Sandra Cisneros

I met Sandra Cisneros last night after she gave a reading for our community's "one book" program. The audience was large and diverse, and she spoke to every person in it, from children to college professors. Her voice was soft and high and from the minute she started speaking I could tell she was a teacher--I could hear it in her voice, the intonations, the caring and nurturing tones. She sounded like she earnestly wanted to communicate with us. She read mostly from The House on Mango Street, the book chosen for the community reading, but she also read a selection from her novel Caramello that retold a story that was told in House about a young boy trying to swing from trees but falling and breaking both arms, earning the nickname Tarzan. She was demonstrating her growth as a writer, from House in which she limited the number of characters to something that she felt she could handle as a young writer, to her later works for which she felt more comfortable handling the many varied characters inspired by the members of her large family.

She described her goal for The House on Mango Street as stringing "pearls on a necklace"--each small piece has value on its own and when strung together they create a different effect as a whole. She wanted to create a book that, as she said, bus drivers and waitresses and moms and fifth graders could all read even if they only had a few minutes. They could open the book and gain something from reading one hundred words or they could read the whole book and gain something else. She accomplished her task beautifully.

She talked about her experience as a young writer starting the book while she was a poetry student in the Iowa Writer's Workshop and then finishing it as a public school teacher. The influence of the poetry workshop is apparent in her vignettes--she wanted each story to be "as powerful as a poem." She was inspired to write the book as her class read literature about houses--she read beautiful, loving descriptions of houses by Isak Denison and Vladimir Nabokov, but she never read about her house. She was first ashamed and considered quitting school--she felt as if she did not belong in that world--but then her emotions turned to rage and she decided that she would write the book about her house. She collected stories from her own life, her family members, and her young students, especially the girls, and "braided" them together.

She gave advice to aspiring artists. Never expect to earn any money with your art, she said. Then if you you do, you will be astonished, and if you don't, you will not be disappointed. She told us to think of ten things that we know that no one else knows, especially those things that we wish we did not know but can never forget. Ten things that no one else in our family, our community, our race, our gender, our church knows--she called it our "ten times ten." Start there with your art.

She expressed her desire for the book to mobilize people, to instill them with a sense of responsibility, communicated in the final story, "Mango Says Goodbye Sometimes." She told all of us, especially the young women, to demand great things from our lives and to go to college, then to go back to where we came from and help the people who are still there. In the book Esperanza says, "Friends and neighbors will say, What happened to that Esperanza? Where did she go with all those books and paper? Why did she march so far away? They will not know I have gone away to come back. For the ones I left behind. For the ones who cannot out."

I am not a minority woman, and I have not been poor. But I do know the ones who are still in the small farm town where I grew up, the ones who got pregnant before finishing high school, the ones who dropped out of school to go to work, the ones who never considered college. And also the ones who went to college and returned to teach at our school. I don't think of them very often.

But I have been back since I left. I went to college and in the summers and falls I drove back tomy high school to teach the color guard in the marching band. I spent time with those girls, told them about college, talked to them about my experience in high school, told them what I had learned since I had left, told them what to do to prepare for their own higher education, encouraged their love of music and pride in what they did. My thoughts last night were that I had just left my home and forgotten them, but this morning I remember that I did go back, and I hope that some of what I tried to teach those girls, beyond how to march in the band and twirl their flags, stayed with them, even if they don't remember where it came from. I'm glad that I did that and I'm glad that I recognize now, thanks to Ms. Cisneros, that what I was doing was important.

I waited in line for an hour to get my book signed (which was not good for Mr. Cheesy because he had to go to work after I got back home at 10:00 p.m. and relieved him of childcare duties). I had that time to think about what I wanted to say to her, which I was able to articulate when a friend from school asked me about the book. The book I held in my hand, which was by then filled up with my notes about the book and about her speech, was the copy that I bought when I was in high school. I loved the book then and I have read it at least twice more. Several people, including Ms. Cisneros, asked me if I got something new out of it when I reread it. Of course I did because I am so different now, as a grown woman, a mother, a literature scholar, a teacher, but what impressed me most on rereading it was that I remembered why I loved it so much as a teenager and called it my favorite book for a while. I don't remember thinking so much about it in the way that I think about what I read now. I remember feeling the book. And I had a profound sense that I understood something that I had not known before, even if I couldn't say exactly what that was. So I told her that, and she seemed to appreciated it. And she saw the extensive notes written in my book, which is unspoken evidence of my appreciation for her.

She signed my book the way I'm sure she signs them all, but I will decide to take it as my own. "Para la Sarah. Con esperanza, Sandra Cisneros."