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
If you just breathe, and go slower, you will have enough energy. It's really important because there are people who wait in line, and your work has changed their lives. You will need to listen to them because they are also going to feed you and give you confirmation of the prayer you asked before you spoke.
If you know two cultures and two languages, that intermediate place, where the two don't perfectly meet, is really interesting.
We need to write because so many of our stories are not being heard. Where could they be heard in this era of fear and media monopolies? Writing allows us to transform what has happened to us and to fight back against what's hurting us. While not everyone is an author, everyone is a writer and I think that the process of writing is deeply spiritual and liberatory.
I've put up with too much, too long, and now I'm just too intelligent, too powerful, too beautiful, too sure of who I am finally to deserve anything less.
If you can't fall asleep, learn how to meditate. I would recommend you listen to a beautiful tape called Spiritual Power, Spiritual Practice [Energy Evaluation Meditations For Morning and Evening, 1998]. It was the one that got me out of my writer's block when I was writing Caramelo. It's by Carolyn Myss.
That's what you need for your writing - to learn how to be present, learn how to be calm. So take that nap, do that meditation.
I remember when they started publishing Latino fiction years ago. You had to be really good to get published. Now you don't have to be that good.
You know, we should have cards like the deaf have. "Can't talk, I'm writing today."
I feel that I can teach my listener about a new word they can use too.
Being on a highway, all that speed and aggression, is very terrifying to me.
When I was a child, I was very shy, and there's still a part of me that's very shy.
I think there's some great stuff coming. I do feel that. I think we have reached our Harlem Renaissance.
You get good at being by yourself and you're condemned to a life sentence of solitude. You think, "Wait a minute! I should have been a tap dancer or something". But in my life, I feel like I take my stories to people orally.
I grew up with this kind of grocery store that caters to the poor. They serve you the worst food