House on Mango Street

The memoir I read was “The House on Mango Street” by Sandra Cisneros. The significance of the title is that, Esperanza, the main character of the book, is always moving from place to place, and her dad is always telling her that one day they will live in a beautiful house forever. But now she is living in a red, ugly house on Mango Street. She is even embarrassed of pointing to that red house and say “its mine.”

Every chapter of this memoir is organized in vignettes; the chapters may be short but every single one of them has significance to how each memory or event affected her life. It can serve as a metaphor for everything in her life.

There were many vignettes in were the memoirist came to realize many things. For example: one of the vignettes that called “Red Clowns”. In this memory she is in a park, waiting for her friend Sally and out of nowhere this man gets near her and rapes her. She begins to get mad at Sally because she didn’t come to help Esperanza in her time of need. Especially since Esperanza came to the carnival because of Sally even though she didn’t want to

I really liked this book; I thought it was a great memoir, I thought it was well written, and how she did the metaphors for such simple things as… “Hairs” hairs describe the personality of a person.

Lines I loved:
“Someday I will have a best friend all my own. One I can tell my secrets to. One who will understand my jokes with ought me having to explain them. Until then I am a red balloon, a balloon tied to an anchor”
pg. 9