I picked up this book from a closing bookstore because I remember reading this during my elementary days in school. I figured now that I’m older, I can understand and appreciate it better. I remember not caring for the book. Two decades have passed, and I still don’t care for the book. But it’s a great telling!
In The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros, you’re looking at the memoirs of a young Latina girl named Esperanza Cordero, who reminisce growing up in a poor desolated, yet active neighborhood. Each “chapter” (made up of short stories, all about the main theme) gives you a perspective that surrounds the character and her development.
I do believe the book is important because it tells of a place, where the author has experienced in her adolescent life, and you always need a POV of growing pains in stories. The House on Mango Street was a pinnacle era in Cordero/Cisneros’s life. I understand how important it is to tell a story through different voices, while still highlighting the main theme, so I get why this was implemented in the school systems. I just didn’t like it. There’s nothing in here that gives me joy or makes my mind wander with Cordero and her house on Mango Street. There’s nothing that excited or resonated with me.
Overall the book was not for me. With 40 pages left, I didn’t even finish the book. I picked up the 10th-anniversary edition, so it has a reflective introduction from Cisneros detailing her thoughts then and now. So umm yeah. That’s it. That’s all I got.
#thelittlibrarian #bookreview #Fiction #memoir #Bildungsroman