The Dream of Home Ownership on the Margins of American Life
Objectives:
Demonstrate your understanding of key historical and structural implications that marginalized communities experience as they aspire to fulfill the Dream of Home Ownership.
Critically analyze the cultural implication of race and gender in the Dream of Home Ownership for socially and economically marginalized communities.
Topic(s): Choose one to establish and support your thesis.
After the unit on the Dream of Home Ownership including Cullen’s historical sketch, Cisneros’ “A House on Mango Street,” and Hansberry’s “A Raisin in the Sun,” engage one of the prompts or a combination of these avenues for discussion to formulate some insight about how the Dream of Home ownership is experienced by historically marginalized communities in the U.S.
The House on Mango Street underscores the challenges immigrant families face on their way to attaining a measure of the American Dream “in the land of opportunity” and demonstrates that there’s a great gulf of meaning between a house and a home. If “Home is where the heart is,” as Esperanza asserts, why is it difficult for Esperanza to find home on Mango Street? What social and structural factors contribute to her predicament? To what extent does the immigrant experience we encountered in The House on Mango Street extend the notion that the Dream of Home Ownership is inextricable tied to all other variations of the American Dream (i.e., the good life, upward mobility, equality) and why?
