Miambiance Magazine: You were born in Chicago, in 1954. What was the atmosphere like in that place and time period, given your ethnic and economic background?
Sandra Cisneros: I think that my experiences in Chicago didn’t seem unique. When I was a child, I didn’t have any awareness [or] experiences of being unique or different [although] I was aware of the affluence of certain parts of the city and the neighborhoods where my father worked. But, I didn’t have any consciousness of class or race, per se, so I couldn’t articulate it until I was an adult. I grew up thinking that my life was everybody’s life.
MM: As a child, did you write much?
SC: Actually, I was an artist, first. I didn’t start writing until I was about ten or eleven years old. And, I wrote in secret.
MM: Did you read much?
SC: I read a lot. I was a great reader, because my mom made sure … [of it] before we started school.
MM: What sort of things did you read?
SC: I liked to read everything, but I especially liked stories of times that were different than my own. Maybe it was a sort of escapism, I don’t know. But, I especially liked to read books that were in a sort of curious English — British English. I liked to read books that were written a hundred years before me or more … of course, those were translated, so they sounded really weird and bizarre. Books like that.
MM: When did you become interested in writing?
SC: I started writing around middle school. But, I always was an artist, and I always drew as I child and I still draw.
MB: Who would you say are your influences?
SC: I would say that authors like Hans Christian Andersen and Lewis Carroll were big influences for me when I was a young person. I think they’re still big influences in my writing now.
MM: Going back to your childhood, how much of The House on Mango Street was based on your life, and on other facts in general?
SC: The setting is factual. The sense of shame is factual. But many of the characters I gathered from different times and places. When I began the book, it was more of a memoir. But when I finished it, it became fiction because I started adding students from my classroom into it — I was a teacher of high school dropouts — and placing them into the neighborhood from my past. I was mixing up people from different times in my life.
MM: Would you care to share any examples of any of the students/characters?
SC: Sure. Like the story about the girl, Minerva, who writes poems on little pieces of paper, and folds them over and over? That’s based on one of my students. Sally is a composite of different people I knew from a girl in my childhood and a girl in my classroom where I was teaching who used to have issues with her father. That’s another example.
MM: You once described 1987 as “the worst year of your life.” Explain why.
SC: Because I was having a really hard time trying to find a job, and I couldn’t find one until the fall. I had to leave the state to find a job, and borrow money to get to the job. Once I got to the job, I hated the job! I was teaching at a university. It was my first time teaching at a university, and I felt very uncomfortable and frightened being in a university where I never felt at home as a student. And here I was, listed as a professor, and I put a lot of pressure on myself. I thought I had to know everything, and I had a great [sense of] insecurity and great fear. And my students were difficult students, and I just took every failure personally. I was alienated; I was in a new city, I did not know anyone; I was in a new job with just a lot of pressure to succeed, and I put a lot of demands on myself. I felt I had to be perfect. I was in a great place of depression because I felt that I couldn’t make a living from my writing. I wasn’t very good, I thought, as a professor because of my first semester. I was really hard on myself. I felt like a failure. I didn’t want to borrow money again to leave because I had to borrow money to get there. I felt this absolute pressure. I felt trapped.
MM: Then, some time during these moments, you came into contact with your agent, Susan Bergholz, who is also your current agent. How did that happen?
SC: I had her phone number in my wallet. I had it there for months. A mutual friend — a bookseller in Chicago, from whom I bought books — gave it to me and told me to call her. But, he gave it to me when I was in a funk. I was so depressed, I didn’t even think about it. I put it in my wallet. It wasn’t until I started getting well, because I was in such clinically severe depression that year that I remembered, looked it up, and it was still in my wallet.
MM: Now, of course, your work is studied in schools all over the country.
SC: Right! I went from the worst year of my life to the best year, with my agent, and winning [awards], and getting my book sold to Random House. It really taught me a lot about when we go through our dark periods to just hang in there.
MM: What advice would you give to aspiring writers?
SC: I would tell them to go to school, most importantly; to get an education, and to get a degree that would allow them to be economically solvent — if they don’t want to be homeless. Make sure you can pay for your own upkeep and health insurance, because you might have to have a day job. Most likely you may never make any money from your writing. Just make sure that you have an education and that you can earn an income. Also, study with writers. That doesn’t mean you’ll do it at a university; it might be after you leave … [Also] to read, learn from the books you’re reading, and share your writing in a writing group or workshop. That’s essential. Because if you’re writing by yourself, you’re not going to get the criticism [and] you’re not going to grow. My experience was not a positive one, but I do recommend a writing workshop.
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