What quotes show Esperanza's low self-awareness at the beginning of The House on Mango Street?

This is of course a very interesting question, because in some ways, Esperanza shows herself to be very self-aware as regards her situation and the state of her life. In the very first vignette for example, Esperanza instinctively understands the sense of shame that she is made to feel when the nun points to her house saying "You live there?" She is able to process the way that the nun's words make her feel like "nothing" and also she is mature enough to know that when her parents say that their house is just "temporary" that this is not the case: "But I know how these things go."

However, a key theme and aspect of Esperanza's character that does develop through the novel is her growing sense and understanding of her own sexuality and sex in general. Note how in the third vignette, entitled "Boys and Girls," Esperanza shares her very child-like view of the sexes:

The boys and the girls live in separate worlds. The boys in their universe and we in ours. My brothers for example. They've got plenty to say to me and nenny inside the house. But outside they can't be seen talkign to girls. Carlos and Kiki are each other's best friend... not ours.

Here we see that Esperanza presents us with a childish view of the world and the division of the sexes. As the story progresses and Esperanza grows up, we see her increasing awareness of sex and her own sexuality as she sees her friends engaging in sexual relations in "The Monkey Garden" and then has her first painful sexual experience herself in "Red Clowns." Also, note how her maturity is developed through watching how other women marry, have children and then find themselves tied to the house and their husbands, and the way that domestic abuse is shown to be part of a woman's experience. This of course leads to Esperanza's powerful and oft-quoted declaration about her own identity as a woman and what she wants for herself:

...but I have decided not to grow up tame like the others who lay their necks on the threshold waiting for the ball and chain.

Nowhere else I feel is Esperanza's movement from innocence and lack of self-awareness to maturity and self-awareness shown so powerfully than in this quote. Esperanza deliberately chooses to reject the expected life that other women on Mango Street follow and to strike out on her own.

What are some quotes showing Esperanza's naivety in The House On Mango Street?

For much of the story, Esperanza is hopelessly naïve about the world. To a large extent, she inhabits a dream world, an imaginary universe in which she forges her own identity.

Unfortunately, this makes things all the more difficult for Esperanza when she has to deal with the kind of real-life situations that are all part of the process of growing up. One such situation involves a bunch of boys stealing Sally's keys and refusing to hand them back until she gives each one of them a kiss.

It's clear from what Esperanza tells us that Sally is only pretending to be mad at the boys and accedes to their wishes. But still Esperanza feels mad; deep down, she feels that there's something not quite right about this situation. So she dashes off to the home of Tito, one of the boys playing the little game with Sally. She tells Tito's mother what's happened, but she's completely uninterested. Without adult help, Esperanza has to go back to the garden and save Sally from the wicked clutches of the boy.

But when she gets there, with three big sticks and a brick, the boys tell her to leave them alone. Sally, for her part, tells Esperanza to go home. Everyone looks at Esperanza like she's completely insane and so she feels ashamed.

Not knowing what else to do, Esperanza runs away and hides:

I had to hide myself at the other end of the garden, in the jungle part, under a tree that wouldn’t mind if I lay down and cried a long time. I closed my eyes like tight stars so that I wouldn’t, but I did.

Ashamed and embarrassed, Esperanza wishes she were dead. And in her naivety, she still doesn't understand the kissing game that Sally was playing with the boys, nor why it wasn't a good idea to take off the way she did.