The House on Mango Street - Sandra Cisneros
The Multnomah County Library does an "Everybody Reads" program each year, where they pick a book and make it widely available, and then have all sorts of programs and activites based on the book. This year's book was The House on Mango Street, a series of vignettes told by Esperanza, a girl growing up in a poor Latino neighborhood. She doesn't want to be there, and dreams of having her own house, a real house, with "real stairs, not hallway stairs, but stairs inside like the houses on T.V." She doesn't want to end up like the women she sees around her and is looking for an escape. But, she's also a young girl who wants to make friends and have fun.
The chapters are mostly very short, often less than two full pages, so it's like a portrait made up of a series of small snapshots: a glimpse of her dad, a bit of her friend Sally, making friends with Rachel and Lucy. It's both bitter and sweet, and makes for a good (though short) read.
Fed to jhliu's brain | February 16, 2005
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