When I started The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros, I had no idea what to expect. I had heard it was a series of vignettes about the life of a Latino girl living in Chicago, but that was all I knew. After reading it, here’s my book review.

This book is the story of Esperanza Cordero, a girl who recently moved to the House on Mango Street. Every day, she longs for a home, not a house – a place she can say is her very own.

As we watch her grow up and eventually, leave the House, she meets many people – people plucked out of the life of the author herself, Sandra Cisneros. Their mannerisms and personalities are so specific that you can imagine the author picking out their traits from her memory. We travel through a series of scenes, some deeply joyful and some full of sorrow and rage. Some confusing and others, beautiful. But each one full of the author’s unique charm.

The writing in this book was very strange. At the beginning, I struggled to understand and get into it, but as the book progressed, I found I enjoyed it more. I can’t adequately articulate my feelings about this book – it was at once beautiful and transformative, and just so strange that I couldn’t properly understand it.

However, one thing I can say with confidence is that this book is unique. I have never read a book quite like it, and I don’t think I ever will. And that is a gift. The story Sandra put out into the world, deeply personal and written in a voice that is unequivocally hers, is the ultimate form of self-expression. You can see people, events and emotions from her life displayed in a raw and vulnerable way through the eyes of Esperanza. This book was so personal that it felt like a joyful call from the author’s soul.

Sometimes, books are a place for the author to truly sink into a character and view the world from their eyes. The questions asked are: how would this person see the world? How would this person react, given everything that has happened before? In what ways do their traumas affect them? How do they show their love?

That is one way to write books and it is a beautiful form of expression. It is the art of succumbing to your characters and being determined to view the world through a different perspective. Many of the books I read are like this, and the better this is executed the more immersive the book is.

And yet, The House on Mango Street sits on the complete opposite side of the line. It is purely a form of expression for the author – Esperanza is not really a ‘character’, but she is the author herself. She sees the world like Sandra, and has the freedom to express this view through her wondrous and sometimes horrific descriptions.

The House is a form of self-expression, a cathartic release of emotions and memories. Even the way it is written, sacrificing punctuation and form to a free-spilling waterfall of words, is defiant to everything we have learned to expect from literature. So, does this make it a bad book?

No, far from that. This is a novel to cherish and enjoy as a pillar in the world of literature, a book that defies all the rules and makes its own. It’s a story about a girl defying everything society has placed upon her, and breaking free to create her own destiny. It is the story of Sandra Cisneros, Esperanza Cordeno.