SOURCE: Klein, Dianne. “Coming of Age in Novels by Rudolfo Anaya and Sandra Cisneros.” English Journal 81, no. 5 (September 1992): 21-6.

In the following essay, Klein examines two novels by Chicano/a writers that represent the Chicano/a coming-of-age experience and the search for personal identity: The House on Mango Street, by Cisneros, and Bless Me, Ultima, by Rudolfo Anaya.

At birth, each person begins a search to know the world and others, to answer the age-old question, “Who am I?” This search for knowledge, for truth, and for personal identity is written about in autobiographies and in bildungsroman fiction. For years, though, the canon of United States literature has included predominantly the coming-of-age stories of white, heterosexual males. Where are the stories of the others—the women, the African Americans, the Asian Americans, the Hispanics, the gay males and lesbians? What differences and similarities would we find in their...