>> Poetry and Prose is sponsored
by the National Endowment
for the Arts.
[ Music ]
>> Hi, I'm Sandra
Cisneros, I'm speaking to you
from my living room in San
Miguel de Allende, Mexico,
and when I think about
where we are right now,
I don't we've ever in our
lifetime experienced a time
in we're all as a community
living with a corazon abierto,
with our hearts open, and I
think it's a spiritual time.
I think of this time as
being a time of sanctuary.
I think that as a writer that
my oficio, my profession is one
in which every time I sit down
here at my desk I have to work
at opening my heart;
starting from that place.
That's how I can be innovative.
That's how I can express things.
That's how I can transform what
I've witnessed into writing,
but now we have the whole planet
in this same emotional
state that artists are in.
Like you know we have to work at
like splitting the heart open.
It's already there,
and we're there
as an entire global community;
an entire global community
with this open heart where we're
feeling things very deeply,
good and bad, at this time, and
to me this is a sacred moment
because I think about like when
I wrote House on Mango Street.
I was a high school teacher.
I didn't have any money.
I had to bring my own
chalk to the class.
My students were living
in dreadful conditions.
They had lives that were
things I couldn't invent,
tragic stories.
They were working
so hard to just try
to get their high school
diploma, and all the odds were
against them, and for me
as a teacher I would just go
home overwhelmed with emotions,
with anxiety, and fear,
and doubt about whether
what I was doing was
of any good to them.
How could teaching them
how to write poetry
or reading literature; how could
literature help us in this time?
How could I be of any use
to students who were dealing
with taking care of three
kids before they're 18,
or trying to bring money home
because their parents
wanted them to quit school
and help them out, or dealing
with gangs, and daily surviving
in their neighborhood, and
trying to make it to school
without getting beat up;
these kinds of problems
that are bigger than how
to put a sentence together.
So, I was filled with a lot
of doubt during that time,
as many teachers are right
now by the challenge,
and I think something that
I learned from that period
in my life when I
felt so impotent was
that when we're working
with our hearts
and with our complete hearts,
con puro amor, with pure love.
On behalf of those, we love
and with no ego involved
 siempre sale bonito.
It's always going
to turn out well,
and we may not see
that at the time.
When I was a teacher
with my heart broken open
by my students, I was working
from some place of pure love.
I started collecting their
stories and writing them down
and putting them in this
neighborhood that I remembered
from my past; that
I was [inaudible]
with my current life, the
students, and I did this
with no idea that it would
do any good in my life,
but I was living in that
sacred time of grace
when our heart is open.
And now I can look back
and see wow; you know maybe
at that moment it seemed
like those seeds I was
planting weren't going anywhere.
I didn't see the
harvest right away.
It took 10 years, 20
years before I could see
that now those stories that
I collected and that I put
under one cover, traveled back
to that same community are
being used in that neighborhood,
are being used in schools across
the nation and across the globe.
So, sometimes we doubt ourselves
and the work we're doing,
but I truly believe we're
living in a state of grace,
and that's what I call this
period with the open heart;
when we're feeling
things so deeply.
We're living like artists,
and the one lesson that House
on Mango Street taught me
is that whatever we create
with love, on behalf
of those with love
with no personal agenda
will always turn out well,
and that's perhaps one
of the laws of universe.
It's the one that
I know for sure.
I think it's important to bring
to light how we're all related.
You know, that all of our
stories interconnected
and that we have so much many
more elements that connect us;
that were more alike than we
are different, but so often
if you're from a group whose
story hasn't been told,
then it's your obligation to
bring that story to light.
I was just reading my classmate
from Iowa and dear friend,
Joy Harjo's, op-ed piece
today in the New York Times,
and in light of the
Supreme Court decision
to recognize the Muscogee Nation
as ruling their own courts.
It was so moving to me in
her essay that she talked
about how the elders teach that
eventually truth will come forth
and justice will prevail, and
you know those sounds like kind
of dechos that you hear
that you don't believe,
but it's this collectivity
of a community seeing
its stories being honored
and justice prevailing even
if it takes generations;
that we don't see it
immediately, but that seed
of the truth comes
forth generations later,
and I think this is
such an incredible time
that I'm witnessing.
It's a tumultuous time.
It's a historical
moment in our country
in which we're seeing
communities
that have been ignored and
who have suffered genocide
or have suffered internments;
who have suffered all kinds
of indignities and colonization
suddenly rising generations
later and speaking and
having their truth told.
