An Interview with Sandra Cisneros

Abstract

AN INTERVIEW WITH SANDRA CISNEROS SANDRA CISNEROS Sandra Cisneros, former recipient of a prestigious MacArthur grant, is the author of a number of books, including the novella The House on Mango Street, the short-story collection Woman Hollering Creek and Other Stories and the poetry collections My Wicked Wicked Ways and Loose Woman. Her first novel, Caramelo, will be published by Knopf in October. Gayle Elliott is assistant professor of English/Creative Writing and coordinator of Women's Studies at Stephens College. Her short fiction and literary criticism have appeared in Writer's Forum, The International Guide to the Short Story in English and The Journal ofModern Literature, among others. She is currently editing a book of interviews with fiction writers for the Society for the Study of the Short Story. 96 · The Missouri Review Sandra Cisneros An Interview with Sandra Cisneros/Gayle Elliott Interviewer: What is your definition of a short story? Cisneros: I don't know what the definition of a short story is, and I don't even care to answer that question. That's something somebody in academia would think about. Ijust want to tell a story, and ifpeople listen , and if it stays with you, it's a story. For me, a story's a story if people want to hear it; it's very much based on oral storytelling. And for me, a story is a story when people give me the privilege of listening when Tm speaking it out loud, whether Tm reading it in a banquet hall for a convention and it's the waitresses and busboys who are looking up from their jobs, or whether it's across an ice house table (ice house is an outdoor bar here in San Antonio), or whether it's a group of my girlfriends when we're having soup. Its power is that it makes people shut up and listen, and not many things make people shut up and listen these days. They remember it, and it stays with them without their having to take notes. They wind up retelling it, and it affects their lives, and they'll never look at something the same way again. It changes the way they think, in other words. Interviewer: What about a story makes it memorable? Cisneros: Well, it's obviously meeting some need that you have in your life. It's memorable because it makes you either laugh or cry. If a story's really good, it does both. Sometimes it's not the story's fault if it doesn't stay with you, because you're too old or too young for it. I feel that, in the Native American sense, the story cycles; there are different times of your life that a story may come to you. You don't remember it, and then you hear it again or read it again later in your life, and because of what's happened in your life it's distinct from the first time you heard it. The story speaks to you then. We may say, "Oh, that story didn't do anything for me," instead of saying, "Tm not ready for that story." We The Missouri Review · 97 blame the author or the story itself; but I really think that you have to hear a good story at the right time in your life. Interviewer: And then it will resonate. Cisneros: Yes, because it was a story that was necessary to you. Interviewer: Do you classify yourself in a particular way: minimalist, magical realist, postmodernist? It would seem to me that you classify yourself maybe more as a storyteller. Cisneros: I don't classify myself as any of those things because I don't know what that means, and I don't have to know. It's not my job to be classifying my stories. Interviewer: What was the process by which you came to understand what your particular gift or stamp would be? Cisneros: You learn things in spirals, you know, and I learned it when I was in graduate school. I've written and talked a lot about that— when we were in seminar, and I was so intimidated when we were...