In an interview, Cisneros stated that during her graduate studies, when she began writing The House on Mango Street, she found the academic atmosphere highly discouraging. While completing an MFA in Creative Writing at the Iowa Writers Workshop, Cisneros first discovered a sense of her own ethnic "otherness", and at this time she felt marginalized "as a person of color, as a woman, as a person from working-class background". Cisneros attributes "her impulse to create stories" to "the loneliness of those formative years". Earlier, Cisneros suggested that as the only girl in a family of boys, she often felt isolated.
Yet there are differences for instance, where Esperanza has two brothers and a sister, Cisneros was "the only daughter in a family of seven children". Like her protagonist, Esperanza, Cisneros is Mexican-American and was born and raised in a Hispanic neighborhood in Chicago. In spite of this, it remains an influential coming-of-age novel and is a staple piece of literature for many young adults.Ĭisneros has discussed the relationship between her own personal experiences and Esperanza's life as depicted in The House on Mango Street. īecause the novel deals with sensitive subject matters, such as domestic violence, puberty, sexual harassment, and racism, it has faced challenges and threats of censorship. It was adapted into a stage play by Tanya Saracho, which was staged in Chicago in 2009. It was on The New York Times Best Seller list and is the recipient of several major literary awards, including the American Book Award from the Before Columbus Foundation. The book has sold more than 6 million copies, has been translated into over 20 languages and is required reading in many schools and universities across the United States. The House on Mango Street is considered a modern classic of Chicano literature and has been the subject of numerous academic publications in Chicano Studies and feminist theory. Elements of the Mexican-American culture and themes of social class, race, sexuality, identity, and gender are interwoven throughout the novel. Based in part on Cisneros's own experience, the novel follows Esperanza over the span of one year in her life, as she enters adolescence and begins to face the realities of life as a young woman in a poor and patriarchal community.
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Structured as a series of vignettes, it tells the story of Esperanza Cordero, a 12-year-old Chicana girl growing up in the Hispanic quarter of Chicago. On the white walls, the bright colours of two paintings stand out: a coloured palette on a black background by Xanti Schawinsky, a Swiss artist and alumnus of the Bauhaus in Dessau and graphic designer for Olivetti, and the pink and orange of a work by György Kepes, Hungarian emigrant artist who took part in the New Bauhaus movement in Chicago.The House on Mango Street is a 1984 novel by Mexican-American author Sandra Cisneros. Haraszty also displays a small metal sculpture by Italian-born designer Bertoia on the living room furniture – along with a gramophone, some records, a bottle liquor and Peruvian sculptures. In the living room there is an old Thonet chair in curved beech wood and many other modern pieces: Le Corbusier’s leather chaise longue and a bright blue Diamond Chair designed by Harry Bertoia for Knoll in 1952. The textiles that cover the sofa and the cushions are creations of Eszter. (Domus 325, December 1956)Īt the time of the publication of his home-studio on Domus, Eszter Haraszty was in charge of the furniture department of Michael Saphier’s American studio, but the symbols of the relationship with Knoll and its collaborators are scattered in her private rooms, as are the works of art of European friends and artists who emigrated in search of the freedom of expression that characterized America in those years. “Knoll owes her its beautiful textiles, splendid in their colours”: this is how Domus presented the young colourist to the readers in 1956. Haraszty introduced the use of new materials, such as nylon, and distinguished herself by the use of bold colours, including pink and orange, which later became the company’s signature. In 1949, he entrusted her with the artistic direction of the company’s textiles department. And it was her friend and fellow countryman Breuer who introduced the young Haraszty, who had arrived in New York in 1946, to Hans Knoll, who hired her immediately upon seeing her portfolio of prints and textiles. It is a house that is also a studio, and it tells the story of the owner’s passion – colour – and her relationship with Knoll Associates, the furniture company she works for and which collaborates with the world’s greatest designers, from Finnish Eero Saarinen to Hungarian Marcel Breuer. This apartment in the heart of the city is a triumph of bright textiles, elegant armchairs, travel memories and spice jars.