Post-colonial Feminist Interpretation Of The Initiation Theme In The House On Mango Street

The House on Mango Street is an initiation novel written by the Mexican American female writer Sandra Cisneros. It depicts the confusion that the heroine Esperanza encounters during her growing process. With the help of initiation guides, Esperanza is getting maturity. After its publication in1984, the novel has a great success. In the following year, Cisneros got the Before Columbus American Book Award. The House on Mango Street is a representative work about the marginalized people, showing the living dilemma of Mexican Americans especially women in America. Based on her own experience of marginalized woman, the author writes about the racial oppression and sexual discrimination that Mexican American women suffer in daily life. With the heroine’s experience and guidance by others, Esperanza awakens and matures at last. The novel reflects the conflict between Mexican Americans and white mainstream Americans, and Mexican American women and men of all colors.Since its publication, a lot of research on the novel has been done by Western and Chinese scholars. Because it is an initiation story of a Mexican American girl, its initiation theme and people’s double marginalities have been analyzed a lot. Researches focus on their ethnic and female identity by many critics. The domestic M. A. theses and doctoral theses have analyzed the novel from various perspectives such as feminism, post-colonialism, Chicana literature and post-modernism. Some related journal articles have interpreted the symbolic meanings in the novel. To reflect the ethnic women’s special experience and their ethnic culture, the author tries to discuss the initiation theme from the perspective of post-colonial feminism.The thesis analyzes the heroine’s confusion of racial and sexual discrimination during the growing process. Influenced by initiation guides, she knows the definite way to escape from the neighborhood by writing. And with the development of her sexual awareness and changing recognition of the house, she decides not to depend on marriage or men to have a better life like other women do on Mango Street. At last, she wants to be independent to have her own house. The responsibility will make her come back to help others in the neighborhood.Nowadays, racial and sexual equality is deeply rooted in people’s mind. Ethnic women are double marginalized in American society. It is socially significant to study the living dilemma and initiation process of the Mexican American girl. To integrate with the whole society, people of the ethnic groups and the mainstream society should communicate with each other in order to make common progress.