Writing in the Spirit of Service

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Written By Open Plaza

Rev. Dr. Tony Tian-Ren Lin talks to celebrated author Sandra Cisneros about her new collection of poetry Woman Without Shame

“Nepantla Heart-Cactus,” 2023. Image created by Submergia with Midjourney Beta on Discord

 
 

HTI Open Plaza celebrates National Poetry Month with a conversation between Rev. Dr. Tony Tian-Ren Lin and celebrated author Sandra Cisneros about her new poetry collection Woman Without Shame (Knopf, 2022) and how writing is like pulling thorns from your heart.

"Art," she says, "is the medicine that heals our heart from the darkness that overwhelms and transforms us. You need to create art not to distract you but to bring you in touch with this darkness that is inside us. Art's mission isn't to entertain or distract. Art's mission is for making you sit with your wounds and transform those demons before those demons transform you."

In this post-pandemic world, where politicians have failed to lead, and the world seems heartbroken, Cisneros continues to turn to her spiritual teachers: the late Buddhist monk Thích Nhất Hạnh and Pema Chödrön, an American Buddhist teacher, author, nun.

If she had to give anyone writing advice, Cisneros says she would tell them to write in the spirit of service. "What the writing has taught me is [that], whatever I create with love--on behalf of those I love, with no ego involved, no personal agenda—siempre sale bonito; it always turns out well," she advises. "When you write, you have to be in some place of service, generosity and absolute humility."

 
 

MORE LISTENING

Ringing the Bell: An interview with poet and author Sandra Cisneros on writing, sexuality, and ‘Buddhalupe” by Daisy Hernández, Tricycle (Winter 2022).

Learning to Live without Shame: Sandra Cisneros discusses her first book of poetry in 28 years, Woman Without Shame. Tricycle, 21 December 2022.

 
 

Woman Without Shame
by Sandra Cisneros
Knopf, 2022

A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: TIME and GOODREADS
A brave new collection of poems from Sandra Cisneros, best-selling author of The House on Mango Street.

It has been twenty-eight years since Sandra Cisneros published a book of poetry. With dozens of never-before-seen poems, Woman Without Shame is a moving collection of songs, elegies, and declarations that chronicle her pilgrimage toward rebirth and the recognition of her prerogative as a woman artist. These bluntly honest and often humorous meditations on memory, desire, and the essential nature of love blaze a path toward self-awareness. For Cisneros, Woman Without Shame is the culmination of her search for home—in the Mexico of her ancestors and in her own heart.

 
 
Featured
Sandra Cisneros

Sandra Cisneros is a celebrated poet, short story writer, novelist, essayist, performer, and artist. Her numerous awards include NEA fellowships in both poetry and fiction, a MacArthur Fellowship, national and international book awards, including the PEN America Literary Award, and the National Medal of Arts. More recently, she received the Ford Foundation’s Art of Change Fellowship, was recognized with the Fuller Award for Lifetime Achievement in Literature, and won the PEN/Nabokov Award for Achievement in International Literature; recently, she was honored by the Poetry Foundation with a 2022 Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, one of the most prestigious awards given to American poets and one of the nation’s largest literary prizes, in recognition of her outstanding lifetime achievement. In addition to her writing, Cisneros has fostered the careers of many aspiring and emerging writers through two nonprofits she founded: the Macondo Foundation and the Alfredo Cisneros del Moral Foundation. As a single woman, she made the choice to have books instead of children. A citizen of both the United States and Mexico, Cisneros currently lives in San Miguel de Allende and makes her living by her pen. She has authored over ten books in different genres and translations, including the acclaimed, best-selling The House on Mango Street (Knopf, 1994) and, most recently, the poetry collection Woman Without Shame (Knopf, 2022).

Featured
Tony Lin

Rev. Dr. Tony Tian-Ren Lin is a Research Professor at New York Theological Seminary. He is a cultural sociologist whose scholarship focuses on the intersection of religion, immigration, race, and ethnicity. He is the author of Prosperity Gospel Latinos and Their American Dream (University of North Carolina Press, 2020), which Publisher’s Weekly praises as a “well-reasoned,” “evocative debut” that “immerse[s] readers in the lives of his subjects.” He was previously a Research Scholar at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture at the University of Virginia where he held numerous academic and administrative positions. Rev. Dr. Lin was born in Taiwan and grew up in Argentina. He holds a bachelor degree from Boston University, a Master of Divinity and Master of Theology from Princeton Theological Seminary, and a Master and Doctor of Philosophy in sociology from the University of Virginia. He is an ordained Presbyterian minister who has served churches in New Jersey and Virginia. His work has been featured in The Atlantic Monthly, The Washington Post, LatinoUSA, WNYC, and other venues.

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