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
I remember I was very taken with a book called DreamTigers by [Jorge Luis] Borges. He was at the University of Texas, Austin, and they collected some of his writings and put them in a little collection. It's called DreamTigers in English, but it doesn't exist in Spanish. It's a little sampler. But that collection in English is what struck me, because in there he has his poems, and I was a poet as well as a fiction writer.
One of the things we learned from that panel is the way poor communities use a library is very different from wealthy communities. But the way the library books are measured are by how many books are taken out. And people in poor communities sometimes won't take the book out because they're afraid to. They're afraid of losing it and not being able to replace it.
I'm thrilled. It's gratifying to me, because I love this literature. And if we can do something to stimulate people to love literature as passionately as I do, that can only be good for the quality of life here.
The beauty of literature is you allow readers to see things through other people's eyes. All good books do this.
At the time I was writing it, it started as my own memoirs but transformed into a piece of fiction. All the emotions are mine, the setting is mine, the house is mine. But the characters are a composite of my students' stories.
These stories celebrate what's at the heart of so many Latino success stories -- a desire to achieve and make a difference, ... Visitors to this Smithsonian exhibit will have the opportunity to learn about Latinos who have made varying but very important contributions to the American fabric.
The good stories are what no one wants to talk about. So you make up a story because no one is going to tell you the truth.
In English, my name means hope. In Spanish, it means too many letters. It means sadness. It means waiting. It is like the number nine, a muddy color.
The more you speak more languages, the more you understand about yourself.
My father always defined my gender to my brothers. He'd say, 'This is your sister; you must take care of her.'
I spent my thirties living out of boxes and moving every six months to a year. It was my cloud period: I just wandered like a cloud for ten years, following the food supply. I was a hunter, gatherer, an academic migrant.
I wasn't aware that 'House on Mango Street' was so influenced by Spanish until after I finished.
I think that Mexican-American kids live in a global world. It's not even bi-, it's multi-. You know, for those of us who grew up with different countries on our block, different nationalities, you know, we moved into multiple worlds.
I was a little press writer when the National Endowment for the Arts came to my rescue and gave me an award. I couldn't buy a light bulb. Almost more than the money, the awards are important because they show that someone believes in you.