The House on the Mango Street

人生不过三万天

Content: 1. Marlene is a neighbor of Esperanza, a beautiful girl from Puerto Rico. She takes care of her cousins' children and dreams of returning home to get married. Marlene likes to wait for the boys to pass by on the street corner, teaching the other girls “knowledge” about love and men. She represents the romantic fantasies of the young girls of Mango Street, but also hints at their restricted future - she is eventually sent back to Puerto Rico by her family because “girls can't hang out on the street like that.”
2.Esperanza observes outsiders' fear of Mango Street. Strangers would lock their doors and speed up as they drove through this Latino neighborhood. But Esperanza knows that people on Mango Street are just as afraid to go to other neighborhoods.
3.Alicia is a studious college student who has to rush to school early every morning. Her father thinks girls only need to cook, but she insists on studying. She can see the mice in the kitchen symbolizing the constraints that family traditions place on women, yet she still chooses to pursue an education. This character shows a new generation of Latina women challenging traditional gender roles.
4.Darius was a boy who usually talked only about boring subjects, but one day he looked at the sky and said, “There is God.” Esperanza realizes that even seemingly superficial people have the ability to perceive beauty.
5.Esperanza and her friends argue about the meaning of names and the shape of clouds. This seemingly childish conversation actually reveals the subjective nature of language and how children explore the world and build their own understanding through argument. The argument eventually ends in reconciliation.
6.Esperanza describes the family and the characteristics of their feet from a child's point of view, as the three girls are given high-heeled shoes donated by the family and experience the “grown-up” feeling of walking in them. The reaction of the men makes them realize for the first time their sexual attractiveness as women. When a drunken man harasses them, they panic and take off their shoes, symbolizing the sudden end of childhood innocence and the first realization of the complexities of growing up.

Evaluation: Marin is a heartbreaking character who fantasizes about love only to be defeated by the harsh reality. Chapter 12 is one of the most powerful chapters in the book, with a sharp social critique accomplished in just two pages, visualizing structural racism through the detail of “locking the car door”. The contrast between Alicia in Chapter 13 and Darius in Chapter 14 is interesting: the former perseveres in her studies in the midst of reality, while the latter seeks poetry in the midst of poverty, together expanding the three-dimensional image of the residents of Mango Street. Alicia also reveals the plight of the Latin American woman, trapped in her family all her life and unable to be understood by her family. The Children's Argument demonstrates Cisneros' keen grasp of language play, showcasing the innocence and accessibility of children, with childlike yet philosophical dialogues, while the high-heeled shoe incident in Chapter 16 chronicles a pivotal moment in the girls' sexual awakening, with which there is much for us to empathize.

Reflection: Marlene's story reminds me of the many “precocious” girls on the Internet. Like Marlene, they learned to use sexual attraction as a bargaining chip too early, only to realize that it didn't get them out of their predicament. Is society still “feeding” young girls with romantic fantasies rather than giving them real choices?
The “locked car door” scenario described in Chapter 12 is still being played out all over the world. When I read Esperanza's words, “We are afraid to go to their place too,” I suddenly realized that prejudice is always a two-way street. Perhaps we too have had similar defensive fears based on ignorance.
What touched me the most was the chapter on high heels. The experience of the three girls being both excited and terrified perfectly captured the paradoxical moments of growing up as a woman - our desire to be seen and our fear of being wrongly seen. This complexity still exists in today's society, just in a different form. Cisneros shows us that growth is never a linear progression, but a tentative process filled with hesitation.