Sandra Cisneros
Yes, But No.
The 1980’s
The Canon allowed for new voices to be
heard in American literature that had been
previously been silenced by racism,
poverty and gender marginalization.
Most Chicanos had been outsiders twice
over and were not able to conform to
literary standards or maintain their own
voice.
However, she was able to jump into the
explosive bandwagon of the opening
canon.
Humble Beginnings
The only girl out of seven children,
Cisneros was born in December of
1954 in Chicago.
Her dad’s family came from extreme
wealth before the Mexican revolution
and had a fine house in Mexico City.
Her great-grandfather even played
piano for the President of Mexico at
his Mansion in Mexico city.
Humble Beginnings
However, they were big gamblers and
lost a lot of their money gambling.
Her grandfather went into the military
and survived the Mexican revolution.
This is the story of Narciso and
Soledad in Caramelo.
Humble Beginnings
Pg.132, 174, 188,192 & 196
This is very similar to the
Bildungsroman, except your main
character, Celaya, is not only female
but Chicano.
These stories are in place to create a
rich texture of belonging and identity
for the main character so she can find
a home within her culture.
Humble Beginnings
Cisneros’ father, Alfredo, was
supposed to graduate college but
dropped out and ran away to the
United States.
His dad was furious because that was
his life savings—educating his son.
Humble Beginnings
Pages: 198,205,210,222
These tell the story of Inocencio
Reyes and Zoila Reyna, Cisneros,
parents.
A one day stop over in Chicago
turned into a month and then a
lifetime because he fell in love with
Cisneros’ mother, Elvira Cordero.
Humble Beginnings
Of her mother’s family, Cisneros simply
states that her history is “blurred and
broken and that it is “simple and much
more humble that that of [her] father’s, but
in many ways more admirable (Cisneros
67).”
Since her father was now regretting
throwing away his education, he now had
to find a way to support his family and so
he learned to be an upholsterer.
Travel
Once established in this business,
they began migrating regularly back
and forth from Chicago and Mexico
throughout her childhood on a
voluntary basis.
Cisneros describes this as almost
obsessive and deeply rooted in his
relationship with mother.
Travel
Cisneros describes her grandmother as
a “hysterical woman, oversentimental, spoiled (Come to think of
it, she was not unlike myself.) She
had favorites. Her best baby was my
father whom she held tight to. As a
result, we returned to Chicago, we
had to find a new place to live, a new
school. (55-56).”
Travel
As explained in Caramelo, this was
difficult because it constantly left them
without any financial security and
constantly starting over. Furthermore,
it left them without creditability for a
long time.
Travel
For Cisneros, it left her introverted
and she often read and studied as a
way of compensating for her
loneliness. It only fueled her desire to
be a writer. She felt out because each
of her brothers had a built in play
mate and she had no one.
Educational Values
Despite the fact that it was her dad
who had some college, it was her
mom who had made sure that Sandra
Cisneros had her own library card
even before she could read.
Unlike most Hispanic children, she
had more free time to read, write and
study than others. Her mother saw to
that for her.
Educational Values
She felt that if the sister who was born
after her (and died) had lived, she
might have had a regular playmate.
Also, if they had lived in the same
place all the time.
1966 they had borrowed enough
money to buy a house and end the
nomadic lifestyle (she was eleven).
Permanent Locations
While this still took place in Chicago, the
North Side in a place called Humboldt
Park, in Caramelo, they move to Texas.
Pgs 299, 311,318.
While these people are also reflected in her
other and original work, House on Mango
Street, she uses the experience again
which is common and even necessary in
the Bildungsroman.
Beginning as a Writer
At the age of ten, she began to write her first poem
but then doesn’t write any more until her
sophomore year of high school.
An English teacher and poet, helped her recapture
her love of poetry.
“Somewhere here, amidst the tumult of Viet Nam
War and ecological awareness, I began my first
poems. There were filled with pleas for peace and
saving the environment. Here and there I three in
a few catchy words like ecology and Coca-Cola.
Despite all of this, I continued writing and began to
be known as the poet” (Cisneros 58).”
Undergraduate
While at Loyola University, she didn’t
do much writing again until her junior
year when she took a Creative Writing
class.
She was encouraged to study at the
famous Iowa’s Writer’s Workshop
where she originally began to study
with poet Donald Justice.
Iowa Writer’s Workshop
However, he left to go on sabbatical
and she began feeling depressed,
isolated and homesick.
She also began to feel that the
workshop was “was East Coast
pretentious and operated totally
without mercy or kind words ( qtd in
Perloff 89).
Iowa Writer’s Workshop
She left all she was doing was
imitating certain kinds of writing and
really finding her own voice.
That spring, she enrolled in a seminar
where they were discussing The
Poetics of Space by Gaston
Bachelard in a class called “Memory
and Imagination.”
Iowa Writer’s Workshop
Cisneros realized what had been
missing—a sense of home and even
more than that, a voice about that
home—since her childhood was so
displaced and she felt displaced in
Iowa.
She talked about this experience
often in interviews about writing and
how she reconnected with herself.
Iowa Writer’s Workshop
“What [do I] know? What could I know? My
classmates were from the best schools in
the country. They had been bred as fine
hothouse flowers. I was a yellow weed
among the city’s cracks.”
It was then she had learned to write about
something her classmates could not
understand or have experienced and could
never experience. She wrote about being
Chicano.
Iowa Writer’s Workshop
1978, she earned her MFA from Iowa and
then taught Creative Writing for three years
to (former) high school drop outs at
Chicago’s Latino Youth Alternative High
School.
1984 House on Mango Street was
published (even made into a movie)
My Wicked, Wicked, Ways was published
in 1987 to enthusiastic reviews.
Writing Career
She teaches many writers in
residence programs through out the
country as well as gives readings.
1991 Woman Hollering Creek was
published which is a collection of
short stories with Random House.
This makes her a “real” author and
not obscure writer any longer.
Writing Career
When asked by NPR about her success as the
only Chicano with a major publishing house in
1991, she replied: “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—Latinos and Latinas, both Chicanos and
Chicanas in the U.S. whose presses or whom the
mainstream isn’t even aware of. And, you know, if
my success means that other presses will take a
second at these writers…and publish them in
larger numbers then our ship will come in.”
Writing Career
2002 Caramelo came out as probably
the most significant book in Chicano
literature according to critics.
It was also a national best seller
proving that Americans of all races
want to learn more as well as enjoy
books about the Latino/Latina culture.
Critics
Most of them feel her descriptions are
a mixture of prose (fiction) and poetry.
She feels that if she has the words to
express her idea, it’s fiction and if she
doesn’t, it’s poetry.
Choices
While Cisneros enjoys her life and her
family, she refuses to settle down and
get married. She feels that she owns
her own life and enjoys her freedom
as a person to move along without
emotional restraints. Something her
multiple family members don’t
understand.