House On Mango Street Compare And Contrast Essay

The House on Mango Street Compare and Contrast with Author Analysis The House on Mango Street is a very popular book written by Sandra Cisneros. This book is about a young Hispanic girl’s life growing up very poor. The readers can make an assumption that the book is written based on the author’s life. Sandra Cisneros was also a Hispanic girl who had to see the face of poverty. In The House on Mango Street, Esperanza has similar experiences to the author, Sandra Cisneros, because they both grew up poor, as a child, they both moved often, and they also expressed signs of low self-esteem and sadness. Esperanza and the author have similar experiences because they both grew up poor. This is found in the vignette, “The House on Mango Street”,

In Esperanza’s case, she was always moving and the places she moved into were not the greatest environment. Whenever she showed people where she would live, she would always get a feeling of low self-esteem and embarrassment because of where she lived. One quote found in the vignette, “The House on Mango Street” is, “ There. I had to look to where she pointed- the third floor, the paint peeling, wooden bars Papa had nailed on the windows so we wouldn’t fall out. You live there? I lived there. I nodded.” (Cisneros Pg. 5) The emphasis on “there” is heartbreaking. You can just imagine the sadness she feels that the place she lives in is not good enough to people’s standards. Especially since she feels like she is obligated to have a better life like her great grandmother did. The author felt this pain too. In a biography, she described that because she moved so often, she retreated inside herself in this quote, "'Because we moved so much, and always in neighborhoods that appeared like France after World War II--empty lots and burned-out buildings--I retreated inside myself'" (Juffer, Sandra Cisneros: Biographical Note) In vignette, “Boys and Girls” it says, “Until then I am a red balloon, a balloon tied to an anchor.”(Cisneros Pg. 9) This is very deep for a young child to say. She is essentially saying that she feels like there is a weight on her body, and it is preventing her from being free and happy. Growing up, the author was the only female child of her family. She would never feel a connection to her other siblings who were all male. This led her to be lonely as shown in a quote, “Her loneliness from not having sisters or friends drove her to read and burying herself in books.” (Mathias, Sandra Cisneros) On top of her family being poor, she had no friends to talk to. This would make a child have a low self-esteem. It would