Chris Dolle's List: Sandra cisneros

• • great insider to what kind of person she is
• where female characters, unlike their male counterparts, are typically portrayed  as seeking solely marriage and motherhood, resulting in a restriction or loss of  freedom. After observing her mother's lifetime of sacrifices and her friends'  physical and sexual abuse at the hands of men, Esperanza instead desires to  leave the barrio, have a house of her own, and become a writer. These goals are  not intended merely for her own self-improvement, however, but to educate  others—especially the women—in her community as well.
• Cisneros confided that it was not until she took graduate-level writing  workshops with predominantly white, wealthy classmates, that she began tapping  into her "difference" in order to create unique writing material; thus, upon  remembering and sketching characters and events from her impoverished childhood,  Cisneros at last developed her own voice as a writer—one she had previously  suppressed and sacrificed because there were no Chicano/a models in her classes  to emulate.
• My Wicked, Wicked Ways took that new self-awareness one step further in  its confrontation of a taboo subject in Chicano culture: a woman's (liberal)  sexuality. The title of the collection, therefore, is simply ironic: while her  culture may view her as "wicked"—she writes about choosing not to marry,  traveling abroad on her own, and sleeping with various men—for Cisneros, the  term does not mean "evil," but free; her poetry abounds in positive personal  choices. The title thus pokes fun at the stereotypical notion that she is  (wrongly) considered "wicked" by her culture for merely articulating her own  story in her poems.
• In her collection of short fiction Woman Hollering Creek, Cisneros  returns to many of the same coming-of-age themes explored in Mango  Street—pre-teen anxiety, sibling relationships in a culture where girls are  less valued than boys, loss of virginity and its shameful consequences, and  identity conflicts from living on both sides of the Mexican border. The stories  represent a range of authorial voices—from young girls to housewives—who  struggle with gender inequality in their culture and their lives. Perhaps the  character that best bridges the adolescent Esperanza of Mango Street and  the mature, confident macha of Cisneros's "Loose Woman" poem, is the young  bride, Cleofilas, the protagonist of the eponymous story, "Woman Hollering  Creek." Based on the myth of the Llorona legend about a poor Mexican woman who  drowned her children and died of grief after her husband abandoned her for  another woman, Cisneros's story reinvents the tragic tale when Cleofilas is  similarly victimized by an abusive husband and escapes a life of silent  suffering in exchange for freedom across the border. At the end of the story,  Cleofilas leaves her husband and crosses the arroyo to begin her own life, thus  replacing the legendary wail of La Llorona with her own "ribbon of laughter,  like water."

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• This workshop marks an important turning point in her career as a writer.  Cisneros had periodically written poems and stories while growing up, but it was  the frustrations she encountered at the Writer's Workshop that inspired  Cisneros' realization that her experiences as a Latina woman were unique and  outside the realm of dominant American culture. Thus, Cisneros decided to write  about conflicts directly related to her upbringing, including divided cultural  loyalties, feelings of alienation, and degradation associated with poverty.
• • showing what she does as a person herself
• California State University, University of California, Berkeley, University of  California, Irvine, Univerity of Michigan, Ann Arbor and the University of New  Mexico, Albuquerque. Cisneros is also a member of PEN and Mujeres por la Paz, a  women's peace group which helps organize.
• The family frequently moved between the United States and Mexico because of her  father's homesickness for his native country and his devotion to his mother who  lived there. Consequently, Cisneros often felt homeless and displaced. She began  to read extensively, finding comfort in such works as Virginia Lee Burton's The  Little House and Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. Today,  Cisneros' works give both solace and realistic lessons about feelings which, as  a child, she felt were uniquely hers, namely cultural division, loneliness and  shame.
• • Gives how to site this page
• A prime example of how Cisneros' writing speak to the experiences of the  forgotten or invisible of American society is The House on Mango Street.
• In My Wicked, Wicked Ways (1987), Cisneros writes about her native Chicago, her  travels in Europe, and, as reflected in the title, sexual guilt resulting from  her strict Catholic upbringing. A collection of sixty poems, each of which  resemble a short story, the work exemplifies one of Cisneros' acclaimed knack  for combining and crossing the boundaries of genre.

