Cisneros-biography
Sandra Cisneros' writing has been shaped by her experiences. Because of her unique background she is very different from traditional American writers. An important theme of her work is the heterogeneity of the Mexican-American community, expressed through differences of class, gender, education, and language use. From the start of her life Sandra Cisneros didn't have what you or I would consider a "normal" childhood. "As a person growing up in a society where the class norm was superimposed on a television screen, I couldn't understand why our home wasn't all green lawns and white wood like in the ones in 'Leave it to Beaver' and 'My Father Knows Best'".(Ghosts). She had a tough time believing her fate was to be spent in poverty, so she looked for an escape. An escape that led her to a book called 'The Little House', which she would continually check out of the library as a kid. It was her favorite because it contained her dream house, one house for one family that was secure and lasting. Throughout Cisneros' life she was never allowed much time to get settled into one place or one home. Her Mexican-American Mother, her Mexican father, and her six brothers were constantly moving between Mexico City and Chicago-
Furthermore, it has represented an important position in debates over multiculturalism--the ability to speak to specific cultural experiences and claim literary value. Discussing her poetry with David Mehegan of the Boston Globe, Cisneros stated that her poetry "is almost a journal of daily life as woman and writer. When they are in the audience they laugh about things we talk about among ourselves. She therefore purposely wrote the opposite of her classmates. Ironically, this anti-academic novel has become widely acclaimed as a "literary masterpiece," beginning in 1985 when it won the Before Columbus Book Award. In an attempt to establish the difference of this kind of home from the ones 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". After that it took her a while to find her own voice. Even if I'm writing about Paris or Sarajevo, I'm still writing about it from this border position that I was raised in. Through these jobs, she gained more experience with the problems of young Latinas. In high school she began writing poetry and even took over as the editor for the literary magazine, but according to her she didn't start to really write until her first creative writing class in college of 1974.
Common topics in this essay:
English Spanish,
City Chicago-where,
Mango Street,
Writer's Workshop,
Sandra Cisneros,
Dasenbrock Sandra,
Sandra Cisneros',
Loyola University,
Sarajevo I'm,
Award Furthermore,
loyola university,
girl's voice,
i'm writing,
|