Cisneros characterize “home” as a place not necessarily where you live or grew up in, but a place where you can identify with and find your success. There are many barriers to belonging that Cisneros experience in her family.  Her family lives in Chicago. Starting that she is the only daughter in a family with 6 sons. Because of that, she spent a lot of time to herself. Her father also saw her as an opportunity to be someone’s wife. Her supposed purpose of education is to find a husband afterwords. She has always wanted more from his father, therefore everything she has written has been for him.  Eventually in the end she was able to win his interest.For graduate school, Cisneros studied in the “foreign terrain” of Iowa. In her time at Iowa, she able to clearly self reflect on her home. She found her home in books. “I found myself coming home when I read Thomas Wolfe…They take me in and happen to lead me to my own crowded rooms in a house on Mango Street”

When I think of home, I think of my physical home at first. It is in Queens, New York. A place where I was born and raised all 18 years of my life. But instead of the apartment, I grew up in, when I think of home, I like to think of the city itself. My home has definitely changed over the course of growing up, not just in a few months. My home has without a doubt shaped who I am as a person. That is because of the suburban environment, the diversity in my neighborhoods and schools. Over the years, there have been new buildings, an influx of people moving in, new restaurants, new neighbors, etc.  Many barriers have been presented in my home. Gentrification has been on the rise for years in my neighborhood. As I look outside my window, buildings stand where what used to be the clear skies. Luxury condos and shopping malls replace long time businesses. As a kid, I always thought those were fascinating, but it doesn’t feel like the home I used to know. While I haven’t had 6 brothers growing up, I have a sister, whom I have grown close with, and also a furry cat. Over the past few months, home is all I have been, and sometimes too much home will make you want to be anywhere but home.