Warriors Don’t Cry. A Separate Route to Girls' Self-Assertion in Cisneros’s The House on Mango Street and Sapphire’s Push.

Abstract

Cisneros’s The House on Mango Street (1984) and Sapphire’s Push (1996) are regarded, among others, as a staple of young adult literature. While attempts have been exhaustively made to delve into a site of oppression under which the protagonists are buried, this research departs to discuss and compare the characters’ unfailing commitment to self-assertion. Through a critical lens of Black feminism, it argues that their liberatory achievements are discretely characterized by the girls’ resistance and retreat that replenish their depleted sense of self-worth. Esperanza, a Latina girl in The House on Mango Street, seeks self-empowerment in the patriarchy-free sphere, harboring a desire to desert gloomy Mango Street. Precious, an African-American girl in Push, however, exhibits resistance traits, exerting both her mental and physical power to overcome subversion. I further put forward the claim that literacy, a fundamental feminist agenda, connectedly influences their endeavor to negate normalized discrimination. Oppressions, it is concluded, are relinquished and they triumphantly walk the path to liberation—their spirits fulfilled and...freed.