Sandra Cisneros

Sandra Cisneros (born December 20, 1954) is an

American writer. She is best known for her first novel, Sandra Cisneros
The House on Mango Street (1983), and her
subsequent short story collection, Woman Hollering
Creek and Other Stories (1991). Her work experiments
with literary forms that investigate 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.[1] She is the recipient of numerous
awards, including a National Endowment for the Arts
Fellowship, was awarded one of 25 new Ford
Foundation Art of Change fellowships in 2017, and is
regarded as a key figure in Chicano literature.[2]

Cisneros' early life provided many experiences that she

later drew on, as a writer: she grew up as the only Sandra Cisneros speaking at an event in
daughter in a family of six brothers, which often made Phoenix, Arizona (2017)
her feel isolated, and the constant migration of her Born December 20, 1954
family, between Mexico and the United States, instilled Chicago, Illinois, U.S.
in her the sense of "always straddling two countries but Occupation Novelist · poet · short story
not belonging to either culture."[3] Cisneros' work writer · artist
deals with the formation of Chicana identity, exploring Alma mater Loyola University Chicago
the challenges of being caught between Mexican and (BA)
Anglo-American cultures, facing the misogynist University of Iowa (MFA)
attitudes present in both these cultures, and Period c. 1980–present
experiencing poverty. For her insightful social critique Notable The House on Mango Street,
and powerful prose style, Cisneros has achieved works Woman Hollering Creek and
recognition far beyond Chicano and Latino Other Stories
communities, to the extent that The House on Mango Notable American Book Award,
Street has been translated worldwide and is taught in awards MacArthur Genius Grant
U.S. classrooms as a coming-of-age novel.[4] Website

Cisneros has held a variety of professional positions, sandracisneros.com (https://sandracisneros.co

working as a teacher, a counselor, a college recruiter, a m)
poet-in-the-schools, and an arts administrator, and she
has maintained a strong commitment to community and literary causes. In 1998, she established the
Macondo Writers Workshop, which provides socially conscious workshops for writers, and in 2000, she
founded the Alfredo Cisneros Del Moral Foundation, which awards talented writers connected to
Texas.[5] Cisneros currently resides in Mexico.[6]

Early life and education

Cisneros was born in Chicago, Illinois on December 20, 1954, to a family of Mexican heritage, the third
of seven children. The only surviving daughter, she considered herself the "odd number, in a set of men.”
Cisneros's great-grandfather had played the piano for the Mexican president and was from a wealthy
background, but he gambled away his family's fortune.[7] Her paternal grandfather, Enrique, was a
veteran of the Mexican Revolution, and he used what money he had saved to give her father, Alfredo
Cisneros de Moral, the opportunity to go to college. However, after failing classes, due to what Cisneros
called his "lack of interest" in studying, Alfredo ran away to the United States, in an effort to escape his
father's anger. While roaming the southern United States with his brother, Alfredo visited Chicago, where
he met Elvira Cordero Anguiano. After getting married, the pair settled in one of Chicago's poorest
neighborhoods. Cisneros's biographer, Robin Ganz, writes that she acknowledges her mother's family
came came from a very humble background, tracing its roots back to Guanajuato, Mexico, while her
father's was much more "admirable".[8]

Taking work as an upholsterer to support his family, Cisneros's father began "a compulsive circular
migration between Chicago and Mexico City that became the dominating pattern of Cisneros' childhood."
Their family was constantly moving between the two cities, which necessitated their finding new places
to live, as well as schools for the children. Eventually, the instability caused Cisneros's six brothers to pair
off in twos, leaving her to define herself, as the isolated one. Her feelings of exclusion from the family
were exacerbated by her father, who referred to his "seis hijos y una hija" ("six sons and one daughter")
rather than his "siete hijos" ("seven children"). Ganz notes that Cisneros's childhood loneliness was
instrumental in shaping her later passion for writing. Cisneros' one strong female influence was her
mother, Elvira, who was a voracious reader and more enlightened and socially conscious than her
father.[9] According to Ganz, although Elvira was too dependent on her husband and too restricted in her
opportunities to fulfill her own potential, she ensured her daughter would not suffer from the same
disadvantages as she did.

Her Khara family made a down payment on their own home in Humboldt Park, a predominantly Puerto
Rican neighborhood on Chicago's West Side, when she was eleven years old.[10] This neighborhood and
its characters would later become the inspiration for Cisneros' novel The House on Mango Street.[2] For
high school, Cisneros attended Josephinum Academy, a small Catholic all-girls school. Here, she found
an ally in a high-school teacher who helped her to write poems about the Vietnam War. Although
Cisneros had written her first poem around the age of ten, with her teacher's encouragement, she became
known for her writing throughout her high-school years.[11] In high school, she wrote poetry and was the
literary magazine editor, but according to Cisneros, herself, she did not really start writing until her first
creative writing class in college, in 1974. After that, it took a while to find her own voice. She explains, "I
rejected what was at hand and emulated the voices of the poets I admired in books: big male voices like
James Wright and Richard Hugo and Theodore Roethke, all wrong for me."
Cisneros was awarded a Bachelor of Arts degree from Loyola University Chicago, in 1976, and she
received a Master of Fine Arts degree from the Iowa Writers' Workshop at the University of Iowa, in
1978. At Loyola, she had an affair with a professor that she calls a “secret life [from] when I was a junior
through Iowa that tormented me and that I wrote about, in my poetry.”[12] She describes the abusive
relationship as “very damaging to me” and is “why my writing is always dealing with sexuality and
wickedness.”[12]