So, we're living in
that historical moment
in which a truth is
finally being told,
and these stories
are coming forth
from the communities themselves.
So, we're getting a revision
of our portrait of America,
and I think this is an
exciting time to be living.
It's a frightening time, but
it's I'm also so grateful
to be witnessing this time and
an honor to be a storyteller,
a story listener at
this time in history.
You know, I never felt at
home in my home town, Chicago,
and I moved south temporarily
just to get out of dodge,
and you know I thought I'd
take a job for a year and wound
up being like 20-something
years,
and I did that because
I just always felt
like a displaced
person in Chicago.
I guess I've always
been looking for home,
and I didn't feel
displaced in my family.
I just felt displaced
in my community,
and coming to Texas you
can never move to Texas
and become a Texan because
the Texans will remind you
that they've been
there 13 generations
since before it was
the United States.
So, there's no way you're
going to become a native.
You'll always be reminded
that you're an interloper,
and you know I felt I had
created a family with people
that I chose to be around,
other artists and other people
who appreciated Mexico as I
did, but eventually many people
who were my family members moved
away or situations changed,
and I felt one evening when
I was locking up my office
and walking in my house I no
longer felt joy in my own home.
I just felt, again,
that displacement,
and my own home didn't
bring me joy anymore.
So, when I came to San Miguel to
do a lecture, something woke up;
something that had been
dormant came forth,
and I recognized the sky and
the light, and it reminded me
of places I loved, including
you know an island I had lived
in in Greece, including
my childhood memories
of Mexico City, and just
a different way of living
without having to deal with
cars; that you could walk around
and life was at a slower pace.
That's you know so it was
like a first it was the kind
of [foreign word], and
you know poco a poco.
I wound up renting a house and
living here for a little while;
trying it out and finishing
the book and here I am.
Well, one of the things
I learned about coming
to Mexico is that
home isn't a place.
Home is inside your body; that
you know you're already home
but you have to make
your peace with yourself.
You have to; it's kind
of like when you fall
in love when you're young.
You're always looking for you
know this guy that's going to
or that girl that's going
to come in your life
and make you complete, and
you know realize that you have
to work on it all by yourself.
That you yourself have
to be complete before you can
make a life with someone else,
and I found that coming
to Mexico that I had
to find my home within me, and
it wasn't about a place so much
as about finding my sense
of belonging, understanding
who I am, and becoming
complete, and finding that home
where I belong is a home in
the heart, kind of like House
on Mango Street, you know?
I didn't realize when I wrote
that when I was in my 20s
that it was actually going to
come true, but I have found
that home in the heart, and it's
like I was dragging my
little caracol heart;
my little snail shell all
along, and I had to make
that spiral journey until
I could finally be at home,
and I have found that
within myself now at 65.
I guess it's a lifetime journey.
I think what's important for
me is my own spiritual beliefs
and my own knowledge,
not faith, but knowledge
of where my life has
taken me to in this moment
of understanding one
that I'm not along.
I am always accompanied
and guided and encouraged
and protected by ancestors.
So, for me I find that hope in
my spiritual practice meditating
and being very mindful of all
the things that give us spirit.
Not people just in the spirit
world, but the spirit world
that speaks to us every
day, even if it speaks to us
through rain or through tree
or through flowers or a sky,
and I don't feel
alone in this time.
I feel like I'm more present
with things of the spirit,
whether they're my
four footed roommates
or whether it's the hummingbirds
or the sunsets that are
so beautiful and so
different every day
or just a flower that blooms.
I really am paying attention.
I'm more mindful now
than I've ever been;
so I think of this period as
being a time of sanctuary,
a time for us to transform every
moment into a spiritual moment
if we're paying attention,
and to look for those teachers
that can help us to
listen more carefully.
For me it's essays by Thích
Nhất Hạnh or Pema Chödrön.
Teachings of masters,
Gandhi or the Buddha,
and also reading poetry because
I think this is an incredible
time for poetry.
The poets are the healers
and the shamans of our age,
and we're living
through a renaissance
of poetry at this time.
I want to read poet that
teach me like Joy Harjo
and guide my path and that
also inspire me to sit down
and explore my inner heart
through writing poetry
especially,
and I think that makes
this time very special;
otherwise I'd have
spent it on a plane,
and because I can't travel I'm
being asked to go into my heart
and to sit and to do a
sitting meditation with my pen.
So, I find hope every time
I reach for my pen or reach
for a book, or I look at
the lives of other people
who I admire and
they give me hope.
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