How many people in Decorah can say they don’t have a home? Esperanza, the narrator of “The House on Mango Street,” has a place to live, but she doesn’t have a home she feels she belongs in. “The House on Mango Street” is a book composed of vignettes detailing various scenes from the life of a young girl living amongst the minority. Esperanza is a Mexican-American girl who has to live a life that is dictated by her social class and her race. There are many books written about people different from me, but I chose this book for the way it describes Esperanza’s experiences—the vignettes feel personal, like reading straight from someone’s diary. There was no overarching plot throughout the book that jumped out to me through the story, but the style of writing was prominent throughout the book. “The House on Mango Street” reads like a diary, like memories that were important for one reason or another. Esperanza often wrote about small details, like candles on top of a fridge, a song, a couch, that it felt so vivid and personal to read. Another thing that I noticed was closely entwined with the emotions and feelings Esperanza had was the actual house itself. The house on mango street was not what her immigrant parents wanted—it was neglected, poor, looked down on—and I noticed the house seemed to be representative of Esperanza herself. When Esperanza gets her future read, the only thing found was “home made of heart”. This stuck out to me as representing the house, and the fact that the only thing homelike about it is what Esperanza can find in her heart with her family. Together these vignettes don’t have a specific plot, but rather an evocative emotion ingrained into each chapter. From first glance, Esperanza and I do not appear similar—we are from different ethnic backgrounds, different classes, even different time periods—but we feel the same. Esperanza tells her stories like she is tired, like she has a bone-deep weariness at the end of each day. Thinking back on the book, I feel as though I am remembering this story as though it is my own, and it helps show that no matter what country your family is from, how much money you have, how you are treated—there aren’t any new emotions. Teenage girls are teenage girls no matter who the world thinks they are, and all feelings are universal even if individual circumstances are unique. -Klara Kelly
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AuthorSTenth grade students at Decorah High School share how they're reading outside of their own experiences and how it has changed them. Categories
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November 2022
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