A House Of My Own

lowcases and monogrammed napkins I tugged f r o m thebins at the Goodwill. I wrote these things and thought ofthem as "litde stories," though I sensed they were connected to each other. I hadn't heard of story cycles yet. Ihadn't read Ermilo Abreu Gomez's Canek, Elena Poniatowska's Lilus Kikus, Gwendolyn Brooks' Maud Martha,Nellie Campobello's My Mother's Hands. That would comelater, when I had more time and solitude to read.The woman I once was wrote the first three stories ofHouse i n one weekend at Iowa. But because I wasn't i n thefiction workshop, they wouldn't count toward my MFAthesis. 1 didn't argue; my thesis advisor reminded me toomuch of my father. I worked on these little stories on theside f o r comfort when I wasn't writing poetry f o r credit. Ishared them with colleagues like poet Joy Harjo, who wasalso having a hard time i n the poetry workshops, and fiction writer Dennis Mathis, a small-town Illinois native, butwhose paperback library was f r o m the world.Little-little stories were i n literary vogue at the time,i n the "70s. Dennis told me about the Japanese NobelPrize winner Kawabata's minimal "palm of the hand" stories. We f r i e d omelets f o r dinner and read Garcia Marquezand Heinrich Boll stories aloud. We both preferred experimental writers—all men back then except f o r GracePaley—rebels like ourselves. Dennis would become a lifelong editor, ally, and voice on the phone when either oneof us lost heart.The young woman i n the photo is modeling herbook-in-progress after Dream Tigers by Jorge Luis Borges—a writer she'd read since high school, story fragments thatring like Hans Christian Andersen, or Ovid, or entriesf r o m the encyclopedia. She wants to write stories thatignore borders between genres, between written and spoken, between highbrow literature and children's nurseryIntroductionrhymes, between New York and the imaginary village ofMacondo, between the U.S, and Mexico. It's true, shewants the writers she admires to respect her work, but shealso wants people who don't usually read books to enjoythese stories too. She doesn'iwant to write a book that areader won't understand and would feel ashamed f o r notunderstanding.She thinks stories are about beauty. Beauty that isthere to be admired by anyone, like a herd of clouds grazing overhead. She thinks people who are busy working f o ra living deserve beautiful little stories, because they don'thave much time and are often tired. She has i n m i n d abook that can be opened at any page and will still makesense to the reader who doesn't know what came before orcomes after.She experiments, creating a text that is as succinctand flexible as poetry, snapping sentences into fragmentsso that the reader pauses, making each sentence serve herand not the other way round, abandoning quotationmarks to streamline the typography and make the page assimple and readable as possible. So that the sentences arepliant as branches and can be read i n more ways than one.Sometimes the woman I once was goes out on weekends to meet with other writers. Sometimes I invite thesefriends to come to my apartment to workshop each other'swork. We come f r o m Black, white, Latino communities.We are men and we are women. What we have i n commonis our sense that art should serve our communities. Together we publish an anthology—Emergency Tacos—becausewe finish our collaborations i n the early hours beforedawn and gather at the same twenty-four-hour taqueria onBelmont Avenue, like a multicultural version of Hopper'sNighthawks painting. The Emergency Tacos writers organizemonthly arts events at my brother Keek's apartment—Introductionxvii

