Chelce Hessler Studies in Ethnic Literature Winter 2014 Short Essay 1 2014.01.

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When cultures converge they create something greater than the sum of their parts, giving rise to a new set of values and mores unique to the desires and challenges of the members of the newly formed society. This metamorphic, sometimes painful process of acclamation and identification is the backbone of The House on Mango Street. Esperanzas stories center around the people in her Chicago neighborhood seeking to find their place amidst the haze of assimilation. Their attempts to integrate their inherited Mexican-American values such as pride in succeeding at achieving the American Dream (and, conversely, shame in being unable to do so) and community as a means of cultural comfort and endurance serve as the lens through which the reader comes to know some of their greatest social and personal hardships. One of the first things Esperanza says about the house on Mango Street is that its not the house wed thought wed get

(Cisernos 9). She talks about houses she has seen on television, presumably belonging to families she might deem as normal. Her disappointment with her familys own home is palpable, but its not until she is seen talking to a third party about the house that the reader is able to begin to see why. You live there? The way she said it made me feel like nothing. There. I lived there. I nodded (10). It becomes clear that her disillusionment with Mango Street is rooted not in a desire for materialistic comforts, but rather in a sense of shame for failing to acquire what other people have deemed proper. With similar dissatisfaction, Esperanza ruminates on her name, a name that her non-Latino peers can only manage to pronounce in a way that is foreign and harsh, causing her to wish for a new name, a name more like the real me, the one nobody sees (11). For Esperanza, there is a pressure to overcome obstacles and stereotypes, to prove that she is somehow worthy before she believes that people will even begin to really consider her as a human being at all. These symbols of social propriety such as domestic normalcy and acceptable American identity, to her and many other first-generation citizens, become the tangible markers of ones success in pursuing the American Dream, an enchanting and often elusive reality that Esperanza deeply aspires to embody.

The want to integrate oneself so wholly into American culture is not universally shared, however. Among immigrants, particularly those who have spent the majority of their life in their native country, there is a persistent anxiety that future generations will forget their roots, abandoning their heritage. This fear, ultimately stemming from passion for ones own indigenous culture, manifests in the congregation of communities consisting of immigrants with similar ethnic backgrounds, particularly in major cities such as Chicago. There is a comfort in commonality, in fictive kinship; as Esperanza says All brown all around, we are safe (17). Aside from the implications of racial prejudice that are inherent to this idea, there is a certain level of innate community that allows for a more comfortable dualism between the country of origin and the new land. Sadly, for much of the novel Esperanza seems to be instilled with the notion that she must somehow transcend her Mexican heritage to genuinely become American. As such, she becomes fixated on doing what she must to fulfill her vision of success, including both literally and symbolically leaving Mango Street, which, in her mind, is a community of people who have permanently settled together and in doing so, exhausted their opportunities for achieving Americanism. It is not until she does finally leave that that she is able to truly realize her

neighborhoods indispensable, inherent value as a formative a part of a burgeoning rich new culture as Mexican-Americans.