Below is the transcript of our conversation with Sandra Cisneros
David Nicholas:
I'm David Nicholas and this is Central Focus, a weekly look at research activity and innovative work from Central Michigan University students and faculty. I'm happy to share a special edition this week with acclaimed and award-winning writer Sandra Cisneros. She has written poetry, short stories, children's books, and novels, all of which offer deeply human characters, personal stories, and proudly reflect her Mexican American heritage. Her recent visit to Mid-Michigan included time with students at Mount Pleasant High School and at CMU. It was my pleasure and honor to sit down with her for an extended conversation. Here's some of what we talked about that day…
Many cultures have and continue to pass on stories about history and culture and some for hundreds of years, many, many more than this country's time. Were you born into a similar oral tradition, learning family stories that same way?
Sandra Cisneros:
I think everyone's born into families that tell stories. Not everyone listens to those stories. And I think in my case, I was a good story listener for both my father and my mother and my father is from Mexico City. My mother was born in Chicago. My father became a U.S. citizen by serving in the Army in World War II. So, they both had plenty of stories of things they witnessed, things they lived. And I don't know if my brother, six brothers, by the way, were as interested in listening to those stories and remembering them. But I always asked my mother to tell me stories about her life.
DN:
You think you see at any point that maybe some are letting go of some of that tradition, especially when it's of a particular history, a particular culture to the family and ancestors? Are we getting careless with that at all and letting that go?
SC:
Well, I think especially with the internet and with people being on their phones, that it's a global phenomenon where people don't talk to each other and we don't listen to each other the way we used to. I can go down the street in any country, and everybody's bent over what looks like a little prayer book and it's their phone. Everybody's looking at their phone and so we don't make eye contact and we don't talk to each other, but I find that if you're a good story listener, if you take the time to talk to anyone in your family or even people you meet on the street or someone in a very brief exchange in a diner or wherever, if you take the time, people want to tell you their story. I just don't think we're in a time where sometimes people feel that they have lived an interesting life. One of the things I try to do when I go out to communities like I have today is to remind people that everybody's story is important. Everybody has lived an amazing life. And if you don't talk about it or document it in some way, it never happened. For me, I've always been compelled to document the stories of people I love, people like my father who couldn't speak English but served in World War II. He had some amazing stories about World War II. And the people around him who didn't speak the dominant language. And if I didn't document that, then his life and his contribution to American history wouldn't count. My fathers’ not featured in Ken Burns' documentary, but he's part of American history. And I just feel compelled by love to honor the lives of people I love and document them.
DN:
When you set pen to paper, what tends to happen first, the thoughts that are eventually become the story that maybe is then captured in the drawing or a drawing because of an image either in your head or something you've seen that then inspires a story. They ask musicians this, do you write lyrics first or music first? It's sort of the same thing.
SC:
First, I investigate the shrapnel in my heart. So, every day we witness, we are told, we live through things that leave shrapnel in our hearts. Some leave flowers and most of the time we remember the shrapnel. And so, I go there to maybe this young man I met or that told me a little bit about his life story in Chiapas or maybe something I saw today, a beautiful flaming tree because I don't have those trees where I live. All of those things ignite me in some way. They stay with me for good or bad, and I take those with me when I'm alone and I think about them, and that's where I start. So, I don't think so much until I edit. I feel things deeply, and I don't question what I feel deeply and what stays with me. That is probably the truest place of where art comes from is here. I doubt when things come from my head and say, oh, I want to write about this. But when it comes through my heart, that always works. That's the place to begin.
DN:
A lot of us grew up with cartoons, TV shows, movies that we certainly know now play to just about every stereotype that now we are supposed to be beyond. They would be off limits. You know, they'll say, “Well, you could never make that today.” But as I continue to watch, I wonder if we really have come that far. I'm thinking of shows like Just Off the Boat or even the George Lopez show. I think there was a good intention to kind of, but to me there was still that undertone of we'll play to the stereotypes. And I think a lot of those built around African American characters and storylines do the same thing. What do you think?
SC:
I think we have a long way to go too. I agree with you. I'm also thinking in Mexico of issues with race and class, which are still a long way to go in Mexico. So, I just think we have to be more inclusive be in positions of power and people making those positions, choices need to be including people from the communities. I know like when I bring some of those issues up, sometimes people say, oh no, but they're not from that community that's getting offended. And I just feel we need to be more inclusive of all the communities in positions of power of communicating how it makes them feel, how they relay that, how they interpret it. And I agree with you, we have a long way to go. There are some books even that I loved as a child, and now when I revisit them as an adult and I say, oh, I don't know if I wanna buy this book for my niece again to continue stereotypes about communities other than my own. So, it's something that...everyone needs to examine. I wonder about classics and books that I don't feel that we ought to censor, books that are of a time period like Mark Twain's, but I need the discussion needs to be made that this is in context of the times. This is a reflection of the times and how this community was viewed by this author. So, I think it just needs to be held accountable to context.
DN:
Writer Sandra Cisneros on Central Focus. Join us on Friday afternoon at 2.30 for the full conversation with her here on WCMU.
