You enter through swinging wooden doors. The kind you would see at the entrance of an old Western bar. You enter an old, empty, dusty Western bar. The dust and emptiness and the oldiness explains why nobody carded you immediately. Not that you would be carded, you look very mature. I mean, not //that// kind of mature. I mean... wise, not wizened, you know?
Barkeep spots you. Barkeep has been wiping the same spot on the bar with a towel for who knows how long. You sit down on a barstool, head in your hands.
(text-colour:#ffa8a8)["What's wrong?"] Barkeep asks.
[[You Answer]] You answer, "I've got this English project bumming me out. Like, I don't even know what these questions mean //much less// how to answer them //much less// how to make a project that addresses them in the context of ethnicity, class, gender, and sexuality!"
(text-colour:#ffa8a8)["I see,"] Barkeep responds. (text-colour:#ffa8a8)["What are you talking about?"]
"I've got to make a project about //The House on Mango Street//. It's... a book."
(text-colour:#ffa8a8)["Yes, it seems I've read this. Book. Perhaps I can help you with this Project."] Barkeep stops wiping the bar and pulls out a spray bottle of Barkeeper's Friend, sprays the spot on the bar, and continues wiping. (text-colour:#ffa8a8)["What are your questions?"]
[[How does Esperanza cope? How does she survive? How does she hold on to hope and dignity in the face of all she experiences? ]] (text-colour:#ffa8a8)[That’s the question, isn’t it? How do any of us cope and survive? Survive and cope? While holding on to hope and dignity and all that? Seems impossible, doesn’t it? Why don’t we work out this question bit by bit? Where shall we start?]
[[The beginning?]]
(text-colour:#ffa8a8)[ "Yes, we must get to the root of the problem! Come, come. Ask me more questions."
]
[[Ok, what is she surviving with?]]
[[- er fine then, what is she coping with?]]
(text-colour:#ffa8a8)[I’m an english-teacher-turned-bartender, not a doctor! I don’t know, her… blood? Her heart?]
[[- er fine then, what is she coping with?]]
(text-colour:#ffa8a8)[ I don't know, did you read the book? What hardships does she experience?]
[[Well, there’s her socioeconomic class.]]
[[She was sexually assaulted?]](text-colour:#ffa8a8)[Why, sure! At the start of the book, when the nun from school sees where she lived, the conversation goes like this: “You live there? The way she said it made me feel like nothing. There. I lived there. I nodded” (5). This quote comes before she moves into Mango Street, but that feeling like nothing doesn’t go away. It stays with her every time she and her family move to another place that’s too small for her family and not good enough to be considered a “real house”.
Her living situation comes up again in another conversation she has with yet another nun. In “A Rice Sandwich”, Esperanza cries when the nun makes her point at a row of ugly flats to indicate she lives there, even though she does not. Esperanza lies about where she lives, and the nun feels pity and lets her eat in the canteen. The feeling comes back again. It’s the feeling of inferiority and shame that comes from other people’s judgment, rather than poverty itself. Of course, the issues from Esperanza’s socioeconomic class are also something she copes with. I could talk about those, but I could also wax lyrically about those nuns. It’s your choice.]
[[Yes. Please. Talk about her class. The issues of her class. Those issues.]]
[[ Nuns. Now. Please.]](text-colour:#ffa8a8)[From the very start of the novel, we find out Esperanza has moved around a lot before getting to Mango Street. These temporary homes are defined by what //The House on Mango Street// isn’t: they had to pay rent or share the yard with people downstairs or not make much noise or carry water in milk gallons since the pipes broke or deal with a landlord banging on the ceiling with a broom. Even //The House on Mango Street// has its own problems: it’s small with a swollen front door, no front yard, a small garage with no car, a small yard, hallway stairs, one washroom, and one bedroom. These descriptions set the scene and the expectations for the rest of the stories.
Mango Street appropriately bookends //The House on Mango Street//. However, there is a key difference in the last few vignettes. There, Esperanza picks back up the thread about wanting to leave Mango Street and move to a real house, only now, there is talk about the importance of coming back to Mango Street: the three sisters, Alicia, and finally Esperanza herself say that she must come back. Like it or not, Mango Street and the times she spent there have left a mark on Esperanza. It permeates her writing. But we’ll get back to that. I know I said it was your choice… But!]
[[ Let’s hear about the nuns… ]](text-colour:#ffa8a8)[I knew you would be as interested as nuns as I am! Since we're so similar, perhaps you would like a sidebar about NASCAR racing as well?]
[[ Nuns. Now. Please.]](text-colour:#ffa8a8)[ Yes, nuns. What is the significance of nuns? Obviously, there is the Catholic aspect. Esperanza and her family are Catholic as evidenced by the chapter “Chanclas'' where she goes to Precious Blood Church (Precious Blood referring to the blood Jesus gave at the Last Supper) for a baptism party attended by most of her family, related by blood, law, or first communion. However, as a Chicano, Esperanza’s religious practices may not 100% line up with what the nuns from the Catholic high school practice. According to the Pew Research Center, about half of Mexican Catholics report “medium” to “high” levels of engagement with indigenous beliefs and practices like evil eye, reincarnation, magic, sorcery, witchcraft, or communicating with spirits. These traditions are from a time before the Spanish colonized Mexico and forcibly tried converting the natives to Catholicism but now exist synchronously with Mexican Catholicism. We see Esperanza visiting Elenita, a local witch woman, to get her palm and the water and cards read. In Elenita’s home, we see Catholic saints and crosses contrasted with voodoo hands, which are further contrasted with Bugs Bunny cartoons and children fighting in the background. What religion we do see in the novel does not come from the nuns, but from Esperanza’s family and community. In fact, the joyous and rich descriptions of a rowdy baptism party and melancholy readings contrast how the nuns are portrayed: simply, as authority figures.
