Esperanza
What Esperanza's name means
What is hope?
The names of each person in Esperanza's family
Who are Papa, Mama, Carlos, Kiki, Esperanza, and Nenny?
Esperanza's best friends
Who are Rachel and Lucy?
What the Vargas kids don't have
What is a father?
"hair is the smell of warm bread" (p. 6)
Who is Mama?
What Esperanza wishes for above all else
What is a house of her own?
Where Esperanza's family is from
What is Mexico?
Esperanza's friend who writes poetry
Who is Minerva?
The character who refuses to speak English
Who is Mamacita?
"I am a red balloon...tied to an anchor" (p. 9).
Who is Esperanza?
Esperanza's first job
What is Peter Pan's Photo Finishers (working in a print shop)?
He dances with Esperanza at a baptism
Who is Uncle Nacho?
She doesn't rescue Esperanza during a traumatic experience
Who is Sally?
Esperanza pictures this character back in Puerto Rico waiting for someone to change her life
Who is Marin?
"They...grab the earth with their hairy toes and bite the sky with violent teeth and never quit their anger" (p. 74).
What are the four skinny trees?
When she gets a house of her own, who Esperanza says she would let live in her attic
Who are bums?
The filling of Esperanza's sandwich that she ate in the canteen at school
What is rice?
A place that becomes a symbol of magic and freedom for the neighborhood children
What is the Monkey Garden?
Two characters who are imprisoned by the men in their lives
Who are Sally and Rafaela?
"One day you wake up and they are there. Ready and waiting like a new Buick with the keys in the ignition" (p. 49)?
What are hips?
What the old ladies at Rachel's and Lucy's sister's funeral tell Esperanza she must do
What is return to Mango Street to help those who cannot leave?
The person in Esperanza's family who dies
Who is abuelito/grandfather/Papa's dad?
Esperanza's older friend who values education because she "doesn't want to spend her whole life in a factory or behind a rolling pin"
Who is Alicia?
How the girls/women in Esperanza's neighborhood often try to escape their lives/Mango Street
What is by getting married?
"She does not hold me with both arms. She sets me free" (p. 110).
What is Mango Street?