Quote 25
And anyway, a woman's place is sleeping so she can wake up early with the tortilla star, the one that appears early just in time to rise and catch the hind legs hide behind the sink, beneath the four-clawed tub, under the swollen floorboards nobody fixes, in the corner of your eyes. (14.1)
This sentence combines two social challenges that make life difficult for the women in Esperanza's community – prescribed gender roles that place them in the kitchen doing domestic work, and an environment of poverty and decay.
Quote 26
People who live on hills sleep so close to the stars they forget those of us who live too much on earth. They don't look down at all except to be content to live on hills. They have nothing to do with last week's garbage or fear of rats. (34.2)
Esperanza creates a dialectical model of two social classes – those who live on earth face challenges every day, while those who live on hills live in ease and comfort.
Quote 27
Do you like these shoes? But the truth is it is scary to look down at your foot that is no longer yours and see attached a long long leg. (17.7)
Dressing up in grown-up shoes is both fun and scary for Esperanza and her friends. The shoes make their own feet look alien to them. The description of the little girls' "long long leg[s]" is disturbingly sexualized – we get the same creepy feeling that we do when we see toddlers wearing makeup in a beauty pageant.