Lack of Agency in the House on Mango Street by Sandra...

Communities are meant to be a space of security in where community members help each other. In The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros, Esperanza, a growing child feels the absence of the community’s help. Through a series of vignettes, Esperanza’s child-like voice reveals the dysfunctionality of the community. Esperanza doesn’t find anyone who she can rely on to help her through her coming of age. The situation is made especially difficult because of her Mexican-American heritage label. The ambiguity of her name presents a bi-cultural identity dilemma. Esperanza’s character represents what many female minorities experience, the lack of agency and solidarity their communities offer to them. The constant similes, through a child’s†¦show more content†¦She expresses her desire to â€Å"baptize herself under a new name† which would mean being free from what both of her identifications , the Mexican and the American, have categor ized her under, a foreign who’s destiny is to wait. The further exploration of her own self continues when Esperanza is encountered with her female sexuality. The family of little feet describes this sexual realization. As a whole, the vignette offers an atmosphere of innocence and fairy tale. Later however its tone becomes perverse when after the girls prancing a man wants to sexually assault them. This is the fairy tale gone wrong or a story of the fall from innocence. It is important to note that a mother is the one who hands them down a bag of old shoes. This action represents the passing down of these feminine roles; the shoes aren’t just shoes but what a woman’s value is in this community on a sexual level. The girls move through this scene with a sense of innocence at first being new to using these shoes. This extended metaphor continues as the girls start exploring the shoes further by switching and trying them on â€Å"until they are tired† indicating a cycle of repeated acts, the form in which this syste m of oppression is conditioned in their lives. Soon the girls discover that â€Å"the men can’t take their eyes off† them. The text says, â€Å"We must be Christmas† this is where the girls become an object; an event the comparison of them to a nice holiday takes away all