Ethnic identity of women in House on Mango Street and Woman Hollering Creek The novels The House on Mango Street (Cisneros 1984) and Woman Hollering Creek (Cisneros 1992) they tell the story of the new American through the eyes of Cisneros. The women in both novels are caught in the middle of their ethnic identity and their American identity, thus creating the "New American." Cisneros often moved between Mexico and the United States while growing up, thus making her feel “homeless and displaced” (Jones and Jorgenson 109). The Mango Street House characterizes a community of girls and women restricted in their movements within the barrio. The roles of these girls and women are translated through the eyes of a child. When women in the barrio are confined, they may become victims of abuse due to male domination. Women are confined to interior spaces beyond their domestic roles as daughters, wives, and mothers. They live within the barrio, but wish to escape and live outside the barrio. Additionally, women can escape their limited lifestyle by getting an education. Esperanza, the child narrator, is the only one who escapes this ethnic lifestyle (Mullen 6). In The House on Mango Street, the "My Name" vignette, Esperanza, named after her great-grandmother, longs for a life outside her inner walls. quarter. The name Esperanza means hope in English, while it means sadness and waiting in Spanish. His great-grandmother was wild when she was young, but was tamed by her Mexican husband. Cisneros states: "She has looked out the window her whole life, the way so many women sit sadly on one elbow... I inherited her name, but I don't want to inherit her seat by the window" (11 ). Esperanza is proud of her namesake...... middle of paper ......1991. Oct. 22. 2000False&origSearch=true&u=CA&u+CLC&u=DLB>.Mullen, Harryette. “A silence between us like a language: the untranslatability of experience in Sandra Cisneros's Woman Hollering Creek.” Gale LiteraryDatabases Summer, 1996. October 22, 2000Galenet.com/servlet/GLD/hit?c=1&secondary=false&origSearchTrue&u=CA&u+CLC&u=DLB>.Olivares, Julian. "The house on MangoStreet and the poetics of space by Sandra Cisneros". Gale LiteraryDatabases 1998. October 14, 2000 <>Servlet/GLD/hits?c=6&secondary=false&origSearch=true&u=CA&…=>."Sandra Cisneros." Contemporary Artists. vol. 64. 1998. Wyatt, Jean. “On Not Being La Malinche: Gender Boundary Negotiations in Sandra Cisneros’s NeverMarry A Mexican and Woman Hollering Creek.” GaleLiterary Databases Fall 1995. October 22. 2000 .