DATE December selection

"I'm trying to write the stories that haven't been written. I feel like a cartographer; I'm determined to fill a literary void." --Sandra Cisneros in an interview.


The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros is a collection of stories or prose poems with a single narrator.  Eleven-year-old Esperanza recounts the lives of her family and neighbors.

In The House on Mango Street, Esperanza speaks the yearning of Cisneros’s own childhood as well as of those—hispanic, black, poor, female, immigrant—who are least likely to have a voice in world.

Cisneros began writing the unwritten stories in response to a seminar during her time at University of Iowa's Writer's Workshop. Cisneros spoke about that time in a Publisher's Weekly interview:

"Everyone seemed to have some communal knowledge which I did not have--and then I realized that the metaphor of house was totally wrong for me. Suddenly I was homeless. There were no attics and cellars and crannies. I had no such house in my memories. As a child I had read of such things in books, and my family had promised such a house, but the best they could do was offer the miserable bungalow I was embarrassed with all my life. This caused me to question myself, to become defensive. What did I, Sandra Cisneros, know? What could I know? My classmates were from the best schools in the country. They had been bred as fine hothouse flowers. I was a yellow weed among the city's cracks."

"It was not until this moment when I separated myself, when I considered myself truly distinct, that my writing acquired a voice. I knew I was a Mexican woman, but I didn't think it had anything to do with why I felt so much imbalance in my life, whereas it had everything to do with it! My race, my gender, my class! That's when I decided I would write about something my classmates couldn't write about."

This experience, instead of discouraging Cisneros’ creative ambitions, emboldened her writing and illuminated a place for her to enter the literary fray. In 1984, The House on Mango Street was published by Arte Publico Press of Houston and won the Before Columbus Foundation's American Book Award in 1985. 

For Cisneros, a story is only a story if people want to hear it.  The House on  Mango Street's stories were based on oral storytelling. She constructed The House on Mango Street to be read in short bursts, in a form that did not require great tracts of time to absorb it. Her aim was to make it accessible to working people—to the people like the characters in the House on Mango Street. 

The novel uses its loose structure to explore the themes of individual identity and communal loyalty, estrangement and loss, escape and return, the lure of romance and the dead end of sexual inequality and oppression.


Cisneros is the author of four books of poetry: Loose Woman, My Wicked Wicked Ways, The Rodrigo Poems, and Bad Boys.  She has also written Woman Hollering Creek and Other Stories and a bilingual children’s book, Hairs=Pelitos. She is a contributor to Emergency Tacos: Seven Poets con Picante, Days and Nights of Love and War, and Family Pictures/Cuadros de Familia.  Her latest novel is Caramelo. An audio interview of Cisneros discussing Caramelo can be found here.


The House on Mango Street and other Cisneros’ other works are studied in schools and universities across the nation.

As Esperanza says at the end of The House on Mango Street:

“One day I will pack my bags of books and paper. One day I will say goodbye to Mango. I am too strong for her to keep me here forever. One day I will go away.

They will not know I have gone away to come back. For the ones I left behind. For the ones who cannot out.”

In keeping with her passion to provide a voice for the voiceless, Cisneros has founded the Macondo Foundation and the Alfredo Cisneros del Moral Foundation. The foundations offer writing workshops, residencies, and monetary awards to help further struggling writers’ efforts.

Both foundations offer writing workshops, residencies, and monetary awards to help further struggling writers’ efforts. The foundations’ collective mission and commitment is build community-building, to facilitate non-violent social change and serve underserved communities through writing.