Sandra Cisneros was born in Chicago in 1954 to a Mexican American family. As the only girl in a family of seven children, she often felt like she had “seven fathers,” because her six brothers, as well as her father, tried to control her. Feeling shy and unimportant, she retreated into books. Despite her love of reading, she did not do well in elementary school because she was too shy to participate.
桑德拉·西斯内罗斯1954年出生于芝加哥的一个墨西哥裔美国家庭。作为一个七个孩子家庭中的唯一女孩，她经常觉得自己有“七个父亲”，因为她的六个兄弟以及她的父亲都试图控制她。她感到害羞和无足轻重，便躲避进书里。尽管她热爱阅读，但她在小学的表现并不出色，因为她太害羞了，不敢参与。

In high school, with the encouragement of one particular teacher, Cisneros improved her grades and worked for the school literary magazine. Her father encouraged her to go to college because he thought it would be a good way for her to find a husband. Cisneros did attend college, but instead of searching for a husband, she found a teacher who helped her join the famous graduate writing program at the University of Iowa. At the university’s Writers’ Workshop, however, she felt lonely----a Mexican American from a poor neighborhood among students from wealthy families. The feeling of being so different helped Cisneros find her “Creative voice.”
高中时，在一位老师的鼓励下，西斯内罗斯提高了成绩，并为学校的文学杂志社工作。她的父亲鼓励她上大学，因为这是她找到丈夫的好方法。西斯内罗斯确实上过大学，但她没有寻找丈夫，而是找到了一位老师，帮助她加入了爱荷华大学著名的研究生写作项目。然而，在大学的作家工作室，她感到孤独——一个出身于贫穷社区的墨西哥裔美国人，周围是来自富裕家庭的同学。这种与众不同的感觉帮助西斯内罗斯找到了她“富有创造力的声音”

“It was not until this moment when I considered myself truly different that my writing acquired a voice. I knew I was a Mexican woman, but I didn’t think it had anything to do with why I felt so much imbalance in my life, but it had everything to do with it! That’s when I decided I would write about something my classmates couldn’t write about.”
“直到这一刻，当我认为自己真正与众不同时，我的写作才有了自己的声音。我知道我是一个墨西哥女人，但我不认为这与我为什么感到生活如此不平衡有任何关系，但这一切都与此有关！那时我决定写一些我的同学写不出来的东西。”

Cisneros published her first work, The House on Mango Street, when she was twenty-nine. The book tells about a young Mexican American girl growing up in a Spanish-speaking area in Chicago, much like the neighborhoods in which Cisneros lived as a child. The book won an award in 1985 and has been used in classes from high school through graduate school level. Since then, Cisneros has published several books of poetry, a children’s book, and a short-story collection.
西斯内罗斯29岁时出版了她的第一部作品《芒果街上的房子》。这本书讲述了一个年轻的墨西哥裔美国女孩在芝加哥的一个西班牙语区长大的故事，很像西斯内罗斯小时候居住的社区。这本书于1985年获奖，并已在高中至研究生阶段的课堂上使用。从那时起，西斯内罗斯出版了几本诗集、一本儿童读物和一本短篇小说集。