In this episode, host Douglas Cowie and his guest, poet and teacher Alina Borger, discuss The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros. They begin by exploring why the novel makes for useful study on a high school curriculum, and move to a wide-ranging discussion of its place as a novel of Chicago, its structure, and the many themes that emerge from its center as a novel about a Latina girl's tentative steps towards adolescence.