While attending the Workshop, Cisneros discovered how the particular social position she occupied gave
her writing a unique potential, recalling "It wasn't as if I didn't know who I was. I knew I was a Mexican
woman. But I didn't think it had anything to do with why I felt so much imbalance, in my life, whereas it
had everything to do with it! My race, my gender, and my class! And it didn't make sense, until that
moment, sitting in that seminar. That's when I decided I would write about something my classmates
couldn't write about."[1] She conformed to American literary canons and adopted a writing style that was
purposely opposite that of her classmates, realizing that instead of being something to be ashamed of, her
own cultural environment was a source of inspiration. From then on, she would write of her "neighbors,
the people [she] saw, the poverty that the women had gone through."[13][14]

Cisneros says of this moment:

So to me it began there, and that's when I

intentionally started writing about all the things in my
culture that were different from them—the poems that
are these city voices—the first part of Wicked Wicked
ways—and the stories in House on Mango Street. I
think it's ironic that at the moment when I was
Cisneros in 2017
practically leaving an institution of learning, I began
realizing in which ways institutions had failed me.[13]

Drawing on Mexican and Southwestern popular culture and conversations in the city streets, Cisneros
wrote to convey the lives of people she identified with.[5] Literary critic Jacqueline Doyle has described
Cisneros's passion for hearing the personal stories that people tell and her commitment to expressing the
voices of marginalized people through her work, such as the "thousands of silent women,” whose
struggles are portrayed in The House on Mango Street.[15]

Five years after receiving her MFA, she returned to Loyola University-Chicago, where she had previously
earned a BA in English, to work as an administrative assistant. Prior to this job, she worked in Pilsen and
Little Village, predominately Mexican neighborhoods, in Chicago, and teaching high school dropouts at
Latino Youth High School.[16]

Later life and career

Teaching
In addition to being an author and poet, Cisneros has held various academic and teaching positions. In
1978, after finishing her MFA degree, she taught former high-school dropouts at the Latino Youth High
School in Chicago. The 1984 publication of The House on Mango Street secured her a succession of
writer-in-residence posts at universities in the United States,[17] teaching creative writing at institutions
such as the University of California, Berkeley and the University of Michigan. She was, subsequently, a
writer-in-residence at Our Lady of the Lake University in San Antonio, Texas. Cisneros has also worked
as a college recruiter and as an arts administrator.[18]

Family
Cisneros currently resides in San Miguel de Allende, a city in central Mexico, but for years, she lived and
wrote in San Antonio, Texas, in her briefly controversial[19] "Mexican-pink" home, with "many creatures
little and large."[18] In 1990, when Pilar E. Rodríguez Aranda asked Cisneros, in an interview for the
Americas Review, why she has never married or started a family, Cisneros replied, "I've never seen a
marriage that is as happy as my living alone. My writing is my child, and I don't want anything to come
between us."[20] She has elaborated, elsewhere, that she enjoys living alone, because it gives her time to
think and write.[20] In the introduction to the third edition of Gloria E. Anzaldúa's Borderlands/La
Frontera: The New Mestiza, Cisneros wrote: "It's why I moved from Illinois to Texas. So that the
relatives and family would allow me the liberty to disappear into myself. To reinvent myself, if I had to.
As Latinas, we have to.".

Writing process
Cisneros' writing is often influenced by her personal experiences and by observations of many of the
people in her community. She once confided to other writers, at a conference in Santa Fe, that she writes
down "snippets of dialogue or monologue—records of conversations she hears, wherever she goes."
These snippets are then mixed and matched, to create her stories. Names for her characters often come
from the San Antonio phone book; "she leafs through the listings for a last name, then repeats the process,
for a first name."[21] By mixing and matching, she is assured that she is not appropriating anyone's real
name or real story, but at the same time, her versions of characters and stories are believable.

Cisneros once found herself so immersed in the characters of her book Woman Hollering Creek that they
began to infiltrate her subconscious mind. Once, while she was writing the story "Eyes of Zapata," she
awoke "in the middle of the night, convinced, for the moment, that she was Ines, the young bride of the
Mexican revolutionary. Her dream conversation with Zapata then became those characters' dialogue in
her story."[22]

Her biculturalism and bilingualism are also very important aspects of her writing. Cisneros was quoted by
Robin Ganz as saying that she is grateful to have "twice as many words to pick from ... two ways of
looking at the world," and Ganz referred to her "wide range of experience" as a "double-edged
sword."[22] Cisneros's ability to speak two languages and to write about her two cultures gives her a
unique position from where she is able to tell not just her story, but also, the stories of those around her.

Community legacy
Cisneros has been instrumental in building a strong community in San Antonio among other artists and
writers through her work with the Macondo Foundation and the Alfredo Cisneros del Moral
Foundation.[23] The Macondo Foundation, which is named after the town in Gabriel García Márquez's
book One Hundred Years of Solitude, "works with dedicated and compassionate writers who view their
work and talents as part of a larger task of community-building and non-violent social change." Officially
incorporated in 2006, the foundation began in 1998 as a small workshop that took place in Cisneros's
kitchen.[24] The Macondo Writers Workshop, which has since become an annual event, brings together
writers "working on geographic, cultural, economic, social and spiritual borders" and has grown from 15
participants to over 120 participants in the first 9 years.[25] Currently working out of Our Lady of the
Lake University in San Antonio,[25] the Macondo Foundation makes awards such as the Gloria E.
Anzaldúa Milagro Award honoring the memory of Anzaldúa, a fellow Chicana writer who died in 2004,
by providing Chicano writers with support when they are in need of some time to heal their "body, heart
or spirit"[23] and the Elvira Cordero Cisneros Award which was created in memory of Sandra Cisneros's
mother.[26] Macondo offers services to member writers such as health insurance and the opportunity to
participate in the Casa Azul Residency Program. The Residency Program provides writers with a
furnished room and office in the Casa Azul, a blue house across the street from where Cisneros lives in
San Antonio, which is also the headquarters of the Macondo Foundation.[24] In creating this program,
Cisneros "imagined the Casa as a space where Macondistas could retreat from the distractions of
everyday life and have a room of his/her own for the process of emotional, intellectual and spiritual
introspection."[27]

