House on Mango Street Vocabulary

Vocabulary and literary analysis terms covering critical reading lenses, literary devices, and historical context for 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

To 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

The structure of sentences—such as the use of intentional fragments or run-ons.

Colloquial Language

Conversational, informal speech; slang.

Repetition

The intentional repetition of a word or phrase.

Unreliable Narrator

A narrator who might have an incomplete view of the world or might be untrustworthy in some other way, whose perspective may distort 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 used purposefully by an author 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 identifying 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

Nancy Lesko's definition of adolescence as a stage between adulthood and childhood characterized by young people being rebellious, hormonal, peer-oriented, conformist, popularity-driven, and concerned with romantic relationships.

Chanclas

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