Sandra Cisneros has spent her whole life searching for a place to call home, documenting her journey in essays, poems, and novels, the most famous of which is The House on Mango Street, her semifictionalized account of growing up in Chicago’s Humboldt Park neighborhood. In her new memoir out October 6, A House of My Own (Knopf), the 60-year-old author recounts more than 30 years’ worth of personal stories about the places she’s lived and the writing they inspired. Over the phone from her home in San Miguel de Allende, in central Mexico, Cisneros spoke about her life in Chicago, the reasons she left town, her relationship with Studs Terkel, and speaking her truth.
Maud Martha by Gwendolyn Brooks, a little-known novel she wrote after she won her Pulitzer prize for poetry, this beautiful story cycle about a young African-American woman growing up on the south side. It’s one of my favorites.
It took a long time; my overnight success was, like, decades. My memories when I was living in Chicago were struggling with getting to and from school or work and just writing on the side. I was mainly a poet, though all the time I was a poet I was writing The House on Mango Street. I aspired to getting the esteem and respect of other writers. Would Studs Terkel ever blurb my book? Would Elena Poniatowska, Dorothy Allison, would my personal literary heroes ever blurb my book? That would be, to me, like heaven. And all those people have since blurbed my book. So, OK, I can get hit by a bus now. I did it.
You’ll be making appearances at the National Museum of Mexican Art on November 14 and 15 as part of your book tour. What’s it like coming back to Chicago? Does it feel like not much has changed?
I think every writer, whether they are a beginning writer or a seasoned writer, needs to understand that every human being can make a difference. Even just what we say to one another—just by speaking we can make change. We have to be responsible. People say, “What can I do? I’m just a drop in the bucket.” Well, you don’t have to take care of the bucket; just take care of your drop.
I told him about my mom, who was his real devotee. He wanted to interview my mom for one of his books about the old neighborhood on Taylor Street. He really wanted her story, he thought she was extraordinary, and she was, but she was so intimidated by the thought of meeting her god that she wouldn’t do it. I talked her into at least coming to the studio with me, and I’m shocked that I was able to get her to do that. My mom was very independent and intelligent and would argue, but she never went out into the public space except to buy groceries. To get her to meet Studs Terkel was a huge hurdle for me. I don’t know how I convinced her. For me it was more exciting to put my mom next to Studs Terkel than for me to meet him.
