Sandra Cisneros is an American writer. Sandra is known for her first novel, The House on Mango Street, published in 1983 and her short story collection Women Hollering Creek and Other Stories published in 1991. The works of Sandra Cisneros deal with emerging subject positions and experiments with literary forms. Cisneros grew up in economic inequality and cultural hybridity that caused her to write unique stories.
Sandra Cisneros received many awards that include the National Endowment for the Art Fellowship. She is also regarded as one of the key writers in Chicana literature.
The early life of Sandra Cisneros provided her with many experiences that she talked about later in her works. She feels isolated as she grew up as an only daughter in a family of six brothers. She constantly migrated between the United States and Mexico with her family. This creates a sense of straddling two countries, yet not belonging to any particular culture.
The works of Cisneros are focused on the formation of Chicana identity. In her works, she explores the challenges one feels when they are caught between the Anglo-American and Mexican cultures, facing the misogynist attitudes prevailing in both cultures, and poverty.
Cisneros is well-known for her discerning social critique and influential prose style not only in Chicano and Latino communities but also around the world. Her novel, The House on Mango Street, is translated worldwide. It is also taught in the American classroom as a coming-of-age novel.
Cisneros has secured different professional positions. She worked as a counselor, a teacher, a college recruiter, an arts administrator, and a poet-in-the-schools. She also maintained a strong commitment to literary causes and Chicano communities. She also established a Macondo Writers Workshop in 1998.
It was a source of socially conscious workshops for writers. She also founded the Alfredo Cisneros Del Moral Foundation in 2000. The foundation gives awards to talented writers of Texas. She is currently living in Mexico.
A Short Biography of Sandra Cisneros
Sandra Cisneros was born in Chicago on 20th December 1954. Even though she spent her early life in Chicago, her family would often visit the relatives of her father in Chicago. This made her feel displaced in her childhood. In an interview in 1987, Cisneros said that she never felt any sense of attraction of connection to Chicago.
Cisneros received her early education in Catholic school. She later attended Chicago’s Loyola University. She was admitted to the prestigious Writer’s Workshop at the University of Iowa in 1976. In 1978, she was awarded an M.F.A. degree.
Career and Writing
Most of the classmates of Cisneros at Iowa were people who belonged to the well-off and privileged backgrounds. They belong to the descendants of European immigrants in the United States. When Cisneros started her writing career, she used their kinds of characters, subjects, and setting in her works.
However, she did not feel satisfied with the results, and she decided to rebel by writing about the neighborhood in which she grew up, and the people who were her friends, neighbors, and relatives. And she started working on The House on Mango Street.
For several years, Cisneros was unable to complete the book. However, in the meanwhile, she taught at high school and served as a minority student counselor and a college recruiter. Cisneros visited Greece for one year in 1982 after winning a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship. She served as artist-in-residence at Foundation Michael Karolyi in France.
In 1984, she came back to the United States. She published her first novel, The House on Mango Street, in Arte Publico Press at The University of Houston.
In the following years, Cisneros was writing both poetry and prose and held various positions in universities. She became widely known in 1991 with the publication of the story collection Women Hollering Creek and Other Stories and the reissuing of The House on Mango Street. Her books were quickly reviewed and found their way to the literature classes in university.
After September 2000, Cisneros did not publish more fiction in book form except for a bilingual expansion for young readers of a section from the novel The House of Mango Streets. She also wrote poetry books that include Bad Boys, My Wicked, Wicked Ways, and Loose Woman.
She also contributed to different periodicals, including Glamour, Contact II, Los Angeles Times, Revista Chicano-Requena, New York Times, and Village Voice.
Recognition and Awards
Cisneros received two National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships awards in 1982 and 1988. The also received the American Book Award in 1985 for The House on Mango Street from the Before Columbus Foundation, the Paisano Dobie Fellowship in 1986.
Along with these, she was also awarded the first and second prize in Segundo Concurso Nacional Award; the Lannan Foundation Literary Award in 1991; a MacArthur fellowship in 1995; and an honorary doctorate from the State University of New York.
Sandra Cisneros’ Writing Style
Critics praised Sandra Cisneros for various reasons. She is recognized for the authenticity of the experiences and voice of her characters and the marvelous simplicity of her style. The ordinary readers find her works as funny, direct, moving, and true to the basic human level.
He proses style in the works such as “Woman Hollering Creek” and Other Stories, and The House on Mango Street is often compared to poetry. The following are the characteristics of the writing style of Sandra Cisneros.