Galena Quique. We do this with no capital except ourvaluable time. We do this because the world we live i n is ahouse on fire and the people we love are burning.The young woman i n the photograph gets up i n themorning to go to the j o b that pays the rent on her PaulinaStreet apartment. She teaches at a school i n Pilsen, hermother's old neighborhood on Chicago's south side, aMexican neighborhood where the rent is cheap and toomany families live crowded together. Landlords and thecity take no responsibility f o r the rats, trash that isn't collected often enough, porches that collapse, apartmentswithout fire escapes, until a tragedy happens and severalpeople die. Then they hold investigations f o r a little while,but the problems go on until the next death, the nextinvestigation, the next bout of forgetting.The young woman works with students who havedropped out of high school but have decided to try againf o r their diplomas. She learns f r o m her students that theyhave more difficult lives than her storyteller's imaginationcan invent. Her life has been comfortable and privilegedcompared to theirs. She never had to worry about feedingher babies before she went to class. She never had a fatheror boyfriend who beat her at night and left her bruised i nthe morning. She didn't have to plan an alternative routeto avoid gangs i n the school hallway. Her parents didn'tplead with her to drop out of school so she could helpthem earn money.How can art make a difference i n the world? This wasnever asked at Iowa. Should she be teaching these students to write poetry when they need to know how todefend themselves f r o m someone beating them up? Can amemoir by Malcolm X or a novel by Garcia Marquez savethem f r o m the daily blows? A n d what about those whoxviiiIntroductionhave such learning problems they can't even manage abook by Dr. Seuss, but can weave a spoken story so wondrous, she wants to take notes. Should she give up writingand study something useful like medicine? How can sheteach her students to take control of their own destiny?She loves these students. What should she be doing to savetheir lives?The young woman's teaching j o b leads to the next,and now she finds herself a counselor/recruiter at heralma mater, Loyola University on the north side, i n RogersPark. I have health benefits. I don't bring work home anymore. My work day ends at five p.m. Now I have eveningsfree to do my own work. I feel like a real writer.A t the university I work f o r a program that no longerexists, the Educational Opportunity Program, that assists"disadvantaged" students. It's i n keeping with my philosophy, and I can still help the students f r o m my previous j o b .But when my most brilliant student is accepted, enrolls,and drops out i n her first semester, I collapse on my deskfrom grief, f r o m exhaustion, and feel like dropping outmyself.I write about my students because I don't know whatelse to do with their stories. Writing them down allows meto sleep.O n the weekends, i f l can sidestep guilt and avoid myfather's demands to come home f o r Sunday dinner, I ' mfree to stay home and write. I feel like a bad daughterignoring my father, but I feel worse when I don't write.Either way, I never feel completely happy.One Saturday the woman at the typewriter accepts aninvitation to a literary soiree. But when she arrives, shefeels she's made a terrible mistake. Al l the writers are oldmen. She has been invited by Leon Forrest, a Black novel-Introduction

ist who was trying to be kind and invite more women,more people-of-color, but so far, she's the only woman,and he and she the only coloreds.She's there because she's the author of a new book ofpoetry—Bad Boys f r o m Mango Press, the literary efforts ofGary Soto and Lorna Dee Cervantes. Her book is fourpages long and was bound together on a kitchen tablewith a stapler arid a spoon. Many of the other guests, shesoon realizes, have written real books, hardbacks f r o m bigNew York houses, printed i n editions o f hundreds of thousands on actual presses. Is she really a writer or is she onlypretending to be a writer?The guest of honor is a famous writer who went to theIowa Workshop several years before she got there. His latest book has just been sold to Hollywood. He speaks andcarries himself as i f he's the Emperor of Everything.At the end of the evening, she finds herself searchingf o r a ride home. She came on the bus, and the Emperoroffers to give her a l i f t home. But she's not going home,she's got her heart set on a movie that's showing onlytonight. She's afraid of going to the movies alone, andthat's why she's decided to go. Because she's afraid.The famous writer drives a sports car. The seats smellof leather, and the dashboard is lit like an airplane cockpit. Her own car doesn't always start and has a hole i n thefloor near the accelerator that lets i n rain and snow, so shehas to wear boots when she drives. The famous writer talksand talks, but she can't hear what he is saying, because herown thoughts are drowning h i m out like a wind. Shedoesn't say anything, doesn't have to. She is just young andpretty enough to feed the famous writer's ego by noddingenthusiastically at everything he says until he drops her o f fi n f r o n t of the cinema. She hopes the famous writernotices she is going to see Gentlemen Prefer Blondesalone. ToxxIntroductiontell the truth, she feels miserable walking up to the boxoffice by herself, but she forces herself to buy the ticketand go i n because she loves this movie.The theater is packed. I t feels to the young woman asif everybody is there with somebody, except her. Finally,the scene where Marilyn sings "Diamonds Are a Girl's BestFriend." The colors are cartoon-wonderful, the set deliriously campy, fhe lyrics clever, the whole number is pureold-style glamour. Marilyn is sensational. After her song isover, the audience breaks into applause as i f this were alive performance, though sad Marilyn has been dead yearsand years.The woman who is me goes home proud of havinggone to the movies alone. Seel It wasn't that difficult. But asshe bolts the door of her apartment, she bursts into tears." I don't have diamonds," she sobs, not knowing what shemeans, except she knows even then it's not about diamonds. Every few weeks, she has a messy crying j a g likethis that leaves her feeling shipwrecked and awful. It'ssuch a regular occurrence she thinks these storms ofdepression are as normal as rain.What is the woman i n the photograph afraid of?She's afraid of walking f r o m her parked car to her apartment i n the dark. She's afraid of the scuffling sounds i nthe walls. She's afraid she'll fall i n love and get stuck livingin Chicago. She's afraid of ghosts, deep water, rodents,night, things that move too fast—cars, airplanes, her life.She's afraid she'll have to move back home again i f sheisn't brave enough to live alone.Throughout all this, I am writing stories to go withthat title, The House on Mango Street. Sometimes I writeabout people I remember, sometimes I write about peopleIntroduction

