The American Dream in Sandra Cisneros’s The House on Mango Street
The American Dream in Sandra Cisneros’s The House on Mango Street

Summary/Abstract: Establishing a literary pattern for future works written by Chicana authors, Sandra Cisneros’s novel, The House on Mango Street, remains fully devoted to the notion of the American dream, adding to this iconic image of the United States a Chicana feminist touch. This paper analyzes the cultural, psychoanalytical and feminist implications of the main character’s daydreams relating to the ownership of a house of her own, which envisage the representation of the American dream in the heart of a young girl living in an ethnic barrio of 20th century Chicago. Throughout the novel, many women of Mexican descent find their own voice, as they have been forced to live with the status of minority both within the Chicano community and the Anglo-American society. When the narrator, Esperanza, finds the creative resources to construct for herself an American individuality, she begins a metaphorical quest for identity, which shifts her status as a woman of color from the marginality of the suburbs to the mainstream culture.

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