Sandra Cisneros family and life experiences to themes in his or her literature - Essay Example

Most of her works are about poor-to-middle class Latinas in the world of modern America. She speaks reality in most of her works. Her works have been featured in periodicals such as The New Yorker, The Los Angeles Times, Elle, Grand Street, The Village Voice, The New York Times and Glamour. Her most popular novel The House on Mango Street earned worldwide applause. It is about a young Latina girl growing up in Chicago experiencing the harsh reality of life with lessons that can benefit the readers.

Her work is highly acclaimed in the literary world such that schools included her work in their curriculum as part of required reading materials (Bergolhz, 2007). Cisneros has earned her living through writing for more than 45 years already. She has published more than 35 publications (Cisneros, 2013). But it was after school that Sandra discovered that she would become a writer. After she graduated from Loyola in Chicago in the year 1976, she attended the University of Iowa’s Writers Workshop.

It was this time of her life that she felt alone, isolated and so out of place. She felt different from her well-bred classmates. This feeling did not suppress her, instead, it uplifted her spirit to become who she is right now. As she quoted in Publishers Weekly, “It was not until this moment when I separated myself, when I considered myself truly distinct, that my writing acquired a voice. That’s when I decided I would write about something my classmates couldn’t write about” (LaBalle, C. 2002). Sandra has been writing poems and stories while growing up.

But it was her feelings of alienation that Sandra felt during her writing workshops that made her realize what she would be writing about. As an American-Mexican living in an Americanized culture, she felt herself unique. Instead of dwelling in her differences, she decided to write about the stories about what she has gone through in life. The encountered conflicts during her growing years such as poverty, cultural differences, social alienation and degradation, and her feelings as a Latina writer are the topics of interests in most of her writings (Jufer,J. ,2013). While her well bred classmates wrote about good homes, nice family and good life, Sandra chooses her topic mostly about women finding their strength in life rising as victors in their poor conditions.

She mirrors the harshness of life and the reality of pain clearly through her poems, short stories and novels. She develops strong characters carrying stories that can enrich and encourage souls. Washington Post Book World connotes her as “a writer of power and eloquence and great lyrical beauty” (Gale, 1998). Sandra Cisneros did not have an easy life. She can’t relate with the traditional homes and families. She was brought up in the state of poverty. She was born in Chicago, but her family moved from place to place most of the time.

This situation has great impact to her such that she became shy, conscious and has no lasting friends. She exposed this side of her in Publisher Weekly quoting “The moving back and forth, the new school were very upsetting to me as a child. They caused me to be very introverted and shy. I do not remember making friend easily.” (Gale, 1998). The constant movements made her feel unfit and lonely. She resolved into reading books and expressed her melancholy through writing. These experiences she had from her