Cisneros, Sandra (1954-…), is a Hispanic American novelist, poet, and short-story writer. In her works, Cisneros blends feminism with her Mexican American heritage. Cisneros is the daughter of a Mexican father and a Mexican American mother. In her writings, she deals with such topics as ethnic prejudice, poverty, and gender roles. Much of her fiction includes Hispanic characters isolated from the mainstream of American life. Her female characters are often torn between asserting their feminist feelings and following traditional, male-dominated Mexican cultural attitudes.
Cisneros gained recognition with her first published work, the novel The House on Mango Street (1984). The book is actually a collection of loosely connected stories told by a Hispanic girl named Esperanza. The young narrator tells about growing up amid the poverty and clashes of cultures within the Mexican American community in Chicago, Cisneros’s birthplace. Woman Hollering Creek and Other Stories (1991) is a collection of stories about Mexican Americans living near San Antonio.
Cisneros’s second novel, Caramelo (2002), is a partly autobiographical story centering on a teenage girl named Layla. The story moves back and forth in time and across cultures and over the Mexican-United States border. The most important event is a family trip from Chicago to Mexico City for a family reunion involving three generations of Layla’s family. The other major character is Soledad, Layla’s “awful” grandmother in Mexico City who was abandoned as a girl and now lives as an embittered old woman. Have You Seen Marie? (2012) is a short novel about a woman who searches the streets of San Antonio for a runaway cat. Martita, I Remember You (2021) is about a Mexican American woman remembering the friends she made as a young, aspiring writer in Paris.
Cisneros’s poetry has been published in Bad Boys (1980), The Rodrigo Poems (1985), My Wicked Wicked Ways (1987), Loose Woman (1994), and Woman Without Shame (2022). Many of her poems explore what it means to be a modern woman of Mexican heritage. A collection of autobiographical pieces was published as A House of My Own: Stories from My Life (2015).
Cisneros was born on Dec. 20, 1954, in Chicago. She received a B.A. degree from Loyola University of Chicago in 1976. She decided to become a writer after attending the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop, where she received a M.F.A. degree in 1978.