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• • This area shows how she contributed to American writing.
• Sandra Cisneros recalls what initially inspired the now internationally  acclaimed novel. As a graduate student in the University of Iowa Writers  Workshop, Cisneros felt alienated by discussion of Gaston Bachelard's  Poetics of Space. She says, "What was this guy talking about when he  mentioned the familiar and comforting 'house of memory'? It was obvious he never  had to clean one or pay the landlord rent for one like ours" (xiii-xiv).  Cisneros' alienation gave rise to anger, which in turn prompted the writing of  House on Mango Street; the lyrical novel describing the life of a young  Mexican-American girl growing up in a working-class Chicago neighborhood, much  as Cisneros herself did. In an attempt to establish the difference of this kind  of home from the one her fellow students remembered,
• Cisneros sought what she calls an "anti-academic voice--a child's voice, a  girl's voice, a poor girl's voice, a spoken voice, the voice of an  American-Mexican" (xv). Ironically, this anti-academic novel has become widely  acclaimed as a "literary masterpiece," beginning in 1985 when it won the Before  Columbus Book Award.
• • Become the most notable chicana writer in American literature.
• all told from a youth point of view, from her 1991 collection, Woman  Hollering Creek. Cisneros has in many ways become the representative  Chicana in the reconstruction of the canon, yet much of her work has been elided  in the focus on House and the youth stories in WHC. Even as  these texts appear regularly on American literature syllabi, Cisneros' three  volumes of poetry and adult short stories, the latter appearing in the second  half of WHC, have been largely ignored in academia. Although the  acceptance of the youth stories has been an important step toward increasing  access to Chicana literature, it has dramatically simplified Cisneros and  suggests that the push for multiculturalism and inclusion does not always extend  to the difficult intersections of adult sexuality and race nor to  representations of "minorities" who are not "role models."
• Cisneros' career is indicative of the slow but steady growth in the acceptance  of Chicana/o and Latina/o writers throughout the 1990s, both in academia and  more broadly; as such, it provides an important way to study the advantages and  disadvantages of "mainstreaming."
• The success of House on Mango Street and My Wicked, Wicked  Ways apparently convinced the mainstream publishing world that Cisneros was  a risk well worth taking.
• My Wicked, Wicked Ways and her "bad girl" sexual politics. Cisneros  "poetically unravels" gender stereotypes, says the author, and quotes Cisneros:  "'I'm the mouse who puts a thorn in the lion's paw,' she says, with an arch  smile reminiscent of the red-lippedsonrisa on the cover of My Wicked Wicked  Ways . . . a collection of poetry celebrating the 'bad girl' with her  'lopsided symmetry of sin and virtue'" (Sagel 74).

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• • This is great background info for her.
• A breakthrough occurred for Cisneros during a discussion of French philosopher  Gaston Bachelard's The Poetics of Space and his metaphor of a house; she  realized that her experiences as a Hispanic woman were unique and outside the  realm of dominant American culture.
• Shortly after participating in the Iowa Workshop, Cisneros decided to write  about conflicts directly related to her upbringing,  including divided cultural loyalties, feelings of alienation, and degradation  associated with poverty. Incorporating these concerns into The House on Mango  Street, a work that took nearly five years to complete, Cisneros created the  character Esperanza, a poor, Hispanic adolescent who longs for a room of her own  and a house of which she can be proud.
• • Great info on Women Hollering Creek.
• • Info on My wicked ways
• Although Cisneros is noted primarily for her fiction, her poetry has also  garnered attention. In My Wicked Wicked Ways, her third volume of verse,  Cisneros writes about her native Chicago, her travels in Europe, and, as  reflected in the title, sexual guilt resulting from her strict Catholic  upbringing.
• Cisneros incorporates Hispanic dialect
• Her biculturalism and bilingualism are also very important aspects of her  writing
• The Macondo Workshop, which has since become an annual event, brings together  writers "working on geographic, cultural, economic, social and spiritual  borders" and has grown from 15 participants to over 120 participants in the  first 9 years
• by providing Chicano writers with support when they are in need of some time to  heal their "body, heart or spirit
• Macondo offers services to member writers such as health insurance and the  opportunity to participate in the Casa Azul Residency Program.
• • Shows her importance in the chicana literarture movement
• she has been acknowledged as a pioneer in her literary field as the first  female Mexican-American writer to have her work published by a mainstream  publisher
• Cisneros’s writing has been influential in shaping both Chicana and feminist  literature.

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• The House on Mango Street,  first published in 1984
• The House on Mango Street,  first published in 1984
• The House on Mango Street,  first published in 1984

• I was born in Chicago in l954, the third child and only daughter in a family  of seven children. I studied at Loyola University of Chicago (B.A. English 1976)  and the University of Iowa (M.F.A. Creative Writing 1978).
• • This is great info for the biography of her life

• I've worked as a teacher and counselor to high-school dropouts, as an  artist-in-the schools where I taught creative writing at every level except  first grade and pre-school, a college recruiter, an arts administrator, and as a  visiting writer at a number of universities including the University of  California, Berkeley, and the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.
• It has sold over two million copies since its initial publication and is still  selling strongly. 2009 marks the 25th anniversary of the publication

• I'm currently at work on several projects, including a collection of fiction  titled Infinito, a children’s book, Bravo, Bruno and a book  about writing titled Writing in My Pajamas.

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