Wild Card with Rachel Martin - BONUS - Sandra Cisneros is in her 'magical mystery period'

Episode Date: November 26, 2024

Sandra Cisneros is best known for her debut novel, The House on Mango Street, which follows a year in the life of a young Chincana girl. For the 40th anniversary of that book, Sandra joined Rachel for a conversation in front of a live audience at the National Book Festival in Washington, D.C. Sandra shared a story about a teacher who changed her life and talked about why she's excited about death.To listen sponsor-free, access bonus episodes and support the show, sign up for Wild Card+ at plus.npr.org/wildcard See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy

Hey, Wildcard listeners, we've got a special addition to our feed this week. A little bonus episode with the writer and poet Sandra Cisneros. I talked to her this summer at the National Book Festival in Washington, D.C., in front of a live audience. Sandra is most famous for writing a novel called The House on Mango Street, which centered the life in the voice of a young Chicana in a time when not a lot of books like that were getting published. We were talking as a way to mark the 40th anniversary of that book. But to my extreme delight, Sandra was up for me. playing an abbreviated version of Wild Card on stage.

And that's what we're sharing with you today. I was nervous because I wasn't sure if being in front of a big crowd would kill the intimacy of the game, but instead it created an exciting energy in the room. Could have been the fact that everyone there was hanging on her every word. I mean, she is so very good at words, after all. It was also one of the rare times I got to actually interview a guest in person. And Sondra used the opportunity to put her hands up to the cards and actually catch a vibe from them that determined which one she chose.

It was really fun. Okay, here's my live conversation with Sandra Cisneros. Okay, so there's three rounds, folks, in this game, and there are a couple of things to remember. You have two tools at your disposal. You have a skip, so if a question isn't resonating with you, you can just say, skip, please, and I'll replace it with another question from the deck. And you have a flip.

The flip puts me on the spot. You can ask me to answer the question before you. You do not have to deploy either of these tools. But they are there for you. Okay? And when we get to the end, there's a special treat. I'm not going to tell you what it is. Food?

Mm-hmm. It's not Rice Krispy Treats, just in case you're going to. I would like Rice Krispy Treats. I mean, I love a good Rice Krispy Treat. Okay, three cards. The thing with this game is that you get to pick. one, two, or three. Okay, can you put them near me?

Yeah, but you can't read them, Sandra. I'm not reading them. Oh, okay. Oh, you're feeling them. Oh, I like it. Two. Who was an adult besides your parents who had an influence on you, for good or for ill? Oh. You know, there were people that came into my life. I'm very lucky that had big influence on helping me to lose shame and to be more courageous about speaking out. And the first person who did that was sixth grade, fifth grade, sixth grade, when I changed schools. And I had just gotten a new pair of glasses. And they were little blue cat eyes. I still wearing cat eyes from Sears.

And I remember we changed schools. And the teacher took one of my drawings and took it off my desk. And I just felt my heart just leap. I thought she was going to do what they did at the other school. school, which is, you know, make an example of you and make fun of you of what you're not supposed to do, because that's how they did it at the other school. So my heart left, and I thought, what have I done wrong? She took my drawing, and she pushed pinned it center, front of the room, and said, look what our new student has created this beautiful drawing. And I said, you mean that's good?

No one had ever acknowledge art as being something positive in my last school and no one had ever seen me and the fact that she was promoting and celebrating me made me think I had fooled her because of my little blue glasses and I thought, oh, she thinks I'm smart. Oh, I poigre-sita.

So I thought, well, I'm going to do something I'll try harder because she's obviously mistaken. So I will try a little harder. And I did something I never did at my other school, and that's when I knew an answer, I would raise my hand. And gradually my grades moved up from D's and C's to C's and B's. And by the time I graduated, I was an A and B student. And that teacher taught me something,

and that is that when you love your students, your students know it. And when you don't love them, they know it too. That's not something they can teach you at a university. You either love your students or you don't. And this teacher loved us, and she nourished us with that love. So, of course, I had to step up my game. I had to meet that love. And I will never forget her, but I've forgotten her name.

But I will never forget her. The reason why I forgot her name is because I only knew her for a few months, because I graduated to the next class. I came mid-year. But I see her, and I've acknowledged her in the acknowledgments of my last book of poetry. I call her Mrs. So-and-so. And Mrs. So-and-so was kind and loving. And when you're an insecure child, you need big doses of love.

