MFS Modern Fiction Studies

Cruz, Felicia J.
On the "Simplicity" of Sandra Cisneros's House on Mango Street
MFS Modern Fiction Studies - Volume 47, Number 4, Winter 2001, pp. 910-946

The Johns Hopkins University Press

Felicia J. Cruz - On the "Simplicity" of Sandra Cisneros's House on Mango Street - Modern Fiction Studies 47:4 MFS Modern Fiction Studies 47.4 (2001) 910-946 On the "Simplicity" of Sandra Cisneros's House on Mango Street Felicia J. Cruz As I perused the back cover of a recent Vintage Books edition of The House on Mango Street a short while ago, I read that it has been translated worldwide and that it has become a "classic" work in the canon of coming-of-age novels. This prompted me to think about whether this edition of Mango Street -- which appeared identical to my personal copy (an earlier, 1991 Vintage Books edition)--sought to interpellate similar, if not the same, groups of readers that contributed to the consolidation of the unwavering popularity of Cisneros's rite-of-passage book. Consequently, upon returning home, I retrieved my copy of Mango Street and saw that its back cover declares that the novel "signals the emergence of a major literary talent." The appeal of Mango Street clearly remains unabated in both the real and literary worlds. Yet, the fact that that this book, within six years after its publication in 1984 by the small, Hispanic publishing house Arte P�blico, had attracted enough attention to prompt its publication by a mainstream publisher warrants further consideration of the circumstances surrounding its seemingly meteoric rise within the US publishing industry. According to Alvina Quintana, 1984 was a watershed year that...