The House on Mango Street

            The House on Mango Street wasn’t what I was expecting at all. When I first sat down to read, I was imagining some sort of story about growing up in a Hispanic household, something similar to Like Water For Chocolate or maybe La Casa de Bernarda Alba. I mean, I did get a subject matter close to what I had expected, I just didn’t receive a story so to speak.

The more I read through the one to two page chapters, the more I felt like I was reading someone’s memories of growing up. Isn’t that how our own childhood memories are anyway? Not continuous. Not perfectly interwoven. Simply brief moments of incredible clarity. Maybe Cisneros was trying to create an authentic feeling collection of memories. It’s amazing how certain moments in our life are so standout that we can simply call them up and relive them as if they were yesterday. For instance, I remember being at the bike shop with my mom, dad, and grandpa. I had achieved my goal of learning to ride a bike without training wheels, and thus, I had earned myself a real multispeed mountain bike. I can’t tell you much about learning to ride without training wheels or when my parents told me about the deal, but I can certainly remember being in the shop, anxiously waiting for my new bike. It had a really cool speed monitor on it that would keep track of how far, and how fast you went. I thought it was so cool. Maybe think isn’t the right word- I knew it was cool.

Because I remembered the moment when I got my first real bike, Esperanza’s sketch of the co-purchase of a bike with her friends stood out to me. Sure the friends on my street had their own bikes, but we still would ride them around the neighborhood just as happily. We still did silly things, like trying to fit three of us on a bike. Sure, this moment was probably more special to Esperanza because she began some true friendships. Belonging is need we all must fill.

Otherwise, I can’t say that many of the sketches really pulled me in. Some were more interesting than others, but nothing really stood out to me. I think a big reason this happened was a result of my reading the book in multiple sittings. I’m not much of a marathon reader. I don’t think I’ve ever read a book (of at least 100 pages) in a single sitting, and thus, I took this one down in parts. I would read a few sketches at a time, then come back to it the next day. Every time I came back to the reading, I felt a little lost at the beginning. While the book is certainly disjointed, I’d always find myself getting into a sort of rhythm after a few sketches. It started making more sense with each sketch. A little bit of continuity seemed to emerge. Perhaps if I tried to read it in one sitting, I would have enjoyed it more, if only because of the sliver a clarity reading several sketches seemed to give.

At the end of my reading, I simply felt unsatisfied. I guess I’m just more of a traditional story kind of guy. I mean, I’ve never been a huge fan of experimental writing. Still, I can appreciate Cisneros work. Even though it wasn’t my favorite book, it was interesting at times. I did feel as though my understanding of Esperanza grew by reading about random moments in her life. In a sense, that’s how we learn about people in real life. We only know the random moments people choose to share with us.