By:
Becca  Jordan

Sandra Cisneros was born in Chicago in l954, the third child and only daughter in a family of seven children. She  studied at Loyola University of Chicago (B.A. English 1976) and the University of Iowa (M.F.A. Creative Writing 1978). Her books include a chapbook of poetry, Bad Boys (Mango Press 1980); two full-length poetry books, My Wicked Wicked Ways (Third Woman 1987, Random House 1992) and Loose Woman (Alfred A. Knopf 1994); a collection of stories, Woman Hollering Creek and Other Stories (Random House l991); a children's book, Hairs / Pelitos (Alfred A. Knopf 1994); and two novels, The House on Mango Street (Vintage 1991) and Caramel (Knopf 2002).

Caramel was selected as notable book of the year by several journals including The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the San Francisco Chronicle, the Chicago Tribune, and the Seattle Times. It was also nominated for the Orange Prize in England. My novels have been selected for One City/One Book projects in numerous communities including Los Angeles, Miami, Fort Worth, El Paso, and Milwaukee. House on Mango Street has sold over two million copies and is required reading in classrooms across the country, including elementary, middle, high school, and university level.

Woman Hollering Creek was awarded the PEN Center West Award for Best Fiction of l99l, the Quality Paperback Book Club New Voices Award, the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award, and the Lanai Foundation Literary Award. It was also selected as a noteworthy book of the year by The New York Times and the American Library Journal, and nominated Best Book of Fiction for l99l by the Los Angeles Times.

Loose Woman won the Mountains & Plains Booksellers Association's 1995 Regional Book Award in the poetry category.

Other awards include the prestigious Mac Arthur Foundation Fellowship, 1995; a Texas Medal of the Arts Award, 2003; an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters from Loyola University, Chicago, 2002; an honorary Doctor of Letters from the State University of New York at Purchase, l993; two National Endowment of the Arts Fellowships for fiction and poetry, l988, l982; the Robert Hollowly Lectureship at the University of California, Berkeley, l988; the Chicano Short Story Award from the University of Arizona, l986; the Before Columbus American Book Award, l985; the Texas Institute of Letters Dobie-Paisano Fellowship, l984; and an Illinois Artists Grant, l984.

My books have been translated into over a dozen languages, including Spanish, Galicia, French, German, Dutch, Italian, Norwegian, Japanese, Chinese, Turkish, and, most recently, into Greek, Thai, and Serbo-Croatian.

In the past she  worked as a teacher and counselor to high school dropouts, as an artist-in-the schools where she taught creative writing at every level except first grade and pre-school, a college recruiter, an arts administrator, and as a visiting writer at a number of universities including the University of California, Berkeley, and the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.

She's currently earns her  living by her pen.  She also  lives in San Antonio, Texas, in a violet house filled with many creatures, little and large.

Cisneros' writing has been shaped by her experiences. Because of her unique background, Cisneros is very different from traditional American writers. She has something to say that they don't know about. She also has her own way of saying it. Her first book, The House on Mango Street, is an elegant literary piece, somewhere between fiction and poetry. She doesn't just make up characters, but writes about real people that she has encountered in her lifetime. Cisneros' work explores issues that are important to her: feminism, love, oppression, and religion. In "Ghosts and Voices: Writing From Obsession" she says, "If I were asked what it is I write about, I would have to say I write about those ghosts inside that haunt me, that will not let me sleep, of that which even memory does not like to mention."(73). Cisneros' writing has been shaped by her experiences. Because of her unique background, Cisneros is very different from traditional American writers. She has something to say that they don't know about. She also has her own way of saying it. Her first book, The House on Mango Street, is an elegant literary piece, somewhere between fiction and poetry. She doesn't just make up characters, but writes about real people that she has encountered in her lifetime. Cisneros' work explores issues that are important to her: feminism, love, oppression, and religion. In "Ghosts and Voices: Writing From Obsession" she says, "If I were asked what it is I write about, I would have to say I write about those ghosts inside that haunt me, that will not let me sleep, of that which even memory does not like to mention.

Works Cited / Links
Major portions of the above text were directly copied from public domain documents found on the internet.
I have listed those Internet Addresses beneath for your convenience.

Biographical Note	Biography
Guess who made the cover?	Hispanic Magazine
Sandra Cisneros	Edwardsly
Issues and Strategies	English & Health
Pictures and Images	Pictures
The Modern American Poetry	Career
The Voices from the Gaps	Women Writers of Color
The Free Encyclopedia	Wikipedia