Sandra Cisneros, The House on Mango Street (1984) Originally published by the Arte Público Press in 1984, Cisneros's lyrical novel received the Before Columbus American Book Award.  In 1995, Cisneros herself received one of the MacArthur Foundation's prestigious "genius" grants.  Cisneros's other published work includes:  •  My Wicked Wicked Ways (1987) -- poetry  •  Woman Hollering Creek and Other Stories (1991) -- short stories  •  Loose Woman: Poems (1994) -- poetry  She has also published Spanish translations of Mango Street and Woman Hollering Creek.

Pre-reading questions:

• As you read, you might ask yourself: what kind of book is this?  Is it a novel?  (What is a novel supposed to be like?)  Or is it just a collection of short stories?
• In a related vein, some have called the book fragmented, in terms not only of its overall arrangement but even its individual sentences.  If that seems a fair description, why do you think Cisneros decided to tell this particular story in that way?  What is the role of fragmentation within the story itself?
• Think a bit about the narrator as well.  How would you characterize her voice?  Is it confident?  Angry?  Yearning?  Hopeful?  How does it compare to the young voice we just examined in "In the Waiting Room"?
• Does the narrative voice in Cisneros's book -- how it talks, what it knows, what it thinks about -- change over the course of the book?  If so, how?
• Homes and houses are obviously of much importance in this book.  Do they hold the same meaning for every character?  What is the difference between a house and a home?
• Why does Cisneros include so many characters who appear only briefly in the book?  What roles do these almost incidental figures play in the novel?
• Why does Cisneros end the book with an almost exact repetition of the opening lines?

Web links:

Each week, we encourage you to browse through some of these links either before or after you begin reading.  They often contain interesting biographical information, samples of the author's other works, and other kinds of material that might help us begin to make connections within and among texts.  If you find other useful sites, please let us know and we'll include bookmarks for them.

• Voices from the Gaps: Sandra Cisneros
• Las Mujeres.com: Sandra Cisneros
• Two of Cisneros' poems from Loose Woman: "Old Maids" and "Las Girlfriends"
• Making Face, Making Soul (home page of chicanas.com)

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