House+on+Mango+Questions

The House on Mango Street is a novella comprised of forty-four “vignettes” short literary sketches, written from the first person point of view of a young girl, Esperanza Cordero, living in the 1960s and early 70s in a poor Latino neighborhood or “barrio” of Chicago, similar to the neighborhood where Mexican-American author Sandra Cisneros was born in 1954.

The novella is often called a prose poem because of its rich figurative language.

As you read, answer the following questions in complete sentences:

1.	What details from the first chapter, “House on Mango Street, reveal Esperanza’s opinion of her home?

2.	Compare “House on Mango Street,” “Boys and Girls,” “Hairs,” and “My Name.” What is Esperanza’s self-image? What similarities do you find between her view of home and her view of self?

3.	How do outsiders see the barrio? How does Esperanza feel then she visits other neighborhoods? What is the significance of this irony?

4.	What is the nature of Esperanza’s “quiet war” (89)? Against whom—or what—is she fighting?

5.	In “Boys & Girls” (8-9), Cisneros writes: “The boys and the girls live in separate worlds.” In “Beautiful and Cruel,”  there is the declaration: “I have decided not to grow up tame like the others who lay their necks on the threshold waiting for the ball and chain” (88). How would you describe the boys and girls in the book? How do they live? What kind of men and women are they likely to become when they grow up? How do boys and girls relate to each other? Look in “My Name,” “Marin,” “Alicia Who Sees Mice,” “Rafaela Who Drinks Coconut and Papaya Juice on Tuesdays,” “Sally,” “Minerva Writes Poems,” “Beautiful and Cruel,” “Sally Says,” and “The Monkey Garden.”

6.	Esperanza describes a number of women as possible role models: Marin (26-7), Alicia (31-2), Sire’s girlfriend Lois (72-3), and Sally (81-3, 92-8). What does she admire about these women? What things can they teach her?

7.	Although Esperanza is clever and often perceptive, she is still a child, and Cisneros sometimes shows her failing to see the significance of thinking that would be obvious to someone older. On pages 24-5, Esperanza and her friends take a ride in a flashy car driven by Louie’s cousin, who is then arrested by the police. What is the effect of making Esperanza what is sometimes called an unreliable narrator? Where else ipn the story does Cisneros use this technique?

8.	In “Boys and Girls” Esperanza describes herself as a “red balloon, a red balloon tied to an anchor.” In the final chapter, she suggests that the “sad red house” on Mango Street is trying to hold her and keep her there  forever. What is it that suppresses Esperanza? What finally enables her to cut loose the anchor?

9.	Nearly all the characters in Cisneros’ book dream of escaping. What do they want to leave? Describe the ways in which different people try to escape, as well as the result of their efforts. Do you think that Esperanza’s dreams of escaping are likely to be more successful? How does being poor—as most of the characters are—affect one’s chances of escaping a dead-end neighborhood or fulfilling other dreams?

10.	The novel’s inscription, A Las Mujeres, means “To the Women.” Who are “the women” and why does Cisneros dedicate the novel to them?