Sandra Cisneros
Sandra Cisneros
Sandra Cisnerosis an American writer best known for her acclaimed first novel The House on Mango Streetand her subsequent short story collection Woman Hollering Creek and Other Stories. Her work experiments with literary forms and investigates emerging subject positions, which Cisneros herself attributes to growing up in a context of cultural hybridity and economic inequality that endowed her with unique stories to tell. She is the recipient of numerous awards including a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, and is...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth20 December 1954
CityChicago, IL
CountryUnited States of America
There are many Latino writers as talented as I am, but because we are published through small presses, our books don't count. We are still the illegal aliens of the literary world.
Every book changes my writing because I'm always trying to do something I didn't do before. I try to do what's hard for me, what I haven't done in the past.
Perhaps the greatest challenge has been trying to keep my time to myself and my private life private in order to do my job. Everything that is most mine belongs to everyone now.
[Thich Nhat Hanh] the one that revolutionized Buddhism. Instead of being monks just engaged in meditation, it was active Buddhism. You went out and felt the ills of the community around you. Instead of retreating to a monastery, you were out in the streets working. And he's been a great help to me, just reading his book, so I don't feel helpless about what I can do about all the violence around me.
I always tell people that I became a writer not because I went to school but because my mother took me to the library. I wanted to become a writer so I could see my name in the card catalog.
Heartbreak allows us to also experience joy and love but you have to walk through heartbreak to even know what joy is. Heartbreak is a constant and it is even necessary. It allows us the opportunity of introspection and exploration. Those processes are what is necessary to write and engage in the arts.
Revenge only engenders violence, not clarity and true peace. I think liberation must come from within.
You can try reading books that will help you be a leader, like Marshall Rosenberg and Thich Nhat Hanh. Be very humble and say, "I don't know why. I don't feel qualified, but I accept this role that you gave me, and so help me."
The older I get, the more I'm conscious of ways very small things can make a change in the world. Tiny little things, but the world is made up of tiny matters, isn't it?
True love in Mexico isn't between lovers; it's between a parent and a child. Mexico is a very intense culture of sons adoring their mothers, and this is why I claim that Mexican culture is matriarchal. Because the one constant, faithful, inviolable, holy love of loves - the love of your life - is not your wife or your lover; it's your mother.
When I was very young I was reading a lot of Latin American fiction, which later would be called "boom fiction."
I was very lucky. I don't know German, or Dutch, or Chinese, or Thai. I don't know them, so I can't judge, so I have to go on the word of the publisher that it's a good translation.
I am a woman, and I am a Latina. Those are the things that make my writing distinctive. Those are the things that give my writing power.
The most powerful speaking you can do is the speaking that comes from your heart and your love.