Raising a child is sometimes a difficult task. Children are often adventurous in seeking answers to the questions they have about life and where they fit in. Parents have the responsibility of answering these questions, and these answers are often opinionated which provide the child with the same views as the parent. Esperanza views her mother as a pretty, warm loving person: “my mother’s hair, my mothers hair, like little rosettes, like little candy circles all curly and pretty because she pinned it in pincurls all day, sweet to put your nose into when she is holding you, holding you and you feel safe…” (6). As

Esperanza’s poverty affects her self-esteem when she doesn’t have new shoes to wear. At her cousins baptism she says, “Everybody laughing except me, because I’m wearing a dress, pink and white with stripes, and new underclothes and socks and the old saddle shoes I wear to school, brown and white, the kind I get every September because they last long and they do” (47). She is forced to wear shoes that embarrass her and it makes her feel bad about her self. Growing up in poverty does that to her. She is unable to feel comfortable with what she wears and it makes her feel out of place even in front of her own family.

Esperanza’s neighborhood is full of old trees and cracked sidewalks. Every where she looks on her street it is depressing. “Four skinny trees with skinny necks and pointy elbows like mine. Four who do not belong here but are here” (74). Esperanza has nothing pretty to look at. She compares herself to the trees implying that there is no way out of this environment that they were placed in. She looks at herself in the same way she doesn’t see a way out of the environment she is in.

A child growing up in a neighborhood full of poverty is often going to have a different outlook on life than a child growing up in an upscale neighborhood. A child who grows up in poverty sometimes has a depressed outlook on the world. Esperanza is no different than other poverty-stricken children. She was brought up in low-income neighborhoods where crime was normal. A situation occurred when Louie’s cousin drove up in a stolen yellow Cadillac and they got a ride from him. “Everybody looked inside the car and asked where he got it…We all asked for a ride and asked where he got it…The seventh time we drove into the alley we heard sirens… They put handcuffs on him and put him in the back seat of the cop car” (24). This situation fascinated Esperanza and it shouldn’t have. This type of situation may influence Esperanza to think it is acceptable to steal things. Because of the environment she lives in this type of situation is more likely to occur than if she lived in an upper-class neighborhood.

Esperanza’s parent, it is her responsibility to recognize how much Esperanza looks up to her and to set good examples for her to follow, but she always doesn’t do so. The day of her cousin’s baptism her mother doesn’t bring home the shoes Esperanza wanted for her ne

Some topics in this essay:
Cisneros Esperanza, Benny Blanca, African American, , Mango Street, makes feel, type situation, makes feel bad, forced start, experience environments esperanza, parental guidance, child grows, environment lives, baptism mother, sets failure, esperanza’s neighborhood, feel bad,