Cisneros founded the Alfredo Cisneros del Moral Foundation in 1999. Named in memory of her father,
the foundation "has awarded over $75,500 to writers born in Texas, writing about Texas, or living in
Texas since 2007".[28] Its intention is to honor Cisneros's father's memory by showcasing writers who are
as proud of their craft as Alfredo was of his craft as an upholsterer.[28]

Cisneros co-founded with Bryce Milligan the Annual Texas Small Bookfair, the forerunner to the Inter-
American Bookfair.[29]

Chicano literary movement

Literary critic Claudia Sadowski-Smith has called Cisneros "perhaps the most famous Chicana
writer",[30] and Cisneros has been acknowledged as a pioneer in her literary field as the first female
Mexican-American writer to have her work published by a mainstream publisher. In 1989, The House on
Mango Street, which was originally published by the small Hispanic publishing company Arte Público
Press, was reissued in a second edition by Vintage Press; and in 1991, Woman Hollering Creek was
published by Random House. As Ganz observes, previously, only male Chicano authors had successfully
made the crossover from smaller publishers.[31] That Cisneros had garnered enough attention to be taken
on by Vintage Press said a lot about the possibility for Chicano literature to become more widely
recognized. Cisneros spoke of her success and what it meant for Chicana literature, in an interview on
National Public Radio on 19 September 1991:

I think I can't be happy if I'm the only one that's getting published by Random House when I
know there are such magnificent writers – both Latinos and Latinas, both Chicanos and
Chicanas – in the U.S. whose books are not published by mainstream presses or whom the
 mainstream isn't even aware of. And, you know, if my success means that other presses will
take a second look at these writers ... and publish them in larger numbers, then our ship will
come in.[32]

As a pioneer Chicana author, Cisneros filled a void, by bringing to the fore a genre that had previously
been at the margins of mainstream literature.[33] With her first novel, The House on Mango Street, she
moved away from the poetic style that was common in Chicana literature, at the time, and she began to
define a "distinctive Chicana literary space,” challenging familiar literary forms and addressing subjects
such as gender inequality and the marginalization of cultural minorities.[34] According to literary critic
Alvina E Quintana, The House on Mango Street is a book that has reached beyond the Chicano and
Latino literary communities and is, now, read by people of all ethnicities.[35] Quintana states that
Cisneros's writing is accessible for both Anglo- and Mexican-Americans, alike, since it is free from anger
or accusation, presenting the issues (such as Chicana identity and gender inequalities) in an approachable
way.[36] Cisneros's writing has been influential in shaping both Chicana and feminist literature.[37]
Quintana sees her fiction as a form of social commentary, contributing to a literary tradition that
resembles the work of contemporary cultural anthropologists, in its attempt to authentically represent the
cultural experience of a group of people,[38] and acknowledges Cisneros's contribution to Chicana
feminist aesthetics, by bringing women to the center as empowered protagonists, in much of her work.[39]

Writing style

Bilingualism
Cisneros often incorporates Spanish into her English writing, using Spanish, instead of English, where
she feels that Spanish better conveys the meaning or improves the rhythm of the passage.[40] However,
where possible, she constructs sentences, so non-Spanish speakers can infer the meaning of Spanish
words, from their context.[40] In Woman Hollering Creek and Other Stories Cisneros writes: "La Gritona.
Such a funny name for such a lovely arroyo. But that's what they called the creek that ran behind the
house."[41] Even if the English-speaking reader does not initially know that arroyo means creek, Cisneros
soon translates it in a way that does not interrupt the flow of the text. She enjoys manipulating the two
languages, creating new expressions in English by literally translating Spanish phrases.[40] In the same
book, Cisneros writes: "And at the next full moon, I gave light, Tía Chucha holding up our handsome,
strong-lunged boy."[42] Previous sentences inform the reader that a baby is being born, but only a Spanish
speaker will notice that "I gave light" is a literal translation of the Spanish "dí a luz" which means "I gave
birth." Cisneros joins other Hispanic-American US writers such as Gloria Anzaldúa, Piri Thomas,
Giannina Braschi, Gustavo Pérez Firmat, and Junot Díaz, who create playful linguistic hybrids of Spanish
and English.[43] Cisneros noted on this process: "All of a sudden, something happens to the English,
something really new is happening, a new spice is added to the English language."[40] Spanish always has
a role in Cisneros's work, even when she writes in English. As she discovered, after writing The House on
Mango Street primarily in English, "the syntax, the sensibility, the diminutives, the way of looking at
inanimate objects" were all characteristic of Spanish.[44] For Cisneros, Spanish brings to her work not
only colorful expressions, but also a distinctive rhythm and attitude.[40]

Narrative modes, diction, and apparent simplicity

Cisneros's fiction comes in various forms—as novels, poems, and short stories—by which she challenges
both social conventions, with her "celebratory breaking of sexual taboos and trespassing across the
restrictions that limit the lives and experiences of Chicanas", and literary ones, with her "bold
experimentation with literary voice and her development of a hybrid form that weaves poetry into
prose".[45] Published in 1991, Woman Hollering Creek and Other Stories is a collection of twenty-two
short stories that form a collage of narrative techniques, each serving to engage and affect the reader in a
different way. Cisneros alternates between first person, third person, and stream-of-consciousness
narrative modes, and ranges from brief impressionistic vignettes to longer event-driven stories, and from
highly poetic language to brutally frank realist language. Some stories lack a narrator to mediate between
the characters and the reader; they are instead composed of textual fragments or conversations
"overheard" by the reader. For example, "Little Miracles, Kept Promises" is composed of fictional notes
asking for the blessings of patron saints, and "The Marlboro Man" transcribes a gossiping telephone
conversation between two female characters.

