Literary Criticism

To begin, Sandra Cisneros is a self-described “Chicana feminist.” Much of her work often challenges patriarchal hierarchies deeply rooted in Latino culture and Mexican American familial structures. In other words, she offers revisionary work. Through her portrayals of women in motherhood and marriage, she is able to critique society’s conforming gender roles. Cisneros draws attention to the societal limitations and expectations placed on Latina women by creating young, pre-adolescent protagonists. This includes their roles as mothers, wives, and caregivers. She integrates archetypal characters of “womanhood” in many of her stories, placing them within a Mexican American family. By positioning them in environments that restrict self-growth and oppress women, she is able to illustrate how these women escape these traditional gender roles and reach for independence.

Cisneros’ use of innovative form and language, including her employment of “hybrid poetic prose,” represents the resistance to “class-inflicted literary conventions” that are inflicted on Latina women. Through her innovative style of writing, Cisneros is able to create a fresh writing style that is “Chicana feminist resistance” and is openly shown and flourishes. Cisneros’ works provide a space for Latina women to break down patriarchal conventions and create for themselves a space for self-expression and creativity.

While Sandra Cisneros puts much emphasis on gender roles, she doesn’t undermine the importance of self-expression and innovation in her works. Social expectations in the U.S. include conforming the public to certain sets of standards of culture, race, class, and gender. Cisneros explores the challenges individuals face and the many different pathways they take to find their own identities. Her books, The House on Mango Street and Caramelo, both contain plots focused on overcoming oppression and accepting identity. Yet, these are only two of the many books she has written regarding self-exploration.

Cisneros’ innovation is present not only in her narrative but also in her writing style. By utilizing her "hybrid poetic prose," she is able to create a more multifaceted and deep depiction of the inner turmoil her characters experience throughout their own journeys. Her books reflect the universal struggle of Latin American individuals to find their unique, individual place in American society. Her style shows how Chicana writing has changed and developed over the years, overcoming "cultural expectations" and "class-inflected conventions."

Sandra Cisneros grew up in a Latin American household. Consequently, her writing reflects “the heterogeneity of the Mexican American community.” Using her own background as a Mexican American, she is able to accurately portray the diverse perspectives Latino individuals have. Discussing serious and important experiences with brevity and humor, she makes her stories easy to understand. Lifting some of the weight off these topics through humor, Cisneros widens the scope of those who can read and learn from her stories. Her novels highlight the tensions between immigrant culture and the push to conform to “American standards.” Her approach to this tension is perfectly embodied in the line, “We didn’t come to the United States. It came to us.”

As a Mexican American from an oppressed family that often moved between the U.S. and Mexico, Cisneros has had firsthand experience balancing ethnic identification with adhering to American culture. Her writing provides a deep analysis of the differences between assimilated and unassimilated Latinos, showing the variety of ways immigrants approach their situations. Her writing features an artistic balance between modernism and postmodernism and argues against the shallow “model of European immigration to the United States.” Much like authors Toni Morrison and Louise Erdrich, Cisneros highlights the complex experience of immigrants in an often conforming society.

With such a deep rooted influence from her Latin American culture, Sandra Cisneros has experienced much oppresion from society. Nearly all of Cisneros' works feature some sort of plot regarding society's challenges. Through navigating the stereotypes of class, gender, and ethnicity in the U.S., her characters grow as individuals so that they can overcome oppression. She focuses heavily on gender roles, the experience of living in an immigrant family, discovering identity, and gaps in class—all of which stem from social stereotypes. Her attitude toward mass culture is clear throughout her stories; she always highlights the importance of overcoming societal obstacles.

She uses her own experiences to hone in on how society treats Mexican Americans. Each of Cisneros' protagonists represents herself and her own “journey to reconciliation.” She tells her story through each character in a relatively unserious way, allowing more accessibility to her writings and their meanings. Not just highly educated scholars are able to read her stories, but also the average person, including a child, is able to understand her message. By using humor and brevity in a poetic manner, she makes the complex societal struggles many Mexican Americans face comprehensible to those who may not have had the same experience. At the same time, she provides a safe haven through her stories for those who did experience struggles in society. Her work resonates with the broader social struggles experienced by Mexican American immigrants in a poignant manner.

