Sandra Cisneros


Literary San Antonio Sandra Cisneros
Image credit: AccuNet/AP The usually dry bed of Woman Hollering Creek after a rain storm	Sandra Cisneros is not a native of San Antonio, but she has lived here for the past several years, after having spent the earlier part of her life in Chicago (her childhood home) and other places in the Midwest and West, punctuated by periodic visits to Mexico. While Sandra Cisneros is not the only gifted creative writer living in San Antonio at the present, she has received the most attention, especially from publishers of literary texts. For example, at least four of her books have been published by major East Coast firms: The House on Mango Street (1983) by Vintage/Random House; Woman Hollering Creek and Other Stories (1991) by Random House; a collection of poetry called Loose Woman (1994) by Knopf; and the novel Caramelo (2002), also by Knopf. In addition, the anthologies of American literature put together for college-level courses are more likely to include one or more selections from her work than from any other Latina writer.
The Woman Hollering Creek sign on U.S. Interstate 10 between San Antonio and Seguin	In the works Cisneros has published so far, San Antonio plays a fairly significant role, especially in the short fiction from Woman Hollering Creek and Other Stories, the title of which, incidentally, comes from the awkward English translation of "la llorona" (the moaning woman), the name of a creek located east of San Antonio toward Seguin. In the specific story bearing that name, a Latina woman leaves the neighboring town of Seguin and flees to San Antonio in order to escape her abusive husband. Symbolically, she--and presumably other abused Latinas-- become "las lloronas" designated in the English title, notwithstanding its folkloric associations with the ghost of a woman who returns to mourn the tragic death of her children.
The Koehler House in Monte Vista north of downtown San Antonio	Other stories in the collection focus more specifically on San Antonio, perhaps using it as the setting of the respective plot. The first of these, for instance, titled "My Tocaya" (my namesake), has an early teenage Latina from the West Side venturing into the north side of town in search of a boy she adores: I knew they lived somewhere in the Monte Vista area. So I'd ride my bike up and down streets--Magnolia, Mulberry, Huisache, Mistletoe--wondering if I was hot or cold. Just knowing Max Lucas Luna Luna might appear was enough to make my blood laugh (39).

Alamo façade The restored Steves House in the King William Historic District Sandra Cisneros' "periwinkle purple" house on E. Guenther Street Espada Aqueduct, façade of San Juan Mission with statue of missionary priest, and façade of Mission Concepción, all built by eighteenth-century Catholic missionaries	Then there is the overly endowed Carmen Berriozabal of "La Fabulosa: A Texas Operetta", who works "as a secretary for a San Antonio law firm" but who runs off with "King Kong Cardenas, a professional wrestler from Crystal City and a sweetie" (62). "Remember the Alamo," the title of which echoes the avenging battle cry of the Texas patriots at San Jacinto in 1836, has nothing to do with the historic events which occurred in either place. Instead, it introduces a deluded male dancer named Rudy who describes himself ambiguously: But I'm not Rudy when I perform. I mean, I'm not Rudy Cantú from Falfurrias anymore. I'm Tristán. Every Thursday night at the Travisty. Behind the Alamo, you can't miss it. One-man show, girl. Flamenco, salsa, tango, fandango, merengue, cumbia, cha-cha-cha. Don't forget. The Travisty. Remember the Alamo. (63) The juxtaposition of the patriotic expression, "Remember the Alamo," with the ambivalent narrator Rudy-Tristán and the name of the night club, "The Travisty," suggests an element of postmodernist satire directed at one of Texas' sacred shrines from a Latina perspective. The final story in Woman Hollering Creek, "Bien Pretty," has a more sanguine narrator named Lupe living in a neighborhood located not far from the King William area just south of downtown San Antonio: A Fulbright whisked [the owners] to Nayarit for a year, and that's how I got to live here in the turquoise house on East Guenther, not exactly in the heart of the historic King William District--it's on the wrong side of South Alamo to qualify, the side where the peasantry lives--but close enough to the royal mansions that attract every hour on the hour the Pepto Bismol-pink tourist buses wearing sombreros. (139) The autobiographical implications here are obvious in view of the fact that, in 1997, Cisneros had her modest frame house on East Guenther Street painted "periwinkle purple." Her act generated a mini-firestorm in the community, because many of the residents in King William considered her contemporary color scheme inappropriate for this historic district. Nevertheless, Sandra Cisneros won the battle and was permitted to keep her lavender colored house intact. But there is yet another allusion to San Antonio in "Bien Pretty" that has interesting autobiographical implications. Soon after the narrator Lupe has moved from San Francisco to San Antonio, she is struck by the difference between the two cities:

A month hadn't passed since I unpacked the van, but I'd already convinced myself San Antonio was a mistake. I couldn't understand how any Spanish priest in his right mind decided to sit right down in the middle of nowhere and build a mission with no large body of water for miles. . . . In the Bay, whenever I got depressed, I always drove out to Ocean Beach. Just to sit. And, I don't know, something about looking at water, how it just goes and goes, something about that I found very soothing. As if somehow I were connected to every ripple that was sending itself out and out until it reached another shore. But I hadn't found anything to replace it in San Antonio. I wondered what San Antonians did. (143)

Notwithstanding her frustration, Lupe does stay and falls in love with a handsome Latino named Flavio, although he eventually deserts her and returns to his sons from two different women in Mexico. Somewhat like Lupe, Chicago-born Sandra Cisneros has stayed in San Antonio and has fallen in love, at least with the creative writing opportunities this city has made available to her.

In the fall of 2002 Cisneros' long-awaited novel Caramelo was published, a skillfully crafted piece of Latina Post-Modernism, with a dash of Magical-Realism thrown in, for example, in the ubiquitous ghost of the "Awful Grandmother"(363). Approximately 100 pages of the novel are devoted to the Reyes family's residence in San Antonio, before the family leaves "this rinky-dink calcetín of a Texas town" (379) and moves back to Chicago. However, the central character Celaya (Lala) experiences the pangs of adolescence as a Catholic school student during the decade of the 1960's. As the first-person narrator, Lala alludes to numerous landmarks popular in the '60's, such as Hemisfair (1968), Frost Bros. Department Store, and Earl Abel's restaurant, formerly located at Broadway and Hildebrand, where Rep. Henry Gonzales once decked a political opponent for insulting him. There's even a piece of self-directed parody when the newly arrived Reyes family drives by a "purple Victorian [house] with a green swing on the porch" (305), an obvious allusion to Cisneros' own house discussed above.