Book Review: The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros

´They are the only ones who understand me. I am the only one who understands them. Four skinny trees with skinny necks and pointy elbows like mine. Four who do not belong here but are here. Four raggedy excuses planted by the city´.

There are books far before their intellectual time and readers who are reading the books far behind their peak moment. As in life, trying to think twice before being judgemental will only bring a better perspective of the context of a specific book. 

I´ve read The House on Mango Street by Mexican-American writer Sandra Cisneros relatively late, many years after the 25th anniversary edition. When published, in the second half of the 1980s, the book was considered an unique story about the struggles of Mexican families in the US with domestic abuse, sexual harassment, poverty and discrimination. The book was subsequently taught in school and an example of Mexican-American approach to identity and ´ethnic otherness´ in a time when such topics were new to both grasp literarily and intellectually.

Set on Mango Street, a suburb of Chicago, it includes a series of vignettes told in the voice of Esperanza Cordero, a young girl dreaming of a white Mexican house, and her neighbours and friends. Most of them seem to be legal immigrants, therefore there is no legal drama surrounding their status, but their struggle is in trying to make a life, life their life or dream their possible lives.

The vignettes are short snapshots into the life and encounters Esperanza is experiencing, a great way to cover a topic from different angles and perspectives. What in my opinion is an achievement of this book is the sync to a teenage girl voice, which sounds genuine and direct. For instance, Esperanza is describing without judging or conceptualizing, and only our adult mines and mental habits can figure out what she is actually talking about - like, for instance, when she mentioned being kissed on the mouth by an older man, a fact she is describing as such in one of her short installments.

Definitely since The House on Mango Street was published, many books treating similar subjects, some much better, was published, both on Chicano topics or other immigration-, feminist- or other similar topics. However, Cisneros wrote Mexican-American history by being one of the first women authors to introduce those subjects to the public debate. 

Rating: 3.5 stars