Esperanza, the main protagonist of "The House On Mango Street", is a 12 year old (when she first moved to Mango Street) Mexican/American girl who recently moved to a house on Mango Street. The house that she moved in is a huge improvement compared to their previous apartment and this is the first house they actually own. But she doesn't like it because it is small and worn down, and is not the house she dreamed of. Their house is located in the middle of a Latino neighborhood in Chicago.

Esperanza matures throughout this story in such a way that if you compare her from the beginning and the end of the story, they would seem like entirely different characters. Two main ways she matures are sexually and emotionally. Throughout the story, she makes friends, develops her first crush, grows hips, endures sexual assault, and begins to write as a way of expressing herself and as a way to escape the neighborhood.

After moving to the house, she quickly befriend two girls named Lucy and Rachel who are Chicana girls who live across the street. Esperanza, Lucy, Rachel, And her little sister Nenny, all have adventures in a small fraction in their neighborhood.

Over the summer, Esperanza hits puberty, she suddenly likes it when boys watch her dance, and also she enjoys dreaming about them. During the begging of the following school year, she meets a girl named Sally, who she befriends. Sally is the same age as Esperanza and is more sexually mature than Lucy or Rachel. Sally uses boys and men as an escape from her father, who beats her. Esperanza is not comfortable with Sally's sexual experience, and their friendship results in a crisis when Sally leaves Esperanza alone, and a group of boys sexually assault Esperanza in her absence.

Esperanza then wants to leave Mango street to live in a house on her own, because of her traumatic experiences. Esperanza finds herself emotionally ready to leave her neighborhood for good, but, she discovers that she will never fully be able to leave Mango Street behind, and that after she leaves she’ll have to return to help the women she has left behind. Esperanza remains on Mango Street, but she has matured greatly over the time she has lived their. Now She has a stronger desire to leave Mango Street and now understands that writing will help her put distance between herself and her situation.