Sandra Cisneros on the Writer's Life: 'It broke up many relationships. Was it worth it? Yes.'

Sandra Cisneros is on PBS NewsHour! Cisneros sat down with Jeffrey Brown at the Mexican Cultural Institute in Washington to discuss her new book of essays, A House of My Own: Stories From My Life, "her life as a writer and her journey to find home."

SANDRA CISNEROS: ...And people think that “House [on Mango Street]” was an overnight success, but that night was a 10-year night.

JEFFREY BROWN: And along the way?

SANDRA CISNEROS: A lot of doubts, a lot of sadnesses, because I didn’t have things that other people had. I didn’t have the car or the health insurance or the house that other people had. There was a lot of doubts of whether I was making the right choices.

I didn’t marry. I didn’t have children. I followed the food supply for jobs. I kept writing at night. And that kept me moving. It kept my life disruptive. It broke up many relationships. Was it worth it? Yes.

(LAUGHTER)

JEFFREY BROWN: Well, I mean, that’s actually what — that’s the totality of your documents, the life of a writer or the writer that you became.

SANDRA CISNEROS: Well, I didn’t intend to be writing — the writer’s life. I was just writing what came to me at the time, but it is a map of how this writer had to break many barriers to find, not a room of her own, but a house of her own.

JEFFREY BROWN: And where did that ambition come from, to make a life as a writer?

SANDRA CISNEROS: You know, I think I didn’t know what I was creating, as much as I knew what I didn’t want to do. And I didn’t want my mother’s life. She was an unhappy, frustrated artist who always dreamed of a life that was never going to be hers.

I didn’t want to be married with seven kids and wish, oh, if only I had done this. I didn’t want that. So, my dream was to mother a book. That was first and foremost since I was 11 years old. And I just didn’t know how to do that, because no one in my family had any connections or a clue of how to do that, so I just kind of fumbled my way through it.

JEFFREY BROWN: And now you are in Mexico.

SANDRA CISNEROS: Yes, I’m living the writer’s life.

JEFFREY BROWN: Crossing the border, living a writer’s life in Mexico, but crossing the border back.

SANDRA CISNEROS: Yes.

Watch the video below, and read the full transcript here.