The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store
Music and Mind

The House on Mango Street

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 vignettes—sometimes heartbreaking, sometimes joyous—Cisneros’s masterpiece is a classic story of childhood and self-discovery and one of the greatest neighborhood novels of all time. Like Sinclair Lewis’s Main Street or Toni Morrison’s 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 one’s story and of being proud of where you’re from.

More Non-Juvenile Books

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  • In The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store, James McBride explores the intertwined lives of the residents of Chicken Hill, a neighborhood where immigrant Jews and African Americans coexist amid struggles and secrets. As the community rallies to protect a deaf boy from institutionalization, the narrative reveals the deep bonds of love and resilience that sustain them, even in the face of adversity and the oppressive forces of society.

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  • The Hunter unfolds in a small Irish village where former Chicago PD officer Cal Hooper seeks peace but finds himself entangled in a conflict involving a reappearing father and a gold-seeking scheme. As Cal and his partner Lena strive to protect a troubled teenager from the looming threat, the lines between safeguarding and revenge blur, challenging their relationships and their morals.

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  • Matt Daly’s lineage links back to Puritans from the early colonial period who helped set the course toward many of the destructive and shameful practices that Anglo-American culture has enacted on people and ecosystems around the world.