Sandra Cisneros

With the publication of The House on Mango Street in 1983, Sandra Cisneros put Latino Literature into the high school classroom. Although she has since published three books of poetry, a collection of short stories, and a novel, The House on Mango Street remains both her path breaking and most widely read book. This may be partly because of the timing as well as because of the format. Published a year after Alice Walker's The Color Purple won the Pulitzer Prize in 1982, it emerged for a readership eager for multicultural stories, and classrooms open to a more diverse curriculum. The short vignettes that make up The House on Mango Street are skillfully written and evocative--each one is a prose poem that displays Cisneros's poetic gifts. Collectively these Vignettes create the story of a neighborhood and the complex relationships between generations and genders. Integrated into the vignettes are social, cultural, and economic references. The narrator, Esperanza, longs to escape her neighborhood, and yet she has an appreciative eye for detail and manages to draw the reader into her world, its humanity and special flavor, even as she plans to escape it. The photo of Cisneros is from somaywebe.com.

The House on Mango Street, now nearly 30 years old, has garnered praise from such highly regarded authors as Gwendolyn Brooks and Maxine Hong Kingston. It is enshrined in the high school and college curriculum, as is evident on Spark Notes and the many websites that share class plans for the book. Yet, some student reviews on Amazon.com that complain about the "randomness" of this book. This naive response to the elegant structure of The House on Mango Street indicates another feature of Latino Literature: it is stylistically and linguistically innovative. Cisnero's vignettes together begin to paint a complex portrait of the factors involved an identity that is embedded in a community. A straightforward narrative might offer a sociological analysis of Cisneros's Chicago community, but it would obscure the daily events and imaginative responses to a variety of cultural stimuli that create Esperanza's world.

As you explore the "circles" of your multicultural selves, and write your own version of "My Name," note how intricately and yet simply Cisneros's story is composed. It has a clear sense of voice, offers the quirky associations of an individual mind, and weaves in a family story that subtly comments on traditional gender relations. What elements from your own life and imagination will create a composite portrait of your world and relationship to your communities?