House on Mango Street Vocabulary

Vocabulary list and literary terms for analyzing The House on Mango Street.

Lens

A style of analysis or way of reading.

Reader Response Lens

Reading a text and making connections to your own experiences, feelings, memories, and culture.

Formalist Lens

Analyzing how a text is written—noticing literary devices and writing choices, then analyzing how they all work together to make meaning.

Youth Lens

Analyzing what a text, film, or movie says about being young.

Metaphor

A comparison between two things for the purpose of demonstrating an idea, emotion, or image.

Simile

A metaphor that uses like or as.

Personification

Metaphors that use human qualities to describe nonhuman things.

Imagery

Descriptions that engage the five senses.

Othering / To Other

View or treat (a person or group of people) as intrinsically different from and alien to oneself.

Vignette

A short, evocative piece of writing that often has some qualities of both poetry and prose.

Syntax

Structure of sentences—such as used intentional fragments or run-ons.

Colloquial Language

Conversational, informal speech; slang.

Repetition

Intentional repetition of a word or phrase.

Unreliable Narrator

A narrative technique where the person telling the story might have an incomplete view of the world or might be untrustworthy in some other way, distorting actual events.

Theme

The message underneath a work of art (literature, film, poetry).

Symbol

An object, idea, or action that represents a deeper, abstract concept.

Indeterminate Element

A portion of a poem or story that is ultimately mysterious, or up for interpretation.

Characterization / Characterize

The creation or construction of a fictional character.

Social Construct / Socially Constructed

An idea that has been created and accepted by the people in a society.

Intentional Fragment

An incomplete sentence that the author intentionally chooses to use instead of a complete sentence.

Allusion

An indirect reference to another cultural artifact (film, novel, story, song, tradition, etc.).

Barrio

A neighborhood in a city or town in the U.S. in which many people who speak Spanish live.

Chicano/a

A term that identifies a person of Mexican descent living in the United States, particularly one who identifies with a political and cultural identity born out of the Chicano Movement of the 1960s and 1970s.

Diction

Word choice.

Connotation / Connotes

The implied meaning of a word based on context.

Denotation / Denotes

The literal, dictionary definition of a word.

Lesko's Characteristics of Adolescence

Defines adolescence as the period between adulthood and childhood when young people show signs of being rebellious, hormonal, peer-oriented, conformist, popularity-driven, and concerned with romantic relationships.

Chanclas

The Spanish word for sandal or flip-flop; symbolizes Esperanza's feelings of shame and self-consciousness about her poverty and appearance.