House On Mango Street By Esperanza

Plot Summary: This historical fiction story is set in 1930’s. The main character, Esperanza is a young Mexican girl who lives on El Rancho de las Rosas near Aguascalientes in Mexico with her loving parents. She enjoys her care-free life filled with riches, parties, servants and silk dresses. Everything changes in Esperanza’s life when her Papa, Sixto Ortega is killed by the bandits, just a day before Esperanza’s 13th birthday. Papa’s brothers try to manipulate the situation in order to seize the rancho, one of them even offers to marry Mama and threatens her. When Mama refuses to marry him, shortly after, their mansion gets set on fire at night. Esperanza and Mama have no choice but to escape the country and settle in the farm camp in California. Their life at the shabby, crowded camp is very hard and different from what she was accustomed to. When Mama gets sick, Esperanza has to work long hours to the hospital bills. She also realizes that it is up to her to take care of her family, so she stops complaining about the things she used to have. The story ends with Esperanza’s mom returning from the hospital, her Abuelita coming from Mexico, and finally her finding happiness and hope once again.
Life is not always simple, bad things may happen to us, however we can always choose to rise above, overcome the struggles and start our life over despite setbacks.
• Appreciate the simplest aspects of life because they are more important than material things.

Illustrations: The book does not include