Dear Sally,
I wish that your life had been different. Perhaps you would’ve realized your full potential and seen yourself outside of the worth of your body. Your father’s treatment towards you is the product of some sort of insecurity complex and I wish that there was a way for you to see that it isn’t your fault. You have to learn to love yourself and everything else will fall into place. I have a large amount of empathy for you that intensified as I read House on Mango Street. A lot of people would see you as a simple “slut” but there’s always a reason behind the way people act. Your promiscuity is the result of a deeper self-esteem issue and I can relate to that. Your friendship with Esperanza is something I relate to, and I wish I could’ve been your friend so that I could help you through your troubles with your father and help you find a way to channel your emotions into something other than meaningless, unhealthy promiscuity. You were dealt a bad card in life. If things had been different, you would be better, but perhaps then you wouldn’t even be the same Sally. It saddens me to think that you don’t know your own worth as a person; I guess I relate to that, in a way. I wish you could’ve grown up like I did and found a way to love yourself and be content. I suppose it’s futile now. And also because you’re fictional.
Sincerely,
Kathryn

Women around the world, everyday,
are being shot at while suckling babes
cry at their breasts and I am here
surrounded by four secure walls
with no way to hear their cries.

Brown women and black women and
in between women and white women
everywhere are becoming victims
of another statistic and my terror
for them is veiled by the pale white
of my skin and the comfortable
middle-class nature of my home.

Women around the world, everyday,
are prejudiced against although
in their veins runs the same red-hot
blood and swelling emotions as
the rest of us and I will never
understand.

I will never understand.

This quote in particular, from “Beautiful and Cruel,” really marks a turning point in the novel for me. Esperanza begins a war against the standards of the culture of her people and refuses to let her power be held by anyone else. She will not wait for a ball and chain like the others. It’s a powerful message, undoubtedly- to take hold of your own power and use it in whatever way you wish in the way a man does. The harsh gender roles of the Hispanic culture in which Esperanza is immersed tell her to give up her power as a girl to the men in her life. She refuses to wait for a husband to command her life for her, something blatant and bold in the context of which she
lives. She is intelligent, questioning her surroundings and aiming to better them; she grows sick of feeling entrapped. This point in the novel marks where Esperanza fully realizes her potential, even as a woman, and becomes determined to soar beyond Mango Street by her own works and her own potential. Esperanza refers to the others as “waiting for the ball and chain,” as many of the women she sees around her are trapped by their husbands and/or fathers. There is a recurrent image throughout the novel of women looking out windows in an almost Rapunzel-esque fashion, and Esperanza does not wish to be one of those. She is determined to be powerful in her own right, unapologetic for that which is hers, and that stands out to me.

“My mother says when I get older my dusty hair will settle and my blouse will learn to stay clean, but I have decided not to grow up tame like the others who lay their necks on the threshold waiting for the ball and chain…
I have begun my own quiet war. Simple. Sure. I am one who leaves the table like a man, without putting back the chair or picking up the plate.” -p. 88-89

Dear Esperanza,
As a teenage girl, it’s not surprising that I can relate to you on a lot of levels. Your musings make me think of certain situations that I’ve come across in my own life. No matter how easy it is to deny, walking through life is simply different for a girl at any age. You brought the privilege I have as a middle-class white person further into my perspective and made me really question whether or not I take it for granted. I only wish that I could further understand the predicaments you are put in as a young Hispanic girl, and now I feel that I have gained a further understanding of your culture and the way in which it works. I will never walk through life in the same way that you have, a blessing in some aspects, I suppose. I hope that someday you get far away from Mango Street and make yourself into a renowned poet or activist or something that will bring you happiness. No matter what anyone has made you believe about your race or your gender, there’s no limit to what you can do. I hope you become a strong woman born in the year of the horse like the Chinese and Mexicans don’t like. I hope all the feelings of conviction and determination that you put on paper last throughout your life and never let you down. By the way, I love the name Esperanza. I hope you learn to love it too.
Sincerely, Kathryn

