Cisneros’ work inspires hope in Latino community

Tuesday, March 4, 2003 | 8:28 a.m.

The only artifact author Sandra Cisneros has kept from her school days is a yellow report card from fifth grade, when she was a student at St. Catherine's school in Chicago. The card is full of Ds and Cs.

Cisneros held it up as if it was a talisman last week at a restaurant called, fittingly enough, Border Grill.

"I don't remember being that stupid, but somebody apparently thought I was," she said over lunch Thursday.

Alienated and uninspired at the time, Cisneros, the daughter of Mexican immigrants, grew up to write a book that would inspire millions of children across the United States "The House on Mango Street," a perennial selection of high school English teachers across the country.

Cisneros was in town for a visit that concluded Saturday, doing one of the things she appears to enjoy most, apart from writing talking to students and teachers. Her visit came as her new novel, "Caramelo," is receiving good reviews and selling well.

Released in September, the book is among the few attempts in fiction to tell the story of several generations of life on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border, and probably the only book selling well in the U.S. that is liberally sprinkled with Spanish.

Cisneros was invited through a program called Writers-in-the-Schools, a project in its second year and run by the International Institute of Modern Letters, headquartered at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. The three-day visit included talks with 20 teachers about using writing in schools, a separate meeting with students chosen by the teachers, and a visit to Centennial High School, which was chosen by lottery.

The school population in the Las Vegas Valley is nearly one-third Latino, many of whom are children of immigrants. Almost one in five households in Clark County speaks Spanish at home, according to U.S. Census figures released this month.

Several hours before meeting Thursday with 20 juniors from area high schools at UNLV's Lied Library, Cisneros called her book a "love letter for all immigrants."

It has come out at a "time when immigration is affecting not just the United States but all the planet, and when there's so many feelings against immigrants," she said.

Cisneros says "stories have the power to save lives," and that Latino students need stories with characters that are Latino like them.

Jesus Cruz, of Sierra Vista High School, asked Cisneros about how growing up poor affected her writing.

During a break, Cruz was asked why he asked the question.

"Because we grew up that way ... and her work shows we can get out of situations we were born into," the student said.

One of four children, Cruz said his mother raised them in Hollywood, Calif., on a single income, walking three miles to work every day at a doughnut shop.

Now Cruz writes for his school's newspaper and wants to write fiction.

"She makes me think I can succeed," the 17-year-old said.

Matt Martin of Coronado High School asked the writer about the importance of putting events from your own life in writing.

"The best art is about something that matters to you," she answered.

Anayeli Ramirez of Desert Pines High School wondered what got Cisneros started.

"I began writing from the feeling of being a freak, of being unpopular," she said.

The teens nodded their heads.

In the same way Cisneros wants today's young people to believe they can realize their dreams, she thinks her own work goes beyond merely entertaining readers.

She recently sent her new book to Laura Bush, whose acquaintance she made in 1995 at the Texas Book Fair. Cisneros lives in San Antonio.

"As a fellow Texan, I think we have a rapport and I have her ear," she said.

She dedicated the book to Mrs. Bush and the president -- "hoping she would read it and talk about it with her partner," she said.

What did she write to the country's most powerful couple?

"I hope this book rings true to you as a story of the borderlands," she said.