It's a reminder to all of us when we see children in our lives. that to just pay attention. Yeah, she came at just the right time and we changed schools because of pipes that broke in our brownstone and I thank God for those broken pipes. I wouldn't be here today. We hadn't changed schools.

After a break, Sonda reflects on why she finds death exciting. We're moving to the next round. We are going deeper as we go. Three new cards. one, two, three? I'm an intuitive. I believe you. What's something about yourself that you have reluctantly realized is true?

I would have to write a poem to get the answer to that one, so maybe we'll skip it. That's a lot of, no, that's a good question. Because I think we learn things about ourselves every year as we get older, don't we? I'm trying to prepare for my graduation, which is my death, you know, I'm going to graduate. And I have in this period, I don't want to be afraid. I want to go and, you know, not cling to life because I think death is kind of exciting. You know, I'm an intuitive, and I know there's something because I've seen spirits. So I don't know what's there, or whatever it is.

It can't be as hard as living. So I think there are things worse than death. And we know those things. We write about them. But I want to be prepared to leave this world feeling like I earned my death. I want to feel courageous. I want to be a model for people letting go this life because I think we tend to force people to stay alive longer than their time.

I witness that with my father. And I want to go and say, who-hoo, who isn't this interesting. Wow, I had no idea. I didn't think it was going to be like this. so whatever it is that's out there, whatever that ether is, I want clarity, and I need to practice that between now and whenever that moment is. I'm sort of, forgive me, I sort of lost the connection between the card said. What is something you've reluctantly realized is true about yourself? Well, I guess. And you went to thinking about your graduation? Because I'm learning so

much. This is the exciting thing about getting older. You know, there's some horrible things, yes, the parts are wearing out, the warranties out. There's a wonderful, there's a wonderful phrase in Spanish, de estes altruas from these heights. You are at a height where you can review your life and you have gratitude for your mistakes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because like, you know, when they read my awards before I came out, I said, hmm, I wish they would read my failures. Because we learn more from our failures. Oh, I got lots of cards and failures.

We got a long bio list for our failures. But think about if you didn't have those failures, you wouldn't be who you are now. The success, isn't the awards, it's getting up from those failures

and you keep going, you keep learning, you keep transmogrifying, you know, you keep transforming yourself. So I think this is a magical mystery period of my life that from these heights,

de these altruis, I can look back and say, oh, look what she did there. Well, good lucky she did that, you know, that I can kind of gather it up and it helps launch me forward. Our last round, three new cards. One, two, three. In the middle. Is there anything in your life that feels like praying?

Writing poetry is praying. If we all wrote poems every day, we would be better. of human beings. You know, if we all wrote about the things that strike our heart, good or bad, every day, even just a button. And by a button, you don't have to think of a beginning, middle, or end. Just write one little pearl, one little pearl button of something that touched your heart, good, bad, indifferent. That's all you have to do. You collect these, and then you put them all together, and it helps you to understand yourself. And for me, it has helped me. I suffer from depression, but I never have to take drugs. I just write poetry. I read

poetry. Really? Yeah, I read poetry. When I, when the poetry is not enough, then I see a therapist, you know. But so far, you know, I learned from my mistake that I don't have to get that depressed anymore. I know what to do now, you know, from my mistakes. And, you know, I had periods in my life where I wasn't writing. I wasn't connecting with people. I was in a new environment. I was meeting my specters, the thing that made me most terrified. And I was doing it all by myself and I wasn't strong enough to handle all that. And I went, slid into like a nine-month depression and became very suicidal. And I think one of the things that we're ashamed about if we come from poor communities is that, you know, we don't think of going to a therapist. You know, we just kind of dream. or take drugs or beat up people or get beaten up. You know, we beat ourselves up. Very self-destructive behavior.

Eat. You know, that's sometimes people overeat from, they can't handle pain that life is giving them. But I never thought of going to see a therapist because I thought going to see a therapist was something wealthy people did, white people did, or people that were crazy. And or all of the above.

And I didn't know that like if I had a wound on my body that didn't heal for nine months, of course I would go to a doctor, not be ashamed. But I felt ashamed about going to seek a mental health specialist for my nine-month depression. And so that's something I talk about. If you've been depressed for over nine months, it's not shameful. If you were in another community, you would go see a shaman or shaman, a curandera. And you can still see them too, but also go see a therapist, and there are sliding scales, so you don't have to worry that it's out of your reach.

