Fredrik Bajer
Danish politician (1837-1922)
Sandra Cisneros
American writer and poet
Sandra Cisnerosis an American writer. She is best known for her first novel, The House on Mango Street (1983), and her subsequent short story collection, Woman Hollering Creek and Other Stories (1991).
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About the Sandra Cisneros
Sandra Cisnerosis an American writer. She is best known for her first novel, The House on Mango Street (1983), and her subsequent short story collection, Woman Hollering Creek and Other Stories (1991). Her work experiments with literary forms that investigate emerging subject positions, which Cisneros, herself, attributes to growing up in a context of cultural hybridity and economic inequality that endowed her with unique stories to tell. She is the recipient of numerous awards, including a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, was awarded one of 25 new Ford Foundation Art of Change fellowships in 2017, and is regarded as a key figure in Chicano literature.
Cisneros’ early life provided many experiences that she later drew on, as a writer: she grew up as the only daughter in a family of six brothers, which often made her feel isolated, and the constant migration of her family, between Mexico and the United States, instilled in her the sense of “always straddling two countries but not belonging to either culture.” Cisneros’ work deals with the formation of Chicana identity, exploring the challenges of being caught between Mexican and Anglo-American cultures, facing the misogynist attitudes present in both these cultures, and experiencing poverty. For her insightful social critique and powerful prose style, Cisneros has achieved recognition far beyond Chicano and Latino communities, to the extent that The House on Mango Street has been translated worldwide and is taught in U.S classrooms as a coming-of-age novel.
Cisneros has held a variety of professional positions, working as a teacher, a counselor, a college recruiter, a poet-in-the-schools, and an arts administrator, and she has maintained a strong commitment to community and literary causes. In 1998, she established the Macondo Writers Workshop, which provides socially conscious workshops for writers, and in 2000, she founded the Alfredo Cisneros Del Moral Foundation, which awards talented writers connected to Texas. Cisneros currently resides in Mexico.
18 Quotes by Sandra Cisneros
- 1.
I have to understand what my strengths and limitations are, and work from a true place. I try to do this as best I can while still protecting my writer self, which more than ever needs privacy.
Sandra CisnerosAmerican writer and poet
- 2.
But I deal with this meditating and by understanding I’ve been put on the planet to serve humanity. I have to remind myself to live simply and not to overindulge, which is a constant battle in a material world.
Sandra CisnerosAmerican writer and poet
- 3.
I think my family and closest friends are learning about my need to withdraw, and I am learning how to restore and store my energy to both serve the community to the best of my ability and to serve my writer’s heart.
Sandra CisnerosAmerican writer and poet
- 4.
I was silent as a child, and silenced as a young woman; I am taking my lumps and bumps for being a big mouth, now, but usually from those whose opinion I don’t respect.
Sandra CisnerosAmerican writer and poet
- 5.
Sometimes I feel I can’t quite master my written and spoken Spanish, because I’m too much a student of English. I would need another lifetime to learn it.
Sandra CisnerosAmerican writer and poet
- 6.
My feminism is humanism, with the weakest being those who I represent, and that includes many beings and life forms, including some men.
Sandra CisnerosAmerican writer and poet
- 7.
I usually say Latina, Mexican-American or American Mexican, and in certain contexts, Chicana, depending on whether my audience understands the term or not.
Sandra CisnerosAmerican writer and poet
- 8.
I realize that when I moved out of my father’s house I shocked and frightened him because I needed a room of my own, a space of my own to reinvent myself.
Sandra CisnerosAmerican writer and poet
- 9.
I’m afraid I’m still trying to find that balance. Especially now that everyone wants a piece of me. I find that I have to become more and more reclusive, and pick and choose when I am public and when I am private.
Sandra CisnerosAmerican writer and poet
- 10.
I don’t see any kind of mirror of power, male power, that is, as a form of liberation. I don’t believe in an eye for an eye. I don’t believe this is truly freedom.
Sandra CisnerosAmerican writer and poet
- 11.
Perhaps the greatest challenge has been trying to keep my time to myself and my private life private in order to do my job. Everything that is most mine belongs to everyone now.
Sandra CisnerosAmerican writer and poet
- 12.
And the nice thing about writing a novel is you take your time, you sit with the character sometimes nine years, you look very deeply at a situation, unlike in real life when we just kind of snap something out.
Sandra CisnerosAmerican writer and poet
- 13.
I try to be as honest about what I see and to speak rather than be silent, especially if it means I can save lives, or serve humanity.
Sandra CisnerosAmerican writer and poet
- 14.
Mexico is only a memory of childhood safety.
Sandra CisnerosAmerican writer and poet
- 15.
Well, I’m Buddhist, Ray, and so part of my Buddhism has allowed me to look a little more deeply at people and the events in my life that created me. And I think a lot of that Buddhism comes out in the world view in this novel.
Sandra CisnerosAmerican writer and poet
- 16.
Revenge only engenders violence, not clarity and true peace. I think liberation must come from within.
Sandra CisnerosAmerican writer and poet
- 17.
I always tell people that I became a writer not because I went to school but because my mother took me to the library. I wanted to become a writer so I could see my name in the card catalog.
Sandra CisnerosAmerican writer and poet
- 18.
I was raised in Chicago, so always used Latina. It’s what my Father and brothers called ourselves, when we meant the entire Spanish-speaking community of Chicago.
Sandra CisnerosAmerican writer and poet