect her to think about what happened or how that affects her. The short story chapter format prevented her from doing so, just moving on to the next story without thoughts on the last one. By the end of the novel it was easy to see her overall growth, but I found it difficult to track her progress throughout it.

Overall, I thought the novel was a great read; short and sweet, but definitely deep and insightful into the seemingly endless life of poverty many families face.