Good Brown Girl from the Barrio
October 6, 2018 § Leave a comment
If House on Mango Street cut me open, the poetry of Cisneros shattered me. I was expecting more of Esperanza, the narrator of Mango Street. Instead I got Sandra Cisneros herself — wild, raw, and vulnerable on the page in ways that left me buzzing. She wrote of her family, of violence, of travel, of sex, of lovers, of chaos, of loneliness, depression, and obsessive love. She wrote of all things a “good brown girl” from the barrio should not experience, much less put down on the page. When I read her poem “Christ You Delight Me” from Loose Woman and came to the last stanza — Suckle vines, I have to hunker//My cunt close to the earth,//This little pendulum of mine//Ringing, ringing, ringing — I couldn’t believe it. A Mexican-American woman, talking like that?
At Bustle, Lizz Huerta, my wonderful friend from the Misfit Crew at Bread Loaf, writes about Sandra Cisneros and how a writer is born when she finds herself on the page.
Neil Serven 
Leave a Reply