The House on Mango Street in Book Riot's Read Harder Challenge

Jun 19, 2015 Deb rated it it was amazing

I don't think my words can do justice to the raw, poignant beauty of these vignettes. Simple but honest language that drove deep into the heart of Esperanza's every day existence as a Latina growing up in Chicago. I grew up in a predominantly white town, and my experience with non-white America is very limited. It will take time, but through literature such as this, my heart and mind opens up more and more to understanding... ...more

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Aug 29, 2008 Carleen Huxley rated it really liked it

Written in a series of vignettes, A House on Mango Street tells the story of Esperanza Cordero, a young girl who moves with her family into a run down red house in the Latino section of Chicago. Although it's the first house they have actually owned, Esperanza discovers that her new home is far from the beautiful dream her parents had always promised. Her neighborhood, full of harsh realities, soon becomes Esperanza's extended family and determined to find her way out, she sets out on a search f ...more

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Jul 31, 2012 Nadine in NY Jones rated it it was ok

Shelves: coming-of-age, young-adult

from NPR poll of best Young Adult fiction ...

I THOUGHT I had read this already, but reading the blurb, maybe not ... so I should check it out.

****

This did not speak to me. The overly-simple writing style combined with the lack of quotation marks left it all feeling very flat.

Passages like this (and I do feel this snippet is quite representative of the whole):

The Eskimos got thirty different names for snow, I say. I read it in a book.

I got a cousin, Rachel says. She got three different names.

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May 11, 2011 Andronike rated it it was ok

I read this book for the first time with my Freshman English class. They really got in to it; I, however, have yet to figure out what the big deal is with this book.

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Jul 02, 2015 Sarah rated it really liked it

Shelves: american-fiction, fiction, classics, latin-america-fiction

I liked this book well enough to read it in three short sittings, but that's also because it is only 110 pages. I wanted to like it more. I like the concept of vignettes - each one is no more than three or four pages, so it's easy to stop and resume whenever you need to - and some of the stories are heartbreaking. But it is precisely because I felt myself starting to like the characters and getting to know them that I wanted to know them better, to find out what happens to them over the long ter ...more

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