CISNEROS, SANDRA

born Dec. 20, 1954, Chicago, Ill., U.S. American short-story writer and poet best known for her evocation of Mexican-American life in Chicago. After graduating from Chicago's Loyola University (B.A., 1976), Cisneros attended the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop (M.F.A., 1978). There she developed what was to be the theme of most of her writing, her unique experiences as a Hispanic woman in a largely alien culture. Cisneros's first book of fiction, The House on Mango Street (1983), is a collection of semiautobiographical prose-poems that recall a girlhood spent trying to be a creative writer in an antagonistic environment. Woman Hollering Creek and Other Stories (1991) contains tales of beleaguered girls and women who nonetheless feel that they have power over their destinies. Cisneros's volumes of poetry include Bad Boys (1980), The Rodrigo Poems (1985), and Loose Woman (1994). My Wicked, Wicked Ways (1987) is a collection of poems on such subjects as her hometown of Chicago, European travels, and sexual guilt.