The House on Mango Street

Esperanza notices that Rachel and Lucy look so alike that you can tell they are sisters just by looking. She and her sister Nenny don’t have that, but they share other traits, like their laughter: “Not the shy ice cream bells’ giggle of Rachel and Lucy’s family, but all of a sudden and surprised like a pile of dishes” (17). Esperanza describes how she and Nenny share an understanding of the world through their shared familial and cultural experiences. When they ride their bikes past a house that looks and feels like a house in Mexico, Esperanza says “look at that house […] it looks like Mexico” (17). Her friends have no idea what she means, but her sister Nenny says, “Yes, that’s Mexico all right. That’s what I was thinking exactly” (17).

Gil is the African American man who owns a used furniture store in Esperanza’s neighborhood. He sits in his shop all day with the lights off (unless you have money to buy something, then he will turn them on). Esperanza and Nenny love to walk through his dark shop and look at his items. They find an old music box, and when Gil winds it up, it is like “all of a sudden he let go a million moths all over the dusty furniture and swan-neck shadows and in our bones. It’s like drops of water. Or like marimbas…” (20). Esperanza is overwhelmed by the beauty of the music box, but she doesn’t want anyone to know how much she loves it, so she turns away. She hears her sister ask Gil how much he wants for the box, but he closes the box and tells them it is not for sale. 

After Cathy moves away, a boy named Juan (Meme is his nickname) moves into her house. Cathy’s house is old, built by her father, and has an old large tree in its yard. Meme has a large sheepdog that follows him. The children of the neighborhood use the tree in Meme’s yard “for the First Annual Tarzan Jumping Contest” (22). Meme wins the contest but breaks both of his arms. 

Meme’s mother rents out the basement of their house to a Puerto Rican family. Esperanza’s brother is friends with the boy who lives there, named Louie. Louie also has a teenage cousin, Marin, staying with them. Marin sells Avon makeup and stands in their doorway singing an American love song over and over. Louie’s male cousin shows up one day with a yellow Cadillac and lets the children take turns riding in it while he drives them around the block and through their alley. They have to pile in and let Louie’s little sisters sit on their laps. Suddenly, the police show up behind the Cadillac, and the cousin tells the kids to get out and run. The children watch as the police chase the Cadillac down the alley, where it crashes into a lamppost. The cousin suffers minor injuries and is handcuffed and taken away in the “back of the cop car, and we all waved as they drove away” (24). 

Marin tells Esperanza that she has a boyfriend in Puerto Rico, but he doesn’t have a job, so she can’t tell anyone they are going to get married. Marin saves money from her Avon job and babysitting, but she hopes to get a job downtown where she will get to dress up and maybe meet someone rich to marry her. Marin stands in her doorstep every night, playing the radio and smoking cigarettes, waiting for boys to walk by and notice her beautiful eyes and short skirts. Esperanza loves to learn things from Marin about being an older girl, like how babies are made and beauty secrets. Eventually, Marin’s aunt sends her home to Puerto Rico with a note explaining that Marin is “too much trouble” (26). Esperanza imagines Marin on a street somewhere in Puerto Rico waiting for “someone to change her life” (27). 

Esperanza describes the way she feels about people who fear her neighborhood: “They think we will attack them with shiny knives. They are stupid people…” (28). Esperanza is not afraid of the people in her neighborhood because she knows them all well, and they mean no harm. She notes that she and her neighbors feel safe when they are around other brown people, but if they go into “a neighborhood of another color” (28) they feel very scared.

Rosa Vargas is a single mother who “cries every day for the man who left without even leaving a dollar” (29). Esperanza calls the Vargas children bad. She describes their antics as out-of-control, wild children who play on roofs and spit at their elders. The neighborhood grows so weary of their rude and dangerous behavior that they all stop paying attention to the children or trying to help protect them. Esperanza feels pity for their mother, who is “only one against so many” (29).