Quote 5
No,
this isn’t my house I say and shake my head as if shaking could
undo the year I’ve lived here. I don’t belong. I don’t ever want
to come from here.
This is Esperanza’s reply to Alicia
in “Alicia & I Talking on Edna’s Steps” after Alicia insists
that Esperanza does have a house, and that it is right there on
Mango Street. This exchange occurs near the end of the novel, when
Esperanza is realizing she does indeed belong on Mango Street. Instead
of insisting that she does not belong, here she says she doesn’t want to
belong, which suggests that Esperanza understands that she actually
does. She has realized that she is not intrinsically different from
the other women in her neighborhood. She has met other women in
the neighborhood who write, women who share her desire to escape,
women who are interested in boys, and women, like Alicia, who desire
education. Her previous feelings of superiority and difference were
only childish ways of obscuring the truth: Mango Street is part
of Esperanza. No matter how far she goes, she will never truly escape
it.
