Writers Who Inspire Us: Sandra Cisneros, Memory, and Storytelling as Power
I started reading Sandra Cisneros in my junior high school for a memoir class. Before reading The House on Mango Street, I remember feeling disconnected from reading. I had been exploring a lot of journal-style stories in the hopes that my writing would have a breakthrough, but it wasn’t until I read Cisneros that I realized I wanted to write my own memoir. I felt alive with energy, reading Esperanza’s recountings of her family, her home life, the way she and her friends watched clouds pass by. I began writing short memoir pieces for class, submitting them every-other week and often reading snippets aloud (with shaking hands). I felt vulnerable, but I wouldn’t be able to figure out why until much later, in graduate school, when my professors commented on the confessional-style with which I wrote.
As a third-generation Ecuadorian American, I could speak Spanish with my family, but I couldn’t write about anyone related to me—or Ecuador—until I felt I was ready to do justice to my family’s stories. The memoir pieces I so lovingly poured over in high school turned into prose poems whose contents blurred the lines between folklore and realism. I like to think I kept my distinctive voice, but I feel as though it’s changed overtime as I’ve tried to work out who I am as a human being, and a writer.
In an interview with Sandra Cisneros in the “Chicago Public Library,” Cisneros says, “I think my work still has a distinctive voice that is uniquely mine—and that voice is one of a person speaking Spanish in English. By that I mean that I write with the syntax and sensibility of Spanish, even when there isn’t a syllable of Spanish present. It’s engrained in the way I look at the world, and the way I construct sentences and stories.” When I write in Spanish and English in my poetry, I feel an authenticity which I’ve only engaged in when around my family. I remember long hours spent on my abuelita’s bed (lovingly nicknamed “Wita”) as she stroked my hands and called me mi hijita, blurring the words until I became mijita or mija. While I normally feel distant when looking back at my childhood, I am comforted by Cisneros’ discussion of feeling “clear '' when we are far away from the story we’re trying to write. Perhaps we are responsible for creating the linkage between the past and the present—a webbing of memories, like algae, connecting us between lifelines.
Sandra Cisneros has written thirteen books, from novels and short stories to children’s books. A MacArthur Fellow, winner of the PEN/Nabokov Award for Achievement in International Literature, Cisneros’ work continues to inspire readers and writers across the globe. It’s difficult to imagine what my writing life would be like had I not been introduced to her work in high school. She was the first Chicana author I read, and her work fundamentally changed how I navigate creative writing and all its intersections.
I’ve been rereading Caramelo, a novel about family, the stories we pass down to each other, history, and what it takes to tell our stories. In an interview from a few years ago, “Sandra Cisneros: Close to the bull’s eye,” Cisneros talks to Jack Smith of The Writer about her style, poetry, and fiction. When reflecting on her poetic prose style, Cisneros writes, “I like poetry because it’s so succinct. Caramelo is so full of so many little details, but I hope every line’s poetic. When I’m writing fiction, I try to make the lines as beautiful as poetry.” It’s this hybrid-space which knits together poetry and fiction that I hope to embody. Cisneros goes on to comment about how inspired she is by the works of Marguerite Duras, Harriet Doerr, and Jean Rhys, and how she hopes to write as beautifully as they do. Whenever I pick up a Cisneros book, I am amazed by how she moves towards poetic language in fiction, and how she discusses memory both as a necessary distance to a text, and as a gap that writers can seek to fill.
Each time I write, I am reminded of the way my family members are constantly telling me to remember them. I can hear my great grandmother’s soft voice saying recuérdame as she presses candy and money into my hands. We sit on her bed in the middle of the night after she’s done praying, and even though she’s not here anymore, I can still feel her presence in my prose—and poetry. My creative nonfiction is a terrifying mystery, and when I look at my memoir, I see a puzzle I have to put together. When I feel most alone, I look to Cisneros’ work to remind me what it means to put my life and my love on the page with an accuracy only I have access to.
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About Sam Moe
Sam Moe is a writer focusing on gastronomy and eco poetry. She is the first-place winner of Invisible City’s Blurred Genres contest in 2022, and the 2021 recipient of an Author Fellowship from Martha’s Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing. Her chapbook, “Heart Weeds,” is available from Alien Buddha Press and her second chapbook, “Grief Birds,” is forthcoming from Bullshit Lit in April 2023.