Plot Overview
On a series of vignettes, The House
on Mango Street covers a year in the life of Esperanza,
a Chicana (Mexican-American girl), who is about twelve years old
when the novel begins. During the year, she moves with her family
into a house on Mango Street. The house is a huge improvement from
the family's previous apartment, and it is the first home her parents
actually own. However, the house is not what Esperanza has dreamed
of, because it is run-down and small. The house is in the center
of a crowded Latino neighborhood in Chicago, a city where many of
the poor areas are racially segregated. Esperanza does not have
any privacy, and she resolves that she will someday leave Mango
Street and have a house all her own.
Esperanza matures significantly during the
year, both sexually and emotionally. The novel charts her life as
she makes friends, grows hips, develops her first crush, endures
sexual assault, and begins to write as a way of expressing herself
and as a way to escape the neighborhood. The novel also includes
the stories of many of Esperanza's neighbors, giving a full picture
of the neighborhood and showing the many possible paths Esperanza
may follow in the future.
After moving to the house, Esperanza quickly befriends
Lucy and Rachel, two Chicana girls who live across the street. Lucy,
Rachel, Esperanza, and Esperanza's little sister, Nenny, have many
adventures in the small space of their neighborhood. They buy a
bike, learn exciting stories about boys from a young woman named Marin,
explore a junk shop, and have intimate conversations while playing
Double Dutch (jumping rope). The girls are on the brink of puberty
and sometimes find themselves sexually vulnerable, such as when
they walk around their neighborhood in high-heeled shoes or when
Esperanza is kissed by an older man at her first job. During the first
half of the year, the girls are content to live and play in their child's
world. At school, Esperanza feels ashamed about her family's poverty
and her difficult-to-pronounce name. She secretly writes poems that
she shares only with older women she trusts.
Over the summer, Esperanza slips into puberty. She suddenly likes
it when boys watch her dance, and she enjoys dreaming about them.
Esperanza's newfound sexual maturity, combined with the death of
two of her family members, her grandfather and her Aunt Lupe, bring
her closer to the world of adults. She begins to closely watch the
women in her neighborhood. This second half of The House
on Mango Street presents a string of stories about older women
in the neighborhood, all of whom are even more stuck in their situations
and, quite literally, in their houses, than Esperanza is. Meanwhile,
during the beginning of the following school year, Esperanza befriends
Sally, a girl her age who is more sexually mature than
Lucy or Rachel. Sally, meanwhile, has her own agenda. She uses boys
and men as an escape route from her abusive father. Esperanza is
not completely comfortable with Sally's sexual experience, and their
friendship results in a crisis when Sally leaves Esperanza alone, and
a group of boys sexually assaults Esperanza in her absence.
Esperanza's traumatic experiences as Sally's friend, in
conjunction with her detailed observations of the older women in
her neighborhood, cement her desire to escape Mango Street and to
have her own house. When Esperanza finds herself emotionally ready
to leave her neighborhood, however, she discovers that she will
never fully be able to leave Mango Street behind, and that after
she leaves she'll have to return to help the women she has left.
At the end of the year, Esperanza remains on Mango Street, but she
has matured extensively. She has a stronger desire to leave and
understands that writing will help her put distance between herself
and her situation. Though for now writing helps her escape only
emotionally, in the future it may help her to escape physically
as well.
