House On Mango Street By Esperanza
Plot Summary: This historical fiction story is set in 1930’s. The main character, Esperanza is a young Mexican girl who lives on El Rancho de las Rosas near Aguascalientes in Mexico with her loving parents. She enjoys her care-free life filled with riches, parties, servants and silk dresses. Everything changes in Esperanza’s life when her Papa, Sixto Ortega is killed by the bandits, just a day before Esperanza’s 13th birthday. Papa’s brothers try to manipulate the situation in order to seize the rancho, one of them even offers to marry Mama and threatens her. When Mama refuses to marry him, shortly after, their mansion gets set on fire at night. Esperanza and Mama have no choice but to escape the country and settle in the farm camp in California. Their life at the shabby, crowded camp is very hard and different from what she was accustomed to. When Mama gets sick, Esperanza has to work long hours to the hospital bills. She also realizes that it is up to her to take care of her family, so she stops complaining about the things she used to have. The story ends with Esperanza’s mom returning from the hospital, her Abuelita coming from Mexico, and finally her finding happiness and hope once again.
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Theme:
• “Don’t be afraid to start over”.
Life is not always simple, bad things may happen to us, however we can always choose to rise above, overcome the struggles and start our life over despite setbacks.
• Appreciate the simplest aspects of life because they are more important than material things.
Illustrations: The book does not include
illustrations.
Personal Response: One of the things I really enjoyed about the book was its symbolism. Esperanza’s name means hope in Spanish. The double meaning of her name lets the readers know that no matter how bad things might seem, Esperanza, a girl and esperanza, the emotion are moving on in a good direction. I also liked the symbolic titles of each chapter. The title of the first and last chapter is the same “Las Uvas” (“Grapes”), which means that the harvest has come full circle and it is time to reap crops, in this case pick grapes. It also means that many things have changed in Esperanza’s life that helped her grew in maturity over the last year as she learnt important lessons about family, justice and fairness. This journey of physical and emotional changes is very inspiring and I hope my students will enjoy it as much as I did.
Extension Ideas:
• Students prepare a large paper-quilt with pictures of fruit, vegetables, symbols, characters, settings from the book and vocabulary describing Esperanza as well. The teacher provides square pieces of paper, students write their ideas, decorate the cards, and then glue them on the class paper-quilt.
• Students conduct the research on the various groups of immigrants. I will provide resources and also instruct the students where they should look for the reliable information in the Internet. They can do the research on their family or ancestors, or choose a different immigrant group. Students will include answers to the following questions:
1. Why did they leave their old countries and come to the U.S.?
2. How did they travel?
3. Where did they first live?
4. What type of work did they perform in the U.S.?
5. What obstacles did the face at the beginning of their new lives?
6. What did they like in a new place?
7. How did this group contribute to forming American history, nation and identity?
8. How is the history of your family/the immigrant group you are researching similar and different to Esperanza’s?
Theme:
• “Don’t be afraid to start over”.
Life is not always simple, bad things may happen to us, however we can always choose to rise above, overcome the struggles and start our life over despite setbacks.
• Appreciate the simplest aspects of life because they are more important than material things.
Illustrations: The book does not include
illustrations.
Personal Response: One of the things I really enjoyed about the book was its symbolism. Esperanza’s name means hope in Spanish. The double meaning of her name lets the readers know that no matter how bad things might seem, Esperanza, a girl and esperanza, the emotion are moving on in a good direction. I also liked the symbolic titles of each chapter. The title of the first and last chapter is the same “Las Uvas” (“Grapes”), which means that the harvest has come full circle and it is time to reap crops, in this case pick grapes. It also means that many things have changed in Esperanza’s life that helped her grew in maturity over the last year as she learnt important lessons about family, justice and fairness. This journey of physical and emotional changes is very inspiring and I hope my students will enjoy it as much as I did.
Extension Ideas:
• Students prepare a large paper-quilt with pictures of fruit, vegetables, symbols, characters, settings from the book and vocabulary describing Esperanza as well. The teacher provides square pieces of paper, students write their ideas, decorate the cards, and then glue them on the class paper-quilt.
• Students conduct the research on the various groups of immigrants. I will provide resources and also instruct the students where they should look for the reliable information in the Internet. They can do the research on their family or ancestors, or choose a different immigrant group. Students will include answers to the following questions:
1. Why did they leave their old countries and come to the U.S.?
2. How did they travel?
3. Where did they first live?
4. What type of work did they perform in the U.S.?
5. What obstacles did the face at the beginning of their new lives?
6. What did they like in a new place?
7. How did this group contribute to forming American history, nation and identity?
8. How is the history of your family/the immigrant group you are researching similar and different to Esperanza’s?