Works by Cisneros can appear simple at first reading, but this is deceptive.[46] She invites the reader to
move beyond the text by recognizing larger social processes within the microcosm of everyday life: the
phone conversation in "The Marlboro Man" is not merely idle gossip, but a text that allows the reader to
dig into the characters' psyches and analyze their cultural influences.[47] Literary critics have noted how
Cisneros tackles complex theoretical and social issues through the vehicle of apparently simple characters
and situations. For example, Ramón Saldívar observes that The House on Mango Street "represents from
the simplicity of childhood vision the enormously complex process of the construction of the gendered
subject".[48] In the same vein, Felicia J. Cruz describes how each individual will interact differently with
Woman Hollering Creek and Other Stories, thus eliciting such varied reader responses as "it is about
growing up", to "it's about a Chicana's growing up", to "it is a critique of patriarchal structures and
exclusionary practices".[47] Cisneros's writing is rich not only for its symbolism and imagery, deemed by
critic Deborah L Madsen to be "both technically and aesthetically accomplished", but also for its social
commentary and power to "evoke highly personal responses".[45][49] this helped her achieve the way she
taught.

Literary themes

Place
When Cisneros describes the aspirations and struggles of Chicanas, the theme of place often emerges.
Place refers not only to her novels' geographic locations, but also to the positions her characters hold,
within their social context. Chicanas frequently occupy Anglo-dominated and male-dominated places,
where they are subject to a variety of oppressive and prejudicial behaviors; one of these places that is of
particular interest to Cisneros is the home.[50] As literary critics Deborah L. Madsen and Ramón Saldívar
have described, the home can be an oppressive place for Chicanas, where they are subjugated to the will
of male heads-of-household, or in the case of their own home, it can be an empowering place, where they
can act autonomously and express themselves, creatively.[50][51] In The House on Mango Street, the
young protagonist, Esperanza, longs to have her own house: "Not a flat. Not an apartment in back. Not a
man's house. Not a daddy's. A house all my own. With my porch and my pillow, my pretty purple
petunias. My books and my stories. My two shoes waiting beside the bed. Nobody to shake a stick at.
Nobody's garbage to pick up after."[52] An aspiring writer, Esperanza yearns for "a space for myself to go,
clean as paper before the poem."[52] She feels discontented and trapped in her family home, and she
witnesses other women in the same position. According to Saldívar, Cisneros communicates, through this
character, that a woman needs her own place, in order to realize her full potential—a home which is not a
site of patriarchal violence, but instead "a site of poetic self-creation."[51] One source of conflict and
grief, for Cisneros's Chicana characters, is that the male-dominated society in which they live denies them
this place. Critics such as Jacqueline Doyle and Felicia J. Cruz have compared this theme in Cisneros's
work to one of the key concepts in Virginia Woolf's famous essay "A Room of One's Own", that "a
woman must have money and a room of her own, if she is to write fiction," or, put another way,
"economic security" and personal liberty are necessary for "artistic production."[53][54]

Cisneros explores the issue of place in relation not only to gender but also to class. As Saldívar has noted,
"Aside from the personal requirement of a gendered woman's space, Esperanza recognizes the collective
requirements of the working poor and the homeless, as well."[55] He refers to Esperanza's determination
not to forget her working-class roots, once she obtains her dream house, and to open her doors to those
who are less fortunate. Esperanza says "Passing bums will ask, Can I come in? I'll offer them the attic,
ask them to stay, because I know how it is to be without a house."[52] According to Saldívar, this
statement of Esperanza's alludes to "the necessity for a decent living space" that is fundamental to all
people, despite the different oppressions they face.[56]

Construction of femininity and female sexuality

As Madsen has described, Cisneros's "effort to negotiate a cross-cultural identity is complicated by the
need to challenge the deeply rooted patriarchal values of both Mexican and American cultures."[57] The
lives of all Cisneros's female characters are affected by how femininity and female sexuality are defined
within this patriarchal value system and they must struggle to rework these definitions.[57] As Cisneros
has said: "There's always this balancing act, we've got to define what we think is fine for ourselves
instead of what our culture says."[58]

Cisneros shows how Chicanas, like women of many other ethnicities, internalize these norms starting at a
young age, through informal education by family members and popular culture. In The House on Mango
Street, for example, a group of girl characters speculate about what function a woman's hips have:
"They're good for holding a baby when you're cooking, Rachel says ... You need them to dance, says
Lucy ... You gotta know how to walk with hips, practice you know."[52] Traditional female roles, such as
childrearing, cooking, and attracting male attention, are understood by Cisneros's characters to be their
biological destiny. However, when they reach adolescence and womanhood, they must reconcile their
expectations about love and sex with their own experiences of disillusionment, confusion and anguish.
Esperanza describes her "sexual initiation"—an assault by a group of Anglo-American boys while
awaiting her friend Sally at the fairground.[59] She feels stricken and powerless after this, but above all
betrayed; not only by Sally, who was not there for her, but "by all the women who ever failed to
contradict the romantic mythology of love and sex".[59] Cisneros illustrates how this romantic mythology,
fueled by popular culture, is often at odds with reality in Woman Hollering Creek and Other Stories,
where multiple references to romantic telenovelas obsessively watched by the female characters are
juxtaposed with the abuse and poverty they face in their own lives.

