The House on Mango Street is about a young, poor, and Hispanic girl named Esperanza who is struggling to overcome all of the obstacles in her way. Through growing up Hispanic and female in an oppressive neighborhood, she pushes herself to be better than those before her. She is striving to break the cycle of poverty that has plagued her neighborhood and in turn realizes her dreams and goals. In doing so she understands that Mango St. is inspiring her to move forward and make something of herself.
             Throughout her early childhood, Esperanza was always trying to move past the poverty she knew all too well. For a while, Esperanza was living in an apartment on Loomis Street, it was so poverty stricken that the pipes didn't even work, and the landlord didn't want to fix them because the apartment was "too old". One day Esperanza was playing outside when a nun passed by her apartment, the nun openly showed her disgust for Esperanza's apartment by saying, "You live there?" After this Esperanza sees her family's poverty clearly for the first time, and what this poverty represents to strangers on a social scale. She realizes that she doesn't want to live like this and doesn't want people to think that about her forever and she pursues a life better than the brash one she lives now. In addition, Esperanza speaks of a house of her own, the house she will own when she becomes a successful adult. She says that it is "Not a flat. Not an apartment... clean as paper before the poem." She wants a home that's not big, but big enough to house her humble journey and a house that is her's, and her's alone. She wants a house that she can be proud of so when someone says, "You live there?" she can say confidently and proudly, "Yes, I live there."
             Another hindrance Esperanza learns to get past, is the discriminat
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