"A Mango Shaped Space" by Wendy Mass

A Mango Shaped Space

by Wendy Mass

I recently read the book “A Mango Shaped Space” by Wendy Mass. This book is based on the struggles of Mia Winchell, a young girl living with a rare disease called synesthesia. Synesthesia is where your senses are blended. For example, in Mia’s case, she can describe letters, sounds, numbers, names, etc. with a certain color. Throughout the book, I observed that Mia has mixed feelings about her synesthesia. She starts off lacking confidence in herself and who she was, but grew to be a stronger person through her hardship. 

 The first word in the book is ‘freak’. I think that this represents how Mia felt about her condition. In the beginning of the book, Mia was led to believe that she was a freak. It all started in her eighth grade classroom where Mia was made fun of for saying that numbers had colors. She didn’t know that her ability to  pair sound, numbers, name, etc. with colors was a medical condition, and I believe it led her to think she was just plain crazy. In the text, Mia asks herself, “Was I the only one who lived in a world full of color?” (pg ). I think that Mia is questioning herself when she says this, and she’s starting to realize that she sees things differently from others. I think that all this evidence shows that Mia isn’t really fond of her synesthesia.

Later in the story, Mia learns more about her condition. After thinking she was alone for so long, she registers that she’s not the only one in the world with synesthesia, and that, although it may be infrequent, other people are living with it as well. I think that this fact comforted Mia, and gave her a more positive view of her condition. Mia became more open about her synesthesia; she confides in her parents, her best friend Jenna, and even the kids at school. Through her actions I concluded that Mia is starting to have more of a positive view of her synesthesia and how it made her different because she was less secretive about it. 

But by the end of the story, I believed that Mia had a completely different view of her synesthesia altogether. She sees her condition as something special that may make her different, but also enhances her own personal view of the world and the things around her. I think so because towards the end of the story when Mia temporarily loses her synesthesia due to depression over her lost cat mango, she says, “I’m no longer the girl who sees colors, and I’m no longer the girl who grandfather’s soul is in her cat. All I am is the girl who is no longer special in any way.” When Mia says that she ‘is the girl who is no longer special in any way’, it proved to me that she then saw her synesthesia as something special. This shows me that Mia’s feelings about her condition drastically changed from the beginning of the story.

In this story, Mia learns that the things that made her different made her stand out. She learned to accept who she was and think about it in a positive way. This is a lesson that many need to learn today. You should learn to accept who you are and what makes you different as though it’s a gift, not a curse.