A House of My Own: Stories from My Life

by Sandra Cisneros

Overview

Winner of the PEN Center USA Literary Award for Creative Nonfiction • From the celebrated bestselling author of The House on Mango Street: "This memoir has the transcendent sweep of a full life.” —Houston Chronicle

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 and winner of the 2019 PEN/Nabokov Award for Achievement in International Literature 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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780345807175
Publisher:	Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Publication date:	09/06/2016
Series:	Vintage International Series
Pages:	400
Sales rank:	190,166
Product dimensions:	5.16(w) x 7.96(h) x 0.79(d)

About the Author

Sandra Cisneros is a poet, short story writer, novelist and essayist whose work explores the lives of the working-class. Her numerous awards include NEA fellowships in both poetry and fiction, the Texas Medal of the Arts, a MacArthur Fellowship, several honorary doctorates and national and international book awards, including Chicago’s Fifth Star Award, the PEN Center USA Literary Award, and the National Medal of the Arts awarded to her by President Obama in 2016. Most recently, she received the Ford Foundation’s Art of Change Fellowship, was recognized among The Frederick Douglass 200, and was awarded the PEN/Nabokov Award for Achievement in International Literature.

Her classic, coming-of-age novel, The House on Mango Street, has sold over six million copies, has been translated into over twenty languages, and is required reading in elementary, high school, and universities across the nation.

In addition to her writing, Cisneros has fostered the careers of many aspiring and emerging writers through two non-profits she founded: the Macondo Foundation and the Alfredo Cisneros del Moral Foundation. She is also the organizer of Los MacArturos, Latino MacArthur fellows who are community activists. Her literary papers are preserved in Texas at the Wittliff Collections at Texas State University. 

Sandra Cisneros is a dual citizen of the United States and Mexico and earns her living by her pen. She currently lives in San Miguel de Allende.

Hometown:

San Antonio, Texas

Date of Birth:

December 20, 1954

Place of Birth:

Chicago, Illinois

Education:

B.A., Loyola University, 1976; M.F.A., University of Iowa Writers' Workshop, 1978

Table of Contents

Introduction 3

Hydra House 9

No Place Like Home 34

Luis Omar Salinas 41

Falling in Love with Enamoramiento 49

Marguerite Duras 53

Huipiles 56

Vivan los Muertos 66

Straw into Gold 73

A Tango for Astor 84

Only Daughter 91

Letter to Gwendolyn Brooks 96

My Wicked Wicked Ways 99

Who Wants Stories Now 105

La Casa Que Canta 113

Mercè Rodoreda 117

The House on Mango Street's Tenth Birthday 124

I Can Live Sola and I Love to Work 132

Tapicero's Daughter 141

Guadalupe the Sex Goddess 160

Que Vivan los Colores! 170

Tenemos Layaway, or, How I Became an Art Collector 177

An Ofrenda for My Father on Day of the Dead 191

Un Poquito de Tu Amor 198

Eduardo Galeano 206

Infinito Botánica 215

El Pleito / The Quarrel 219

To Seville, with Love 226

A White Flower 235

Señor Cappuccino 240

Natural Daughter 245

A Girl Called Daydreamer 265

A House of My Own 270

An Ofrenda for My Mother 289

Resurrections 298

Ten Thousand 303

The Author Responds to Your Letter Requesting My Book Be Banned from the School Library 307

The Girl Who Became a Saint: Teresa Urrea 312

Chavela Vargas: Una Mujer Muy Mujer 325

Chocolate and Donuts 331

Akumal 337

A Borrowed House 341

Epilogue: Mi Casa Es Su Casa 350

Pilón: Infinito 371

Resting Place/Descanso 375

Acknowledgments 377

Editorial Reviews

Dazzling . . . part artist statement, part declaration of independence.” —Los Angeles Times

“Delightful. . . . This memoir has the transcendent sweep of a full life. . . . [Cisneros’] prose reads like poetry, rhythmic and energetic; her poetry is as natural and effortless as plainspoken prose.” —Houston Chronicle

“[A] spirited collection. . . . [A House of My Own] puts a gifted storyteller at your fingertips, one who offers a panoply of life in apartments, rented rooms and borrowed houses, a journey with a curious, lively mind and reflections on cultures, families and traditions.” —Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
 
“Resonant. . . . A complex, nuanced picture of the writer emerges—think of a mosaic, a collage.” —Chicago Tribune

“A fierce talent. No one writes like Cisneros. . . . A House of My Own is a compilation of true stories and non-fiction pieces that form a ‘jigsaw autobiography’ of the author’s life." —Jezebel

“An extraordinary and magical journey. Sandra Cisneros makes me so happy that I am a reader, so joyful that she is a writer, and even more exhilarated that she is part of our world. Read this book and laugh, cry, and rejoice!" —Edwidge Danticat

“Cisneros is right there in the room, fiercely candid, warm and gracious, talking about everything. . . . A literary salon steeped in storytelling and writers, [A House of My Own] honors her process and influences and draws attention to crucial and difficult points of her development. Like a manifesto, it reasserts Cisneros’s artistic credo." —The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

“In a tone that is intimate and inviting—indeed, we feel we are sitting right next to [Cisneros] as she sips tea (or chugs tequila) at her home in Mexico, and recounts her adventures with a laugh and a shake of the head: Ay Dios mio." —Los Angeles Review of Books

“[Cisneros] has documented her life through a mélange of essay, poetry, and battle cry." —Oprah.com

“Cisneros . . . has here written what may well be the best memoir of the year thus far. . . . A fierce portrait of an artist and her quest, and the roads taken and not taken to find a home of her own." —Library Journal (starred review)

“[Cisneros] opens wide the doors to the house of her life, and we are all privileged to cross the threshold." —The Austin Chronicle

