Chapter 41-44

Esperanza's friends, Rachel and Lucy's baby sister dies. They held a funeral. Esperanza felt weird about the death situation. Their three aunts tried comforting Esperanza and told her to make a wish. They seemed to know what her wish was. They told her that her wish will come true. After she gets home from the funeral, Esperanza feels sad all of a sudden. She vents to Alicia about how she isn't proud of the place she lives in (Mango Street) and that she'll never come back to Mango Street until it gets better, since it is an impoverished neighborhood. Alicia tells her that she will always return to Mango Street. They also both know that the mayor won't do anything to shape it into a better place. Esperanza strongly believes that she will have a house of her own one day, not an apartment or development, but an actual house. One day, she will say goodbye to Mango Street.

Chapters 31-40

There was a girl named Sally that went to the same school as Esperanza. She was beautiful and very religious, therefore her father never let her outside of their home. She wears makeup and dresses sophisticated. She also goes straight home after school everyday. Esperanza wants to be just like her because Esperanza feels ugly and unattractive to males due to their lack of interest in her. Then she had a conversation with her mother. Esperanza's mother confessed that she quit school when she was young because she didn't have nice clothes. She regrets letting shame in her appearance stop her from getting an education. One day, Sally walked into school with bruises. She lied to everyone and said she fell, but no one believed her. She told Esperanza the truth, which was how her father beat her like an animal because he thinks that as a female, she's going to runaway with another man. Esperanza felt bad about her tragic situation and offered Sally to stay at her house for the night. But Sally's father went to Esperanza's that night and cried and begged Sally to go home. Shortly after she went home, she was beat, yet again because she was on the phone with a boy. She couldn't go to school for awhile. There was a garden in the neighborhood where most kids hung out at, and Esperanza's most embarrassing moment happened there also. One day, Esperanza watched Sally flirt with boys and then they stole her keys and told her that she had to kiss them to get them back. Esperanza was angry and threw sticks and bricks at the boys. Everyone looked at her like she was crazy, even Sally did. Sally told her to go home. Then, she cried due to embarrassment. She never went back to the garden after that day. In chapter 39, Esperanza got raped by one of the boys who flirted with her. She claims that sex isn't like any of the movies that Sally had described and says that Sally is a liar. In chapter 40, Sally gets married. Remind you, she is only in 8th grade. Her husband forbids her from going out, therefore she stays home because she is afraid to go out without permission from her husband.

Chapters 21-30

Esperanza decided to get a job to pay her tuition for Catholic high school. Her Aunt Lala told her to work at Peter Pan Photo Finisher. She lied about her age to the boss of the workplace. She instantly started working. There was an older Asian guy that offered to be her friend. He told her that he should get a birthday kiss, but when she went in to kiss him on the cheek, he grabbed her head and kissed her on the lips. The next night, her father cried to Esperanza because he announced that her grandpa had died. She had never seen her father cry before. Therefore she held her father in her arms and comforted him. Her Aunt Lupe died shortly after her grandpa died. Her aunt already had an illness for a few years, but it never occurred to Esperanza that she could die at any moment. She and her friends decided to play charades that day and she pretended to be her Aunt Lupe. Then, her Aunt Lupe died that same day. Then, the next day, Esperanza went to a fortune teller. Her name was Elenita. Elenita told Esperanza that she sees "a home in the heart," but Esperanza does not know what that means. In chapter 29, there was a boy named Sire who stared at Esperanza every time she passed his house. He has a girlfriend named Lois. Esperanza was jealous of her feminine ways. This was when she becomes desperate to know what it feels like to be held and kissed. Then, Esperanza looked out of her window and sees 4 skinny trees. She claimed that only she understood them and that they understood her. They reminded her of she and her best friends and to keep them close.

