“When you’re a writer, you live in dreamtime. It’s kind of like a kite. You begin with your own story, and the higher it goes, it starts to take off and characters start to say things you would never say. The more you tether it to your life, it won’t go very far. It has to begin from something constructed for me that’s real, and then — I just give it more string.”
–Sandra Cisneros, episode 293 of Talk Easy with Sam Fragoso
Writer Sandra Cisneros has been making sense of the world on the page since 1984’s The House on Mango Street. In honor of Hispanic Heritage Month, we wanted to replay our 2022 conversation with the beloved poet.
We discuss her first poetry collection in 28 years, Woman Without Shame (4:40), why she chooses to write ‘dangerous’ pieces (6:18), and the significance of her poem, “My Mother and Sex” (8:38). Then, we walk through Sandra’s coming of age between Mexico and Chicago (15:16), the sixth-grade teacher that guided her entry into art (19:39), her epiphanies on class in graduate school (23:49), the “Pilsen Barrio” that shaped her seminal novel, The House on Mango Street (29:05), and how Studs Terkel informed her lifelong approach to story (30:17).
On the back-half, we discuss the loves and losses that inspired Sandra’s early sensual poems (36:36), how she documented her power through “Neither Señorita nor Señora” (40:04), a painful period captured in “Year of my Death” (50:30), the day her mother visited her writer’s office in San Antonio (57:56), and why she still has more to say (and write) at age 67 (59:59).
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Show-notes:
- Order Sandra’s poetry collection Woman Without Shame, now available in paperback.
- Find her previous works, including The House on Mango Street, on her website.
- See the referenced photograph of Sandra in A House of My Own.
- Follow her on Instagram.
- For more, find our recommended talks with Jennifer Egan, Ocean Vuong, Margo Jefferson, Tom Hanks, Joyce Carol Oates, David Sedaris, and Maria Ressa.
- Order your Talk Easy mug in cream and navy or our vinyl record with Fran Lebowitz.
Illustrations by Krishna Shenoi. Reference image by Keith Dannemiller.
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