Freestyle Blog Entry Week 3

For one of our freestyle reading assignments this week, I read Sandra Cisneros' "The House on Mango Street."

One of the more powerful quotes that stood out to me was "the way she said it made me feel like nothing. There. I lived there. I nodded" (Cisneros 329).

The narrator of the story describes moving from place to place with a family of six. Each of the family's residences were somewhat less than ideal, either being too small or faulty in some way. The narrator desperately wanted a house of their own "and we don't have to pay rent to anybody" (Cisneros 328).

A house they could all be proud of so that when they pointed it out to passerbys on the street, they didn't have to feel ashamed or embarrassed to admit it was their own. Even though this quote I selected is near the end of the story, after the family had moved into a house of their own (though it was only slightly better than some of the previous residences), I really felt a sense of sadness for the narrator and the family. I found myself rooting for them, though the story is very short. When they finally got the house on Mango Street, I hoped it was what they had all dreamed of. When the house fell short, my heart sank for them.

Of course material possessions are not all-important, that certainly is not what I'm trying to say here, being proud of what your family has and wanting to show it off is a feeling I think everyone deserves. This family struggled but stayed together and perservered through it all. Cisneros does a great job of getting the reader on the narrator's side and hoping right along with the family that the house on Mango Street can live up to their dreams.