Hope in "The House on Mango Street": Do you need to be selfish to survive?

I think so far this is the book I have thought of the most, not only is my group working on a Wikipedia article that showcases it, but I think it has just left me thinking about its meaning. The more I read it, the more I look at articles about it or analyze its characters, the more contradictions I find. I haven’t made up my mind on whether I like it or not, I think I’ll never really know.

While I was reading it, I couldn’t help wonder what message this book is communicating, I am trying to pinpoint it amidst the other books we’ve read this semester. To start off the author dedicates this book “To the Women”. We can see that for most of the characters are women, and most of the stories about the struggles of women. However, it is simply narrating issues women face but not conveying any empathy nor hope. We simply get the idea that Esperanza wants to escape this, we see that she is different from the rest of her community, or she feels different. We notice the same in Piri, how he also seems to be facing a different struggle from that of the “group”. These stories are really about the protagonists and not the community. That is what I find unsettling in a certain way. It doesn’t mean that it is good or bad, just that I don’t get peace at the end because the struggles of these communities just persist, and the existence of these protagonist doesn’t generate any change in the lives of those around them. I find that in Esperanza’s and Piri’s stories they both come across as selfish individuals. Esperanza seems to be always dissatisfied with her state in life, only finding her “house” when she is older and by herself. This defies that saying of “home is where family is”. An article I read about this book also said that Esperanza was only able to leave Mango Street on the backs and sacrifice of many women, so in a way she benefits from the ‘system’ as well. When piecing this altogether, I see it as a mechanism adopted by Esperanza to survive, if you don’t empathize and set yourself apart from your community it makes it easier to look outside of it for an escape route. Esperanza lived her emancipation very privately, we don’t see her sharing this with friends of her age. We see her interaction with mentors, older women, but these are speaking out of regret, for they weren’t able to seize the right moment to escape, they either dropped out of school, got married, got pregnant, etc.  

Having this in mind, what does it say about Chicano culture? Why are these issues so prevalent? Specifically when portraying women as victims and men as perpetrators? This isn’t really a kink because these woes, sadly, are seen as a norm. Where can we find voices that speak out for equality and not for a disordered emancipation? I ask this last question because in this book there really isn’t a fixed model of femininity/womanhood, women are portrayed as objects and servants, and Esperanza herself thinks that by emulating the qualities of a man is how she escapes this “I am one that leaves the table like a man, without putting back the chair or picking up a plate”. With this Esperanza associates being a women with being tame, with following orders, with being pretty, and a subordinate, when that isn’t what femininity is about. Here being a wife is seen negatively, being a mother is seen negatively and dismissed as almost nothing. There is no value put in motherhood. In my view, such an important role of a woman, a role only performed by women, is completely disregarded or badly portrayed. Is the book saying that to escape this culture women ought not to marry and be mothers? What does this say for the future of strong Chicana women, those to whom this book is dedicated to? If the cells of culture are families, how is it to be transmitted without a positive perception of motherhood? How is that communicated in these books? Where is the hope, the Esperanza, for Chicano culture? I haven’t seen it myself so far, maybe I missed something.