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2000s: Life in the Hispanic quarter of Chicago
The House on Mango Street
What you need to know before your trail
Told in a series of vibrant vignettes, The House On Mango Street is the story of Esperanza Cordera, a young girl growing up in the Hispanic quarter of Chicago. For Esperanza, Mango Street is a desolate landscape of concrete and run-down tenements where she discovers the hard realities of life – the fetters of class and gender, the spectre of racial enmity and the mysteries of sexuality. Capturing her thoughts and emotions in poems and stories, Esperanza is able to rise above hopelessness and create for herself “a house all of my own quiet as snow, a space for myself to go” in the midst of her oppressive surroundings.
Travel Guide
Chicago
The author was born in Chicago in 1954 to Mexican parents,. She was one of eight siblings and the only girl. During their childhood, they moved between Chicago and Mexico but when she was 11, they moved into the Humboldt Park area of Chicago, which was predominantly Puerto Rican at the time.
Life here influenced and inspired the stories in The House on Mango Street.
There is no real “Mango Street’ but there is a Mango Avenue north in the city
Esperanza Cordero is her childhood self in many ways going through the type of inequalities which people of an hispanic culture were most prone to. Inequalities about her status in a working class family and of course, her gender.
Booktrail Boarding Pass: The House on Mango Street
Destination : Chicago Author/Guide: Sandra Cisneros Departure Time: 1990s
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