Sandra Cisneros
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Sandra Cisneros, in her novel The House on Mango Street, portrays the American Dream as alive and well, although in a new and feminist form. If one means by that Dream primarily the opportunity to advance from a place of poverty to a place of economic success, then the Dream only partially applies to Esperanza, the book's protagonist. Esperanza does have material dreams as well as more artistic and spiritual ones, but even her material desires are rooted in her fundamental dream of being free from racial, social and sexual oppression, free to be her most individualistic and creative self. Despite the fact that her dreams are, indeed, self-oriented, they are not merely selfish but are part of her sense of commitment to a larger community. Cisneros's novel covers a number of years in the life and coming-of-age of Esperanza, a young girl growing up in Chicago. The book primarily focuses on the conflicts between Esperanza's developing dreams and desires, and the harsh life she and her family lead in urban poverty. These conflicts are not resolved by the end of the book, but the determination and resiliency of Esperanza strongly suggest that she will find success in life and some measure of creativity, if not happiness. The reader meets Esperanza as a little girl living in the misery of poverty, shame and loneliness. Despite her circumstances, however, she is intelligent, sensitive, and curious, full of a sense of wonder about the world. Her dream gradually evolves into the
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ecoming an empowered feminist who is learning the process of liberation from watching other women who were wearing such balls and chains and vowing not to fall into the same prison of gender limitations.
Esperanza's story is easy to identify with. She is torn between two worlds--the world of her imagination and the world in which she is trapped, a situation most human beings are trapped in to various degrees. Her parents try to do better, to achieve their more purely materialistic version of the American Dream, but the house they move into on Mango Street is in no way the picture-perfect house of which they dreamed. Her parents set for her an example of wanting to achieve dreams, but they fail to show her how to actually achieve those dreams. Esperanza herself dreams of a better house not for the sake of achieving socioeconomic status but because it will allow her to pursue her creative dream: "A house all my own. With my . . . books and my stories. . . . A space for myself to go, clean as paper before the poem" (108).
Still, this higher dream takes time to evolve. At first, she wants a house of her own simply so she will not be mocked for her poverty, not made to "feel like nothing" (5) as she does when a passing nun is sho
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Approximate Word count = 1474
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page)
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