A TODAY SHOW #ReadWithJenna BOOK CLUB PICK

NATIONAL BESTSELLERA coming-of-age classic about a young girl growing up in ChicagoAcclaimed by critics, beloved by readers of all ages, taught in schools and universities alike, and translated around the worldfrom the winner of the 2019 PEN/Nabokov Award for Achievement in International Literature.

Cisneros draws on her rich [Latino] heritage…and seduces with precise, spare prose, creat[ing] unforgettable characters we want to lift off the page. She is not only a gifted writer, but an absolutely essential one.The New York Times Book Review

The House on Mango Street is one of the most cherished novels of the last fifty years. Readers from all walks of life have fallen for the voice of Esperanza Cordero, growing up in Chicago and inventing for herself who and what she will become. In English my name means hope, she says. In Spanish it means too many letters. It means sadness, it means waiting.”

Told in a series of vignettessometimes heartbreaking, sometimes joyousCisneross masterpiece is a classic story of childhood and self-discovery and one of the greatest neighborhood novels of all time. Like Sinclair Lewiss Main Street or Toni Morrisons Sula, it makes a world through people and their voices, and it does so in language that is poetic and direct. This gorgeous coming-of-age novel is a celebration of the power of telling ones story and of being proud of where you’re from.