The House on Mango Street
Esperanza Cordero is a girl growing up in a Latino neighborhood in Chicago when her family finally buys a house of their own, a small, crumbling red place on Mango Street that is not the house she had imagined. Sandra Cisneros tells her story in more than forty short vignettes, each a page or two long, moving between funny and furious: the four skinny trees, the boys and girls at the edge of childhood, a great-aunt who wastes away in bed, neighbors trapped by husbands who keep them locked upstairs, a playground assault that Esperanza cannot fit into the story she has been told about her own body. Published in 1984 and translated into more than twenty languages, it remains one of the defining texts of American Latina literature and a staple of middle and high school classrooms.
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Twelve-year-old Esperanza Cordero moves with her family into a small red house on Mango Street in a working-class Chicago neighborhood. In a year of short, poetic chapters, she watches the women on her block, learns what bodies and money mean, and decides that she will leave and come back.
The House on Mango Street is widely taught starting in middle school, recommended for readers 12 and up. Sandra Cisneros's vignette-style chapters and accessible voice have made it a classroom favorite for over 40 years.
Sandra Cisneros calls it a novel, but it is structured as 44 short vignettes that read like prose poems. Each chapter can stand alone; together they form a coming-of-age portrait of Esperanza Cordero.
The House on Mango Street was written by Sandra Cisneros, published in 1983 by Olimpos.
The House on Mango Street is 132 pages in standard print editions, though page counts vary slightly between hardcover, paperback, and large-print formats.
At an average reading pace of about 250 words per minute, The House on Mango Street takes most readers 2 to 3 hours to finish.
The House on Mango Street is a standalone novel by Sandra Cisneros, not part of a series.
The House on Mango Street is available in hardcover, paperback, ebook, and audiobook formats from Amazon, Bookshop.org, ThriftBooks, and most major bookstores.
