1. Sandra Cisneros
Influences Leading to Her Writing
The House on Mango Street
By Dan Kaczmarczyk
2. Family
• Cisneros grew up on Chicago’s South Side.
• Her parents were working class. Her father was an
upholsterer and her mother was a factory worker.
• She was the only daughter and she had six brothers.
• Her mother loved books very much. They couldn't afford
them, but they did go to the public library and their house was
always filled with borrowed books. Cisneros said this was very
important in nurturing her as a writer and her mother is
always a voice in her stories.
3. Childhood
• During her childhood, Cisneros moved several times, always
into ghetto neighborhoods. Regarding the constant
moving, she says,
“The moving back and forth, the new schools, were very upsetting to me as a
child. They caused me to be very introverted and shy. I do not remember
making friends easily, and I was terribly self-conscious due to the cruelty of the
nuns, who were majestic at making one feel little. Because we moved so
much, and always in neighborhoods that appeared like France after World War
II--empty lots and burned-out buildings--I retreated inside myself.” (Sagel)
• In 1969, Cisneros’ parents were finally able to buy a cramped
two-story bungalow in a Puerto Rican neighborhood on
Chicago's North Side. It was an ugly red house similar to the
one Cisneros portrays in The House on Mango Street.
4. The House on Mango Street
• During the late 1970’s Cisneros had a breakthrough while attending
a writer’s workshop at the University of Iowa. Her classmates spoke
about the attics, stairways, and cellars of childhood that inspired
them. It wasn’t until then that she realized how out of place she felt
because she had no childhood memories like theirs.
• It was after this realization that she decided she would start writing
about topics she knew best. Cisneros says, "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.” (Sagel)
5. The House on Mango Street
• The House on Mango Street is about a young girl named
Esperanza growing up in a Latino and mostly Puerto Rican
neighborhood in Chicago.
• Regarding the autobiographical nature of The House on
Mango Street, Cisneros is quoted as saying, "All fiction is non-
fiction. Every piece of fiction is based on something that really
happened.... They're all stories I lived, or witnessed, or heard.”
7. Works Cited
Sagel, Jim. "Sandra Cisneros: conveying the riches of the Latin
American culture is the author's literary goal." Publishers Weekly
29 Mar. 1991: 74+. Literature Resource Center. Web. 9 July 2012.
Tompkins, Cynthia. "Sandra Cisneros." American Novelists Since
World War II: Fourth Series. Ed. James R. Giles and Wanda H.
Giles. Detroit: Gale Research, 1995. Dictionary of Literary
Biography Vol. 152. Literature Resource Center. Web. 9 July
2012.
