Identity in The House on Mango Street Essay Example

Currently, there are several million Latinos residing in the United States. The Latino community within an American culture has become a very important culture that has risen politically. In the book “The house on Mango Street” by author Sandra, through her use of setting, she demonstrates the identity of a Mexican American has to challenge throughout their lives. 

In the book “The House on Mango Street”, the author demonstrates the reality of a Latino family living in Chicago, United States is portrayed. The neighborhood is the setting from which the situation and the presentation of the characters are composed. Esperanza, its protagonist, narrates the story, a discontinuous story that unfolds loose but deeply felt experiences. At all times, the landscape forms a vital element of the work, as well as imprecise, and changing identity links. The scenes that are constituted through stories and characters are vivid images of the Hispanic experience in the American lands. In the chapter, “The House on Mango Street”, Esperanza, selects from her core, elements of the past that define her in her present. Esperanza relates “We didn’t always live on Mango Street. Before that we lived on Loomis...it’s not the house we’d thought we’d get” (Cisneros, 3). Esperanza is immersed in the sense of identity, her life is traversed by an incessant search, she is a girl living in the interstices of one culture and another, between one language and another, in the void of not knowing precisely what her memories are and what her dreams are. The scenes that are constituted through stories and characters are vivid images of the Hispanic experience on American lands. Undoubtedly, drift is one of the essential characteristics of the story, the characters, like Esperanza's family, have come from everywhere and have settled in different areas where the fundamental traits that unite them are interwoven between poverty, language, common cultural traits, exclusion, and instability. 

Many people had lived like Esperanza, they had to face the famous “American dream” which can be a house, career. The American dream has different concepts for each person, each person has to find their dreams and identity by living in another country or even in their own. In this case, Esperanza has always dreamed, because of her parents, about a big house with a lot of rooms, bathrooms so she can have her own space so that she cannot share a bed with her sister. “But the house on Mango Street is not the way they told it at all. It’s small…me and Kenny” (Cisneros, 4). With this quote, she demonstrates a first aesthetic appreciation, an image of the dimensions and characteristics of Esperanza's family home. Esperanza rejects her place on Mango Street. She describes her house as ugly and peeling, showing the poverty in which Esperanza and her family live. Their dreams do not crystallize in the reality that surrounds them, not only the house is unpleasant, but also the neighborhood and neighbors. Esperanza is hurt and embarrassed by the poverty in which she lives, she feels identified with her inferior status, but she never accepts it. This conveys the feelings she had to endure during all those times she had to move because of her economic status. The feeling of inferiority that awakens in Esperanza causes her to begin a new process of constructing her identity. “That one? she said, pointing to a row of ugly three-flats…start to cry” (Cisneros, 45). This quote shows how Esperanza is frustrated because of her economic position it also portrays her sadness, she is living hard life because of poverty. 

Cultural identity is one of the most difficult things because they have various ways of defining and finding them. Culture and identity are learned during your growth as a person, depending on where you were born it can also be affected by where you grow up. “One day we were passing a house that looked, in my mind, like houses I had seen in Mexico” (Cisneros, 17) Esperanza thinks she recognizes features of something that her mind “idealizes as Mexico”, however her imagination contemplates landscapes that might be her identity or her roots where she comes from. Cisneros pursue to reproduce the sensations of overcrowding and vulnerability that the characters face, making use of a strictly material description of the setting. Esperanza had always dreamed of her ideal house because of her parents, the big and beautiful has that her parents had always dreamed, of it became her dream, but she doesn’t accept her identity or origin.  In “Bum in the Artic”, “I want a house on a hill like the ones with the gardens where Papa works…but the wind” (Cisneros, 87). Esperanza is convinced that she wants to get her own house, but she is also sure that she never wants to be like the Americans. She does not identify with them. She just wants her own space, clean and comfortable, for her alone, but that she can share with others that she considers her family. As well, she also identifies with her great-grandmother because she has her name, Esperanza. Her name has a double meaning. For her, the protagonist, her name means sadness and hopelessness. In the chapter, My name, “She was a horse woman too … women strong” (Cisneros, 10). Back then, woman was supposed to be the perfect woman, perfect wife, stay at home doing all the chores, but now, Esperanza wants to change that. Family memory triggers in Esperanza the desire to build an identity that would allow her to forge her destiny. She reflects on her name, her body, and her history. She does not want to be relegated to the same power relations to which the women in her family have been subjected. With great skill, Cisneros condenses an entire domain structure in just a few lines of his writing. This is a new process of building her identity that gives the name Esperanza a very positive connotation, where waiting means progressing, overcoming obstacles, trusting that change is possible, and that is exactly what she wants. Have her own identity and carry on with her life. 

In conclusion, the author Sandra Cisneros portrayed how setting can define your identity. “The House on Mango Street” is a book in which the author focuses on identity, its importance, so it depends on where you come from or where you were born. In this case, it was Esperanza, a little Latina who plays an important role in her society, in which she cannot find her identity.