A Latina of many colors, Sandra Cisneros

Latino Leaders: The National Magazine of the Successful American Latino, April-May, 2004 by Miriam Martinez

Her works have not only left their mark among academics but also in the lives of many readers. The House on Mango Street, Woman Hollering Creek, and her long awaited novel Caramelo, masterfully deliver her own voice and tell of a meaningful part of America's history.

Meeting Sandra Cisneros at Tortes Tam Haven in her adopted office in San Antonio over some tacos, the phone ringing at the counter, the noise and the spicy aromas from the taqueria's busy kitchen, reveal that being one of the most remarkable voices of contemporary literature in the US does not necessarily mean an unapproachable intellectual immersed in dense theories and unable to relate to everyday things and real people.

Sandra Cisneros is just the opposite, highly energetic and an eager convensationalist. The framework of her poetry and fiction are precisely everyday many Latinas have experienced: restrictions on the grounds of race, class, and gender, but it also portrays a burgeoning sensuality, women's solidarity and humor. Cisneros has made it into the mainstream literary, tradition of her country and has surmounted the "minority writer" label, but she still has a chamaca spirit, fortunately.

She has been a sort of medium that channels the voices of women like Lucy, Chayo, Lupe, or Esperanza, the leading character of the book that propelled her to fame, The House on Mango Street. The book has sold over 2 million copies and is required reading at all levels ranging from elementary to university level.

Book magazine's Dagoherto Gilb said of her staggering success, "I knew Sandra Cisneros before she was Sandra Cisneros. She's like my sister. We came up together but her rise went much higher than mine. Talking about Sandra Cisneros these days is like talking about Frida Kahlo."

Sandra Cisneros, like Esperanza, also grew up in Chicago. Born to a Mexican lather and a Mexican-American mother, Cisneros was the third child and only daughter in a family of seven children. She describes herself as a (laughter with six father. "My father always defined my gender to my brothers. He'd say, 'This is your sister, you must take care of her.'"

Sandra's father emigrated to the US, where he spent some time looking for a place to settle until he eventually arrived in Chicago, where the Mexican community was striving to make some bucks. Her Mexican-American mother had to give up school for a job at a couple of factories. This was a time when the Cisneroses led some sort of a Gypsy life. To save on rent, the family spent summers back in Mexico with the grandparents. But going back to Chicago meant struggling to find a place to live in a variety of ethnic neighborhoods sharing space with Italians, Puerto Ricans, blacks, and Poles. Finally in 1965 at age ten, Sandra and her family found a somewhat fixed place on Campbell Avenue near Humboldt Park.

Sandra's father became her reference for Mexican popular culture, Mexican comic books such as Familia Burron, the music of Agustin Lara, Mexican cinema, and fotonovelas. But it was her mother who exposed the children to arts and literature. Every time they had the chance, her mother would take the kids to free concerts in the park and on museum visits. "She was the more educated of the two, even though she was self educated, didn't go beyond 9th grade and working class, she passed my father as far as curiosity and hunger for learning is concerned. My father had studied a year in UNAM (Mexico City's vast national university) when he left Mexico, and then he had to learn a trade when he mine to the US.

"My mother used to take us all to the public library. We didn't have books because we couldn't afford them. I loved books. Even before I could read I loved the public library, maybe because it was quiet, unlike my house, where the radio and TV were on, and my brothers were fighting. I just loved the place," recalls Cisneros.

Growing up in Chicago, Sandra attended crowded Catholic schools where the nuns and teachers were oppressive, unsupportive, and, worst of all, very racist. An example of such an experience is skillfully portrayed in Eleven, a short story where an abusive teacher forces an eleven year old to wear an abandoned sweater that is not even her own.

"I suffered a lot when I yeas a child, feeling things. But I also experienced beautiful things very deeply, not just sorrows. As a kid I used to look at a flower, and I'd feel this unity with the universe. I would look at a tree, and he would talk to me. That introversion was good; it shaped me as a writer."

Sandra became an introspective child who found comfort in Dickens, Carroll, the Brothers Grimm, and Andersen. "I think, in a way, I was collecting my own mythology," and "adds, "along with that I was coloring in my father's fotonovela magazines. With a little red pencil dipped in spit, I would color lipstick on all the ladies' pictures."

Sandra knew she wanted to attend college when she was in 5th grade. At that age, she had some sort of a vision. "I kind of visualized my name in the card catalogue. I wanted my name, my family name on the spine of a book. This was very important to me because my brothers 'always kept telling me that I was not a real Cisneros, because I would get married and lose my name. I think that's why I'm single," she chuckled her almost-childlike laughter. That was a secret she kept to herself for some time.