When Cisneros addresses the subject of female sexuality, she often portrays negative scenarios in which
men exert control over women through control over their sexuality, and explores the gap she perceives
between the real sexual experiences of women and their idealized representation in popular culture.
However, Cisneros also describes female sexuality in extremely positive terms, especially in her poetry.
This is true, for example, of her 1987 volume of poetry My Wicked, Wicked Ways. According to Madsen,
Cisneros refers to herself as "wicked" for having "reappropriated, taken control of, her own sexuality and
the articulation of it – a power forbidden to women under patriarchy".[60] Through these poems she aims
to represent "the reality of female sexuality" so that women readers will recognize the "divisive effects"
of the stereotypes that they are expected to conform to, and "discover the potential for joy in their bodies
that is denied them".[61]

Cisneros breaks the boundary between what is a socially acceptable way for women to act and speak and
what is not, using language and imagery that have a "boisterous humor" and "extrovert energy" and are
even at times "deliberately shocking".[62] Not all readers appreciate this "shocking" quality of some of
Cisneros's work. Both female and male readers have criticized Cisneros for the ways she celebrates her
sexuality, such as the suggestive photograph of herself on the My Wicked, Wicked Ways cover (3rd
Woman Press, 1987).[61] Cisneros says of this photo: "The cover is of a woman appropriating her own
sexuality. In some ways, that's also why it's wicked: the scene is trespassing that boundary by saying 'I
defy you. I'm going to tell my own story.'"[63] Some readers "failed to perceive the transgressive meaning
of the gesture", thinking that she was merely being lewd for shock value, and questioned her legitimacy
as a feminist.[64] Cisneros's initial response to this was dismay, but then she reports thinking "Wait a
second, where's your sense of humor? And why can't a feminist be sexy?"[65]

Construction of Chicana identity

The challenges faced by Cisneros's characters on account of their gender cannot be understood in
isolation from their culture, for the norms that dictate how women and men ought to think and behave are
culturally determined and thus distinct for different cultural groups. Through her works, Cisneros conveys
the experiences of Chicanas confronting the "deeply rooted patriarchal values" of Mexican culture
through interactions not only with Mexican fathers, but the broader community which exerts pressure
upon them to conform to a narrow definition of womanhood and a subservient position to men.[57]

A recurrent theme in Cisneros's work is the triad of figures that writer and theorist Gloria Anzaldúa has
referred to as "Our Mothers": the Virgen de Guadalupe, La Malinche and La Llorona.[66][67] These
symbolic figures are of great importance to identity politics and popular culture in Mexico and the
southwest United States, and have been used, argues theorist Norma Alarcón, as reference points "for
controlling, interpreting, or visualizing women" in Mexican-American culture.[68]

Many theorists, including Jacqueline Doyle, Jean Wyatt, Emma Perez and Cordelia Candelaria, have
argued that the gender identity of Mexican and Chicana women is complexly constructed in reference to
these three figures.[69] La Virgen de Guadalupe, a Catholic icon of the manifestation of the Virgin Mary
in the Americas, is revered in Mexico as a "nurturing and inspiring mother and maiden".[70] La Malinche,
the indigenous mistress and intermediary of conquistador Hernán Cortés, has according to Wyatt "become
the representative of a female sexuality at once passive, "rapeable," and always already guilty of
betrayal".[71] Cisneros describes the problematic dichotomy of the virgin and the whore presented by
these two figures: "We're raised in a Mexican culture that has two role models: La Malinche and la Virgen
de Guadalupe. And you know that's a hard route to go, one or the other, there's no in-betweens."[72]
Madsen has noted that these 'good' and 'bad' archetypes are further complicated by the perception, held by
many Chicana feminists, that they would be guilty of betraying their people, like La Malinche, if they
attempt to define their femininity in more "Anglo" terms.[73] Through her work, Cisneros critiques the
pressures Chicanas face to suppress their sexuality or channel it into socially acceptable forms so as to
not be labeled "Malinchista[s] ... corrupted by gringa influences which threaten to splinter [their]
people".[74]

The third figure, La Llorona, who derives from a centuries-old Mexican/Southwestern folktale, is "a
proud young girl [who] marries above her station and is so enraged when her husband takes a mistress of
his own class that she drowns their children in the river".[75] She dies grief-stricken by the edge of the
river after she is unable to retrieve her children and it is claimed that she can be heard wailing for them in
the sound of the wind and water.[75] These entities, from the gentle and pure Virgen de Guadalupe, to the
violated and treacherous la Malinche, to the eternally grieving la Llorona give rise to a "fragmentary
subjectivity" often experienced by Chicanas, and their need to come to terms with them, renegotiate them
on their own terms, or reject them altogether.[76]

The three "Mothers" come out most clearly in Woman Hollering Creek and Other Stories. In the stories
"Never Marry a Mexican" and "Woman Hollering Creek", the female protagonists grapple with these
"Mexican icons of sexuality and motherhood that, internalized, seem to impose on them a limited and
even negative definition of their own identities as women".[71] The protagonist in "Never Marry a
Mexican" is haunted by the myth of la Malinche, who is considered a whore and a traitor, and defies la
Malinche's passive sexuality with her own aggressive one.[71] In "Woman Hollering Creek" the
protagonist reinvents the la Llorona myth when she decides to take charge of her own future, and that of
her children, and discovers that the grito of the myth, which is the Spanish word for the sound made by la
Llorona, can be interpreted as a "joyous holler" rather than a grieving wail.[3] It is the borderland, that
symbolic middle ground between two cultures, which "offers a space where such a negotiation with fixed
gender ideals is at least possible".[77]

