SOURCE: Cruz, Felicia J. “On the ‘Simplicity’ of Sandra Cisneros's House on Mango Street.” Modern Fiction Studies 47, no. 4 (winter 2001): 910-46.

In the following essay, Cruz discusses the variety of reader responses to The House on Mango Street in terms of the textual ambiguity inherent in Cisneros's storytelling style.

As I perused the back cover of a recent Vintage Books edition of The House on Mango Street a short while ago, I read that it has been translated worldwide and that it has become a “classic” work in the canon of coming-of-age novels. This prompted me to think about whether this edition of Mango Street—which appeared identical to my personal copy (an earlier, 1991 Vintage Books edition)—sought to interpellate similar, if not the same, groups of readers that contributed to the consolidation of the unwavering popularity of Cisneros's rite-of-passage book.¹ Consequently, upon returning home, I retrieved my copy...