Sandra Cisneros wrote The House on Mango
Street. Cisneros had similar experiences to Esperanza, the protagonist, in
The House on Mango Street. Cisneros too moved around from house to
house. She lived in ghetto neighborhoods of Chicago. She often found herself in small,
cramped homes. Cisneros also comes from a large family in which she was the only
daughter of seven children. Growing up, she often felt out of
place:
Cisneros remembers that as a child she often felt
a sense of displacement.
Life
was a struggle for Cisneros. Money was hard to come by. By the time Cisneros was twelve,
her parents had saved enough money for a down payment on a run-down
house:
By 1966
her parents had saved enough money for a down payment on a run-down, two-story house in
a decrepit Puerto Rican neighborhood on Chicago's north side. There Cisneros spent much
of her childhood.
From her
experiences of living in this house, she deveoped her writing skills. She wrote about
the characters that surrounded her life during this time. These neighbors later became
characters in her book The House on Mango Street.
As a child, due to moving around so much,
Cisneros became withdrawn. She had just a few friends. She observed the neighbors
carefully. Her mother encouraged her to write. She also made sure Cisneros had a library
card.
In college, Cisneros found her own voice. Others'
writings encouraged her to write about her own experiences as a
child:
The
author wrote poems and stories as a schoolgirl, but the impetus for her career as a
creative writer came during her college years, when she was introduced to the works of
Donald Justice, James Wright, and other writers who made Cisneros more aware of her
cultural roots.
Today, we
have Esperanza and The House on Mango Street which is a reflection
of some of Cisnero's own experiences while growing
up.
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