42. The House on Mango Street

by Sandra Cisneros

People tend to think that if a book features a youthful protagonist that is meant to be read by children. It is true that teens and kids like to read books with an age-appropriate hero. It is easier to connect to a protagonist when you've lived through that time of life. However, when it comes to books with child protagonists that are not picture books, it often turns out that there is a level that kids just can't access. There is something sad about being a child that children don't perceive. All those things missed through lack of experience.  All those fights and all those opportunities. Being afraid of the ghost in the corner that is really a shadow that looks like a ghost or is it a ghost that looks like a shadow. Experience in life both protects us and steals those magical moments.

The House on Mango Street is one of those books that has seeped into the holy "High School Canon of Approved Literature For the Youth of America." It seems to get shoehorned into the American Literature curriculum as an example of Latin-American Literature. If you sense, dear reader, my dripping sarcasm, know that it is not aimed at the novel. Rather it is aimed at the "Administrative Powers-That-Be." If you are a teacher, there are a multitude of rules about what you cannot say and the material you cannot cover. Censorship has won in America, at least as far as the schools are considered. Sex is scary. Drugs don't really exist, at least if you say it loud enough they don't. Nothing truly bad happens to children. Ever. As a teacher, adding new and fresh novels to the curriculum in even them most minor ways (say summer reading lists) opens one up to attack. If there's a bad word in it: attack. If there is sex, even abstractly: attack. Any hint of the realities of life: attack.

Unless, however, the novel introduced fits into the sacrosanct category of multicultural. If that's the case, suddenly all bets are off and it's possible to teach what real literature is good for. Good literature is not safe. Good literature rolls over the rocks in the human soul and examines the dark creepy crawlies. That's not to say there aren't happy endings, triumphs, love won, and sappy endings in real literature.  These bright points exist but the trip up to them is challenging and arduous.

The House on Mango Street is one of those real books.  There are a lot of dark things hidden behind the perception of young protagonist. There's rape, poverty, violence, and despair. There's also faith, love, and escape. It's a real book and the only reason we can teach it is because its latin origins protect it. Some administrator somewhere read the first 10 pages, absorbed the child POV and approved it. Well here's one in your eye, admin. The teachers won on this one.