In the particular vignette entitled “The Family of Little Feet,” Sandra Cisneros uses symbolism to illustrate the more general, overall theme of entrapment in The House on Mango Street. Esperanza continuously has a fascination with feet that goes on throughout the entire novel; feet are the mode that allow us to travel from place to place, wherever we wish to go, and as Esperanza feels trapped, so do her own feet seem futile and defective. This spurs an unmistakable fascination with the feets of others who seem to have seen so much more than her. In “The Family of Little Feet,” a family of people who have- surprise- little feet and gift their shoes to Esperanza and her friends. The amount of detail in which Esperanza describes the feet to the reader is almost shocking at first and provides as an exemplary way of drawing attention to the symbolistic doting. She describes the grandpa of the family’s feet as being “fat and doughy like thick tamales… powdered and stuffed into white socks and brown leather shoes” and the grandma’s as “lovely as pink pearls and dressed in velvety high heels that made her walk with a wobble.” The feet also serve even further as symbols of the characters’ overall personalities- the patriarch being lazy and heavy and the matriarch being proper and lovely. Esperanza feels almost drawn to the feet of people she is fascinated by and sees them as modes of understanding the people as a whole via the tales their feet can tell- where they have been, etc. This device as used by Cisneros communicates the overall theme of entrapment by highlighting Esperanza’s intense dreaming, especially when connected to something so seemingly mundane as feet.

In Sandra Cisneros’ The House on Mango Street, the author explores the theme of gender roles and expectations through the narrator’s experiences in her heavily-patriarchal, Hispanic familial and neighborhood surroundings. Ezperanza’s coming-of-age is essentially highlighted by the gender roles she is subjected to, making a significant impact on the unraveling of the novel.
The first section of the novel features a vignette entitled “Marin” about a girl in Ezperanza’s neighborhood who is infatuated with the idea of a man sweeping up to take her away; “What matters, Marin says, is for the boys to see us… [Marin] is waiting for a car to stop, a star to fall, someone to change her life.” Ezperanza is constantly fascinated by women who feel entrapped much in the same way as she is; Marin in particular feels as if she needs a man to sweep her away and save her, revealing an underlying notion that women are damsels in distresses, incapable of their own saving. Marin buys into this stereotype, wishing for a knight in shining armor to do her biddings for her because she believes that she is not strong enough to do it herself. This fascinates and confuses Ezperanza, as many of the expectations for her gender do. Further into the book, as Ezperanza begins to grow, she begins to be subjected to the troubles too many of teenage girls go through. In particular, the vignette “The First Job” features an old Oriental man who makes her feel comfortable at first, gaining her trust in a time period where she was emotionally vulnerable such as her first day of a new job. He asks for a birthday kiss and then forces her into surprising, unwanted advances; “just as I was about to put my lips on his cheek, he grabs my face with both hands and kisses me hard on the mouth and doesn’t let go.” This vignette is a statement on what teenage girls go through in a society that heavily sexualizes them even as they just begin puberty. This is Ezperanza’s first experience being unwillingly sexualized; she trusts this man and his comfort, a young girl on her first day, and he believes that he is entitled to a lip-on-lip kiss that she does not voluntarily give. In a similar fashion, one of the final vignettes of the novel features an instance in which Ezperanza is yet again forced into an action involuntarily. The vignette is entitled “Red Clowns” and is a startling, emotional portrayal of Ezperanza’s rape. The boy raping her dehumanizes her, not only in his actions, but in words; “I love you, Spanish girl, I love you.” He reduces her to simply “Spanish girl”: a label to turn her into an object that he cannot feel bad about hurting. With this turn, Cisneros brings up some interesting insights on gender roles; rape is an all-too-common action, primarily against girls. Rapists (primarily men) see women as sexual objects to be picked for their liking, instead of sentient human beings, a theme often reestablished throughout the novel and brought to large attention through “Red Clowns.”
Ezperanza’s thoughts and insights are ones that all teenage girls can relate to, no matter their walk of life. Gender roles are something that impacts us in our everyday lives as we feel the pressure to break through damsel-in-distress stereotypes and unwanted sexual advances by men who see us as objects. Cisneros, through The House on Mango Street, makes a statement on patriarchal standards and gender roles that resonates with the reader and forces them to form form an opinion.

