Book Review: The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros

Esperanza’s journey begins with the self, the family, and moves outward into the community. Through little chapters of vignettes, she explores her identity through ripples of memory and everyday experiences until she comes to terms with the difficult but beautiful challenges of growing up. What lingers with me is Esperanza’s appreciation of the small and quiet things. 

One scene where this is evident is when she comforts her father after the news of her grandfather’s passing. Cisneros writes with a precision and poignancy that affected me in ways I have not experienced in a while. 

I also appreciate the feminist writing that is subtly narrated, yet cuts like a knife. It is real. It is something I recognize because I know girls and women like Sally, Nenny, Esperanza’s mother, and her grandmother, who was forced to marry at a young age. Their stories are not presented loudly, but they are there, in the limitations placed on their lives, in the choices taken away from them, and in the ways they learn to survive. This is what makes The House on Mango Street linger. It is a quiet book, but its truths are never silent.