🎧 Audiobook Review 🎧
Title: The House on Mango Street
Author: Sandra Cisneros
Publisher: Knopf/Double Day
Genre: YA/Short Stories
Thank you @prhaudio for the #gifted listening copy! This one is narrated by the author herself. I thought she did a fantastic job, overall, especially because the book is voiced by a young girl. The House on Mango Street is celebrating its 25th anniversary and is a March Read With Jenna Pick! @readwithjenna
“At onetime or another we have all felt other.”
This book is told in a series of vignettes. The author has a background in poetry and though this is some of her very early work it shined through. The style almost feels like verse and though it’s a short book at just around 130 pages it took me a bit to settle into. Eventually I could appreciate the simple, yet impactful style of a Latina girl coming of age in Chicago seeing where she is and what she wants to become.
“I want to be like the waves on the sea, like the clouds in the wind, but I’m me. One day I’ll jump out of my skin, I’ll shake the sky, like a hundred violins.”
The story is written like a collage and many of the snippets you desperately want more. You are getting such a small glimpse of Esperanza, her family and neighborhood; however by the time you get to the end I think it comes full circle.
“When you leave you must remember always to come back. A circle you understand. You will always be Esperanza. You will always be Mango Street. You can’t erase what you know. You can’t forget who you are.”
Whether you’re picking this up for the first time or as a reread this one is worth the time!
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