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A House of My Own

Summary
Esperanza once more expresses her deep-seated desire for a true home: "Only a house quiet as snow, a space for myself to go, clean as paper before the poem."
 
Analysis
These two brief paragraphs, the novel's penultimate vignette, define the home for which Esperanza yearns largely in negative terms (a kind of via negative). Significantly, the house is "not a man's house" and "not a daddy's." It is, in other words, free from the controlling and abusive power of patriarchy that we have seen repeatedly throughout the book. And in this house there is "nobody to shake a stick at" and "nobody's garbage to pick up after." It is a house where Esperanza can care for herself-where she can finally cultivate her own identity. The vignette's closing image is important: Esperanza likens the house to a clean piece of paper, pointing us toward the final vignette and her identity as a writer, a story-teller, a crafter of narrative.