ISSN: 2360-7831

 International Journal of English Literature and Culture
 

International Journal of English Literature and Culture

Vol. 8(4), pp. 107-116. July, 2020

 ISSN: 2360-7831

DOI: 10.14662/IJELC2020.095

Review paper

In most studies of Sandra Cisneros’s The House on Mango Street, neither the ambivalence nor the resistance operating in the book have been properly investigated or duly acknowledged. On the contrary, Esperanza’s wish to re-baptize herself under a different name and her ardent desire to leave the barrio and live in a house of her own have been interpreted as assimilationist gestures that involve either betrayal of her ethnic community or capitulation to oppressive forces in the dominant American culture, such as the ideology of the American Dream. Employing the insights of postcolonial theory and minority criticism, this article shows that these two gestures on the part of the heroine are deeply ambivalent, involving in fact both a radical sense of hybridity and an act of active resistance. Like the name Esperanza chooses for herself beyond the English and Spanish versions of her inherited name, the architecture and location of her dream house represent a forward thrust for freedom based on a critique of the dominant discourses in both Mexican-American and Anglo-American cultures, such as patriarchy and the ideology of the American Dream. From this perspective, it is not the titular house on Mango Street but Esperanza’s dream house outside the barrio that constitutes the ultimate metaphor for her identity – an identity that is at once ambivalent, hybrid, and resistant.

Keywords: Ambivalence, Hybridity, Identity, Resistance, Cisneros’s The House on Mango Street

Cite This Article As: Al-Abbood, M. N. (2020). Identity, Ambivalence, and Resistance in Sandra Cisneros’s The House on Mango Street. J. Eng. Lit. Cult. 8(4): 107-116