Chapters 11-20

We meet Louie's other cousin, Marin in chapter 11. Marin has a boyfriend in Puerto Rico. Although her boyfriend is unemployed, she is saving up money by selling Avon products and babysitting, so that she could go back to Puerto Rico to get married to him. Louie's parents wants to send her back to Puerto Rico because she was too much trouble. Esperanza likes Marin because she's the only person who she can get information about boys, sex, and how to look pretty. Marin is allowed to go out at night, but only as far as her front yard. Esperanza and her friends get scared when they venture into another neighborhood consisted of a different color. There was a family on Mango Street called the Vargas. Rose Vargas was a single mother with a lot of kids whom were constantly out of control. The kids do not have respect for their surroundings. In chapter 14, Esperanza's friend, Alicia, sees mice in her home. She is deathly afraid of mice, but her father claims that there are not any mice in their home. Alicia goes to college to avoid the factory life. One day, Esperanza and her friends were naming the clouds, snow, and people. It turned into a childish argument. They called each other names. Then, they played dress up and walked around the streets strutting in high heels. Boys were hollering at them and the girls grew tired of it. Lucy's mother (one of the girls' mother) threw away the high heels and the girls didn't complain. Esperanza had a sudden urge of jealousy of the kids who were able to eat lunch at school. She always went home to eat. Her mother decided to let her eat at school one day. Esperanza cried in front of the nun monitoring the canteen because she lied and told the nun that she lived in the ugly apartments that the nun pointed at just so they would let her stay for the day. One night, she and her mother went to a baptism party. She had to wear her old shoes because her mother forgot to buy her party shoes. She was ashamed to get up and dance when her cousin asked her to dance because of the shoes, but then her uncle forces her to dance and the thought of her old shoes slipped her mind. The next day, Esperanza and her friends talked about hips and what they were used for. So, they jump roped, practiced shaking their hips, and made up songs about hips. Esperanza's sister, Nenny didn't catch on though.

Chapters 5-10

In chapters 5 through 10, Esperanza meets new friends. Her first new friend was named Cathy. Cathy has lots of cats and claims to be the great great grand cousin of the queen of France. Then she goes on and tells Esperanza who's who in the neighborhood. She promises to be Esperanza's friend until next Tuesday because her and her family were moving out of the neighborhood due to the bad conditions. But she doesn't realize that it is insulting to Esperanza to hear that from her, since Esperanza's family had just moved into a house on Mango Street. Then, she meets two other girls named Lucy and Rachel, whom Cathy says that "smell like brooms" and tells her not to befriend them. They all shared one bike because they chipped in money to buy it and rode it around the neighborhood laughing together. Then the narrator explains that Esperanza and her younger sister, Nenny are alike in a couple ways, like the way they laugh. They went to a junk store in the neighborhood and Nenny asked the owner about a music box that played a beautiful sound. Esperanza was intrigued by it, but she pretended not to care because she didn't want to be embarrassed in front of Nenny. Nenny wanted it, but it wasn't for sale. One day, Cathy and her family moved away and a new family moved into her house. One of the boys who lived there was named Meme Ortiz, also known as Juan. Meme's family rents out their basement to a Puerto Rican family. Louie is the oldest child of that family. Louie's cousin told the kids to hop into his car to take a ride around the block. Then he saw the cops and had all the kids get out of his car. He ran into a lamppost when he tried running from the cops. He ended up getting caught by them.

Esperanza Cordero.

Esperanza is the protagonist or main character of the novel. She is thirteen years old. She grows during the year, both emotionally and physically. In the first few chapters, she begins her story-telling style, which is describing her life story in short chapters. She turns towards writing to avoid dealing with the neighborhood. She explains how she came to live at the house on Mango Street. It was due to the broken pipes in her previous house. Mango Street was an impoverished neighborhood. She was not too fond of her new home. She always complained that it was too cramped because it only had one bedroom. She had no choice but to sleep in that one bedroom with her whole family. Boys and girls were not allowed to socialize with one another in the neighborhood. Although Esperanza had brothers, they always refused to converse with her outside of their home, only the inside. Esperanza also has a sister named Nenny. Esperanza's responsibility was to watch over Nenny to make sure she does not play with the Vargas kids. Then, she explains that she was named after her great-grandmother, whom she has never met. They were both born in the Chinese year of the horse. The horse is said to be an animal that represents strength, but also said to be bad luck for women being born in the year of the horse. Esperanza rejects the idea of this "bad luck" superstition. Although she has not met her great-grandmother, she compares her to a wild horse. In English, she explains that her name means "hope," while in Spanish it means "too many letters" as well as "sadness" and "waiting." Esperanza says that she wants to change her name to one that expresses her "true self" one day.

The House On Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros.

 

Here is the book I chose to read. I chose this book to read because it looked interesting. The title of the book intrigued me. I also heard from someone a couple years ago that this book was good and inspiring. I thought to myself that there had to be a deeper meaning behind the title of the book. I look forward to reading this book to find out the messages that the author, Sandra Cisneros, tries to send to the reader in this book.