SOURCE: "Sandra Cisneros' The House on Mango Street, and the Poetics of Space," in Chicana Creativity and Criticism: New Frontiers in American Literature, edited by María Herrera-Sobek and Helena María Viramontes, University of New Mexico Press, 1996, pp. 233-44.

In the following essay, Olivares discusses the theme of space in Cisneros's first short story collection, and demonstrates the manner with which she employs her imagery as "poetics of space."

In some recent essays collectively titled "From a Writer's Notebook," Sandra Cisneros talks about her development as a writer, making particular references to her award-winning book, The House on Mango Street She states that the nostalgia for the perfect house was impressed on her at an early age from reading many times Virginia Lee Burton's The Little House. It was not until her tenure at the Iowa Writers Workshop, however, that it dawned on her that a house...