1. Intro to The House on Mango Street
By Sandra Cisneros

2. Essential Questions
What role does our family, culture, and community play in shaping us?
How can reading the stories of other help us to find our own acceptance and purpose?
How can a writer use figurative language and creative writing techniques to express point of view and voice?

3. About the Author Sandra Cisneros
Born in Chicago
December 20, 1954
The only daughter in a family of seven children
High school teacher and counselor

4. The House on Mango Street
First published in 1983
A collection of vignettes
American Book Award in 1985
Sold over 2 million copies since its initial publication

5. What is a Vignette?
A short, well written sketch or descriptive scene. It does not follow a specific plot which would make it a short story, but offers extremely descriptive scenes.

6. The Setting Early 1980’s Narrator: Esperanza Cordero
Point of View: First-person present tense

7. Fundamental or universal topics or ideas explored in a literary work
Themes
Fundamental or universal topics or ideas explored in a literary work

8. Identity Innocence
Esperanza’s struggle to mesh together her ethnic, gender, cultural, sexual and economic identity
How can growing up disperse the fog of innocence?

9. Otherness Set in a society where gender roles are very defined
Set in a Latino community in America

10. Motifs
Recurring structure, contrasts, literary devices that help to develop the text’s major themes
Names
Falling
Women by Windows

11. Symbols Shoes/ feet Trees Poetry
Symbols are objects, character, figures, or colors used to represent abstract ideas or concepts
Shoes/ feet
Trees
Poetry

12. Final thought: “I am the sum of all stories that pass through me
Final thought: “I am the sum of all stories that pass through me.” -Sandra Cisneros