over different periods of time, the first three were written in Iowa as a side project, for at the time Cisneros was studying for a MFA. When orchestrating this book, Cisneros wanted it to be "a book that can be opened at any page and will still make sense to the reader who doesn't know what came before or comes after." She says the people she wrote about were real, amalgamations of persons she met over the years. She tailored together events of the past and the present so that the story being told could have a beginning a middle and an end, and that all the emotions felt are hers. Characters Esperanza Cordero – The House on Mango Street is written through the eyes of Esperanza Cordero, who is an adolescent girl living in a working-class Latino neighbourhood in Chicago. Esperanza is intrigued by the idea of being a Mexican American woman in Chicago, which reflects the author herself just 15 years prior to publishing this book. We follow this young woman coming into her sexual maturity and observe her undying struggle to make new possibilities for herself. The reader also encounters Esperanza living between two cultures, the Mexican one which she encounters through her parents and the American culture in which she finds herself living. Throughout the book, we see Esperanza reject her Chicana community as a means to forge and establish her own identity. As her name suggests, Esperanza is a "figure of hope, a 'fierce woman' on a complex pursuit for personal and community transformation.". Esperanza uses her house in Chicago, to question her society and the cultural customs that weigh on her due to her identity as a young Chicana woman. She observes the women of her community to find a role model of her own, and she looks at both their negative and positive aspects and uses what she has learnt from her observations to form an identity for herself. Magdalena "Nenny" Cordero – She is Esperanza's youngest sister, the protagonist mentions that they are both very different from one another. She is described as having slippery hair. Rachel and Lucy Guerrero – They are sisters, around the same age as Esperanza and Nenny, from Texas but now living on Mango street. They buy an old bike together and share it between them. They are described as having “fat popsicle lips” like the rest