HOUSE ON MANGO STREET WINDOWS

They think we will attack them with shiny knives.” Among the Mango Street denizens, there are unwed mothers, petty thieves, drug abusers, and a garden variety of mischief-makers.Įsperanza does wander off Mango Street from time to time, especially to “the avenue which is dangerous. “Those who don’t know any better come into our neighborhood scared. She writes, in “Those Who Don’t,” about that reputation. The narrator, though only barely an adolescent, understands that her neighborhood is considered undesirable. Mamacita lives across the street, third-floor front. Elenita, the “witch woman,” reads fortunes in a kitchen somewhere nearby. Benny and Bianca own the corner candy store. The neighborhood is densely populated, as lots of people cram into the street’s houses and apartment buildings, like the Puerto Rican family who lives in Meme’s basement apartment, and Rose Vargas’ wild kids who are described as “too many and too much.” Edna owns the big six-flat next door, with daughter Ruthie as one tenant and jukebox repairman Earl and his two dogs staying in the basement. Esperanza and friends stage the First Annual Tarzan Jumping Contest in Meme’s dirt backyard, amidst its collapsed remnants of an old garage and a big tree. Friends and neighbors come and go-for example, Cathy, whose father built her wooden house with slanty floors and no closets, is replaced by Meme Ortiz. The fictional Mango Street is a poor neighborhood populated with immigrant families and colorful characters, a neighborhood that Cathy Queen of Cats warns is changing for the worse, prompting Esperanza to comment, “…they’ll just have to move a little farther north from Mango Street, a little farther away every time people like us keep moving in.” It is not a transient neighborhood, exactly, but more a neighborhood of last resort in which residents, including Esperanza’s family, move in with the intention of moving out. She writes, “I pick up parts of Bucktown, like the monkey garden next door, and plop it down in the Humboldt Park block where I lived during my middle and high school years-1525 N. It is between Central and Austin, and of course, 4006 would be just off Irving Park Road.Ĭisneros writes in A House of My Own, that while the Mango Street house was actually modeled after one specific past Chicago residence, the fictional neighborhood is a potpourri of details based on other places she’d lived. “You live right here 4006 Mango, Alicia says and points to the house I am ashamed of.” There is no actual Mango Street in Chicago, but there is a Mango Avenue. The story, “Alicia & I Talking on Edna’s Steps” pins down an address. The fictional Mango Street, especially narrator Esperanza’s own house, is described in intricate detail throughout the 46 vignettes that comprise the collection. There is no front yard, only four little elms the city planted by the curb.” A later story observes the house “with its feet tucked under like a cat.” That story goes on to say, “Bricks are crumbling in places, and the front door is so swollen you have to push hard to get in.

HOUSE ON MANGO STREET WINDOWS

This house is “small and red with tight steps in front and windows so small you’d think they were holding their breath,” just as it is described in the title story of The House on Mango Street. However, Cisneros herself stated that the house that stands directly across from 1525 is very similar to her childhood home. was demolished around 2004 a modern three-flat apartment building now stands in its place. Unfortunately, the original house at 1525 North Campbell Ave. Latinos, especially Puerto Ricans, Mexicans, and Dominicans, comprise more than half the neighborhood’s population. The house is nestled within a Humboldt Park neighborhood that today still reflects the diversity explored in The House on Mango Street, which is set around the 1960s. This address was one of Cisneros’ multiple childhood residences and is said to have been the real-life inspiration for the house on Mango Street, from which the book receives its title. In 1965, an eleven-year-old Sandra Cisneros and her family moved into the residence at 1525 N.

House on mango street