Focusing specifically on her most famous work, The House on Mango Street, Sandra Cisneros wrote a powerful coming-of-age novel. Cisneros commonly uses the growth of a character to portray overcoming social oppresion. In The House on Mango Street,  she created a bildungsroman, or a novel where the protagonist develops morally, through the eyes of a pre-adolescent girl. In it, the girl, named Esperanza, overcomes many common experiences as she grows into a woman. Being hypersexualized by older men, pushed to conform to the traditional roles of a female, and fighting the stereotypes of a typical Mexican American, she struggles to find her own sense of self. Cisneros crafts her voice to grow as the novel progresses, making it a “voice of hope” and a “voice of transition.” Sandra Cisneros includes common experiences young girls must face, making Esperanza fight back against her surroundings, which push her to “join the community as a wife and a mother.”

Resisting her gloomy fate, Esperanza fights for her sense of individuality; she struggles through her journey to find her identity. Once she declares, “I am,” she is able to finally begin this journey of finding her identity. Through a simple yet powerful phrase, Cisneros creates a shift in her voice, illustrating how someone has to accept and understand who they are before they can find solace.

Through building a story from the eyes of a young girl as she ages, Cisneros is able to capture the experience and path to self-identification in a way that is relatable and easy to understand.

Bildungsroman definition: a novel dealing with one person's formative years or spiritual education.

Sandra Cisneros’ The House on Mango Street reshapes the typical framework in Chicano/a literature. A traditional bildungsroman often features a male protagonist in which the “boy becomes a man by first acquiring self-sufficiency and then assuming his rightful place as a leader in the community.” Likewise, with a female protagonist,  a bildungsroman often has her “give up her freedom and sense of individuality in order to join the community as a wife and mother.” Yet, Cisneros abandons both of these stereotypical notions in her story. With her young, pre-adolescent protagonist, Esperanza, Cisneros makes her story about how she fights against social and cultural expectations to find her own sense of individuality. Cisneros allows her protagonist to achieve her dreams without betraying her community or cultural roots—a plot unlike any other traditional Chicano bildungsroman.

Through her novel, Sandra Cisneros was able to change the trajectory of Chicano literature. Addressing the social challenges often faced, she “emphasizes the crucial roles of racial and material as well as ideological conditions of oppression.”

In addition, Sandra Cisneros uses a variety of literary choices and elements to create light writing that criticizes societies ugly realities. Some of her most notable literary elements include her use of imagery, symbols, and poetic tone. 

Imagery

Sandra Cisneros utilizes “short, impressionistic glimpses” in order to create a poignant narrative. Often offering readers a disembodied view into the characters’ consciousness, she adds a “surreal and fragmented quality” to her writing. By using a minimal amount of words, she allows for individual interpretation and relation to the novel, making her stories personal and relatable.
Her seemingly simple word choice also allows for the unfiltered ugliness of some realities to take form, such as the violence and sexual aggression Esperanza experiences in The House on Mango Street.
Through using seemingly simple diction, deeper and more poignant images are created, revealing profound messages in simple text.

Symbols

Sandra Cisneros creates powerful messages in her writing through the use of symbols. In her story The House on Mango Street, the home the protagonist lives in serves as a central symbol. Esperanza’s house is “small, crooked,” and “drab.” This aggressively contrasts Esperanza’s idealized image of a home. Yet, this “ideal home” is just a reflection of her idealized version of herself. What her home lacks is what Esperanza, as a young girl, yearns for: stability, financial means, triumph, and pleasant surroundings. It is important to note that “the metaphor of the house is more than pure materialism.” Cisneros uses this symbol to portray the inner struggles many immigrants face when trying to assimilate into American society.
Similarly, in The House on Mango Street, another prominent symbol is the trappings of womanhood. Illustrated through “shoes, makeup, and clothes,” Cisneros represents common experiences and stereotypes of a “girl” to show how society pushes women to conform to tradition. She uses this symbol to make a complex reality easy and relatable: how a woman learns to empower herself in an oppressive society.

Poetic Tone

The tone of Sandra Cisneros’ writing is often compared to that of music. With a “poetic, lyrical quality,” Cisneros’ writing is said to have a strong “aural character.” Through repetitive phrasing, her writing resembles that of a “nursery rhyme.” This creates a vulnerable tone that makes her stories poignant and personal. Cisneros often writes with a youthful perspective, creating a lighthearted tone that reflects the tension between innocence and harsh reality.