Sandra Cisneros

Sandra Cisneros was born in 1954 in Chicago, Illinois. The daughter of a Mexican father and a Mexican-American mother, Cisneros was the only girl among six brothers in a family that frequently traveled between Chicago and Mexico to visit her father's family. Since new living quarters had to be found after each trip to Mexico, Cisneros' childhood was spent in a variety of run-down Hispanic neighborhoods until 1966 when her parents purchased a small, twostory bungalow in a Puerto Rican neighborhood on Chicago's north side. These experiences inspired her first book, The House on Mango Street ( 1983), which received the Before Columbus American Book Award in 1985.

Cisneros is also a poet. At Loyola University and later at the University of Iowa's Writer's Workshop in the late 1970s she began searching for her creative Latina voice and published her first poems in journals and later in several collections: Bad Boys ( 1980), The Rodrigo Poems ( 1985), My Wicked, Wicked Ways ( 1987), and Loose Woman ( 1994). In 1991, in a then rare example of a work by a Hispanic woman recognized by a mainstream U.S. press, Random House published Woman Hollering Creek and Other Stories , twenty-two diverse tales narrated from a female perspective. The work was awarded the P.E.N. Center West Award for best fiction in 1992. Woman Hollering Creek , a powerful work of fiction writing, has a heightened gender and cultural consciousness that is true to Cisneros' stated creative goals, according to a 1991 interview: "[I]n my stories and life I am trying to show that U.S. Latinas have to reinvent, to remythologize, ourselves. A myth believed by almost everyone, even Latina women, is that they are passive, submissive, long-suffering, either a spit-fire or a Madonna. Yet those of us who are their daughters, mothers, sisters know that some of the fiercest women on this planet are Latina women." Cisneros' works have earned her an international reputation and a secure niche in American letters.

Poet, essayist, and short story writer, Sandra Cisneros is one of the most celebrated contemporary Chicana writers, with a number of acclaimed publications; her most famous work to date, however, is her first fictional work, The House on Mango Street , which presents the life of the young narrator Esperanza through her own experiences and those of her neighbors and her community. The work is dedicated "A las Mujeres- To the Women," all the female characters whose lives have enriched that of the protagonist and who represent a diversity of challenges and perspectives. As the protagonist, Esperanza revises and reclaims her cultural inheritance; Cisneros, the author, proposes a reconsideration of contemporary Chicana inheritance, evident in the voices of her female characters.

A short book comprising 44 brief, finely crafted tales, Mango Street is narrated by a Chicana girl named Esperanza Cordero who is presented to the reader over the course of a few years as she moves from childhood to adolescence. Her stories give voice to the people who live in the barrio, the inhabitants of Mango Street in urban Chicago, who have not traditionally been heard in the mainstream culture. They are the experiences of a diverse community that is mainly, although not exclusively, Latino: Mango Street 's occupants include emigrants from the southern United States, African Americans, and Hispanics from diverse cultures. Some characters are limited to one chapter; others span several. We observe them change- for better or worse- from Esperanza's insightful perspective. The book combines humorous observations with touching scenes that reflect the protagonist's process of maturation.