Borderlands
Even though Cisneros does not explicitly locate her stories and novels on the Mexico-U.S. border,
Sadowski-Smith identifies the concept as perhaps Cisneros's most salient theme due to the constant
border crossings, both real and metaphorical, of characters in all of her works.[78] The House on Mango
Street takes place in Chicago where the narrator lives, and in Mexico City where she visits extended
family. Caramelo primarily takes place in those settings as well, but part of the book details the narrator's
experiences as a teenager in San Antonio, TX. Various characters in Woman Hollering Creek and Other
Stories also make trips to Mexico to reunite with family members. However, to quote literary critics Jesús
Benito and Ana María Manzanas, the "image of the border has become fully meaningful not only when
we consider it as a physical line but when we decenter it and liberate it from the notion of space to
encompass notions of sex, class, gender, ethnicity, identity, and community."[79] Cisneros frequently
divorces the border from its strictly geographic meaning, using it metaphorically to explore how Chicana
identity is an amalgamation of both Mexican and Anglo-American cultures. The border represents the
everyday experiences of people who are neither fully from one place nor the other; at times the border is
fluid and two cultures can coexist harmoniously within a single person, but at other times it is rigid and
there is an acute tension between them. Literary critic Katherine Payant has analyzed the border metaphor
in Woman Hollering Creek and Other Stories, which manifests in references to the Chicana/o characters'
Mexican roots and the (im)migration between the two countries, the recurrence of overlapping pre-
Columbian, mestizo and Southwestern Chicano myths, and the portrayal of Chicanas/os as "straddling
two or three cultures."[80] Payant makes use of Gloria Anzaldúa's concept of living "on the borderlands"
to describe the experience of Cisneros's Chicana characters who, in addition to their struggle to overcome
patriarchal constructs of their gender and sexual identity, must negotiate linguistic and cultural
boundaries.[81]

Personal life
Cisneros practices Buddhism[82] and is queer, the latter of which is a theme she alludes to in her
work.[83][84]

Awards
At a ceremony in September 2016 was awarded a 2015 National Medal of Arts.[85] In 2019, PEN
America awarded her the PEN/Nabokov Award for Achievement in International Literature.[86] In 2023,
the Dayton Literary Peace Prize Foundation named her as the year's winner of the Ambassador Richard
C. Holbrooke Distinguished Achievement Award.[87]

Sandra Cisneros received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts in 1981 and 1988,[88]
and in 1985 was presented with the American Book Award by the Before Columbus Foundation for The
House on Mango Street.[89] Subsequently, she received a Frank Dobie Artists Fellowship,[90] and came
first and second in the Segundo Concurso Nacional del Cuento Chicano, sponsored by the University of
Arizona.[91]

She has further received the Quality Paperback Book Club New Voices Award,[90] the Anisfield-Wolf
Book Award,[92] the PEN Center West Award for best fiction,[90] and the Lannan Foundation Literary
Award for Woman Hollering Creek and Other Stories.[90] This book was selected as the noteworthy book
of the year by both The New York Times and The American Library Journal, and an anthology of erotic
poetry, Loose Woman, won the Mountain & Plains Booksellers' Award.[93]

Cisneros was recognized by the State University of New York, receiving an honorary doctorate from
Purchase in 1993[18] and a MacArthur fellowship in 1995.[94] In 2003, Caramelo was highly regarded by
several journals including The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the San Francisco Chronicle, the
Chicago Tribune, and The Seattle Times, which led to her Premio Napoli Award in 2005;[95] the novel
also was shortlisted for the Dublin International IMPAC award,[96] and was nominated for the Orange
Prize in England.[97] In 2003, Cisneros became part of the second group of recipients of the newly
formed Texas Cultural Trust's Texas Medal of Arts.[98][99][100] In 2016, the University of North Carolina
at Chapel Hill awarded Cisneros an honorary Doctor of Letters.[101] She was honored with the Chicago
Literary Hall of Fame's Fuller Award in 2021.[102]

The Archives and Special Collections at Amherst College holds some of her papers.
 Chicano movement
Chicano literature
Latino literature
American literature in Spanish
American literature
Bilingual Review Press

Bibliography

Books
Cisneros, Sandra (1983). The House on Mango Street. Houston: Arte Público. ISBN 978-0-
934770-20-0.. Second edition: Cisneros, Sandra (1989). The House on Mango Street. New
York: Vintage. ISBN 978-0-679-73477-2..
Cisneros, Sandra (1987). My Wicked, Wicked Ways. Bloomington, IN: Third Woman Press.
ISBN 978-0-943219-01-1.
Cisneros, Sandra (1991). Woman Hollering Creek and Other Stories. New York: Random
House. ISBN 978-0-394-57654-1.
Cisneros, Sandra (1994). Hairs = Pelitos. New York: Knopf. ISBN 978-0-679-89007-2.
Cisneros, Sandra (1994). Loose Woman: Poems. New York: Knopf. ISBN 978-0-679-41644-
9.
Cisneros, Sandra (2002). Caramelo, or, Puro cuento. New York: Knopf. ISBN 978-1-4000-
4150-3.
Cisneros, Sandra (2004). Vintage Cisneros (https://archive.org/details/vintagecisneros00cis
n). New York: Vintage. ISBN 978-1-4000-3405-5.
Cisneros, Sandra (2011). Bravo Bruno. Italy: La Nuova Frontiera. (Italian)
Cisneros, Sandra (2012). Have You Seen Marie? (https://archive.org/details/haveyouseenm
arie00cisn). New York: Alfred A. Knopf. ISBN 978-0307597946.
Cisneros, Sandra (2015). A House of My Own. New York: Knopf. ISBN 978-0-385-35133-1.
Cisneros, Sandra (2018). Puro Amor. Sarabande. ISBN 978-1946448217.
Cisneros, Sandra (2021). Martita, I Remember You/Martita, te recuerdo. Vintage.
ISBN 9780593313664.

Poetry
Collections and chapbooks

Cisneros, Sandra (1980). Bad boys. San Jose: Mango.

