The House on Mango Street

Esperanza’s family lives in an urban, impoverished part of Chicago. The buildings are cramped together, and they have almost no access to nature. Esperanza longs to be able to see wide open sky: “you can never have too much sky […] sky can keep you safe when you are sad” (33). A neighborhood boy describes the clouds in the sky as “God” (33), and Esperanza agrees with that comparison. She feels spiritually connected to nature. In “Four Skinny Trees,” she compares herself to the trees growing out of the cement in front of her house: “Four skinny trees with skinny necks and pointy elbows like mine. Four who do not belong here but are here” (74). Like a tree, Esperanza imagines herself growing up and out of her neighborhood, while maintaining strong roots in her community. Esperanza comes to believe that in order to have access to nature and freedom of spirituality, she needs to become an upper-class American. However, she doesn’t want to become classist: “People who live on hills sleep so close to the stars they forget those of us who live too much on earth” (86). She uses proximity to sky and earth as a