In both novels, House on Mango Street and The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, stereotyping is a reoccurring issue. House on Mango Street shows the stereotypes given to people who have little to no money and Part Time Indian expresses how different races are viewed and treated differently. Esperanza and Junior, the characters in the novels, each struggle with finding acceptance within their own families and with people around them. Sadly, the only reason no one respects them the way they should is based solely on the way they look and where they live. Both novels have a common theme of stereotypes causing society to judge a book by its cover.
House on Mango Street is about a young girl who is ashamed of her family’s poverty and
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He dreams of being the first in his family to make it through school and go to college. This becomes quite a challenge though since money is so tight. “Seriously, I know my mother and father had their dreams when they were kids. They dreamed about being something other than poor, but they never got the chance to be anything because nobody paid attention to their dreams.” This not only shows how no one payed attention to his parents struggles, but it also shows how Junior feels about everyone just assuming he will not make it the entire way through school because of his race. One of the biggest changes Junior makes in his life is deciding to switch to an all white prep school twenty-two miles off of the rez. This decision leaves the people on the rez unhappy and also causes problems at his new school, Reardon. “We pulled up in front and a lot of my classmates just stared… I suppose we looked dangerous.”(Alexie,60). When Junior refers to himself as “dangerous” this shows how fed up he is with everyone assuming things about him before they ever spoke a word to him. He was just trying to further his education as much as he could, but instead felt like an outcast for the color of his skin and where he had come