Sadness of the New Home: Immigrants in The House on Mango Street
Ivana Howard

Although the cover publication of Sandra Cisneros’s The House on Mango Street places the protagonist’s neighborhood in a Latino section of Chicago, the issues in this book transcend geographical boarders. Specifically, frequent references to hardships Mexican immigrants face relate not only to any Latino child in America, but also to any child immigrant in the world. Through the delineation of Esperanza’s neighborhood and especially through Esperanza’s thoughts, Cisneros points out the things that make it difficult to be a Mexican in America: poverty, unwelcome attitudes from American neighbors, and nostalgia for the old home.

Almost every short entry in this book spells out  Esperanza’s family’s poverty. Esperanza cannot remember all of their previous addresses since the family moved so many times. The family lives in such poor conditions that, when Esperanza shows her apartment to a passing nun, the latter reacts: "You live there? There. I had to look where she pointed…You live there? The way she said it made me feel like nothing" (5). Soon, the family of six settles down, in a one-bedroom house. However, again everything points to poverty: the crumbling bricks, tight stairs, small windows, and Esperanza’s casual notice that the family does not own a car.  Similarly, Esperanza always wears "the old saddle shoes…brown and white, the kind [she] get[s] every September because they last long…[their] heels all crooked" (47). Each of the little girl’s stories adds to the picture of Esperanza’s poor life due to her minority and immigrant status.

The immigrant status introduces another problem to Esperanza’s life: the prejudice from fellow American  citizens. Esperanza’s new neighbor, Cathy, places herself above the neighborhood’s newcomers imagining she has royal ancestors and considers Esperanza a nuisance. Esperanza notices this attitude when she notes that Cathy and her family will "have to move a little farther north from Mango Street, a little farther away every time people like [Mexicans] keep moving in" (13). The labeling of the neighborhood goes even further; Esperanza says, "Those who don’t know any better come into our neighborhood scared. They think we’re dangerous. They think we will attack them with skinny knives" (28). Although Esperanza knows that those "are stupid people who are lost and got [there] by mistake" (28) she also knows that "[t]hat is how it goes and goes" and it does not make a life for a Latino in America any easier.

Nostalgia also makes lives harder for Esperanza and her neighbors. Esperanza does not talk much about the home she left; however, she still feels a bond to Mexico. The nostalgia surfaces when Esperanza passes a familiar house. She notes:

…a house…looked, in my mind, like houses I had seen in Mexico. I don’t know why. There was nothing about the house that looked exactly like the houses I remembered. I’m not even sure why I thought it, but it seemed to feel right. Look at that house, I said, it looks like Mexico. (18) This nostalgia seems even more obvious and burdening with older neighbors. A neighbor, Mamacita, sadly expresses her memories of the old home. Esperanza says, Mamacita sits all day by the window…and sings all the homesick songs about her country in a voice that sounds like a seagull. Home. Home. Home is a house in a photograph, a pink house…She still sighs for her pink house, and then I think she cries. (77) Esperanza witnesses this woman’s inability to adapt and refusal to speak English as her sadness; the unfriendly and cruel new world brings Mamacita this sadness when compared to the warmth of the old home.

Through all these unfortunate and inevitable things Esperanza, her family, and neighborhood encounter, Cisneros gives us a realistic picture of Mexican immigrants’ hard lives. Moreover, Cisneros paints universal picture of any immigrant in America or in the world. She chooses a girl who can relate to any other girl and leads her through every hardship possible in her position. Very sad, this collection of stories portrays immigrants’ lives so realistically it obviously comes from someone who felt the hardships of immigration herself.

Works Cited

Cisneros, Sandra. "Cathy Queen of Cats." The House on Mango Street. New York: Vintage, 1991. 12- 13.

---. "Chanclas." The House on Mango Street. New York: Vintage, 1991. 46-48.

---. "Laughter." The House on Mango Street. New York: Vintage, 1991. 17-18.

---. "No Speak English." The House on Mango Street. New York: Vintage, 1991. 76-78.

---. "The House on Mango Street." The House on Mango Street. New York: Vintage, 1991. 3-5.

---. "Those Who Don’t." The House on Mango Street. New York: Vintage, 1991. 28.