“Throughout each story, though written for a diverse smattering of purposes and people, is Cisneros’s constant molding of words like clay. . . . [Her] words will make existing fans love her more, and drive new readers to reach for her previous works after closing this one." —The Washington Times

“Cisneros’s earnest but casual voice resonates throughout, rich with humor and a sense of urgency." —Pasatiempo (Santa Fe)

“Welcoming and deeply gratifying." —NBC News

“Gorgeous." —The Rumpus

“Frank, accessible examinations of multiple subjects braided together in Cisneros’s personable, self-examining style." —Albuquerque Journal

From the Publisher

09/07/2015
Cisneros, a MacArthur Fellow and two-time NEA grant recipient, has felt one constant emotion throughout her life: a hunger for a place that belongs to her, a place where she is free. In her lyrical, warm, and richly detailed account, Cisneros writes of her nomadic family. She, her parents, and her six brothers only find some sense of permanence during regular visits to her paternal grandparents in Mexico City. It isn’t until she’s an adolescent that they get their first real home in Chicago, which inspires her most famous novel, The House on Mango Street. But when given the chance, she flees in the early 1970s from the old-world, marriage-minded patriarchy of her father’s home for university and an M.F.A. Then, with the half-finished Mango manuscript in tow, she leaves the country for the first time, at 28. She lands in Greece and finds her first home of her own, a house where she writes in the garden looking out over the mountains. Many years on, it “holds a dazzling place in my memory.” Like many artists, Cisneros often lives as an itinerant; as a Mexican-American from “Chicano, Illinois,” she toggles between two metaphorical worlds. Settling in San Antonio, she wears tunics, the same style worn by the servants her Mexican relatives employ, and declares, “This cloth is the flag of who I am.” Now in her 60s, Cisneros vividly evokes the many stages of her life and the places she’s been. (Oct.)

Publishers Weekly

★ 09/01/2015
Cisneros, author of The House on Mango Street and Caramelo, has here written what may well be the best memoir of the year thus far. She seamlessly weaves "memories" from her life from 1984 through 2014 (some written for specific audiences and expanded in this volume). As in her fiction and poetry, Cisneros blends family stories from Chicago and Mexico with lively storytelling, rich details, and good humor. The result is a fierce portrait of an artist and her quest, and the roads taken and not taken to find a home of her own. All readers who are interested in creative writing, memoir, American literature, and Chicana literature will appreciate. VERDICT This memoir deserves to find the broad and wide readership of Cisneros's earlier books. [See Prepub Alert, 4/27/15.]—Pam Kingsbury, Univ. of North Alabama, Florence

Library Journal

Sandra Cisneros’s sweet, wry, Latin-inflected voice is the perfect accompaniment to the true stories that comprise this engaging memoir. The author of the bestselling coming-of-age novel THE HOUSE ON MANGO STREET here blends the personal—reflections on her parents’ marriage, her adventures on a Greek island while trying to finish a novel—with political commentary and essays on her literary heroes to create an unusual autobiographical quilt. Cisneros has an inviting, quirky tone that encourages listeners to stay—whether for her thoughts on women in Sarajevo or her story of finally abandoning Mr. Wrong. She varies her rhythm and pitch as ably as a professional narrator, and often reads with an audible smile, making us smile too for this moving tribute to life. A.C.S. © AudioFile 2015, Portland, Maine

OCTOBER 2015 - AudioFile

Sandra Cisneros’s sweet, wry, Latin-inflected voice is the perfect accompaniment to the true stories that comprise this engaging memoir. The author of the bestselling coming-of-age novel THE HOUSE ON MANGO STREET here blends the personal—reflections on her parents’ marriage, her adventures on a Greek island while trying to finish a novel—with political commentary and essays on her literary heroes to create an unusual autobiographical quilt. Cisneros has an inviting, quirky tone that encourages listeners to stay—whether for her thoughts on women in Sarajevo or her story of finally abandoning Mr. Wrong. She varies her rhythm and pitch as ably as a professional narrator, and often reads with an audible smile, making us smile too for this moving tribute to life. A.C.S. © AudioFile 2015, Portland, Maine

OCTOBER 2015 - AudioFile

2015-07-07
The making of a Latina writer. Award-winning novelist, poet, and MacArthur Fellow Cisneros (Have You Seen Marie?, 2012, etc.) describes her first novel, The House on Mango Street (1983), as a series of discrete vignettes that could be read as a whole "to tell one big story…like beads in a necklace." That description is apt, as well, for this warm, gently told memoir assembled from essays, talks, tributes to artists and writers, introductions, and poems, most previously published over the last several decades. "I am the only daughter in a family of six sons. That explains everything," Cisneros once wrote as a contributor's note. But she admits her identity has been shaped, as well, by her proud, stern Mexican father, "intelligent, self-taught" Mexican-American mother, and by her childhood in working-class Chicago. Although she exalts in her identity as a Latina, she realized on a trip to Mexico, when she was 30, that like other "naive American children of immigrants," she was "filled with nostalgia for an imaginary country—one that exists only in images borrowed from art galleries and old Mexican movies." Cisneros chronicles the creation of her first novel, begun in graduate school at the University of Iowa, when she was 22, and completed on the Greek island of Hydra in a whitewashed house with "thick walls, gentle lines, and rounded corners, as if carved from feta cheese." Homes feature in many pieces: the apartments her family moved into, always looking for cheaper rent; the house they finally bought, where the author had a closet-sized bedroom; her house in San Antonio that she painted purple, raising objections from the city's Historic and Design Review Commission. Besides reflecting on her writing, Cisneros discloses a period of severe, suicidal depression when she was 33; a tantalizing family secret; and eulogies for her parents. A charming, tender memoir from an acclaimed Mexican-American author.

Kirkus Reviews