The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros

Sandra Cisneros will be honored 'for enriching the American narrative. On September 22, President Obama awarded a 2015 National Medal of Arts to author Sandra Cisneros, in a ceremony at the White House recognizing contributors of the arts and humanities. PEN America Literary Awards program director Nadxieli Nieto credited Cisneros with “inspiring a new era of Latinx writers we see emerging today.” I’m so thrilled to get this award from them.” “What an honor to get an award from these three writers,” Cisneros said. “It’s hard to imagine navigating our world today without her stories and her voice guiding us toward needed much reclamation and endurance.” “In a formidable and awe-inspiring body of work, which includes fiction, memoir, and poetry, Cisneros brings us astounding and lyrical voices from burning, maligned, devastated, as well as reassembled houses, and nations,” the judges wrote. This year’s award was judged by authors Alexander Chee, Edwidge Danticat and Valeria Luiselli. The PEN/Nabokov Award, a collaboration between PEN America and the Vladimir Nabokov Literary Foundation, is given each year to “a living author whose body of work, either written in or translated into English, represents the highest level of achievement in fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and/or drama, and is of enduring originality and consummate craftsmanship,” according to PEN America’s website

“I truly don’t feel that I’ve arrived at where I want to be yet. In a telephone interview with The Times, Cisneros said she was surprised to receive the award from the literary foundation PEN America. Sandra Cisneros, the Mexican American novelist whose books “The House on Mango Street” and “Woman Hollering Creek” are widely considered contemporary classics of American literature, has won the PEN/Nabokov Award for Achievement in International Literature.Ĭisneros is the third author to win the annual award, after Syrian poet Adonis in 2017 and Irish novelist Edna O’Brien in 2018.

The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros