Sandra Cisneros Writes Stories That Take on a Life of Their Own

November 4, 2021

At Bustle, Sandra Cisneros discusses her new book, Martita, I Remember You, an unsent letter from a woman recalling a brief stay in Paris and the sisterhoods she formed during her time there. “It’s kind of like a kite,” Cisneros says of her writing process. “You begin with your own story, and the higher it goes, it starts to take off and characters start to say things you would never say. The more you tether it to your life, it won’t go very far. It has to begin from something constructed for me that’s real, and then I just give it more string.”

is a writer and illustrator. She is the author of two illustrated books, Last Night's Reading (Penguin Books, 2015) and Sanpaku (Archaia 2018).