The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros. This is the story of a young Mexican-American girl, named Esperanza, living in Chicago. The story of her family, her neighbors and her childhood is told through a series of vignettes. It is a charming, and moving book. I could see the neighborhood in my mind and I knew exactly what the characters looked like. It made me laugh out loud, and yet was deeply moving in it's honest depiction of the hardships people from her neighborhood faced. It touched on themes of domestic abuse, job frustration, loneliness and isolation. Especially poignant were the chapters where she talked of her feelings as a teenager.  I could feel Esperanza's longing for the day when she would have a house of her own. And yet I felt that as far away as she could possibly get from Mango street, she will never be completely free of it. A piece of her will always be there.