The House on Mango Street: Identity (Re)Construction

 The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros, published in 1984, follows the convoluted journey of girlhood through the simultaneously blurred and impressively sharp lens of twelve year old Esperanza, who immigrated to Chicago from Mexico and resides in a lower-middle class neighborhood brimming with family, friends, foes, and mentors. Cisneros boasts a perspective and voice unlike any other due to her upbringing in Chicago as a Latin American, specifically her residence in a home that prompted much self-reflection at an early age and was a defining force in her life. She was inspired by her experiences as a child and presents Esperanza’s home as a character in its own right, its personality dictated by its residents and the residents’ personalities equally dictated by the home. In a similar vein, Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights spotlights an estate that has such a palpable magnetism and vitality that it is difficult to consider it merely as a transitory, physical space rather than a distinguished entity inextricably linked to the past and elucidative of the future. Cisneros’ work also addresses the question: how do physical boundaries within a home, or lack thereof, affect the intra psyche of its occupants, either dissuading or encouraging identity construction/ reconstruction?

Esperanza, whose name means “hope” in English, is confronted with a series of tribulations that initially inspire dislike of her upbringing and permeate her sense of self. On the first page of the book, prior to introducing herself, she informs the audience “we didn’t always live on Mango Street” (Cisneros, 1). She views the neighborhood as an unmoving label, one that is both negative and yet deserving of its own introduction – its identity, and the implications of such a singular classification, precedes her own identity. Esperanza is resentful of her parents for their living conditions: she considers the house on Mango Street to be confining, devoid of glamor, and the antithesis of comfort. The repeated usage of the insecurity motif implies that individuals are molded by the bodies, hallways, and the furniture around them. Even the exterior of one’s home contains significance, whether it is a formidable and imposing structure, like Wuthering Heights, or “small and red with tight steps in front and windows so small you’d think they were holding their breath” (4). As a young girl, Esperanza makes herself small, so as to compensate for the confining quarters she is in and considers herself less beautiful, less worthy than her older sister. It is fascinating to assess the origins of Esperanza’s self-esteem issues and their various manifestations, specifically as related to the author’s actual home. 

The narrator shares a bedroom with “Mama and Papa, Carlos and Kiki, [herself] and Nenny” (4). The home, as one could imagine, is nearly bursting at the seams. Just as the house on Mango Street can scarcely accommodate Esperanza, her own aspirations and hopes are unable to be subdued and are embraced through her hopes and dreams; she longs to become a writer and have a room of her own. The precarious living situation propels Esperanza to seek bigger and better things, away from Mango Street and away from its seemingly inherent moroseness. She expresses to her friend and neighbor, Alicia, “I don’t belong. I don’t ever want to come from here" (106). As Esperanza matures, however, she eventually realizes that the House on Mango Street, for better or for worse, is a pivotal pillar of her identity and thus shouldn’t be a source of shame. Instead, it can be viewed as a catalyst for change. Just as Esperanza exercises the insecurity that haunts her through the written word and the unrelenting pursuit of her aspirations, in Wuthering Heights, Heathcliff attempts to jettison the ghost of Cathy from his life by terrorizing young Cathy and Linton, presumably reenacting the own trauma he endured. The ideas of nurture and nature both play an appreciable role in the formation of self; less appreciated, however, is the ways that the home one grew up in, or the space they currently inhabit, can impress onto them its idiosyncrasies, indirectly informing the way they see and carry themselves. 

The novel is composed of nearly fifty vignettes, each related to the narrator’s home or the neighborhood in which she resides and its eccentric, sagacious, or even frightening residents. The stories are typically blemished by socio-cultural conflict, much like Wuthering Heights, and hosts similar themes related to class, racial, and gendered hierarchies within a static setting. Cisneros’ actual home that the novel is based on no longer exists – since 2004, an apartment building has occupied the space at 1525 North Campbell Avenue. The marriage between reality and art is striking, especially when noting that the home Cisneros conceptualized in her novel, a text primarily marked by class conflict, was torn down and then rebuilt entirely to accommodate wealthier owners. Its afterlife is non-material; it has been erased from history and marred by gentrification. The home that still exists across from the new apartment complex is somewhat similar to her childhood home, however. Cisneros brilliantly typifies how the material condition of a house can reflect and affect those who live within it, in addition to exemplifying how external social forces intersect with and form micro level interactions. 

 Young Sandra Cisneros in her backyard

1525 N. Campbell Ave.

Chicago, Illinois

Bibliography 

Betz, Regina M. “Chicana ‘Belonging’ in Sandra Cisneros’ The House on Mango Street.” Rocky Mountain Review, vol. 66, 2012, pp. 18–33. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/rockmounrevi.66.18. 

Casagrand, Tina. “Sandra Cisneros – Chicago, Illinois.” The New Territory Magazine, 26 May 2022, newterritorymag.com/literary-landscapes/sandra-cisneros-chicago-illinois/. 

Cisneros, Sandra. The House on Mango Street. 1984. Bloomsbury, 2004.