— (2022). Woman without shame.

List of poems
 Title Year First published Reprinted/collected

Cisneros, Sandra (September 7, 2020).

"Still-life with potatoes, pearls, raw meat,
Still-life with potatoes,
rhinestones, lard, and horse hooves" (http
pearls, raw meat,
2020 s://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1994/0
rhinestones, lard, and
5/23/still-life-with-potatoes-pearls-raw-mea
horse hooves
t-rhinestones-lard-and-horse-hooves). The
New Yorker. 96 (26): 44–45.

Cisneros, Sandra (August 22, 2022). "Tea

dance, Provincetown, 1982" (https://www.n
Tea dance,
2022 ewyorker.com/magazine/2022/08/22/tea-d
Provincetown, 1982
ance-provincetown-1982). The New
Yorker. 98 (25): 56–57.

Contributions
Days and Nights of Love and War (2000). By Eduardo Galeano. Contribution by Sandra
Cisneros.
Family Pictures/ Cuadros de Familia (2005). By Carmen Lomas Garza. Introduction by
Sandra Cisneros
Emergency Tacos: Seven Poets Con Picante (2007). By Carlos Cumpian, Sandra Cisneros,
Carlos Cortez, Beatriz Badikian, Cynthia Gallaher, Margarita Lopez-Castro, Raul Nino.
Things We Do Not Talk About: Exploring Latino/a Literature through Essays and Interviews
(2014). By Daniel Olivas. Interview of Sandra Cisneros featured in book.

Essays and reporting

Cisneros, Sandra (Autumn 2009). "An ofrenda for my mother" (https://web.archive.org/web/
20120927020317/http://www.granta.com/Archive/108/An-Ofrenda-for-my-Mother/1). Granta
(108): 219–224. Archived from the original (http://www.granta.com/Archive/108/An-Ofrenda-f
or-my-Mother/1) on 2012-09-27.

Bibliographical Resources
Works and editions: https://faculty.ucmerced.edu/mmartin-
rodriguez/index_files/vhCisnerosSandra.htm

See also
Hispanic and
Latino Americans
portal

Mexicans in Chicago
Macondo Writers Workshop
Chicana feminism
American literature in Spanish
Chicano literature
 Latino poetry

