A House of My Own: Stories from My Life (Vintage International)

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I'd grown up with her fiction, including the novels The House On Mango Street and Caramelo, but I wasn't sure what to expect of a memoir. She also examines with abrading candor and impish wit gender expectations, sexuality, and her long campaign to become 'a woman comfortable in her skin. Her San Antonio partner, on the other hand, “was as sweet as burnt-milk candy but as untidy as un remolino tejano en agosto, a Texas dust devil in August” (loc.

I went home that night and realized my education has been a lie-- had made presumptions about what was 'normal. This collection of essays and articles are profound, and deserve to be read and shared time and time again. And as a fellow quiet, sensitive child of a Latino immigrant, her experiences felt familiar to me in a way that I rarely come across in other books. My mother's first thing she did in the morning was turn on the radio, and my brothers turned on television sets.

The opening essay on Cisneros’s time on Hydra, as well as the introduction to the 25th anniversary edition of The House on Mango Street and the final essay, “Mi Casa es Su Casa,” were wonderfully written and executed. Unless you're exiled from your father's house for some transgression, you really are expected to live there," she tells NPR's Ari Shapiro. I just never really read anything by Chicano/a individuals throughout most of my schooling, including college. A House of My Own is part artist statement, part declaration of independence from The House on Mango Street, as Cisneros closes yet another chapter in her writing journey. Also, I hope that these little vignettes from the world I inhabit will bring you some feelings of peace and comfort as well as they will have a calming effect on you by cultivating a loving and gentle space for all readers.

The essays wildly vary in topic and have been distributed in a variety of different ways: some are lectures she’s given, while others have actually been published in literary spaces. a ferocious gut-puncher of a track that sees classic Chicago “beat-track” style 909 arrangements lay over an intense saturated 303 bassline that relentlessly worms its way throughout the mix with a booming urgency. She goes into detail in the Greece essay about how she wrote and turned in the manuscript of The House on Mango Street on that little Greek island, and then she also describes when and where she wrote specific short stories or vignettes. It also pulls together nonfiction writings that range from literary tributes to monographs and speeches punctuated by hard-won insights. Homes feature in many pieces: the apartments her family moved into, always looking for cheaper rent; the house they finally bought, where the author had a closet-sized bedroom; her house in San Antonio that she painted purple, raising objections from the city's Historic and Design Review Commission.I decided to read Sandra Cisneros' A House of My Own: Stories from My Life after reading a review by avid reader and active GoodReads user Rowena. But the overarching theme is finding a house of her own, from a young girl who moved too frequently and never had a quiet space of her own in such a large family. And when we read older articles that tell of thoughts the author no longer thinks, Cisneros grants new insights .

The idea of coming from many different cultures, different to the ones that your parents came from and making connections through language, food, and traditions is portrayed in such a rich, multi-faceted manner.Also, while I find her to be self-aware and enlightened in many areas, there were a couple comments that sat uncomfortable with me, not enough to ruin anything, just enough to remind me that idolization does no one any favors.