Sometimes you don't have to pay anything, but it's very important that you take care of your soul. And sometimes writing poetry isn't enough. There have been times in my life that it isn't enough. But poetry keeps me healthy. It's my medication. Reading poetry. And if you don't know who to read, you can go to the library and get an anthology and read the writers that speak to your heart.

It's so important that we write poetry, that we read poetry. It's like a, what do they call that when they do that investigative surgery and they tend to camera in your body. What's that called? Lapproscopic surgery? Yeah, but like it's that for your heart. So you see, how am I? Well, let me see.

I have to write a poem, see. And that's a great thing about writing poetry. You don't know what it's about. You don't know what it's about when you begin. You might begin writing about Tulip. and then it tells you about your mother. I thought I was writing about tulips. And that's what's so great about it.

It's a kite that you have to give it string. You have to follow it. You have to run. And then it lifts off. And when it picks your feet off off the ground, that's it's it. But you have to compost the evil stuff that you're churning, if it's evil. You know, often it is. And then when it compost and a little white flower blooms, you're done.

After a quick break, Sandra takes a trip in our memory time machine, and it's a doozy. Okay, so with every episode of Wild Card, we play this conversation game, and then we end with a trip in our memory time machine. And then I make a weird sound effect. Doodoo doodoo. Doodoo. You know, like a time machine? Doodoo doodoo. And we take you to a place. You get to choose.

one moment in your past that you would not change anything about. Oh, thank you. But you would just like to linger there a little longer. Can you take us there? I've written about it. It's called Akumal.

It's a place in the Yucatan away from Cancun in that neck of the woods. And I had a mystical experience when I was very young. I've had a lot of mystical experiences, but that was like a major. I went there with my parents just before I started graduate school.

And my father and mother were very interested in getting water, and we stopped. At that time, Akumal, there were no hotels, no condos, like now. It was just some hammocks strung up between palm trees and some little shed selling drinks. And they left me alone, and I lay down on a very shallow body of water that was a little inlet. I don't like beaches and I don't like water, and I'm not a great swimmer, so it has to be like that shallow for me to want to get in. And it was the softest sand. If you've been to the Mayan Riviera, you know it's the softest sand in the world. And it was all ripples like the roof of your mouth.

So when you lay down on it, it cushioned you at the right places, and the water was warm. in the palm branches were giving me a cleansing and the wind was just right and the ocean was lapping at my earlobes and suddenly everything shifted by itself and I was in a state that we don't have a word for

it was like I understood what the Buddha understood that I was connected to everything I can never die because I was also the wind and the trees and the water and the sand and the universe, and everything was one textile. It was all interwoven. And I understood that, and I knew that, you know, well, I don't mind dying right now. This is perfectly fine because I can't die. And it was so wonderful. I don't know how many seconds or years or minutes I was in that state

of absolute bliss. And then my father said, Sandra, vavanaughness! And I had to get up and go back to the real world. and get in the car and I thought, what the hell? What was that? I was too young to know what that was. I still am not old enough to know what that was. And whatever it was, it just was a little like a, you know, zoom, we're going to give her little laser beam. And I thought, that was so amazing.

It's happened to me again. It happens with great states of intense beauty, but I don't cause it. It's not like meditating. It just only happened to me one other time besides that, after that. And I don't know what to call it, except Maslow calls it peak experience. I don't know Maslow. I know what to do.

But anyway. A gift. It's a gift. For me, it was a message and a vision. And I did not know I was an intuitive then, and now I do. So it's for me to share and to tell you that we're all interconnected, like the Buddhists say. we enter our and so there's no me

and you or I or they and it's all part of that and I think we're witnessing that with the problems we're having with the environment with something like COVID that makes us understand how much we are connected to one another

anyway I don't know what it was but there it is that was beautiful thank you that's it for this special bonus episode of Wildcard If you like this one, you should absolutely check out our episode with poet laureate Ada Lameh. It's one of my favorites for sure. This episode was produced by Taylor Hutchison and edited by Dave Blanchard. Wildcarts executive producer is Beth Donovan.

Our theme music is by Romteen Arablewee. You can reach out to us at wildcard.npr.org. We'll shuffle the deck and be back on your feed Thursday. See you then.