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Notes
Anzaldúa, Gloria (1987), Borderlands: The New Mestiza = La Frontera (https://archive.org/d
etails/borderlandslafro00anza), San Francisco: Spinsters / Aunt Lute, ISBN 978-0-933216-
25-9.
Alarcón, Norma (1982), "Chicana's Feminist Literature: A Re-vision Through Malintzin/or
Malintzin: Putting Flesh Back on the Object" (https://archive.org/details/thisbridgecalle000m
ora/page/182), in Moraga, Cherrie; Anzaldúa, Gloria (eds.), This Bridge Called My Back:
Writings by Radical Women of Color, Watertown, MA: Persephone, pp. 182–189 (https://arc
hive.org/details/thisbridgecalle000mora/page/182), ISBN 978-0-930436-10-0
Benito, Jesús; Manzanas, Ana María (2002), "Border(lands) and Border Writing:
Introductory Essay", in Benito, Jesús; Manzanas, Ana María (eds.), Literature and Ethnicity
in the Cultural Borderlands, Amsterdam: Rodopi, pp. 1–21, ISBN 978-90-420-1509-8
Candelaria, Cordelia (1980), "La Malinche, Feminist Prototype", Frontiers: A Journal of
Women Studies, 5 (2): 1–6, doi:10.2307/3346027 (https://doi.org/10.2307%2F3346027),
JSTOR 3346027 (https://www.jstor.org/stable/3346027).
Gonzalez, Christopher Thomas, "Hospitable Imaginations: Contemporary Latino/a Literature
and the Pursuit of a Readership: Sandra Cisneros, Junot Diaz, Giannina Braschi", Ohio,
2012.
Candelaria, Cordelia (1993), "Letting La Llorona Go, or Re/reading History's Tender
Mercies", Heresies, 7 (3): 111–115
Cisneros, Sandra (1986), "Cactus Flowers: In Search of Tejana Feminist Poetry", Third
Woman, 3 (1–2), University of California, Berkeley: 73–80
Cruz, Felicia J. (2001), "On the 'Simplicity' of Sandra Cisneros's House on Mango Street" (ht
tp://muse.jhu.edu/journals/modern_fiction_studies/v047/47.4cruz.html), Modern Fiction
Studies, 47 (4): 910–946, doi:10.1353/mfs.2001.0078 (https://doi.org/10.1353%2Fmfs.2001.
0078), S2CID 162197208 (https://api.semanticscholar.org/CorpusID:162197208), retrieved
2008-10-31. (Project MUSE subscription required for online access)
Dasenbrock, Reed Way (1992), "Interview: Sandra Cisneros" (https://archive.org/details/inte
rviewswithwr0000juss/page/287), in Dasenbrock, Reed Way (ed.), Interviews with Writers of
the Post-Colonial World, Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, pp. 287–306 (https://archi
ve.org/details/interviewswithwr0000juss/page/287), ISBN 978-0-87805-572-2
Doyle, Jacqueline (Winter 1994), "More Room of Her Own: Sandra Cisneros's The House
on Mango Street", MELUS, 19 (4), The Society for the Study of the Multi-Ethnic Literature of
the United States (MELUS): 5–35, doi:10.2307/468200 (https://doi.org/10.2307%2F468200),
JSTOR 468200 (https://www.jstor.org/stable/468200). (JSTOR subscription required for
online access)
 Doyle, Jacqueline (1996), "Haunting the Borderlands: La Llorona in Sandra Cisneros's
Woman Hollering Creek", Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies, 16 (1), University of
Nebraska Press: 53–70, doi:10.2307/3346922 (https://doi.org/10.2307%2F3346922),
JSTOR 3346922 (https://www.jstor.org/stable/3346922). (JSTOR subscription required for
online access)
Ganz, Robin (Spring 1994), "Sandra Cisneros: Border Crossings and Beyond", MELUS, 19
(1), The Society for the Study of the Multi-Ethnic Literature of the United States (MELUS):
19–29, doi:10.2307/467785 (https://doi.org/10.2307%2F467785), JSTOR 467785 (https://w
ww.jstor.org/stable/467785). (JSTOR subscription required for online access.)
Harrington, Patricia (Spring 1988), "Mother of Death, Mother of Rebirth: The Mexican Virgin
of Guadalupe", Journal of the American Academy of Religion, 56 (1): 25–50,
doi:10.1093/jaarel/lvi.1.25 (https://doi.org/10.1093%2Fjaarel%2Flvi.1.25).
Madsen, Deborah L. (2000), Understanding Contemporary Chicana Literature, Columbia,
SC: University of South Carolina Press, ISBN 978-1-57003-379-7
Payant, Katherine (1999), "Borderland Themes in Sandra Cisneros's Woman Hollering
Creek" (https://archive.org/details/immigrantexperie0000unse/page/95), in Payant,
Katherine B.; Rose, Toby (eds.), The Immigrant Experience in North American Literature:
Carving Out a Niche, Westport, CT: Greenwood, pp. 95–108 (https://archive.org/details/immi
grantexperie0000unse/page/95), ISBN 978-0-313-30891-8.
Perez, Emma (1993), "Sexuality and Discourse: Notes from a Chicana Survivor" (https://arc
hive.org/details/chicanacriticali00alar/page/159), in Zavella, Patricia; Alarcón, Norma;
Castro, Rafaela; Perez, Emma; Pesquera, Beatriz (eds.), Chicana Critical Issues, Berkeley:
Third Woman Press, pp. 159–184 (https://archive.org/details/chicanacriticali00alar/page/15
9), ISBN 978-0-943219-09-7.
Quintana, Alvina E. (1996), Home Girls: Chicana Literary Voices (https://archive.org/details/
homegirlschicana0000quin), Philadelphia: Temple University Press, ISBN 978-1-56639-373-
7.
Rodríguez Aranda, Pilar E. (Spring 1990), "On the Solitary Fate of Being Mexican, Female,
Wicked and Thirty-three: An Interview with Writer Sandra Cisneros", The Americas Review,
18 (1): 65–80.
Sadowski-Smith, Claudia (2008), Border Fictions: Globalization, Empire, and Writing at the
Boundaries of the United States, Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, ISBN 978-0-
8139-2689-6.
Sagel, Jim (1991), "Sandra Cisneros: Interview", Publishers Weekly: 74–75.
Saldívar, Ramón (1990), Chicano Narrative: The Dialectics of Difference (https://archive.org/
details/chicanonarrative0000sald), Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press, ISBN 978-
0-299-12474-8
Wyatt, Jean (Autumn 1995), "On Not Being La Malinche: Border Negotiations of Gender in
Sandra Cisneros's 'Never Marry a Mexican' and 'Woman Hollering Creek' ", Tulsa Studies in
Women's Literature, 14 (2), University of Tulsa: 243–271, doi:10.2307/463899 (https://doi.or
g/10.2307%2F463899), JSTOR 463899 (https://www.jstor.org/stable/463899). (JSTOR
subscription required for online access.)
Woolf, Virginia (1998), A Room of One's Own, and Three Guineas, Oxford: Oxford
University Press, ISBN 978-0-19-283484-3.

Further reading
Art at Our Doorstep: San Antonio Writers and Artists featuring Sandra Cisneros. Edited by
Nan Cuba and Riley Robinson. Trinity University Press, 2008
Carmen Haydée Rivera: Border Crossings and Beyond: The Life and Works of Sandra
Cisneros. MacMillan, 2009.
 Christopher Thomas Gonzalez: Hospitable Imaginations: Contemporary Latino/a Literature
and the Pursuit of a Readership. on Sandra Cisneros, Gloria Anzaldúa, Giannina Braschi,
Piri Thomas, and Junot Díaz. OhioLink, 2012
Pérez, Ricardo F. Vivancos (2013). Radical Chicana Poetics. doi:10.1057/9781137343581
(https://doi.org/10.1057%2F9781137343581). ISBN 978-1-349-46578-1.
Hartmut Lutz: Not "Neither-Nor" but "Both, and More?" A Transnational Reading of Chicana
and Metis Autobiografictions by Sandra Cisneros and Howard Adams, in idem,
Contemporary achievements. Contextualizing Canadian Aboriginal literatures. Studies in
anglophone literatures and cultures, 6. Wißner, Augsburg 2015, pp 241 – 260

External links
Official website (https://www.sandracisneros.com/)
Sandra Cisneros Collection, Amherst College Archives and Special Collections (https://archi
vesspace.amherst.edu/repositories/2/resources/111)
Sandra Cisneros speaks with Francisco Macías of the Library of Congress for the National
Book Festival, 2012 (https://www.loc.gov/podcasts/bookfest12/podcast_cisneros.html)
Daniel Olivas Interviews Sandra Cisneros at the Los Angeles Review of Books (http://larevie
wofbooks.org/interview/three-questions-for-sandra-cisneros-regarding-her-new-book-have-y
ou-seen-marie)
Sandra Cisneros (http://www.makers.com/sandra-cisneros) Video produced by Makers:
Women Who Make America
Sandra Cisneros (https://lccn.loc.gov/n84021632) at Library of Congress, with 19 library
catalog records

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