The House on Mango Street

I knew almost immediately that I wouldn’t like The House on Mango Street I read the introduction and that was all I needed to tell that this would not be a work that I would have fond memories of. I don’t know exactly if it was the content or the structure or perhaps something else about the book that I didn’t like, but it was something. However for the purposes of this discussion I will try to put my disagreements aside and look at the book from a neutral point of view.

The House on Mango Street is a collection of short stories from the Author’s past growing up in a predominantly Hispanic neighborhood in Chicago during the 1980’s. The short stories are brief experiences from the author’s childhood and incorporate a number of characters, family and non-family, real and fictional, that had a significant impact on her life. The stories range from her experiences moving into the neighborhood, to her life at school, to games she used to play, and much more. Although there is no real plot woven through these stories the reader can see a definite pattern, that the author is not satisfied with her living conditions and ultimately wishes to have a house of her own. At first she doesn’t understand why her family lives the way they do or why many of her friends are doomed never to leave Mango Street, but in the end the reader does get some sense that she is beginning to understand that her way of thinking in not in the majority and that many of her peers have simply come to accept the life that they live and that they are destined to live.

Personally, I think the author could have done just as good a job of illustrating this point by writing a full novel with a plot and a continuous storyline. The disjointed nature of the work is one of the most frustrating factors to me as reader. It seems that she starts developing on thought in a story only to abandon it and move on to the next short story. Maybe the thought will be picked up later, or maybe not. Having said all that I can understand how this work is applicable to the coming-of-age theme that we a pursuing in this class. I discussed earlier that the author is not like the other kids in her neighborhood in that she has dreams and goals, and is not satisfied with here life. That isn’t necessarily the coming of age aspect that I see, it is the change that we see in the author from the beginning of the work to the end, which conveniently ends with almost the same narrative. The author describes Mango Street setting her free and recognizes that there are some on Mango Street that cannot leave.

All in all the work did provide examples of the coming of age theme, however I think that this goal could have been met in a more traditional way. I’m sure the author has good reason for writing the book in the style she chose, it just happens to be a style that I do not agree with.