Bildungsroman- The House on Mango Street

In The House on Mango Street, Sandra Cisneros describes the coming-of-age of the young Latino girl, Esperanza. During this one year, Esperanza struggles to find her identity as a Latino girl wanting to escape the life in an impoverished community. She first struggles with the shame of being poor and living in a broken down house on Mango Street. Nevertheless, at the end she accepts her identity as a Latino girl from an impoverished community and embraces it, which indicate she is no longer ashamed of herself; therefore, she is determined to return to Mango Street and to help others after she succeeds. In addition, she has to learn what it means to be a woman especially a Latino one. The women within Esperanza’s community provide her with both negative and positive attributes of being a woman. Having both types in her life, Esperanza knows what kind of woman she wants to be and does not want to become. Furthermore, her ambition to escape the impoverishment of the Latino community pushes her to educate herself and to use her writing skill to break the viscous cycle destined for the Latino women and girls in her community.