I've just met, often I mi x the two together. My studentsf r o m Pilsen who sat before me when I was teaching, withgirls who sat beside me i n another classroom a decadebefore. I pick up parts o f Bucktown, like the monkey garden next door, and plop i t down i n the Humboldt Parkblock where I lived during my middle and high schoolyears—1525 N . Campbell Street.Often all I have is a title with no story—"The Familyof Little Feet,"—and I have to make the tide kick me i n thebehind to get me going. Or, sometimes all I've got is a firstsentence—-'You can never have too much sky." One of myPilsen students said I had said this, and she never forgot it.Good thing she remembered and quoted i t back to me."They came with the wind that blows i n August. . ." Thisline came to me i n a dream. Sometimes the best ideascome i n dreams. Sometimes the worst ideas come f r o mthere, too!Whether the idea came f r o m a sentence I heardbuzzing around somewhere and saved i n ajar, or f r o m atitle I picked up and pocketed, fhe stories always insist ontelling me where they want to end. They often surprise meby stopping when I had every intention of galloping alonga little further. They're stubborn. They know best whenthere's-no more to be said. The last sentence must ringlike the final notes at the end of a mariachi song—tan-tan—to tell you when the song is done.The people I wrote about were real, f o r the mostpart, f r o m here and there, now and then, but sometimesthree real people would be braided together into onemade-up person. Usually when I thought I was creatingsomeone f r o m my imagination, i t turned out I was remembering someone I ' d forgotten or someone standing soclose I couldn't see her at all.I cut apart and stitched together events to tailor thexxii Introductionstory, gave i t shape so it had a beginning, middle, and end,because real life stories rarely come to us complete. Emotions, though, can't be invented, can't be borrowed. A l lthe emotions my characters feel, good or bad, are mine.I meet Norma Alarcon. She is to become one of myearliest publishers and my lifetime friend. The first timeshe walks through the rooms of the apartment on NorthPaulina, she notices the quiet rooms, the collection oftypewriters, the books and Japanese figurines, the windowswith the view of freeway and sky. She walks as i f on tiptoe,peering into every room, even the pantry and closet as i flooking f o r something. 'You live here . . ." she asks,"alone?"'Yes.""So . . . " She pauses. "How d id you do it?"Norma, I di d i t by doing the things I was afraid ofdoing so that I would no longer be afraid. Moving away togo to graduate school. Traveling abroad alone. Earningmy own money and living by myself. Posing as an authorwhen I was afraid, just as I posed i n that photo you used onthe first cover of Third Woman.And, finally, when I was ready, after I had apprenticedwith professional writers over several years, partneringwith the right agent. My father, who sighed and wished f o rme to marry, was, at the end of his life, much more gratified I had my agent Susan Bergholz providing f o r merather than a husband. Ha llamado Susan ? he asked medaily, because i f Susan called i t meant good news. Diamonds may do f o r a girl, but an agent is a woman writer'sbest friend.1Introductionxxiii

