The House on Mango Street follows the story of Esperanza, a girl growing up in a poor Hispanic family and how she was influenced by her neighborhood and the people around her. The characters fulfill certain stereotypes that would normally be applied to them, but Sandra Cisneros dispels them by portraying how they actually live through the eyes of a girl growing up in the culture. In the novella, power imbalances between races are shown through the stereotyping and neighborhood divides in the city that Esperanza grew up in, which shows how stereotypes can become so normalized that they are treated as a regular characteristic of someone of a certain group. Esperanza has had an understanding of the way her Hispanic ethnicity is viewed by society, more specifically, upper-class white society. The scale of these stereotypes against Esperanza is shown when she talks …show more content…
Non-white people are worried about getting stereotyped and therefore into trouble for the color of their skin, whereas white people have the upperhand because they stereotypes that they face do not threaten their well-being. Each demographic seems to have certain views of one another which prevents certain areas from becoming more diverse. It is very clear that Esperanza lives in a neighborhood that is monoracial or close to it. She does not like the stereotypes placed on it and says “All brown all around, we are safe,” which implies that each racial demographic feels unsafe around people of other ethnicities (28). The stereotypes in this book create a divide in the neighborhoods because they are so ingrained into the culture that nobody is willing to try to learn about one another. To most people, stereotypes of certain races have become traits that are not given a second thought. If people were to look past those stereotypes, there would likely be less of a divide within that