The House on Mango Street The Home Quotes

How we cite our quotes: Citations follow this format: (Chapter.Paragraph)

Quote #10

No, this isn't my house I say and shake my head as if shaking could undo the year I've lived here. You have a home, Alicia, and one day you'll go there, to a town you remember, but me I never had a house, not even a photograph…only one I dream of. (42.3)

Esperanza envies Alicia for at least having the memory of a home to think about.

Quote #11

Not a flat. Not an apartment in back. Not a man's house. Not a daddy's. A house all my own. With my porch and my pillow, my pretty purple petunias. My books and my stories. My two shoes waiting beside the bed. Nobody to shake a stick at. Nobody's garbage to pick up after. (43.1)

Esperanza's dream house, "A House of My Own," recalls Virginia Woolf's feminist treatise, "A Room of One's Own."

Quote #12

We didn't always live on Mango Street. Before that we lived on Loomis on the third floor, and before that we lived on Keeler. Before Keeler it was Paulina, but what I remember most is Mango Street, sad red house, the house I belong to but do not belong to. (44.4)

The repetition of the first phrase of the novel causes us to pay more attention to the small segment that's different this time around: now what Esperanza remembers most isn't "moving a lot," but the house on Mango Street.