Little Miracles, Kept Promises by Sandra Cisneros
"Little Miracles, Kept Promises" by Sandra Cisneros is a collection that explores the diverse voices and perspectives of individuals reaching out to saints in moments of longing, humor, and desperation. The work cleverly intertwines elements of faith with a comedic tone, showcasing Cisneros's signature wit as seen in her other writings. Through letters addressed to various saints, characters like Barbara Ybañez and Rubén Ledesma express their personal struggles, desires, and aspirations in a relatable manner. The collection culminates with the character Rosario, who embodies the journey of a young Latina artist challenging traditional gender roles and finding empowerment in her cultural identity. Her relationship with the Virgin of Guadalupe transforms from one of rejection to admiration, highlighting the complex intersections between faith, femininity, and self-acceptance. Overall, Cisneros’s work resonates with themes of hope, resilience, and the quest for understanding within the fabric of cultural and religious expectations. This collection invites readers to reflect on the ways in which personal experiences shape one's relationship with faith and identity.
Little Miracles, Kept Promises by Sandra Cisneros
Excerpted from an article in Magill’s Survey of American Literature, Revised Edition
First published: 1991 (collected in Woman Hollering Creek, and Other Stories, 1991)
Type of work: Short story
The Work
“Little Miracles, Kept Promises” is a catalog of Cisneros’s strengths and appeals as a fiction writer. The collection of notes left at saints’ shrines may recall the letters of Nathanael West’s Miss Lonelyhearts (1933), but the tone of these is more consistently comic, showing well the witty and humorous side of Cisneros that appears in many of her stories and poems. For example, Barbara Ybañez threatens to turn the statue of San Antonio de Padua upside down until he sends her “a man man. I mean someone who’s not ashamed to be seen cooking or cleaning or looking after himself.”
Rubén Ledesma somewhat reluctantly, yet desperately, appeals to San Lázaro, who was “raised from the dead and did a lot of miracles,” to help him deal with his “face breaking out with so many pimples.” These letters are especially rich in the variety of voices and tones they present, from the devout who speak to their saint as a friend, to the pious who lapse into almost meaningless formulas, to the inexperienced who are uncomfortable addressing a person they do not know personally, to the irreverent and skeptical.
These many voices lead finally to that of a young woman, Rosario, who has cut off a braid of hair that has never before been cut and pinned it by the statue of the Virgin of Guadalupe. Rosario is an image of Cisneros, the young Latina artist rebelling against the restrictive roles of women in her culture, especially as they have been reinforced by the massive cultural authority of the Catholic Church. She says that she has resisted religious belief until her discovery that the Virgin is not simply a passive sufferer but also one manifestation of woman as goddess, the powers of fertility, healing, creative energy. This discovery made it possible for Rosario to love the Virgin, to stop being ashamed of her mother and grandmother, and, finally, to love herself.
Of Rosario, Cisneros said, “That’s me. . . . I’m very, very much devoted to the Virgin of Guadalupe, but not exactly the same figure celebrated in Church.”
Bibliography
Brackett, Virginia. A Home in the Heart: The Story of Sandra Cisneros. Greensboro, N.C.: Morgan Reynolds, 2005.
Cisneros, Sandra. “The Authorized Sandra Cisneros Web Site.” http://www.sandracisneros.com/home .html.
Cisneros, Sandra. “From a Writer’s Notebook: Ghosts and Voices—Writing from Obsessions, Do You Know Me? I Wrote The House on Mango Street.” The Americas Review 15 (Fall/Winter, 1987): 69-73, 77-79.
Jussawalla, Ferosz, and Reed W. Dasenbrock, eds. Interviews with Writers of the Post-Colonial World. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1992.
Kevane, Bridget A., and Juanita Heredia. “A Home in the Heart—An Interview with Sandra Cisneros.” In Latina Self-Portraits: Interviews with Contemporary Women. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2000.
Olivares, Julián. “Sandra Cisneros’ The House on Mango Street and the Poetics of Space.” In Chicana Creativity and Criticism: Charting New Frontiers in American Literature, edited by Maria Herrera-Sobek and Helena María Viramontes. Houston: Arte Publico Press, 1988.
Petty, Leslie. “The ’Dual’-ling Images of la Malinche and la Virgen de Guadelupe in Cisneros’s The House on Mango Street.” Melus 25 (Summer, 2000): 119-132.
Rodriguez-Aranda, Pilar E. “On the Solitary Fate of Being Mexican, Female, Wicked, and Thirty-Three: An Interview with Writer Sandra Cisneros.” The Americas Review 18 (Spring, 1990): 64-80.
Tompkins, Cynthia. “Sandra Cisneros.” In American Novelists Since World War II, 4th Series, edited by James and Wanda Giles. Vol. 152 in Dictionary of Literary Biography. Detroit: Gale, 1995.
Valdéz, Maria Elena de. “The Critical Reception of Sandra Cisneros’s The House on Mango Street.” In Gender, Self, and Society, edited by Renate von Bartelben. Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 1993.