A HOUSE OF MY OWN by Sandra Cisneros

My review of A House of My Own: Stories from My Life (Alfred A. Knopf) by Sandra Cisneros was published in Lone Star Literary Life. From the review:

Born in Chicago to a working-class Mexican American family, the lone girl among six sons, Cisneros attended graduate school at the Iowa Writers Workshop. She had to create her own path, not blazing but creeping, hacking through the undergrowth. She had not yet discovered a template for what she needed to be and how she wanted to live. �Then it occurred to me that none of the books in this class [grad school], in any of my classes, in all the years of my education had ever discussed a house like mine. I went home that night and realized my education had been a lie � had made presumptions about what was �normal,� what was American, what was of value. I got mad [and] asked myself what I could write about that my classmates couldn�t. I was trying as best I could to write the kind of book I�d never seen in a library or in a school�it was out of this negative experience that I found something positive: my own voice.�

To read the entire review follow this link.