Transcript The House on Mango Street

The House on Mango Street
By
Sandra Cisneros
Sandra Cisneros
• About Sandra Cisneros
• born in Chicago in l954, the third child
and only daughter in a family of seven
children. studied at Loyola University of
Chicago (B.A. English 1976) and the
University of Iowa (M.F.A. Creative
Writing 1978).
Sandra Cisneros
• worked as a teacher and counselor to high-school
dropouts, as an artist-in-the schools
• taught creative writing at every level except first
grade and pre-school
• a college recruiter, an arts administrator
• visiting writer at a number of universities
including the University of California, Berkeley,
and the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.
Sandra Cisneros
• The House on Mango Street, first published in
1983, won the Before Columbus Foundation's
American Book Award in 1985, and is required
reading in middle schools, high schools, and
universities across the country.
• It has sold over two million copies since its initial
publication and is still selling strongly.
Sandra Cisneros
• books have been translated into over a
dozen languages, including Spanish,
Galician, French, German, Dutch, Italian,
Norwegian, Japanese, Chinese, Turkish,
and, most recently, into Greek, Thai, and
Serbo-Croatian.
Sandra Cisneros
• Born December 20, 1954 in Chicago, Sandra
Cisneros is an American novelist, short-story
writer, essayist, and poet.
• Cisneros is one of the first Hispanic-American
writers who has achieved commercial success.
• She is lauded by literary scholars and critics for
works which help bring the perspective of Chicana
(Mexican-American) women into the mainstream
of literary feminism.
Sandra Cisneros
• Cisneros received her B.A. from Loyola University in
1976 and her M.F.A from the University of Iowa Writers'
Workshop in 1978.
• This workshop marks an important turning point in her
career as a writer.
• Cisneros had periodically written poems and stories
while growing up, but it was the frustrations she
encountered at the Writer's Workshop that inspired
Cisneros' realization that her experiences as a Latina
woman were unique and outside the realm of dominant
American culture.
Sandra Cisneros
• Thus, Cisneros decided to write about conflicts
directly related to her upbringing, including
divided cultural loyalties, feelings of alienation,
and degradation associated with poverty.
• These specific cultural and social concerns,
coupled with Cisneros' feelings of alienation as a
Latina writer, came to life five years later in The
House on Mango Street (1983).
Sandra Cisneros
• Cisneros was the only daughter among seven
children, and her brothers attempts to make her
assume a traditional female role is reflected in the
feminist strains of her writing, glorifying heroines
who dream of economic independence and
celebrating women.
• The family frequently moved between the United
States and Mexico because of her father's
homesickness for his native country and his
devotion to his mother who lived there.
Sandra Cisneros
• Cisneros often felt homeless and displaced.
• She began to read extensively, finding comfort in
such works as Virginia Lee Burton's The Little
House and Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in
Wonderland.
• Today, Cisneros' works give both solace and
realistic lessons about feelings which, as a child,
she felt were uniquely hers, namely cultural
division, loneliness and shame.
House on Mango Street
• A prime example of how Cisneros' writing speak
to the experiences of the forgotten or invisible of
American society is The House on Mango Street.
• In this work, widely celebrated by critics, teachers,
adults and adolescents alike, Cisneros introduces
the reader to Esperanza- a poor, Latina adolescent
who longs for a room of her own and a house of
which she can be proud.
Sandra Cisneros
• By reaching deep into her Chicana-Mexican
heritage and articulating sensations of
displacement and longing, Sandra Cisneros has
created a lasting tribute to those who must conquer
similar battles as she, and has thereby left a lasting
friend for all who have let their imaginations build
a house all their own.
• ClassicNote on House on Mango Street
Key Facts
• Full Title · The House on Mango Street
• Author · Sandra Cisneros
• Type of Work · Novel made up of interconnected
vignettes
• Genre · Coming-of-age story
Key Facts
• Time and Place Written · Early 1980s, United States
• Narrator · Esperanza Cordero
• Point of View · Esperanza narrates in the first-person
present tense.
• She focuses on her day-to-day activities but sometimes
narrates sections that are just a series of observations.
• In later vignettes Esperanza talks less about herself and
more about the people around her.
• In these sections she is never fully omniscient, but she
sometimes stretches her imagination to speculate on the
characters' feelings and futures.
Key Facts
• Tone · Earnest, hopeful, intimate, with very little
distance between the implied author and the
narrator tense · Mostly present tense, with
intermittent incidents told in the future and past
tenses
• Setting (time) · A period of one year
• Setting (place) · A poor Latino neighborhood in
Chicago protagonist · Esperanza
Key Facts
• Protagonist · Esperanza
• Major Conflict · Esperanza struggles to
find her place in her neighborhood and in
the world.
Themes
• Themes are the fundamental and often
universal ideas explored in a literary work.
• The Power of Language
• The Struggle for Self-Definition
• Sexuality vs. Autonomy
• Women's Unfulfilled Responsibilities to
Each Other
Motifs
• Motifs are recurring structures, contrasts, or
literary devices that can help to develop and
inform the text's major themes.
• Names
• Falling
• Women by Windows
Symbols
• Symbols are objects, characters, figures, or
colors used to represent abstract ideas or
concepts.
• Shoes/feet
• Trees
• Poetry