Journal Five from Teylar

My favorite chapter in The House on Mango Street would have to be Bums in the Attic. Esperanza is embarrassed to go look at expensive houses because she knows that her family could never afford to live in one. She fantasizes about living in a house on a hill and inviting bums as she calls them to come stay in her attic. “Some days after dinner, guests and I will sit in front of a fire . . . Bums, I’ll say and I’ll be happy” (Cisneros 87). In this line she imagines herself as one of the people who lives in the house on the hill. She pictures people like her now, who don’t have a lot of money, asking to stay with her. She calls those people bums. When I first read the chapter it made me think if she saw herself as a bum because she didn’t live in a big house on a hill. It also made me question why she is embarrassed to go with Nenny and her father to go look at these big houses on the hill.