Q&A with author Sandra Cisneros

*A good lunchtime read. Enjoy! VL

By Maggie Galehouse, The Houston Chronicle

For Sandra Cisneros, gathering decades of writing wasn’t so different from wrangling stray pets.

Each piece needed to be nudged, gently, toward home.

“I’m gathering up my stray lambs that have wandered out of sight and am herding them under one roof, not so much for the reader’s sake, but my own,” Cisneros writes in the introduction to “A House of My Own,” her new memoir. “Where are you, my little loves, and where have you gone? Who wrote these and why? I have a need to know so that I can understand my life.”

In no way is this a traditional memoir with tidy numbered chapters and a smooth arc. Instead, Cisneros collects seemingly odd parts – older pieces of writing, lectures, newspaper articles, keynote speeches, stories repeated out loud but only now finding their way onto the page – and assembles them into one beating heart. Each piece comes with a brief introduction, which offers context and, sometimes, reflection.

Born in Chicago to a Mexican father and Mexican-American mother, Cisneros lived for many years in San Antonio and now makes her home in central Mexico. All her homes – including temporary digs in places as far-flung as Sarajevo and the Greek island of Hydra – find their way into the memoir.

“This book has been a back-burner project I’ve been working on for 30 years,” Cisneros says in her girlish voice on the phone from New York.

Click HERE to read the full interview.