Sandra Cisneros
(1954– )
Many of Sandra Cisneros’s ideas for her fiction and poetry come from her childhood experiences. Cisneros was born in Chicago, but her family frequently moved back and forth between Chicago and Mexico City. She sometimes felt homeless and displaced because she and her six brothers had to move so often. She found comfort, however, in reading and wrote poems and stories throughout her childhood. She was the literary magazine editor in high school, but Cisneros claims that she didn't really know how to write until she was in college, where she realized that as a Latina, her experiences were different from those of her classmates. In her best-known work, The House on Mango Street (1983), Cisneros reflects on what it means to be a young Hispanic girl in America. The book explores the hopes, disappointments, and awkward adolescence of Esperanza. Cisneros has written another collection of stories, Woman Hollering Creek and other stories (1991), and several collections of poetry, including Bad Boys (1980) and My Wicked Wicked Ways (1987).
Cisneros has taught creative writing and poetry to grade school, high school, and college students in San Antonio, Chicago, and cities in California. She currently lives in San Antonio, Texas, where she continues to write and teach students how to write.