Bilingualism
The readers often see Spanish in the English writings of Sandra Cisneros. Cisneros often substitutes Spanish words for English words where she feels that Spanish words better conveys the contextual meaning and advances the rhythm of a passage. However, she constructs sentences in a way that the non-Spanish speakers can easily infer the sense of the Spanish words from the context.
For example, in the short story collection, Woman Hollering Creek and Other Stories, Sandra 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.” If the non-Spanish readers do not know that the Spanish word “arroyo” means creek, she soon translates the word in the following sentence in a way that it does not interject the flow of the text.
Sandra Cisneros enjoys operating two languages, thus creating expressions in English by translating Spanish phrases. In the same collection, Woman Hollering Creek and Other Stories, Sandra writes: “And at the next full moon, I gave light, Tía Chucha holding up our handsome, strong-lunged boy.”
In the first sentence, the readers re informed that the baby is born; however, only Spanish readers are able to understand that the literal translation of “di a luz” gives light,” which metaphorically means “I gave birth.”
Cisneros is among other Hispanic American U.S. writers such as Piri Thomas, Gloria Anzaldua, Gustavo Perez, Giannina Braschi, and Junot Diaz, who creates a lively linguistic hybrid of English and Spanish. In this process, Sandra Cisneros notes that: “All of a sudden something happens to the English, something really new is happening, a new spice is added to the English language.”
In Cisneros’s works, Spanish always play an important role even when she writes in English. Even though her debut novel The House on Mango Street is primarily written in English, the sensibility, the syntax, the way of looking at inanimate objects, and the diminutives were resembling Spanish.
Spanish, for Cisneros, brings colorful expression to not only her work but also a distinctive attitude and rhythm.
Narrative Modes
The fiction works of Sandra Cisneros are in various forms. For instance, she has written novels, short stories, and poems, through her different forms, she challenges the social conventions. She breaks the social taboos of trespassing across the restrictions that bound the experiences and lives of Chicano people. She also challenges the literary conventions with her bold experimentation with her hybrid form and literary voice that weaves poetry into prose.
Woman Hollering Creek and Other Stories, published in 1991, is a short story collection of twenty-two short stories. Cisneros employed a collage narrative technique in which each of the stories serves to engage and affect the readers in a totally different way.
The narratives of Cisneros alternate between the first person, third person, and the stream-of-consciousness narrative modes. These narratives range between short impressionistic vignettes to longer stories that are driven by events, and from highly poetic language to pretty frank realist language.
Some of the stories of Cisneros lack narrators, and they mediate between the readers and the characters. Such stories are composed in the form of textual fragments of the conversations overheard by the readers.
For example, the short story “Little Miracles, Kept Promises” is in the form of fictional notes asking for the blessing from saints. Similarly, the short story “The Marlboro Man” is in the form of a telephonic conversation between two female characters.
Diction and Apparent Simplicity
At first reading, the works of Cisneros appear to be simple. However, this is deception. Her works deal with the larger social process within the small world of everyday life. She makes the readers move beyond the text and look for the larger social process in everyday life. For example, the phone conversation in the short story “The Marlboro Man” is merely an idle gossip.
The text allows the readers to ding in the psyche of the characters and the cultural influences on each of them. Critics have observed the way Cisneros deals with complex social and theoretical issues through apparently simple characters and situations.
For example, the novel The House on Mango Street, Ramon Saldivar notes, represents the simplicity of childhood vision, the extremely complex process of the structure of the gendered subject. Similarly, critics also describe how each individual interacts in a completely different way in the short story collection Women Hollering Creek and Other Short Stories.
Therefore, Sandra elicits the various responses of different readers from the stories is about growing up to the stories is about growing up in Chicana to the stories is a critique of the exclusionary practices and patriarchal structures.
Cisneros’s writing is rich in imagery and symbolism. It is also aesthetically and technically accomplished. The works, because of its social commentary, evoke highly personal responses and helped Cisneros to achieve her way.
Literary themes in Sandra Cisneros’ Writings
Place
As the works of Cisneros deal with the struggles and aspirations of Chicanas, the theme of place often arises in her works. In Cisneros’s works, places not only refer to the geographic locations, but it also points out the position her characters hold in the social context.
Chicanas live in male-dominated, and Anglo dominated places where they are subject to subjugation, operation, and prejudicial behaviors. Home is the place that is of particular interest to Cisneros.
As noticed by the literary critics, home can be a place of subjugation and oppression for Chicanas, where they are subject to the will of male heads of the family. However, the home can be a place of empowerment where Chicanas can express themselves creatively and act autonomously.
