Early on in The House on Mango Street, Esperanza thinks about the great grandmother she is named for, a wild woman who didn't want to marry. Her husband had to kidnap her to marry him, and, according to Esperanza, her great-grandmother never forgave him for it.

Esperanza doesn't want to be like her great-grandmother, who so often sat looking out a window. She also doesn't like the metallic way her name sounds in English. She thinks of wanting to be baptized again so she can have a new identity.

Baptism is a symbol of new life and the renewal of life after death, as in the Christian faith the baptized are said to go to heaven. Esperanza knows she can't be formally rebaptized, so she dreams of rebaptizing herself. She feels more like a Lisandra or Zeze the X, a person with a more exotic or mysterious name.

Esperanza has not yet matured when she has these thoughts. However, they suggest from early on how important the theme of identity will be in this book. Esperanza continually struggles to define herself. She pushes back against the constricting way women are defined by their culture of the 1950s and 1960s, in which the expectation is that women will marry and have children. She dreams of becoming a writer.