The House on Mango Street

The House on Mango Street is a series of vignettes seen from the point of view of a teen-age Latino girl growing up in a poor neighborhood. The reader realizes long before Esperanza does that in spite of her poverty and the house she is so ashamed of, she has had an incredibly rich childhood with so many human stories to treasure and write about.
The descriptions in the book are always surprising. One of Esperanza's new friends on Mango Street, Cathy, refuses to play with her other friends, Rachel and Lucy; she says, "Can't you see, they smell like a broom?" Cathy says she is moving away because the neighborhood is going bad, apparently never thinking about the fact that she is talking to a girl whose family has just moved in to the neighborhood. Esperanza can put two and two together.
I think my favorite description is about Meme Ortiz's dog: "The dog is big, like a man dressed in a dog suit, and runs the same way its owner does, clumsy and wild and with the limbs lopping all over the place like untied shoes."
The experiences in the book just ring true. In one chapter, Esperanza and Rachel and Lucy get in a big argument while Esperanza's sister, Nenny, is naming clouds. Nenny's persistent obliviousness really made me laugh. While the others are calling each other "Cockroach jelly" and "Cold frijoles," Nenny just keeps naming the clouds, "Mimi, Michael, Moe . . . ." One of the chapters that drew me in the most was the one in which Esperanza asks to eat lunch at school. I'm not going to tell you what happens; I'm just going to say that it rings absolutely true.
The book is a coming of age story too. The chapter called "Monkey Garden" would make a great short story all by itself. It captures the hepless frustration Esperanza feels with having her childhood stolen from her by those around her who disregard her innocence. There are a few chapters in which she faces more difficult things, but this one seemed the most poignant to me.
I think the book hits on universal themes regarding community life, especially in poorer neighborhoods. It took me back to my years on Howard Street in Whittier, California, where there were over fifty kids on our block of duplexes. We were a mix of Latino and white kids from blue collar families. I remember so many things from those days. I remember Rick's mother always kissing and hugging her boyfriend for what seemed like hours at the gate to their duplex, but he never asked her to marry him. I remember David Watson's grandfather claiming that he was the best Backgammon player in all of California and Nevada combined; nobody we knew could beat him. I remember everyone admiring Joe's big brothers while they drove up and down the street in their wide low-rider car, their arms resting on their open windows with cigarettes tucked into their sleeves. I remember my brother pounding on the wall when John's mother and her lover were making too much noise in the adjoining duplex late one night and seeing her lover rush out her front door a few minutes later. John and I played with his racecar set in his livingroom the next day as though nothing had happened. There were endless evenings of kick the can, dodge ball, and truth or dare. Man, a lot went on. And all along we wished we lived on Orange Street.