The House on Mango Street

'Cisneros draws on her rich [Latino] heritage … and seduces with precise spare  prose, creating unforgettable characters we want to lift off the page. She is not only a gifted writer but an absolutely essential one’
New York Times Book Review
Told in a series of vibrant vignettes, The House on Mango Street is the story of Esperanza Cordera, a young girl growing up in the Hispanic quarter of Chicago.  For Esperanza, Mango Street is a desolate landscape of concrete and run-down tenements where she discovers the hard realities of life - the fetters of class and gender, the spectre of racial enmity and the mysteries of sexuality.  Capturing her thoughts and emotions in poems and stories, Esperanza is able to rise above hopelessness and create for herself 'a house all of my own quiet as snow, a space for myself to go' in the midst of her oppressive surroundings.