The House on Mango Street is a coming of age story about a young Mexican-American girl named Esperanza, who struggles to figure out who her real self is. Such as, self-definition, ethnicity, language, and economic status. All these factors play a role in which she learns that what defines her is her ability to tell stories. Her writing allows her to express those aspects of her life and allow her to step out of her comfort zone about her background and how she feels towards defining herself.
A common theme in House on Mango Street is the struggle of identity. Esperanza has to define herself both as a woman and as an artist, which changes throughout the novel. In the beginning of the novel Esperanza wants to separate herself from her family and heritage by changing …show more content…
There is always one scene that stands out to me and makes me feel and understand exactly what they are talking about. In the movie Selena and her brother are in the car with their father, Abraham, and he is telling them how hard it really is to be Mexican-American and how people don’t truly understand. He says, “We gotta prove to the Mexicans how Mexican we are, and we gotta prove to the Americans how American we are, we gotta be more Mexican than the Mexicans and more American than the Americans, both at the same time. It’s exhausting. Damn. Nobody knows how tough it is to be a Mexican American.” Similar to their father, many Mexican-Americans don’t always feel a sense of belonging in either Mexico or America; but feel stuck in the middle. Trying to prove yourself to both Americans and Mexicans makes it hard to find a sense of belonging to either one. It really expresses that they don’t automatically belong in either. However, because Selena and her siblings grew up feeling American and Mexican, they believed they could cross the boundaries between both groups and belong to both instead of just