The In-Beetween-ness in Sandra Cisnero’s The House on Mango Street and Caramelo

The House on Mango Street and Caramelo are two coming-of-age novels by Sandra Cisneros. These two novels talk about the lives of Chicana immigrants in America. Two protagonists in these novels, who are also the narrators of these novels, Esperanza and Celaya, experience cultural confusion.  In one side, they have sense of belonging to their homeland, which is Mexico. In the other side, some narrations show how their ways of living are much like Americans’ way of living. Beside the main characters of these novels, the other characters also seem experience cultural confusion and displacement. They seem like being in between and unhomely. Unhomely here doesn’t mean that the characters are homeless. It has nothing to do with the condition of having or not having a house to live and stay. Just like what explained on Homi Bhaba’s The World and The Home, “To be unhomed is not to be homelss, nor that the “unhomely” be easily accomodated in that familiar division of social life into private and the public spheres.” (Bhabha, page 141).

First novel is The House on Mango Street. This novel is Coming-of-Age novel which is told by 12 years old Esperanza Cordero’s perspective. It tells about her growing up life in immigrant area in Chicago, Mango Street. In Mango Street, she meets Lucy and Rachel, and then they become friends. From her eyes, Esperanza also tells about people who live in Mango Street who have different life stories.

We can see the difference of how Esperanza sees her house on Mango Street in chapter The House on Mango Street and in the chapter Mango Says Goodbye Sometimes:

“We didn’t always live on Mango Street. Before that we lived on Loomis on the third floor, and before that we lived on Keeler. Before Keeler it was Paulina, and before that I can’t remember. But what I remember most is moving a lot. Each time it seemed there’d be one more of us. By the time we got to Mango Street we were six—Mama, Papa, Carlos, Kiki, my sister Nenny and me.” (Cisneros, page 3)

“I knew then I had to have a house. A real house. One I could point to. But this isn’t it. The house on Mango Street isn’t it. For the time being, Mama says. Temporary, Papa says. But I know how those things go.” (Cisneros, page 5)

“We didn’t always live on Mango Street. Before that we lived on Loomis on the third floor, and before that we lived on Keeler. Before Keeler it was Paulina, but what I remember most is Mango Street, sad red house, the house I belong but do not belong to.” (Cisneros, page 109-110)

First two quotations are quotations from the chapter The House on Mango Street. These quotations show how Esperanza actually never wants to live in a house such as the house on Mango Street. It shows displacement that happens to Esperanza. Comparing with the third quotation which is quotation from the chapter Mango Says Goodbye Sometimes, the last chapter of the novel, we can see how Esperanza already accepts Mango Street as the place where she lives. She is no longer experience displacement that shown in the first chapter.

Besides that, we can see cultural confusion that some characters of the novel experience. In My Name, we can see how Esperanza is not proud of her name that sounds very Mexican and some of her school mates see it funny. She also narrates how it is different for people who speak Spanish when they spell her name, “At school they say my name funny as if the syllables were made out of tin and hurt the roof of your mouth. But in Spanish my name is made of a softer something, like silver” (Cisneros, page 11). It also appears on Our Good Day, when she introduced herself to Lucy and Rachel, she said “I wish my name was Cassandra or Alexis or Maritza but Esperanza—but when I tell them my name they don’t laugh.”(Cisneros, page 15).  Esperanza also tells about the character named Mamacita in the chapter No Speak English. Mamacita described as a person who alienated by society because she can’t speak English, “I believe she doesn’t come out because she is afraid to speak English, and maybe this is so since she only knows eight words.” (Cisneros, page 77).

We can see contra-diction and paradox in how the way Esperanza narrates herself. In one side, we can found her urgency in using English by telling about Mamacita’s difficulties. The fact that she doesn’t proud of her name, shows how she assumed that to become American is way better than her identity as Mexican. But in the contrary, in some other narrations, we can see how Esperanza so much attached to Chicana culture and tradition and how Esperanza is siding on Chicana side. No matter how Esperanza feels ashamed of her identity, she always dreaming of a house just like in Mexico, it symbolizes she feels that to be Chicana is her identity.It seems like she admit but not admit about her identity. The in-between-ness is embodied in the character of Esperanza.

