More Room to Play in Sandra Cisneros’s The House on Mango Street

Year 2006, Issue: 23, 65 - 74, 01.04.2006

Stella Bolaki

Abstract

In a recent article which explores the relationship between Sandra Cisneros and Emily Dickinson, and which forms part of a larger project on privacy and affiliation in American literary history, Geoffrey Sanborn starts his argument with the following question: “What happens to the political dimension of a work of art when the artist shows signs of becoming lost, or of being lost, in the pleasures of creation?” 1334 . One area where issues of politics and aesthetics remain strong and contentious is in writing by women of color. In the case of their work, Sanborn’s question is usually broken down into related questions that create a false “either/or” choice; questions such as must an ethnic American woman choose between individualism and community or between formal experimentation and realism, raise “moral dilemmas” which present their various political allegiances and artistic choices as mutually exclusive.

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