More Room to Play in Sandra Cisneros’s The House on Mango Street
Keywords:
Sandra Cisneros, The House on Mango Street, Chicana literature, play and politics, private enjoyment, communal responsibilityAbstract
his article analyzes the interplay between personal pleasure and social responsibility in Sandra Cisneros's The House on Mango Street. Building upon Geoffrey Sanborn's exploration of private enjoyment and communal responsibility, the paper argues that Esperanza Cordero, the novel's protagonist, negotiates these dual demands not only through writing but also through playing. The author contends that play, both literal and metaphorical, serves as a crucial site for artistic practice and political engagement. This study examines how Cisneros revises traditional notions of privacy and community, particularly within Chicana literature, by emphasizing the porous boundaries between individual creativity and collective obligations. The paper demonstrates that acts of play and writing are not mutually exclusive but rather interconnected, challenging the binary opposition often imposed on women of color writers. By integrating Sanborn's framework with Sau-ling Cynthia Wong's analysis of Asian American fiction, this work investigates how ethnic American literature at large navigates the tensions between personal expression and social activism.
(The abstract and keywords were prepared retrospectively for indexing purposes using AI-assisted tools and editorial review, based on the original article. They did not appear in the original publication.)
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