Talking about the character of Mamacita, her character becomes important and significant here even though Esperanza only tells about her in one chapter. The unhomeliness embodied in the character of Mamacita. Mamacita not only described as the one who can’t speak English, but also the one who’s not belong to the Mango Street, who always feel homesick and longing for her motherland. How Esperanza tells that Mamacita always play Spanish radio and cry every night shows to whom the sense of belonging that Mamacita has.

The second novel is Caramelo. Just like The House on Mango Street, Caramelo is also a Coming-of-Age novel which is narrated by Celaya, the only daughter in family amongst seven children. Same with Esperanza, Celaya is a Mexican who lives in Chicago. From her perspective, Celaya, or Lala, narrates about her family, especially her grandmother whom she calls The Awful Grandmother. She also tells about her trip to Mexico every summer holiday, and she tells how it feels when she came to Mexico. 

We can see the cultural confusion in the part when Lala and her family enter frontier between U. S. A and Mexico, “As soon as we cross the bridge everything switches to another language. Toc, says the light switch in this country, at home it says click.” (Cisneros, page 17). How the different of language in U. S.as the world where Lala lives and Mexico as home makes her confuse. When Lala go beyond the borderline everything turn into strange things for her. This is make border becomes something that is important and significant. When Lala go beyond the borderline, she is not only go beyond the borderline physically from one territory to another territory, but also she go beyond her comfort zone to public. She must face the differences in reality. It feels like what Bhabha has said as “suddenly the home turns into another world” (Bhabha, page 143). This particular thing described by Homi Bhabha in The World and the Home;

“The border between home and world becomes confused; and, uncannily, the private and the public become part of each other, forcing upon us a vision that is as divided as it is disorienting.” (Bhabha, page 141)

The similar thing also happens to Rafael, older brother of Lala. The moment when Rafael went to Army School in Mexico and at the moment he came back, everything has changed.

“He tries talking to us in Spanish, but we don’t use that language with kids, we only use it with growns-ups. We ignore him and keep watching our television cartoons.

Later when he feels like it and can talk about it, he’ll explain what it’s like to be abandoned by your parents and left in the country where you don’t have enough words to speak the things inside you.” (Cisneros, page 23)

The way how Rafael being allienated by her family after he came back from Mexico makes him feels the outsideness because of the impact of two different cultures.

According to Bhabha’s The World and the Home, the characters in Caramelo represents the outsideness.

“It could be said of these moments that they are of the world but not fully in it; thay they represent the outsideness of the outsideness of the inside that is too painful to remember.” (Bhabha, page 152)

Furthermore, we can also see the gender issue found on these two Cisneros’s novel. We can found gender role and position issue in these novels and also we can find the oppression based on gender. We can find gender-based oppression in The House on Mango Street. There are the characters of abusive men, such as Mamacita’s abusive husband who always force her to speak English and Sally’s abusive father. Sally is a friend of Esperanza who is acting older than her actual age. Lately, Sally decided to run from her house with her boyfriend. The hierarchy that place man in the position which is higher than woman makes it possible for the male characters to be abusive toward female characters. In Caramelo, that kind of hierarchy can be seen on the conversation between Rafael to Lala.

“Especially the brothers laugh and point and call me a boy.

--Oh, brother! What a chillona you turned out to be. Now what? Mother asks.

—What could be worst than being a boy?

--Being a girl! Rafa shouts. And everyone in the car laughs even harder.” (Cisneros, page 22)

From above explanation, we can conclude that we can see the unhomeliness embodied in these two Cisneros’s novels. These novels talk about Chicana immigrants that experience some cases such as unhomeliness, gender-based oppression, or cultural confusion. The fictional characters in these novels experience cultural confusion as the impact of two different cultures that blended into one in their selves. Since the characters grow-up in two different cultures, these characters tend to admit but not admit their identity as Chicana, and also admit but not admit their identity as American. They have problem in sense of belonging and in which identity they belong to.

Works Cited

Bhabha, H. (1992). The World and the Home. Social Text, No. 31/312, Third World and Post-Colonial Issues , 141-153.

Cisneros, S. (1984). The House on Mango Street.

Cisneros, S. (2002). Caramelo .