Cisneros is well known for her unusual style of writing. Besides the poetic structure of the sentences, what is usual about her style of writing in this chapter? Why are the conversations between the girls sometimes difficult to understand?
Just like Esperanza, whose Identity isn't easy to define, critics have had difficulty classifying The House on Mango Street. Is it a collection of short stories? A novel? Essays? Autobiography? Poetry? Prose poems? The book is composed of very short, loosely organized vignettes. Each stands as a whole in and of itself, but collectively the stories cumulate in a mounting progression that creates an underlying coherence; the setting remains constant, and the same characters reappear throughout the tales. Cisneros once explained: "I wanted to write stories that were a cross between poetry and fiction-[I] wanted to write a collection which could be read at any random point Without having any knowledge of what came before or after." Despite the disjunctive nature of the stories, as they evolve, Esperanza undergoes a maturation process, and she emerges at the end showing a more courageous and forthright facade.
