Quote 76
Not a flat. Not an apartment in back. Not a man's house. Not a daddy's. A house all my own. With my porch and my pillow, my pretty purple petunias. My books and my stories. My two shoes waiting beside the bed. Nobody to shake a stick at. Nobody's garbage to pick up after. (43.1)
Esperanza's dream house, "A House of My Own," recalls Virginia Woolf's feminist treatise, "A Room of One's Own."
Quote 77
We didn't always live on Mango Street. Before that we lived on Loomis on the third floor, and before that we lived on Keeler. Before Keeler it was Paulina, but what I remember most is Mango Street, sad red house, the house I belong to but do not belong to. (44.4)
The repetition of the first phrase of the novel causes us to pay more attention to the small segment that's different this time around: now what Esperanza remembers most isn't "moving a lot," but the house on Mango Street.
Quote 78
By the time we got to Mango Street we were six – Mama, Papa, Carlos, Kiki, my sister Nenny and me. (1.1)
Esperanza introduces her family in the first paragraph of the first story.