SOURCE: Mayock, Ellen C. “The Bicultural Construction of Self in Cisneros, Álvarez, and Santiago.” Bilingual Review/La Revista Bilingue 23, no. 3 (September-December 1998): 223-29.

In the following essay, Mayock examines three novels by Latina authors: The House on Mango Street, by Cisneros, How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accent, by Julia Álvarez, and When I Was Puerto Rican, by Esmeralda Santiago. Mayock asserts that each of these novels constitutes a bi-cultural Latina transformation of the traditional bildungsroman.

Virginia Woolf once said, “How queer to have so many selves” (Kakutani B2), a comment which immediately introduces the concept of the multiplicity of one's character. In the case of Sandra Cisneros's The House on Mango Street (1984), Julia Álvarez's How the García Girls Lost Their Accents (1992), and Esmeralda Santiago's When I Was Puerto Rican (1993), multiple selves stem from manifold cultural locations. Each of the three protagonists is deeply affected by her geographical...