As the nuns are basically teachers at her school, a feeling of shame naturally permeates the two interactions that Esperanza has with nuns. There is the shame of being in a lower socioeconomic class in both interactions, and there is the shame of lying in the second one. That and the fear of being yelled at results in Esperanza crying. In her own words, “I always cry when nuns yell at me, even if they're not yelling” (45). Now, we know that getting yelled at is a major force of discipline in this school. Kids are sent to Sister Superior’s office whether or not they did something bad in order to get punished. In this school, nuns are not the gentle, peaceful women akin to Mother Teresa. They exist to keep order, to yell at children, and pity them.
The Catholic school itself costs the family a lot of money, which the parents pay so that their children don’t “turn out bad” from going to a public high school (53). Like //The House on Mango Street//, the Catholic school is a step up from the worst option (which many people still experience), but it is not perfect. Parents (generally) want the best for their children, to give them a chance to pursue their dreams, so they make do with what they got. This is how Esperanza’s family copes with not having the financial means yet, but //how does Esperanza herself cope?// And what else is she coping with?]
[[She was sexually assaulted?]]
(text-colour:#ffa8a8)[ Of course, there's no question about it. She and friends are catcalled and harassed in "The Family of Little Feet", a man forces a kiss on her during job at the photo store, and there's the chapter "Red Clowns" where she is raped. At a young age, she is forced to confront both how society starts to view her differently as a growing girl and the consequences of that male gaze. Increasingly, these incidents along with others show how Esperanza can’t return to the life she had as a child where she didn’t need to care about how boys looked at her or how she felt when boys started looking at her.
However, these incidents mentioned at the beginning don't come as a result of Esperanza’s burgeoning interest in boys and they don’t come out of nowhere either. They're part of a greater pattern about how women and girls are exploited and trapped by men often by sexual means in this book as well as real life. ]
[[What kind of pattern?]]
(text-colour:#ffa8a8)[ The pattern is seen in the people we meet throughout the vignettes of the book. We see Mamacita being forced to live in a country she doesn’t know the language of because she must go where her husband and her baby go (76). We see Rose Vargas who has so many children that she raises by herself since her man left without a trace (29). We see Alicia who is scared of her father (32). We see Rafaela whose husband locks her indoors, afraid she will run away (79). We hear about Esperanza’s great-grandmother who had the same fate of looking out a window (11). We see Sally who is hit by her father who thinks she will run away like his sisters (93). Sally who gets married to escape only to find herself in a different cage, only with linoleum roses (101).
These are the women that Esperanza sees everyday and whose stories are expressed in vignettes, which naturally express how Esperanza thinks. ]
[[How are Esperanza’s thoughts expressed in the vignettes?]](text-colour:#ffa8a8)[ Well, vignettes are small snippets of Esperanza’s year. There are the vignettes about Esperanza’s own life and experiences, which she tells from her own point of view.
Then, there are the vignettes about who people live in Esperanza’s neighborhood. Every story about a person tied down to a neighborhood is told through Esperanza’s point of view. It’s what she sees and hears and thinks about them. These stories drive Esperanza’s desire to leave Mango Street and live in a new house, but they’re also what tie her to Mango Street. They’re also related to what Esperanza uses to survive.]
[[And, what is that?]]
(text-colour:#ffa8a8)[ It’s her writing.`*` We see evidence that Esperanza writes poetry when she talks to Minerva and when she shows her poem to Aunt Lupe: ]
(align:"=><=")+(box:"X=")[//‘I want to be
like the waves on the sea,
like the clouds in the wind,
but I’m me.
One day I’ll jump
out of my skin.
I’ll shake the sky
like a hundred violins’//
(60-61).]
(text-colour:#ffa8a8)[This poem reflects Esperanza’s desire for escapism and a future where she is free and powerful. These dreams contrast the reality we see in the novel; she is just a child of Mango Street. Writing allows Esperanza to express the dream that she and her family share, to live and to live without burden, to say goodbye to Mango Street. The dream of a better future they hold on to provides the drive to survive in the present.
Esperanza also uses writing itself as a way to let go of Mango Street or rather getting Mango Street to let go of her. In her own words, “I put it down on paper and then the ghost does not ache so much. I write it down and Mango says goodbye sometimes. She does not hold me with both arms. She sets me free” (110). It’s implied that the vignettes are written by Esperanza, not just from the point of view of her. She writes about her friends, the people she meets, the escapades she has, and the trauma she experiences. That is what sets her free.
`*`in my opinion]
[[Aw, cool epic!]]You say, "Hey, do you mind if I just copied what you said verbatim for my project?" Without waiting for an answer you rush away, leaving the bar stool rattling and the Barkeep wiping the bar.
[[Conclusion]] Hello, this is for an English Project on //The House on Mango Street//. For best results (and score) please chose the top answer.
[[You Enter]] Besides the book itself, my other sources include 1) my brain and 2) website articles regarding things I don't know enough about to talk about without sources:
* https://berkleycenter.georgetown.edu/posts/mexican-catholicism-conquest-faith-and-resistance
* `https://assets.pewresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/11/2014/11/Religion-in-Latin-America-Survey-Topline-Questionnaire.pdf`
Now, how should we end this?
[[The beginning?]]