The Riddle of Cantinflas: Essays on Hispanic Popular Culture, Revised and Expanded Edition

Sandra Cisneros: Form over Content

114 Of f i c i a l ly a n o i n t e d L a G i r l f r i e n d b y t h e English-speaking media, Sandra Cisneros is considered a living classic. She is the most sought-after Latina writer of her generation and a guest impossibletoignoreinanymulticulturalfiesta .Theblack-and-whitephotographs used to promote her work are colored by an overwhelming sense of theatricality . They make her look like a sweet, light-skinned india with a European flair, a natural beauty out of a Sergei Eisenstein film. Her enigmatic smile hides the ancient mysteries of her people, and her cowboy boots, tiny miniskirts , idiosyncratic Mexican shawls, and hairbands inject the needed exoticism into her ethnic roots. Herstatusasthevoiceof aminorityhasnotbefallenbyaccident.Bornin 1954inaChicagobarrioandeducatedintheMidwest,Cisnerosacquiredher distinct Tejana identity when she settled in San Antonio in the mideighties. She has since turned the U.S.-Mexican border into her habitat. She proudly parades around under a hybrid facade that is part nativist Spanish and part antiestablishment American. She is constantly asking her audience to approach her as the star of a cross-cultural bildungsroman where mestizas, ignored and underrepresented for ages, end up baking the cake and eating it all. Indeed, Cisneros describes herself as “nobody’s wife and nobody’s mother” and “an informal spokeswoman for Latinos.” Her imposed profile is that of an eternal sympathizer of lost causes, a loose woman, a south-ofthe -border feminist outlaw happily infuriating anyone daring to obstruct her way. “They say I’m a bitch,” a poem of hers reads, Or witch. I’ve claimed the same and never winced. SANDRA CISNEROS Form over Content SANDRA CISNEROS 115 They say I’m a macha, hell on wheels, viva-la-vulva, fire and brimstone man-hating, devastating, boogey-woman lesbian. Not necessarily, but I like the compliment. By all accounts I am a danger to society. I’m Pancha Villa. I break laws upset the natural order, anguish the Pope and make fathers cry. I am beyond the jaw of law. I’m la desperada, most-wanted public enemy. My happy picture grinning from the wall. Her artistic talents are clear but overemphasized. In fact, what truly attracts readers is not her compact prose, which she perceives as “English with a Spanish sensibility,” but her nasty, taboo-breaking attitude. Her works are pamphleteering. They denounce rather than move; they accuse rather than educate. Responsible for several poetry collections, a children’s book, and a couple of volumes of fiction, Cisneros hit high into the firmament with her 1984 novel The House on Mango Street, a chain of interrelated vignettes widely read from coast to coast and repeatedly assigned to undergraduates. The plot is unified by the voice of Esperanza Cordero, a preteenage girl coming to terms with her impoverished surroundings and her urge to write her life. Cisneros’s second published book, with the imprint of Arte Público Press, a small nonprofit house at the University of Houston devoted to minority literature , The House on Mango Street came out just as she was celebrating her thirtieth birthday. The match between writer and publisher seemed ideal: a simple, cliché-filled coming-of-age tale by and about Hispanic women, uncomplicated and unapologetic, with the potential for enchanting a broad audienceof youngschoolgirls,andafederallyfundedpresswhosemandate hadbeentoplaceinbookshelvesthefictionbyLatinosthatmainstreamNew York publishers refused to endorse. In a short time both parties benefited greatly, the unknown Cisneros becoming, without any major reviews, an incipientversionof the bandidalatina thatwouldlaterblossom,andhertitle turning out to be one of the fastest selling in the house’s catalog. That all happened when diversity and the politics of inclusion were still in diapers. By the late eighties, multiculturalism had become a national obsession, and a spokesfigure for the brewing Latino minority was urgently needed. Richard Rodriguez, whose autobiography Hunger of Memory had 116 SANDRA CISNEROS appeared in 1982, was already an illustrious presence, but his antibilingualism ,oftenconfusedwithanti-Hispanicism,seemedrepugnantandxenophobic to the liberal establishment. Since Rodriguez stood alone, an unopposed male, a right-wing intellectual whose soul not even the devil could buy, a female counterpart was quickly sought. Cisneros seized the opportunity: Susan Bergholz, a Manhattan literary agent making a niche for emerging Latinos literati, took her as a client; soon after, Vintage agreed to reprint The House on Mango Street and Random House to publish another collection of stories, Woman Hollering Creek. A sudden metamorphosis occurred. Talented and outgoing...