The House on Mango Street

by Sandra Cisneros

When she thinks to herself in her father’s language, she knows sons and daughters don’t leave their parents’ house until they marry. When she thinks in English, she knows she should’ve been on her own since eighteen.

How can art make a difference in the world? This was never asked at Iowa. Should she be teaching these students to write poetry when they need to know how to defend themselves from someone beating them up?

She’s afraid of going to the movies alone, and that’s why she’s decided to go. Because she’s afraid.

I no longer make Chicago my home, but Chicago still makes its home in me.

she walked so djo could run

She is the color of a bar of naphtha laundry soap,

lavadero-tok

And I think if my own Papa died what would I do. I hold my Papa in my arms. I hold and hold and hold him.

But I think diseases have no eyes. They pick with a dizzy finger anyone, just anyone.

When I am too sad and too skinny to keep keeping, when I am a tiny thing against so many bricks, then it is I look at trees.

Home. Home. Home is a house in a photograph, a pink house, pink as hollyhocks with lots of startled light. The man paints the walls of the apartment pink, but it’s not the same, you know.