I felt meek on my first day at the factory. Ruthie always says she would’ve thought it was a doe walking in if I hadn’t had red lipstick on. I was not like the other girls then, just proper and pretty, that’s all. My momma taught me that a girl should always look pretty. Nothing else, just pretty. I knew no better than to believe her then. Now I know that there are so many other things a girl should always be.
My momma thinks it’s disgraceful, me working here in a factory like this. A woman’s place is at home with her children, she says all proper again and again, like she is so much better than me because she stayed at home and played pretty all day while my papa did the real work, the productive stuff.
It always makes me angry. Harlen will kill the Nazis a little easier and when he comes back home little Leo can have a daddy, I tell her, all because of me, cause I’m making these planes for him to fly. I’m keeping him alive, momma, what did you do for papa that’s like that? And then she always gets mad and I have to say sorry, I didn’t mean it.
The girls at the factory taught me how to stand up for myself like that. Ruthie was my first friend and she’s taught me the most. I walked in the first day and saw her, all lipstick and big hips and honey-rich voice, and she intimidated me so much I nearly turned around and left. She walked over and took me by the arm when she saw me standing by the door, smiling the way you smile when you talk to a child. You new here, honey? her voice sung. That’s alright. C’mere and I’ll show you the ropes.
The first thing she did was show me how to use a drill. I’d never used a drill before. As Ruthie handed it to me, the first thing I thought of was my mother’s face, weeping over my loss of propriety, and my father next to her, all stern and disappointed like the sharp-jawed fathers in movies. The image nearly kept me from taking it. I wanted to run away and go back home to little Leo, but when I paused too long and Ruthie raised a well-manicured eyebrow at me, I thought of my baby and their father and took the heavy tool from her hands.
She led me over to one of the airplanes, big and huge and majestic against the harsh grey of the factory walls, and Ruthie invited me to sit in the small pilot’s seat as she went over to get her own big contraption and show me the magic of the tool. I peeked over to the side of the plane, thinking about my Harlan sitting here sometime soon, and it made me feel a little better, a little less guilty. Her face was relaxed as I sat in awe of her, so pretty and with such a big man’s tool in her hands, and when she was finished with the nails on the plane she said it was my turn to do one. I spotted the callouses on her hands and felt self-conscious.
All the other women paused from their work, taking a moment to look at me, some of them sniggering and the negro one in the corner trying to look all kind and inspiring at me. The negro one was Mary Janelle and she is very nice and I love her now but I would never tell my mother that. I did what Ruthie did, her watchful eye looming over me, positioning a nail and driving it into the metal with my new contraption that Harlan would’ve loved and the thought of him flying my work and it serving him well and my little baby seeing his father made my soft hands steady. There was a big boom of laughter, large and small mouths, all painted different colors, opening to let the humor loose. I felt my eyebrows knit together in confusion.
Oh, honey, Ruthie drawled as she came to rest her hand on my back. This ain’t bad laughter. You’re the first one of us to do that right on the first try. Mary Janelle leaned over, her face all amused, and told Ruthie that she owed her a milkshake.
Ever since that day I’ve never felt meek again.

A few years back, while I was visiting my grandmother, an old, dusty book caught my eye. It read “An Overview of Literature: Renaissance-present” on the side in an outdated font and had the sideways script of my grandfather all throughout its pages. I never new my grandfather, as he died when my mother was only 19 of a sudden heart attack, but I’ve always heard from people that knew him that we are immensely alike in our demeanor, expressions, and our shared love of literature. The den of my grandmother’s house is still overrun with books that he would sit all night and devour, ranging from thought-provoking books on the history of Ancient Greece to classics like Gulliver’s Travels. To find such a book, with his notes scattered in the margins by every poem, connected me with him in the greatest way that I will ever know. I can peer into it and see into his mind in a way that I never could by simply knowing him, and that means all the world to me.

With Emily and I, it was an instant ‘I can tell I’m going to like you.’ I knew, with her short hair and numerous rock band t-shirts, that she would become my friend. The first few conversations were filled with the question “Oh my god, you like that too?” She was the first real friend I made in high school, although I had lingering ones from middle school. She introduced me to a whole new world of friendship, one where it’s unthinkable to stab each other in the back, and one that’s quite hard to find. Emily understands that I’m not always good at telling the people I care about that I care about them, and never fails to let me know that she cares about me. Our friendship is probably the best one I’ve yet to encounter. I sense that it will persist through a lot of stages of life.