How we cite our quotes: Citations follow this format: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #1
Out back is a small garage for the car we don't own yet and a small yard that looks smaller between the two buildings on either side. […] The house has only one washroom. Everybody has to share a bedroom – Mama and Papa, Carlos and Kiki, me and Nenny. (1.5)
The description of the Cordero family's new home contains clues about their economic status – the smallness of the house, not really big enough for a family of six, tells us that the family is poor.
Quote #2
You live there? The way she said it made me feel like nothing. There. I lived there. I nodded. (1.10)
Esperanza feels judged by the nun from her school. It's all in the intonation – the way she says the word "there" tells Esperanza that there's something wrong with her home.
Quote #3
That's when we move away. Got to. Then as if she forgot I just moved in, she says the neighborhood is getting bad. (5.3)
Cathy's statement about the deteriorating quality of the neighborhood feels like an insult to Esperanza, who's just moved in. But something about Cathy's explanation seems false – is her family really leaving for the reasons she claims? Or is she just being pretentious?
Quote #4
Cathy's father will have to fly to France one day and find her great great distant grand cousin on her father's side and inherit the family house. How do I know this is so? She told me so. In the meantime they'll just have to move a little farther north from Mango Street, a little farther away every time people like us keep moving in. (5.4)
When Esperanza lets us know that her only source of information about Cathy's noble heritage is Cathy herself, we know we have reason to doubt the story. Why does Cathy feel it's so important to claim an aristocratic, European heritage?
Quote #5
Don't talk to them, says Cathy. Can't you see they smell like a broom? (6.6)
Cathy's tendency to pretend to be superior to her neighbors suggests that she's very insecure. Do she and the other residents of Mango Street belong to different classes of society, or are Cathy's feelings of superiority an invention to make herself feel better?
Quote #6
Those who don't know any better come into our neighborhood scared. They think we're dangerous. They think we will attack them with shiny knives. They are stupid people who are lost and got here by mistake. (12.1)
Esperanza notices that no one who doesn't live there comes to Mango Street on purpose – people from other neighborhoods only wind up there "by mistake," when they get lost.
Quote #7
They are bad those Vargases, and how can they help it with only one mother who is tired all the time from buttoning and bottling and babying, and who cries every day for the man who left without even leaving a dollar for bologna or a note explaining how come. (13.2)
The misbehavior of the Vargas children has an explanation that's rooted deeply in social problems – they misbehave because their mother is too poor and overworked to discipline them. She's poor and overworked because her husband abandoned her. The problem is complex, and doesn't have an easy solution.
Quote #8
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 #9
That one? She said, pointing to a row of ugly three-flats, the ones even the raggedy men are ashamed to go into. Yes, I nodded even though I knew that wasn't my house and started to cry. (18.11)
Why does the Sister Superior at Esperanza's school assume Esperanza lives in a run-down tenement apartment? Why does Esperanza agree and say that she lives there?
Quote #10
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.