I couldn't trust my own voice, Norma. People saw alittle girl when they looked at me and heard a little girl'svoice when I spoke. Because I was unsure of my own adultvoice and often censored myself, I made up another voice,Esperanza's, to be my voice and ask the things I neededanswers to myself—"Which way?" I didn't know exacdy,but I knew which routes I didn't want to take—Sally,Rafaela, Ruthie—women whose lives were white crosses onfhe roadside.A t Iowa we never talked about serving others with ourwriting. I t was all about serving ourselves. But there wereno other examples to follow until you introduced me toMexican writers Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz, Elena Poniatowska, Elena Garro, Rosario Castellanos. The youngwoman i n the photograph was looking f o r another way tobe— "otro modo de ser," as Castellanos put it.U n t i l you brought us all together as U.S. Latinawriters—Cherrie Moraga, Gloria Anzaldua, Marjorie Agosm, CarlaTrujillo, Diana Soli's, Sandra Maria Esteves, DianeGomez, Salima Rivera, Margarita Lopez, Beatriz Badikian,Carmen Abrego, Denise Chavez, Helena Viramontes—until then, Normita, we had no idea what we were doingwas extraordinary.I no longer make Chicago my home, but Chicago stillmakes its home i n me. I have Chicago stories I have yet towrite. So long as those stories kick inside me, Chicago willstill be home.Eventually I took a j o b i n San Antonio. Left. Cameback. A n d left again. I kept coming back lured by cheaprent. Affordable housing is essential to an artist. I could, intime, even buy my own first house, a hundred-year-oldhome once periwinkle, but now painted a Mexican pink.xxivIntroductionJ;I [ -.ttII*':»Two years ago my office went up i n my backyard, abuilding created f r o m my Mexican memories. I am writingthis today f r o m this very office, Mexican marigold on theoutside, morning-glory violet on the inside. Wind chimesring f r o m the terrace. Trains moan i n the distance all thetime, ours is a neighborhood of trains. The same SanAntonio River tourists know f r o m fhe Riverwalk wends itsway behind my house to the Missions and beyond until i tempties into the Gulf of Mexico. From my terrace you cansee fhe river where i t bends into an S.White cranes float across the sky like a scene paintedon a lacquered screen. The river shares the land withducks, raccoons, possums, skunks, buzzards, butterflies,hawks, turties, snakes, owls, even though we're walkingdistance to downtown. A n d within the confines of myown garden there are plenty of other creatures too—yappy dogs, kamikaze cats, one lovesick parrot with a crushon me.This is my house.Bliss.October 24th, 2007. You come down f r o m Chicagofor a visit, Mama. You don't want to come. I make youcome. You don't like to leave your house anymore, yourback hurts you say, but I insist. I built this office beside theriver for you as much as f o r me, and I want you to see it.Once, years ago, you telephoned and said i n anurgent voice, "When are you going to build your office? Ijust saw Isabel Allende on PBS and she has a HUGE deskand a BIG office." You were upset because I was writingon the kitchen table again like i n the old days.And now here we are, on the rooftop of a saffronbuilding with a river view, a space all my own just to write.Introduction xxv

We climb up to the room I work in, above the library, andout to the balcony facing the river.You have to rest. There are industrial buildings onthe opposite bank—abandoned granaries and silos—butthey're so rain-rusted and sun-bleached, they have theirown charm, like public sculptures. When you've recoveredyour breath, we continue.I ' m especially p f o u d of the spiral staircase to therooftop. I ' d always dreamed of having one, just like thehouses i n Mexico. Even the word f o r them i n Spanish iswonderful—un caracol—a snail. Our footsteps clang oneach metal step, the dogs following so close we have toscold them.'Your office is bigger than i n the pictures you sent,"you say delighted. I imagine you're comparing i t to IsabelAllende's."Where did you get the drapes i n the library? I betthey cost a pretty penny. Too bad your brothers couldn'tupholster your chairs f o r you and save you some money.Boy, this place is niiiiice!" you say, your voice sliding up thescales like a river grackle.I plop yoga mats on the rooftop, and we sit crosslegged to watch the sun descend. We drink your favorite,Italian sparkling wine, to celebrate your arrival, to celebrate my office. \The sky absorbs the night quickly-quickly, dissolvinginto the color of a plum. I lie on my back and watch cloudsscurry past i n a hurry to get home. Stars come out shyly,one by one. You lie down next to me and drape one legover mine like when we sleep together at your home. Wealways sleep together when I ' m there. A t first becausethere isn't any other bed. But later, after Papa dies, justbecause you want me near. It's the only time you let yourself be affectionate.xxviIntroduction"What i f we invite everybody down here f o r Christmasnext year?" I ask, "What do you think?""We'll see," you say lost i n your own thoughts.The moon climbs the f r o n t yard mesquite tree, leapsover the terrace ledge and astonishes us. It's a f u l l moon ahuge nimbus like the prints of Yoshitoshi. From here on, Iwon't be able to see a f u l l moon again without thinking ofyou, this moment. But right now, I don't know this.You close your eyes. You look like you're sleepingThe plane ride must've tired you. "Good lucky you studied," you say without opening your eyes. You mean myoffice, my life.I say to you, "Good lucky."For my mother, Elvira Cordero CisnerosJuly llth, 1929-Novemberlst, 2007May 26th, 2008Casa Xochitl, San Antonio de Bexar, TexasIntroductionxxvii

floral wallpaper. She was twenty-three and a half. Now she summoned her courage and told her father she wanted to live alone again, like she di d whe n she was away at school. He looked at her with that eye of the rooster before it attacks, but she wasn't alarmed. She'd seen that look be