Wednesday April 1, 2009, Celebrate 25 years of HOUSE ON MANGO STREET with Sandra Cisneros LIVE in Houston.

Without HOUSE ON MANGO STREET there would be no Nuestra Palabra. Latino Writers Would not be having their say in Houston, Tejas. Let’s all show her our support and gratitude.

One of the most important books of our time

Join us to celebrate this American Classic:
Wednesday, April 1, 2009
7 pm – 9 pm. Free admission
Rice University
Shell Auditorium, McNair Hall
(Entrance #20 off Rice Ave., turn right at the second stop sign. First bldng on the left.)
Houston, Texas

Book signing in the Student Union immediately afterwards.

This event is brought to you by The Texas Commission on the Arts, The Houston Arts Alliance, the City of Houston, additional partners include KPFT 90.1 FM, Rice University, ALAS—HCC, Inprint, Univisión Television, NHPO, Barnes & Noble Bookstore, The Harris County Library, Houston Community College.

25 years ago there was not a fascination with the Latino Demographic.

HOUSE ON MANGO STREET first appeared in an America where Latinos were undercounted, under-represented, antagonized, or simply ignored. Sandra Cisnero’s novel helped change the cultural landscape of America by providing a voice for a demographic that would become one of the largest segments of American society.

Told in a series of vignettes stunning for their eloquence, The House on Mango Street is Sandra Cisneros’s greatly admired novel of a young girl growing up in the Latino section of Chicago. Acclaimed by critics, beloved by children, their parents and grandparents, taught everywhere from inner-city grade schools to universities across the country, and translated all over the world, it has entered the canon of coming-of-age classics.

Sandra Cisneros was born in Chicago in l954, the third child and only daughter in a family of seven children. She studied at Loyola University of Chicago (B.A. English 1976) and the University of Iowa (M.F.A. Creative Writing 1978).

In 1995, Sandra Cisneros was awarded the MacArthur Foundation Fellowship, also known as the Mac Arthur Genius grant. Subsequently, she organized the Latino MacArthur Fellows — Los MacArturos — into a reunion focusing on community outreach. In 2003 she was awarded the Texas Medal of the Arts.

The House on Mango Street, first published in 1984, won the Before Columbus Foundation’s American Book Award in 1985, and is required reading in middle schools, high schools, and universities across the country. It has sold over two million copies since its initial publication and is still selling strongly. 2009 marks the 25th anniversary of the publ ication of The House on Mango Street in the United States, and she will be traveling to 20 cities to celebrate with her readers.

Her books have been translated into over a dozen languages, including Spanish, Galician, French, German, Dutch, Italian, Norwegian, Japanese, Chinese, Turkish, and, most recently, into Greek, Iranian, Thai, and Serbo-Croatian.

Her books include a chapbook of poetry, Bad Boys (Mango Press 1980); two full-length poetry books, My Wicked Wicked Ways (Third Woman 1987, Random House 1992) and Loose Woman (Alfred A. Knopf 1994); a collection of stories, Woman Hollering Creek and Other Stories (Random House l991); a children’s book, Hairs/Pelitos (Alfred A. Knopf 1994); and two novels, The House on Mango Street (Vintage 1991) and Caramelo (Knopf 2002). Vintage Cisneros, published in 2003, is a compilation of selections from her works.
Caramelo was selected as notable book of the year by several journals including The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the San Francisco Chronicle, the Chicago Tribune, and the Seattle Times. In 2005 Caramelo was awarded the Premio Napoli and was short-listed for the Dublin International IMPAC Award. It was also nominated for the Orange Prize in England.

Tony Diaz
Founder
Director
Nuestra Palabra: Latino Writers Having Their Say