For Esperanza, Mango Street is a desolate landscape of concrete and run-down tenements where she discovers the hard realities of life - the fetters of class and gender, the spectre of racial enmity and the mysteries of sexuality.

Capturing her thoughts and emotions in poems and stories, Esperanza is able to rise above hopelessness and create for herself "a house all of my own quiet as snow, a space for myself to go" in the midst of her oppressive surroundings.