Sandra Cisneros “My Name”: The Search for Individuality and Identity in America

Sandra Cisneros’ “My Name” is from her famous novel The House on Mango Street (1984) is an extraordinary text that touches upon themes of displacement, gender inequality, and of identity. Cisneros life and times is interesting, complex, and indeed complicated. And it is easy to see how her personal life translates into this text. Sandra Cisneros (1954- ) was born in Chicago and grew up in a chauvinistic, machista type of culture alongside six brothers, her Mexican mother and father. This made Cisneros feel isolated. She would even state that growing up it was like she had seven fathers instead of one.  Thus, Cisneros didn’t feel as part of that lifestyle and “My Name” is representative to her feelings at the time. Another crucial moment Cisneros also traveled a lot back and forth between Mexico and U.S. which gave her instability of who she was culturally, making feel like she didn’t belong to either. Although it can be interpreted that in her writing Cisneros did embrace biculturalism.

But who is Sandra Cisneros? That is based on interpretation. For example, some websites classify her as an American writer. But on her own website she doesn’t state what she would classify herself ethnically. She just writes how she was born in Chicago and about all the success she made in America through her writing. Yet again, she writes on the Latino experience, is involved in the Latino community and various organizations, and is currently living in central Mexico. Therefore, this is an important question to tackle when trying to understand Cisneros and what it means to be American.

The narrator of this text begins by explaining the definition of her name and how she personally interprets. Cleary doesn’t associate herself with her name because it represents not only represents “sadness” to her, but makes her feel inferior gender-wise. Her grandmother who had her same name (whom she inherited it from) reminds the narrator of that sad hope as she was victim of being mistreated due to the chauvinistic lifestyle that comes with the Mexican culture. The narrator feels that she wants a name that she can personally identify with. She wants to create her own identity, not have an inherited one.

Historically speaking, given that ideas of feminism had flourished influencing Cisneros during the time she wrote the text, the narrator’s break from her name does not only represent her transference to a more American identity but also to lift the stigma of being an inferior sex. As mentioned before, the narrator inherited her name, Esperanza, from her grandmother, which to the narrator “means sadness, it means waiting … [as Mexicans] don’t like their women strong.” Actually in an interview, Cisneros explained how when she was a grad student she created Esperanza when she was “feeling very displaced and uncomfortable as a person of color, as a woman, as a person from working-class background.” Although, writing the novel as a whole she never actually believed the impact she’d make on others. “When I wrote ‘House,’ when I started it, I didn't think I was giving voice to Latino women. I thought I was just finally speaking up. I had been silenced, made to feel that what I had to say wasn't important.”

 Nevertheless, Cisneros and her writing has made a major impact in the Chicano community, to the Chicano literary movement and contributed to the construction of the Chicana identity. The House on Mango Street in particular has sold over two million copies and is read in middle schools, high schools and in universities across the nation. All in all, the text in relation to American identity perhaps suggests that there’s no such thing as being “American.” It’s about finding yourself and who you are as a person and your place as an individual in the world at large.

Further Readings:

Audra McLeod, "Sandra Cisneros: An Interdisplinary Approach to The House on Mango Street,"  http://www.unc.edu/~dcderosa/STUDENTPAPERS/childrenbattles/SandraCisneros.html
Sandra Cisneros own homepage, http://www.sandracisneros.com/

                                          Sandra Cisneros and her early life