The house on mango street is a story about a young girl named Esperanza and her family that lives with her in one house on mango street. Throughout this story she speaks about who’s in the family explains how each one of her siblings are and her uncles and aunts. Esperanza speaks about a lot of struggles her family and herself had went through in their lives. Esperanza had one dream and one dream only and that was that she wanted to work as hard as she could to get her own house so she can take care of everyone. That was one of her main goals throughout the whole story.

When the story begins it starts off with Esperanza explaining who her family is basically an introduction of who’s in the family. There were six in the family “Mama, Papa, Carlos, Kiki, her sister Nenny and herself. Esperanza spoke about how her family and her didn’t always only live on mango street they had moved like about 4 times. The difference between the other houses they lived at and the one there at now (mango street) is that the house on mango street is theirs, they don’t have to pay rent to anybody, or share the yard with the people downstairs, or be careful with to much noise, it was their house. They moved to mango street because the house they had previously lived at had broken water pipes and the owner couldn’t fix it because the house was too old.

A part of the story that I like is where Esperanza talked about the uniqueness of her family. When I say uniqueness I’m talking about how she talks about her families appearance, one of the chapters “Hairs” is a funny chapter because she talks about how everybody in the family has different hair. She said papa has broom like hair, her own hair was lazy it never obeyed barrettes or bands, Carlos’ hair was thick and straight, Nenny’s hair was slippery and Kiki had fur like hair because she was the youngest. Esperanza also talks about how boys and girls are really different from one another, she’s talking about her siblings. Another thing I like about the book is she not only talks about her family and herself but she speaks about the neighbors too, “Cathy queen of cats” that one was silly because how random is it that her neighbor from upstairs has so many cats and is very nice with Esperanza.

The book is really good to read because it’s not only focused on one specific topic only, it talks about way more then that and when you’re reading the book it’s so easy to imagine all the people and scenarios that happen throughout the story. The author goes from telling crazy stories about her family to interesting stories about their neighbors and people that lived around them. The author even speaks about how they had lived on mango street for a while that Esperanza’s Cathy had moved away and a new guy came which was just as interesting as Cathy was. I like how the author really broke into really specific detail on each character that is in the book. On every character that she had wrote about they all seem to different from one another as if she had so much imagination for each one it’s really cool because it’s almost fun reading it and not many people find reading fun.

 The author had brought up on “Those who don’t” about one problem that actually happens all the time in the world. “Those who don’t know any better come into our neighborhood scared. They think we’re dangerous. They think we will attack them with shiny knives. They are stupid people who are lost and got here by mistake.” That paragraph from the story said it clearly and it’s true many people who don’t know many areas where it doesn’t look nicer it looks more “ghetto” come across these neighborhoods and right away assume the worst and sometimes even cause trouble for people there when they haven’t done a single thing. Sandra Cisneros had put in her book a serious problem that happens in the world, many people are so ignorant that they think their assumptions are always right when really there not. That’s one of the reasons why I like this book because she also does bring up conflict that happens in the real world into the book which makes it less fiction.

In the story there isn’t only one certain timeline in it, throughout the story as you’re reading you can tell Esperanza is getting bigger and bigger, from when she had school to when she got her first job. The number one favorite part of the story is “My name,” I like this part because I found it really funny how Esperanza doesn’t like her name. The reason why she didn’t like her name was because Esperanza in english it meant hope, in spanish it means sadness, waiting, it was her great-grandmother’s name and now it was hers, but she always looked out the window her whole life and she didn’t want to end up sitting by a window looking out to it her whole life like her great-grandmother did. This book is 100% recommended because it’s not only a funny book it really captures the reader to keep reading it until the end, it has a pretty story to it too and it’s very interesting.