For example, in The House of Mango Street, Esperanza, the young protagonist, wishes to have her house as “Not a flat. Not an apartment in the 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.”
Esperanza is an aspiring writer and longs for a space for herself where she can go and clean as paper before the poem. Esperanza feels trapped and discontented to be with her family. She also sees other women in the same position as of hers.
Critics observe that through the character of Esperanza, Cisneros communicates that women also need their own space and place so that she can realize her full potential. She shows the need for women for a home which is not a site for patriarchal violence but rather a site for poetic creation of self.
The Chicanas character in Cisneros works constantly lament over the fact that male-dominated society in which they are living denies them of this place.
This theme in Cisneros’s works has been compared to the famous essay of Virginia Woolf, “A Room of One’s Own.” In the essay, Woolf says that “a woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction.” This means that women must have economic security and personal liberty that is a compulsion for artistic creation.
Cisneros deals with the subject of place not only in relation to gender but also to class. Critic observes that the character of Esperanza not only deals with the personal requirement of gendered women’s space, she also recognizes the collective issues of the working poor and the homeless Chicanos as well.
The critics refer to the determination of Esperanza not to forget her roots when she obtains her dream house and to open the door for those who are unfortunate. For instance, in the novel, Esperanza says that “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.” This statement alludes to the need for decent living space that is essential for all people regardless of the various oppressions they face.
Construction of femininity and female sexuality
Sandra Cisneros struggles to negotiate a cross-cultural identity that has become difficult by the necessity to challenge the deeply rooted patriarchal values of both American and Mexican culture. The lives of the female characters employed by Cisneros in her work are affected by how the patriarchal value system defines femininity and female sexuality.
The female characters struggle to revise these definitions. For instance, Cisneros said that “There’s always this balancing act, we’ve got to define what we think is fine for ourselves instead of what our culture says.”
In her works, Cisneros shows how Chicanas, like other women from different ethnicities, internalize and conform to the norms of patriarchy at a young age. The norms are taught to them through family education and popular culture.
For instance, the group of girls in the novel the House on Mango Street talk about the function of women hips: “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.”
The conventional and traditional gender roles taught to females such as cooking, child-rearing, and captivating attention of males are well acknowledged by the character of Cisneros and consider them to their biological destiny. However, when they reach adolescence, they have to reconcile with their idealism about love and sex with their experiences of disillusionment, anguish, and confusion.
The character of Esperanza describes that her sexual initiation is attacked by the group of boys when she is waiting for her friend Sally at the fairground. After the incident, she feels powerless and stricken, and above all betrayed by all women who failed to contradict the romantic myths about sex and love.
In her works, Cisneros deals with how these romantic mythologies about sex and love, which is fueled by the prevailing culture, are at odds with the reality shown in the short story collection Woman Hollering Creek and Other Stories. In the collection of short stories, Cisneros alludes to the romantic television shows obsessively watched by female characters. This idealism is put aside by the poverty and abuse they face in their real lives.
Whenever Cisneros deals with the subject of female sexuality in her works, she, most of the time, portrays negative situations in which male shows control over by controlling her sexuality. Thus, Cisneros explores the gap she observes between the idealized representation in the prevailing culture and the real sexual experiences of women.
Despite all these things, Cisneros also illustrates female sexuality in positive terms as well, particularly in her poetry. For example, in My Wicked, Wicked Ways, a poetry volume published in 1987, Sandra Cisneros designates female sexuality in tremendously positive terms.
In the volume, Cisneros refers to herself as “wicked” as she has control over her own sexuality and the articulation of it. This was the power that was not permitted for women in the patriarchal culture. In these poems, Sandra Cisneros’s main aim is to talk about the reality of female sexuality.
This will make women realize the conflict-ridden effects of the stereotypes that they are made to conform to. It will also enable women to discover the potential for joy in their bodies, of which they are denied.
Sandra Cisneros breaks the boundaries between what is socially and culturally acceptable for women to speak and act and what is not. She uses imagery and language that have energetic humor and sociable energy and also intentionally shocking. All of the readers are unable to appreciate the shocking quality of some of the Cisneros works.
For the way she celebrates sexuality, both females and males’ readers have criticized her. For instance, she put a suggestive photograph of herself in the cover of My Wicked, Wicked Ways. Regarding the cover, Cisneros says that it is of a woman arrogating her own sexuality.
Construction of Chicana identity
The struggles and challenges faced by the characters of Chicana on the basis of their gender cannot be realized, acknowledged, and understood in seclusion from their culture. The culture dictates the norm of how men and women are supposed to think and behave. These gender norms vary from culture to culture.
