The House On Mango Street Reading Log

Reading log:

P 88 → the hole passage about Nenny changes our vision about her. For me, she has always been all along the story the little girl, innocent and who doesn’t know much about life. But now we discover than not only does she understand life, but also she has already made her choice about her husband.

P 91 → Esperanza’s mother confess to her daughter her biggest shame and regret, which is quitting school just because of her clothes while she could have had a brilliant future. I think this is very brave, because she accept her mistake and talk to her daughter so that she won’t do the same.

P 93 → “and she said Daddy and went home”, this phrase touches me a lot because we see how this world is full and violence and still there are some people (especially kids) who stay brave. Just like Sally who accepts to go home even if her father can’t stop hitting her and ruining her body.

P 94 → “the monkey doesn’t live there anymore” she’s talking about him just like if he was a human, but he’s only an animal. Also she says that he took his people while it’s the people who took him, because it’s not a monkey who decides for a whole family’s future.

P 99 → “sally you lied to me”, I don’t understand why all the chapters begin that way, we don’t know what’s happening, when is it happening, and we don’t even know who is talking. Sometimes we have to read the chapter 2 times before we understand the story.

P 100 → Esperanza can’t stop repeating again and again that Sally lied to her, that she’s a liar. Has she been rapped? She is talking about some boys who forced her to kiss them and she couldn’t defend herself or do anything else but crying... I think she has been rapped.

“Beautiful and cruel” is a chapter where Esperanza imposes herself sexually. Indeed, she wants to be independent and stop waiting for a husband to come pick her among many other girls in the barrio. Instead, she decides to take as example those women in the movies who seduce men and make them become crazy and in love, and them they just go and let them without coming back anymore. This way to see things shows that Esperanza isn’t mature enough to understand how sexuality really works, since the real life is way of being how movies or cartoons represent it. Also, she begins her “seduction strategy” by leaving the dinner table like a man, and refusing to push in her chair and doing her dishes. She is convinced that these pretty tasks will make her waste her precious time, instead of doing something else that could help her find the perfect man. But the only thing that she doesn’t think about is that by actin that way, she puts her mother in an uncomfortable situation, because she has to do all the domestic work alone, and that shows a selfish side of Esperanza’s personality.

“Smart cookie” is a chapter that represents the relation between a mother and daughter that is becoming stronger than ever. Espereranza’s mother talk to her daughter very honestly, based on her own experience and her own mistakes to make her daughter realize that she is not the only one who can be smart, and that she has to open herself to the world if she wants to escape and not end up like of her mother’s friends who’s husbands just left. Esperanza found it very surprising that her mother talk to her that way and confess her mistakes that much, so that shows that their relation has never been very strong and close. The mother tells her mother that even with knowing how to do many things, she can’t escape because she doesn’t know how to do the most important one, taking the subway, which will help her leave her troubles and sadness. Therefore, she make

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