SOURCE: "Remembering Always to Come Back: The Child's Wished-For Escape and the Adult's Self-Empowered Return in Sandra Cisneros's House on Mango Street," in Children's Literature, Vol. 23, 1995, pp. 221-41.

In the following essay, Sánchez addresses Cisneros's treatment of home and homelessness in the stories comprising The House on Mango Street

In an essay on "home" and "homelessness" in children's literature, Virginia L. Wolf [in Children's Literature, 1990] suggests that one distinction between literature for children and literature for adults may be that the former tends to embrace myth while the latter tends to embrace reality: "Whereas much adult literature laments our homelessness and reflects the fragmentation or loss of myth, most children's literature celebrates home and affirms belief in myth." In doing so, however, children's literature might very well offer an unrealistic view of the world: "Even though I celebrate all those wonderful mythic houses in children's literature as...