Having a Latino identity is an incredibly complex experience shared by tens of millions of Americans. A combination of African, European, and Native heritages have merged into a single Latinx culture, and being Latinx in America often means straddling the line between the Latinx culture of your ancestors and the American culture you are surrounded by. As a Latina woman living in the United States, this experience becomes deeply personal and resonates with me. Preserving pride and respect for one's culture while adapting to American life can become a balancing act that has a dramatic impact on one's life. In The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros, Esperanza Cordero, the young protagonist, experiences this identity divide herself. His youth encounter represents a situation that millions of Americans still experience every day. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original EssayIn her article "Adolescent Journeys: Finding Female Authority in The Rain Catchers and The House on Mango Street," Christina Rose Dubb of the University of Pennsylvania notes this encounter while defending her thesis that Esperanza uses her literary skills to understand her identity and the world around her using Julie Langer's four vision building positions. Rather than analyze Dubb's analysis of The House on Mango Street against Langer's four positions, which Dubb has already developed in depth, I will further explore his argument that Esperanza lives trapped between her Mexican identity and her American identity. I certainly agree with Dubb that Esperanza's mixed identity is crucial in helping us understand her progression and maturation over the course of the novel. To achieve her "authorial voice" (230), as Dubb puts it, Esperanza must first question, analyze, and come to understand her culture. Simply put, Christina Rose Dubb is using Julie Langer's vision-building framework to analyze adolescent authority in both The House on Mango Street and The Rain Catchers. He linearizes these phases to create a path for the protagonists of each novel to find their voice and become active and assertive parts of their worlds. Early in this argument, Dubb acknowledges the additional obstacles Esperanza faces due to her background – referring to this in-between life as living in “los intersticios,” the cracks, as Anzaldua says (222). He argues that the use of vignettes and the shift from Spanish to English allows this sense of flexibility and intermediation to flourish. This middle ground makes understanding her culture and background significantly more difficult for Esperanza than it would be if she were simply white. At the beginning of the novel, Esperanza blindly accepts her culture and her life in general. Dubb classifies this part of his life as "the silent stage of development, where they live their lives on the surface, without questioning their situations or using words as power" (224). Esperanza writes simple descriptions of her world and culture, without even realizing that her culture is distinct. He talks about houses that “look like Mexico” (18) and dogs “with two names, one in English and one in Spanish” (21). His identity is woven into his life so precisely that he is not aware of it. Esperanza's naivety and innocence keep her blind to the world around her. However, this childish obedience does not last long. Later in the novel, Esperanza begins to struggle with her identity as she fails.