The House on Mango Street was written and published in 1984 by a Mexican-American writer, Sandra Cisneros. I suggest people to read this book because not only does it give the reader an idea about how life was back in the 80s in certain parts of the world, but it teaches the reader, especially if it’s a grown-up reading it, they can understand how teenagers may feel as they grow up and try to find out who they truly are and who they want to be. I felt emotionally connected to the book because not only am I a Latina girl, but also a teen, and I can understand how Esperanza was feeling. I also enjoyed how good of a writer Cisneros is and how she paints a picture with the figurative language she uses through the whole novel.

The theme is coming-of-age, with the main character, Esperanza, a Latina girl, growing up in Chicago with her family, surrounded by other Latinos. Esperanza tries to find who she is and what she wants in life, while seeing other people around her struggle with violence and poverty. The story is told in vignettes. The novels speaks about her life as she grows in a poverty stricken area, while she makes friends, grows hips, develops her first crush, and even suffers from being sexually assaulted. She speaks about wanting to escape the poor neighborhood she lives in and wants a better future than the futures some of the people she knows have.

This is one of my favorite books of all time. As I mentioned before in the first paragraph, I was emotionally connected to the book. “I like to tell stories. I tell them inside my head. I tell them after the mailman says, Here’s your mail. Here’s your mail he said… I like to tell stories I am going to tell you a story about a girl who didn’t want to belong.”