JULIÁN OLIVARES

Sandra Cisneros The House on Mango Street¹ is a book about Esperanza
Cordero, a Chicana girl who lives in the barrio, or ghetto, of a large city.²
Through forty-four brief lyrical narratives, or vignettes, as Cisneros has
called them ( "Softly Insistent Voice," 14 -15), ranging from one-half to three
pages, the girl recounts her growth from puberty to adolescence within the
sociopolitical frame of poverty, racial discrimination, and gender subjuga-
tion. The book's action is propelled by three major themes: the girl's desire
to find a suitable house (essentially a move away from the barrio), to find
her identity, and to become a writer. Identity is crucial, for it not only means
coming to terms with her Latino ethnicity, but also arriving at a gender
consciousness not circumscribed by the gender determinants of her cul-
ture. Consequently, the narrator is "twice a minority"; she is doubly mar-
ginated because of her ethnicity and her patriarchal society (Melville). As
we will ascertain, the themes are inextricably interrelated; the resolution of
the themes of house and identity is to be achieved by her role as writer.

The House on Mango Street is a book about growing up, what critics call
a bildungsroman. This genre is cultivated commonly in the United States
by emerging writers, often first- or second-generation immigrants, and es-
pecially within literatures emerging around the periphery of a dominant
society.³ It offers the advantage of a first-person narration that becomes the
basis for the expression of subjectivity; the protagonist relates his or her
experiences in the growth from childhood to maturity, the latter determined
by the dialectic with culture and society. The often simplistic or naive nar-
ration proper to a child's perspective is conducive to an innocent but criti-
cal view of society and, in the case of Mango Street, to the formation of a
counterdiscourse.

Before proceeding to our commentary on The House on Mango Street, it
would be beneficial to briefly compare the work with its model and prede-
cessor, Tomás Rivera . . . y no se lo tragó la tierra (And the Earth Did Not
Devour Him), in order to appreciate their historical and critical contexts.

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