Ay Tú!
Critical Essays on the Life and Work of Sandra Cisneros
A comprehensive volume on the life and work of renowned Chicana author Sandra Cisneros.
Sandra Cisneros (b. 1954), author of the acclaimed novel The House on Mango Street and a recipient of the National Medal of the Arts, a MacArthur “Genius Grant” and the PEN/Nabokov Award for International Literature, was the first Chicana to be published by a major publishing house. ¡Ay Tú! is the first book to offer a comprehensive, critical examination of her life and work as a whole. Edited by scholars Sonia Saldívar-Hull and Geneva M. Gano, this volume addresses themes that pervade Cisneros’s oeuvre, like romantic and erotic love, female friendship, sexual abuse and harassment, the exoticization of the racial and ethnic “other,” and the role of visual arts in the lives of everyday people. Essays draw extensively on the newly opened Cisneros Papers, housed in the Wittliff Collections at Texas State University, and the volume concludes with a new long-form interview with Cisneros by the award-winning journalist Macarena Hernández.
As these essays reveal, Cisneros’s success in the literary field was integrally connected to the emergent Chicana feminist movement and the rapidly expanding Chicanx literary field of the late twentieth century. This collection shows that Cisneros didn’t achieve her groundbreaking successes in isolation and situates her as a vital Chicana feminist writer and artist.
¡Ay Tú! brings together a stellar ensemble of Latina/x and Chicana/x literary scholars and essays devoted to the writing of Sandra Cisneros, one of the most prolific writers of our time. This tremendous collection is a gift to every professor and student of literature and cultural studies.
¡Brava! The coeditors of ¡Ay Tú! have gathered a wealth of scholarly perspectives that students, scholars, and general readers are sure to find illuminating. Insightful and thought-provoking, every chapter opens a door into Cisneros’s familiar and well-loved literary works. Whether you are new to Cisneros or have read and reread favorites, you are sure to find new insights and approaches to her work in this magnificent collection.
Literary scholars celebrate the life, work, and activism of Chicana writer Sandra Cisneros in these astute essays...[The book makes] excellent use of Cisneros’s archives...[and] sheds light on the author’s formative years...It’s a fitting tribute to a beloved author.
A tremendous gathering of voices acclaiming Cisneros’ influence.
Sonia Saldívar-Hull is a professor emerita of English at the University of Texas at San Antonio. She is the author of Feminism on the Border: Chicana Literature and Politics.
Geneva M. Gano is a professor of English at Texas State University and the author of The Little Art Colony and US Modernism.
- List of Illustrations
- Preface. ¡Ay Tú! ¡Sí Yo! Nosotrxs: The Sinvergüenza Collective
- Introduction. Her Fabulous Career: Sandra Cisneros’s Life/Work (Sonia Saldívar-Hull and Geneva M. Gano)
- Part I. ¡Ay, Qué Rico! Close Readings
- 1. Lingering with Complicity in Caramelo (Mary Pat Brady)
- 2. The Racial City: Navigating Chicago’s Racialized Space in The House on Mango Street (Olga L. Herrera)
- 3. Telenovela Feeling in Sandra Cisneros’s Loose Woman: “I Think of Me to Gluttony” (Adriana Estill)
- 4. “You Were Telling Cochinadas”: Performative Metaphors for Storytelling in Sandra Cisneros’s Caramelo (Shanna M. Salinas)
- 5. Mapping the Decolonial: Community Cartography in Sandra Cisneros’s Woman Hollering Creek (Teresa Hernández)
- Part II. Love, Shame, and Sinvergüenzas
- 6. “Love the Only Way I Know How”: Cultivating Erotic Conocimiento in the Work of Sandra Cisneros (Belinda Linn Rincón)
- 7. From Marginal to Sin Vergüenza: Overcoming School-Inflicted Shame through Transgressive Literary Aesthetics in Sandra Cisneros’s Life and Writing (Georgina Guzmán)
- 8. The Loose Woman and the Men of Ill Repute (Richard T. Rodríguez)
- 9. Wild, Wicked, and Crazy Brave Tongues: Locating the Collaborative Origins of Sandra Cisneros’s and Joy Harjo’s Poetic Voices (Audrey Goodman)
- 10. “Hay Que Inventarnos / We Must Invent Ourselves”: The Impact of Norma Alarcón and Sandra Cisneros’s Friendship on Chicana Feminist Literature (Sara A. Ramírez)
- 11. Faxes, Friendship, and the Rise of Chicana Literature: Examining the Archive of Letters between Sandra Cisneros and Helena María Viramontes (Linda Margarita Greenberg)
- Part III. ¡Adelante! Seeing and Listening with Cisneros
- 12. La Sandra como Artista: The Visual Cisneros (Tey Marianna Nunn)
- 13. Sin Vergüenza: A Plática with Sandra Cisneros (Macarena Hernández)
- Acknowledgments
- Contributors
- Index
Entre Guadalupe y Malinche
Tejanas in Literature and Art
Edited by Inés Hernández-Ávila and Norma E. Cantú
Pastures of the Empty Page
Fellow Writers on the Life and Legacy of Larry McMurtry
Edited by George Getschow
meXicana Fashions
Politics, Self-Adornment, and Identity Construction
Edited by Aída Hurtado and Norma E. Cantú
