SOURCE: "In Search of Identity in Cisneros' The House on Mango Street," in The Canadian Review of American Studies, Vol. 23, No. 1, Fall, 1992, pp. 55-72.

In the essay below, de Valdés examines the "highly lyrical narrative voice" of The House on Mango Street in relation to textual representations of "a poetics of identity" as a Chicana writer.

Sandra Cisneros (1954–), a Chicago-born poet of Mexican parentage, published her first novel in 1984. The House on Mango Street is written in the manner of a young girl's memoirs. The forty-four pieces are, however, not the day-to-day record of a preadolescent girl, but rather a loose-knit series of lyrical reflections, her struggle with self-identity and the search for self-respect amidst an alienating and often hostile world. The pieces range from two paragraph narratives, like "Hairs," to the four-page "The Monkey Garden."

There are a number of significant issues to be discussed concerning...