Utbildningsradion – Over to You 2000/2001 Sandra Cisneros Programnr: 00060/ra 15

SANDRA CISNEROS – FINDING THE HOME OF HER HEART Manus: Claes Nordenskiöld Producent: Claes Nordenskiöld Sändningsdatum: 31/10 2000 Programlängd: 14’39

MUSIC: Ry Cooder ‘Canción Mixteca’ Sandra Cisneros: I’m Sandra Cisneros and we’re talking here in San Antonio. I was the only daughter in a family of six brothers and my brothers used to make me cry by telling me that I wasn’t a real Cisneros. That I was going to get married and turn into something else and they were the real Cisneros whereas I was just kind of like a phony. I was what you would call those lloronas. You know those cry babies. You know those girls in the class. You know there’s always one in the class that if you shout at her too loud she’d burst into tears. Speaker/Claes Nordenskiöld: Sandra Cisneros is the celebrated writer of books like “The House on Mango Street” and “Woman Hollering Creek”. Sandra Cisneros: I am Mexican by my father’s side. My father was Mexican by birth. My mother was born in the United States of Mexican parents. So I am an American of Mexican descent. Speaker: We’re on the upper floor of the Liberty Bar, a meeting place for artists of all kinds not too far away from the heart of San Antonio, Texas. But Sandra did not grow up here, she grew up in poor areas of Chicago. Sandra Cisneros: I really did not grow up in the Mexican barrio. I grew up in many communities in transition, in flight. Neighborhoods targeted for urban renewal. So I was always living in neighborhoods where there was cheap housing – usually in the neighborhoods with a great deal of racial tension, communities with the fleeing white community and an incoming black community. And depending on who was looking at me, I was either black or white, depending on who the viewer was. MUSIC: Ry Cooder ‘Canción Mixteca’ Speaker: What was your upbringing like though? Were you a happy kid, or? Sandra Cisneros: I think my brothers and my mother would give a very different perspective as to who I was. And on the outside I may have been very happy to them because I was kind of a comedian in the family. But to me my memories are always sad and I feel that I was very introspective and oversensitive and quiet. And that’s not what they would say at all. I was, in my opinion, very shy because we moved so much and we were always the ‘new’ kids. 1

Utbildningsradion – Over to You 2000/2001 Sandra Cisneros Programnr: 00060/ra 15

Speaker: So you always had to get to know the new kids? Sandra Cisneros: Yeah. But sometimes there were no new kids to know because we lived next to a big empty lot or a Boulevard or you couldn’t cross the street or ... you know it was dangerous. Some of the neighborhoods we lived in were dangerous. And there were enough kids with just our immediate family. You know just six brothers and my cousins. That was enough. MUSIC: Daniel Lanois ‘Still Learning How to Crawl’ Speaker: When did you feel that you wanted to be a writer though? Sandra Cisneros: When I was in about fifth grade. I used to go to the library a lot and maybe because it was the only place that was quiet. And I remember seeing the authors’ names in the card catalog and it suddenly occurred to me that I would like to see my name in the card catalog. And I would like the card to be dirty and worn and ragged. Because if the card was dirty that meant a lot of people had fingered it and it was a popular book and people were looking for it. And that’s how I visualized myself as a writer. So it came down to my name – to seeing ‘Cisnernos, Sandra’. And I think that was important too because I was the only daughter in a family of six brothers and my brothers used to make me cry by telling me that I wasn’t a real Cisneros. So I think it was part of a sense of creating a sense of self and a sense of pride for self. I was one of these good Catholic girls that did what my father told me until I went to graduate school. And as an undergraduate I was living during a time in which there was resources then available for people of color to go to school and for people from homes like mine were able to get an education rather easily and able to get money for books and housing. But my father, being the Mexican father that he was, wouldn’t allow me to live away from home. So, even though my brothers were going to the same university and living on campus, I had to commute a long distance to get to this campus. By the time I went to graduate school I made sure I only applied to places outside of Chicago. And that’s how I got out my fathers’ door. In my culture you don’t leave your father’s house until you’re married and that’s true whether you are a man or a woman. You live in your father’s home and sometimes you marry and you still stay there. So what I was doing was rather outrageous for my gender and for my culture and for my class. Speaker: How did your father feel about that? Sandra Cisneros: Well, my father saw it and my mother convinced him that this was because of my education that I needed to go away to study. My father was very supportive of my going away to school and since it was no financial burden on him, he thought it was fine because the money was there through government grants. However I found out in retrospect that he sent me to college because he thought I’d marry a 2

Utbildningsradion – Over to You 2000/2001 Sandra Cisneros Programnr: 00060/ra 15

professional. And when I came out of college with two degrees and no husband, he was very disappointed. I was supposed to find a man of category as they say in Spanish, ‘un hombre de categoria’, a professional. And meanwhile I came out of college and was living in these drafty apartments with the mattress on the floor. And we had never slept on the floor. We were poor but not that poor. So he was horrified to see me living in these dumps with space heaters and the mattress on the floor and crazy Bohemian friends. And he felt that I was choosing to be poor by choosing this frivolous habit I had of wanting to write. MUSIC: Daniel Lanois/Brian Eno ‘Deep Blue Day’ Speaker:

