The House Cisneros Built

The first time I ever read anything by Sandra Cisneros, I was seven. 

It was a short story titled “Eleven.” The words hopped off of the doodled page of my tattered textbook and bounced across the classroom walls as my fellow second-grade classmates tripped over the words they read aloud. I was spellbound. As an awkward kid with a Peter Pan complex, the story of a girl who believed she carried around all of her past selves struck a core in my little seven-year-old heart. That year I managed to get my hands on a copy of Sandra Cisneros’ first novel — The House on Mango Street — unaware that this woman and these words would shape my perception of the world forever. 

As a student who attended predominantly BIPOC public schools, I discovered that it is a luxury to be able to read about yourself, especially within a classroom. The literary canon is predominantly white, male, and cis-gendered. English classes in middle school and high school revolved around authors like Mark Twain, George Orwell, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Shakespeare. And sure, some Black students had Maya Angelou or Alice Walker on their reading lists, but that’s only two Black women out of thousands of Black authors. There was no real representation there, especially when they were handed Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird or Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn right afterward. Looking back, I can not recall ever being handed a book by an Asian author until I got to college (Southland by Nina Revoyr, seriously, go read it) and as for Latinx authors well, there was only ever one — Sandra Cisneros.  

Where my fellow Hispanic and Latinx classmates had read few to little books written by an author of their race or culture, I walked through the white American education system with The House on Mango Street in my pocket. I read it so often that her language began to tint my own, her characters resided in my mind. I began to see myself walking in her footsteps. I began to think that I could write. 

Now, this isn’t to say that Cisneros is underrated. If anything, she has become infamous in American literature. Her short story “Woman Hollering Creek” was a hot topic in high school and her essay “Guadalupe the Sex Goddess” has appeared in multiple syllabi during my college career. What I aim to point out is the fact that writers like her are not emphasized enough within public school curriculums. The reason I grew to love her writing at such an early age was that my mother nurtured my love of books, but a lot of Latinx people, especially those of us with immigrant parents who did not receive a proper education, have limited access to literature growing up. Some of us do not get to read about ourselves in novels nor do we get to see familiar names on the covers, names that sound like ours.

The House on Mango Street has shaped me as a writer, not only because of the story it tells but because of its author. In the introduction that accompanies this novel, Cisneros writes of her days as a struggling artist, questioning the importance of literature and whether or not her words could make a difference. She writes about defying her father and his expectations when she chooses to fight for her independence. She goes against the cultural norms of her Mexican family by embracing a very different lifestyle. But she doesn’t throw her culture out the window. She embraces it in her writing.

Before becoming a big author, she taught students attempting to receive their high school diplomas after dropping out in their youth. She writes about how she felt naive trying to write poetry when they were busy trying to raise children or survive in abusive households. These students began to appear in her stories. Her characters adopted their faces, their experiences, their struggles. Thus, to read this book as an American with a Hispanic or Latinx lineage is to read about one’s self and recognize one’s friends, family, and neighbors in the characters. It is to laugh at the jokes because they sound like something from your own childhood, it’s to understand the plights of characters like Sally, Mamacita, and even Esperanza. This is pure American literature that focuses on the newest wave of American citizens, immigrants, artists, canonizing a people who have existed and contributed to America for a long time. 

It tells our story and inspires others to tell theirs. It is representation at its finest. 

Since graduating high school, my bookshelves are full of predominantly BIPOC authors. I read Olivia E. Butler, Isabel Ibanez, Toni Morrison, and Amy Zhang. I comb the overstuffed bookshelves at thrift stores for anything with a Spanglish title or a last name that sounds like mine. And following Sandra Cisneros’ example, my culture, my people, my native tongue, all appear in the things I write.

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Just in case the American education system didn’t tell you, here are a few authors of Hispanic and Latinx descent: Sandra Cisneros, Isabel Allende, Erika L. Sanchez,  Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Cristina Henriquez, Carlos Fuentes, Elizabeth Acevedo, Carmen Maria Machado, Julia Alvarez, Gaby Rivera, Gloria Anzaldua, Luis J. Rodriguez… and those of you yet to come.