The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros

My review

rating: 4 of 5 stars
A very short and easy read.

I am finding that I am treating books like a fine mint or chocolate. Something to savor and think about, not to chomp through and prove I read something (or to make my “read” list longer).

At times I will read something and then either re-read the paragraph or even the chapter to take it all in. I noticed I did this with the book “Caramelo”, also by Sandra Cisneros. In “The House on Mango Street” I found myself reading chapters over (they are very short, 1 – 2 pages at most) to make sure I savored all the flavor from her writing.

She writes without any quotation marks to show spoken word. It’s almost as if she is remembering what happened and you’re hearing it in her head.

It’s the story of a girl, living in a low-income area and the people who live around her. The whole book is about her observations of the people she sees, but also her own feelings about living there and realizing what it means to live “there”.

Some chapters make you laugh (she can be very clever in her writing) and some chapters can make you tear up (I’m sure my own background fueled some of the tearing up). The observations are all made through the eyes of a girl, so things like abuse, machismo, and heartbreak are very straight forward, simple, almost romatic. Not romantic in the horrible things that happen, but in the way she sees it and tries to make sense of it.