What do you think inspired you? Did anyone inspire you to become a writer? Or were there any writers specifically that had a great influence on you? Sandra Cisneros: You know what was the greatest influence and role model? People telling me I couldn’t. You know, sometimes when you don’t have a role model, just having a fence makes you want to break out and jump over it. And like my father and my brothers in a way, were great blessings because they would tell me I couldn’t. You know when I said that I wanted to go to college and my brothers laughed and said, ‘you can’t go to college’, when I was in sixth grade. Well just for that I was going to show them. So in a way in my life there were extraordinary barriers that became, that vaulted me into doing what I wanted to become. And I think my father in a way through his conservatism and his traditionalism helped launch me into my career. MUSIC: Daniel Lanois/Brian Eno ‘Deep Blue Day’ Speaker:

What if we go back to the “House on Mango Street”. Does that street exist? Sandra Cisneros: House On Mango Street exists in the imagination because it’s really a composite of several neighborhoods, of a real house that ‘The House on Mango Street’ is based on, with the neighborhood I taught in and the last apartment I lived in when I was working in Chicago. So they’re really three neighborhoods. It’s a real place in my memory, not called Mango Street but it’s the characters and some of the settings from different time periods in my life. Speaker: What about the characters in the book. Are you this Esperanza? Sandra Cisneros: No. I didn’t intend for it to be me. When I began the book I was trying to write about something my classmates couldn’t, without... You know they were so opinionated about everything that I wanted to be able to be the person of authority about something that they couldn’t say I was wrong. And I felt so overwhelmed by their sense of superiority that I wrote about something that they couldn’t touch and that’s where “House” began. So originally it began of my trying 3

Utbildningsradion – Over to You 2000/2001 Sandra Cisneros Programnr: 00060/ra 15

to think of something that my classmates that had come from wealthy homes couldn’t write about. And I tried to be a little outrageous and write about things that they had not lived. But as I moved away and started teaching in the barrio, because I did teach in the Mexican barrio, the lives of my women students, at the alternative high school, was so harsh compared to my life that I started populating the characters with their stories MUSIC: Ry Cooder ‘Church’ Speaker: So then you ended moving down to San Antonio. Sandra Cisneros: I won an NEA grant in my twenty-eighth year and with that grant I moved away first to Europe and meandered and finished “House on Mango Street” in Greece, lived in the south of France, wound up living in Sarajevo. I had never gone anywhere alone. I had been this dutiful daughter and you know people from my class and culture don’t travel alone. So that’s why I did it. And of course I came back after being away for eighteen months and came back in a worse place than I began because not only had I traveled but now I was back in Chicago after having seen the world. So I was very depressed and the first thing I wanted to do was get out of town. I didn’t have any money and my publisher was then in Texas – my small press publisher was at the University of Houston – and they notified me about a job in San Antonio and I didn’t know anything about San Antonio. And as often happens, when you don’t want a job and you apply for it you can be guaranteed you will get it. And so I applied for a job I didn’t want and I got it and it was my destiny I guess. I came here not knowing a thing about Texas. I just came because it was a stepping stone out of Chicago. You know I didn’t like this town when I got here. It really seemed like this stupid back- water little town and now all these years later, it is a stupid backwater little town but there are some brilliant people here as well. I’ve since fallen in love with this place because I found that it is the home and the heart. Like the witch woman tells Esperanza, she’s going to have a home in the heart and she didn’t understand what that meant and I didn’t understand what I meant when I wrote it. But all these years later I’ve kind of written a prophecy for myself. I found the home in my heart. The place where the two languages that I grew up with are public: English and the Spanish. And I can see them on billboards and I can hear them on the radio and I can see them. And graffiti and on menus mixed together. Speaker: You can use them everyday. Sandra Cisneros: Everyday. And I get ideas from the two languages. I have to be where the two languages are – the language of my heart and I found it here. MUSIC: Ry Cooder ‘Church’

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Utbildningsradion – Over to You 2000/2001 Sandra Cisneros Programnr: 00060/ra 15

Speaker: What about you’re working on a new book right now? Sandra Cisneros: Yes. I’m working on a novel. This book, this novel ‘Caramelo’ is the one that it was time for me to write now. And it’s a more complicated novel than ‘House.’ ‘House on Mango Street’ was the work of a young poet trying to write fiction. And now I’ve been writing fiction for a long time now and I’m learning my craft. I learn it every day when I go to my desk. And the issues that I want to write about are much more complex than the world as I saw it as a girl in my twenties. I’m forty-four years old now and I still feel like I haven’t figured out a thing about myself or the planet and I’m still learning. And I haven’t ... barely barely have scratched the surface of my craft and I’m trying to use all the powers I have of wisdom and foolishness to understand myself by writing this book. Speaker: Can you say anything about what it is about? Sandra Cisneros: Yes. It’s a book about my father’s life. It’s based on my father’s life as an immigrant. But it’s about borders. It’s about a man and his family, who like my father, who is an upholsterer and shuttles back and forth between Mexico City and Chicago and is homeless in a sense, in exile from his own self and anchored only by the country of his children. It’s an immigrant story. Speaker: Sounds wonderful. Alright, thanks a lot, Sandra. Sandra Cisneros: Thank you Claes. MUSIC: Ry Cooder ‘Canción Mixteca’

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