Sandra Cisneros
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Sandra Cisneros (born December 20, 1954 in Chicago) is a United States author and poet best known for her novel The House on Mango Street. She is also the author of Caramelo, published by Knopf in 2002. Much of her writing is influenced by her Mexican-American heritage.
Cisneros was the third among seven children and the only daughter. During childhood her family moved through a series of apartments in the poor neighborhoods of Chicago's south side. While she was a teenager, her family realized its dream of purchasing a house, although she considered it ugly and shabby. This event likely inspired much of The House on Mango Street. Her family frequently traveled between Mexico and the United States, inspiring elements of Caramelo.
In 1976, Cisneros received a BA in English from Loyola University Chicago. She enrolled in the graduate program in creative writing at the University of Iowa Writer's Workshop and earned a master’s degree in creative writing in 1978. She received a National Endowment for the Arts grant in 1982. The grant allowed her to stay one year at Michael Karolyi Institute in Vence, France. Cisneros now works as the literature director of the Guadalupe Cultural Arts Center in San Antonio, Texas.
Sandra Cisneros currently resides in San Antonio in the infamous "purple house" on Guenther Street where she writes and occasionally offers her time for Latino writer workshops with the Guadalupe Cultural Arts Center and the Esperanza Center for Peace and Justice. She was awarded a MacArthur "Genius" grant for her writing in 1995.
Her influences include her childhood, her family, and her Mexican-American heritage.
Purple House
Sandra Cisneros lives in the King William Historical District of San Antonio in a house which she painted periwinkle. This caused some controversy among the neighborhood and gained coverage in local media. Cisneros states: "The issue is bigger than my house. The issue is about historical inclusion. I want to paint my house a traditional color, but please give me a broader palette than surrey beige, sevres blue, hawthorn green, frontier days brown, and Plymouth Rock grey. . . . I thought I had painted my house a historic color. Purple is historic to us. It only goes back a thousand years or so to the pyramids. It is present in the Nahua codices, book of the Aztecs, as is turquoise, the color I used for my house trim; the former color signifying royalty, the latter, water and rain."Most recently, Cisneros changed the color of her house from periwinkle to pink.
Cisneros has also recently been writing a book that is still unnamed.
Bibliography
- "The House on Mango Street" vignettes (1984)
- "My Wicked, Wicked Ways" poetry (1987)
- "Woman Hollering Creek" short stories (1991)
- "Loose Woman" poetry (1994)
- "Hairs/Pelitos" picture book (1994)
- Vintage Cisneros (2004)
- Caramelo novel (2002)
External links
- [Official website]
- [Voices from the Gaps biography]
- [Modern American Poetry]
- [Teacher Resource File]
- [PAL]
- Sandra Cisneros reads "Los Nadies/The Nobodies" by Eduardo Galeano from Book of Embraces, El libro de los abrazos 1989 "[link]".
- [1991 audio interview of Sandra Cisneros with Don Swaim of CBS Radio - RealAudio]
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