From Chicago to Mexico, the places Sandra Cisneros has lived have provided inspiration for her now-classic works of fiction and poetry. But a house of her own, a place where she could truly take root, has eluded her. In this jigsaw autobiography, made up of essays and images spanning three decades—and including never-before-published work—Cisneros has come home at last. Written with her trademark lyricism, in these signature pieces the acclaimed author of The House on Mango Street shares her transformative memories and reveals her artistic and intellectual influences. Poignant, honest, and deeply moving, A House of My Own is an exuberant celebration of a life lived to the fullest, from one of our most beloved writers.
hurried. I had to pack and catch the first morning hydrofoil, and it was almost dawn when I knocked on Liesel’s door. At daybreak I kissed the raccoon boy goodbye, deposited the house keys, and got on the hydrofoil to Athens, where I mailed the manuscript off from the Syntagma Square post office without making a copy. This seems incredibly reckless to me now in this age of computers, but that’s what my life was like BC. A decade later when I returned to Hydra, I thought I’d remembered the
Tepeyac, Mexico City What would my teachers say if they knew I was a writer now? Who would’ve guessed it? I wasn’t a very bright student. I didn’t much like school, because we moved so much and I was always new and funny looking. In my fifth-grade report card I have nothing but an avalanche of Cs and Ds, but I don’t remember being that stupid. I was good at art, and I read plenty of books, and Kiki laughed at all my jokes. At home I was fine, but at school I never opened my mouth except when the
that looked out into a plaza. One night he got the idea to collect the garbage in the square and rearrange it like a chessboard. “Ay, qué bonito,” people on the street said, how beautiful. They didn’t want anyone to touch it, not even the street sweepers the next morning. Shortly after this installation, Franco was taken ill and hospitalized. Friends said it was from picking up corncobs from Mexico City streets. But knowing Franco, I think it was from picking up worse things than corncobs, if
in the photograph was looking for another way to be—“otro modo de ser,” as Castellanos put it. Until you brought us all together as U.S. Latina writers—Cherríe Moraga, Gloria Anzaldúa, Marjorie Agosín, Carla Trujillo, Diana Solís, Sandra María Esteves, Diane Gómez, Salima Rivera, Margarita López, Beatriz Badikian, Carmen Ábrego, Denise Chávez, Helena María Viramontes—until then, Normita, we had no idea that what we were doing was extraordinary. — I no longer make Chicago my home, but Chicago
bilingual boys. The older son is sent to New York to assist Teresita in her work. His name is John Van Order, and he will become the father of Teresita’s two daughters. How could love not develop between a nineteen-year-old boy and a woman of twenty-seven who has very little experience in love? Maybe he tells her things he believes with all his heart, but his heart is the heart of a child. But her heart is the heart of a girl. And though they can’t marry, because she is still legally married to
