The House on Mango Street takes place in a Latino neighborhood on Chicago, around a house with boarded windows on Mango Street. The novel is portrayed through the eyes of a young girl growing up and becoming a woman. She battles obstacles of your average Mexican-American girl: gender, poverty, and race; where women were not to expect too much out of life. Esperanza, this girl who wants to become a poet, is self-consious about herself and ashamed to reside in such a run-down house. Her dreams begin to crack as she realizes, not evertyhing turns out like in your dreams. Through rough experiences with friendships, alienation, peverty, and death, Esperanza becomes stronger and moves on from Mango Street remaining true to herself and always optimistic. The novel progresses from a girl with low self-esteem that manages to blossom amidst the dirty streets and lives her dreams. This book was well done with a great sense of reality, that is not sugar-coated. Sandra wrote things as they were and shall be respected for that. You must admire her writing style, being one of the few authors confindent enough with themselves to use vignettes. Although a great book, I must inquire why it is on the 9th grade reading list? It is not a difficult book, nor is it too long to grasp the attentions of 10-year-olds. I would prefer if they entered this book on the 5th grade reading list, because, to me and several other peers, this book is much too simple for us, so therefore should begin with the younger people of our generation. All I am inferring, is that if you were a person age 12 and above, this book would fail to intereset you ass much as it would people in elementary schools. But, if you feel up to it, or just want something feast your eyes on, this is a book that should be on your list of choices.

I had to read "The House on Mango Street" for my Accelerated Fiction class. I think that it is a literary masterpiece. Cisneros captured the thoughts of a young girl wonderfully. The emotional, mental, and physical changes of the narrator (Esperanza) are described in such detail that it is hard to remember that you are actually reading a fictional story. I loved the story... up to the last ten vignettes. I had never read a story anything like "Mango Street". It was a unique experience to read such a book. Oh, but the last ten vignettes, they were so much less enjoyable. The quality of the book is still the same, but the narrator is growing up and is no longer naive. She realizes how terrible the conditions she really lives in are and she wants to escape so badly. I found the last ten vignettes so sad and so heart- breaking I really didn't think I could finish the book. That's what I thought about "The House on Mango Street". It's a wonderful and unique book. Just don't read past vignette 34 unless you've got some tissues handy.

As a teacher in a rural high school with a student population that is 98% Latino most years and the author of a mystery series featuring a Latino private investigator, I can vouch for the power of Sandra Cisneros's HOUSE ON MANGO STREET. It is written in deceptively simple English--perfect for teenagers still struggling with their second language (or third language for youths who first learned to speak an indigenous native language). It tells the tale of a girl named Esperanza as she learns about life growing up in Chicago living in a house on Mango Street. In a series of powerful vignettes, Cisneros reveals the truth about the girl's life--a truth that Esperanza has not quite yet realized. While the book has a focus on a Latino girl, the book is universal. You don't have to be a Danish prince to be touched by HAMLET, and the same is true about THE HOUSE ON MANGO STREET. The vignettes illustrate Esperanza's life, learnings, and yearnings. They reveal her dreams--dreams that reach far beyond Mango Street.