Cisneros, through her work, conveys the struggles and experiences of Chicanas facing the patriarchal values of Mexicana and American cultures. This is not only shown through the women’s interaction with the Mexican fathers but also with the broader community, which forces them to conform to a narrow definition of womanhood and their submissive position to men.
In Cisneros’s works, the readers come across the triad of figures: La Malinche, the Virgin of Guadalupe, and La Llorona. Gloria Anzaldua, a writer, and theorist refer to them as “Our Mothers.” They are the symbolic figures in her works. They are of great importance to identity politics and culture of the Southwest United States and Mexico. These figures have been used for interpreting, controlling, or visualizing women in American-Mexican culture.
In reference to these three women, the identity of Chicana and Mexican identity is complexly constructed. La Virgen de Guadalupe is a catholic icon of the indicator of the Virgin Mary in America. In Mexico, she is admired as an inspiring and nurturing maiden and mother. La Malinche is an indigenous mistress and transitional of conquistador Hernan Cortes.s he has become the representative of female sexuality. She is always guilty of betrayal.
In her works, Cisneros talks about the challenging opposition of the virgin and the whore shown 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.”
Moreover, critics also observed that the “bad” and the “good” archetypes are more complicated by the perception that is held by many of the Christian feminists in the Anglo terms. Cisneros’s works are a critique of the suppression and pressure faced by Chicanas women to suppress their sexuality or direct it to sexually accepted forms.
The third figure is of La Llorona. She is derived from the stories of centuries-old Southwestern or Mexican folktale. She 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.” By the edge of the river, she dies in grief after she is unable to save her children.
It is also acclaimed that she is often heard wailing for her children in the sound of water and wind. A kind of fragmentary subjectivity is found in Cisneros’s work is often experienced by Chicanas from the entities of the gentle and pure Virgen de Guadalupe, to treacherous la Malinche, to the eternally grieving la Llorona.
They need to come in terms with them, redefine them in their own terms or reject them altogether,
In the short story collection, the three figures are recurrent. For instance, in the story “Never Marry a Mexican” and “Woman Hollering Creek,” the female protagonists are grapple with Mexican icons of motherhood and sexuality that internalized and imposed on them. They are limited to have negative impressions of their own identities as women.
The protagonist of the short story “Never Marry a Mexican” is sinister of the myth of La Malinche, who is considered as a traitor and whore. She defies the passive sexuality la Malinche with her own aggressive sexuality.
In the short story “Woman Hollering Creek” the protagonist reinvents the myth of la Llorona when she decides to leave her husband and take charge of her own body and of her children. She also discovers that the Grito, Spanish word for the sound made by La Llorona can be symbolically interpreted as a “joyous holler” rather than a grieving scream.
It is on the borderland, a middle ground between two cultures, and offers a space for the negotiation with fixed gender ideals.
Borderland
Even though Cisneros novels and short stories are not explicitly located on the borders of US-Mexico, however, borderland is the most salient theme of her works. She made the theme explicit in all of her works due to the constant border crossing, both metaphorical and real, of characters. For instance, the novel The House on Mango Street is set in Chicago, where the narrator lives and in Mexico, where she visits her extended family.
Likewise, Caramelo takes place in Mexico and Chicago as well; however, some parts of the book also deals with the narrator’s experiences in San Antonio as a teenager.
In the short story collection, Woman Hollering Creek and Other Stories, different characters make trips across the border to Mexico to reunite with their family members. However, the image of the border is not only physically important.
When the readers decenter the image of the border and liberate it from the notion of space and encompass the notion of class, sex, gender, community, ethnicity, and identity, it becomes very much important.
In her works, Cisneros frequently splits the border from its geographic position and meaning. She uses it metaphorically to show how Chicana identity is a mixture of both Anglo-Americana and Mexican cultures.
The border shows the everyday experiences of people who do not belong to one culture or place. Sometimes, the border appears to be fluid, and the two cultures cannot coexist in harmony with a single person. However, at times, it is rigid, and there is tension between them.
Critics have analyzed the metaphor of the border in Woman Hollering Creek and Other Stories as a manifestation of the roots of Chicano culture and migration between the two countries. Moreover, there is a recurrence of Southwestern Chicano myths and pre-Columbian mestizo. The Chicanas are portrayed as standing between two or three cultures.
In order to describe the experiences of Chicana characters of Cisneros on living on the border, critics use the concept of Gloria Anzaldua. They assert that in addition to facing the struggles of the patriarchal construct of sexual and gender identity, they also have to struggle with cultural and linguistic boundaries.