Sandra Cisneros

Sandra Cisneros, an award winning novelist base all of her short stories on the two cultures which she has grown up in and now call her heritage, American and Mexican. The merge of these two cultures play a significant role in the plot and setting of her stories. My Lucy friend who smells like corn, Eleven, Mexican Movies, Barbie Q and Mericans are just of few of Sandra stories in which she merges both the American and Mexican culture. In “My Lucy friend who smells like cheese,” Cisneros describe Lucy as the “Texas girl who smells like corn, like Frito Bandito chips, like tortillas, something like that warm smell of nixtamal or bread the way her head smells…” implying that she is a Latina since corn is often regarded as one of Latinas main dish. “So my skin can get so dark it’s blue where it bends like Lucy’s.” the persona continues. She makes us know that Lucy is also living in America by mentioning the flip flop they both bought from k-mart. Similarly in Mexican Movies, although she is not doing it directly, Cisneros compares both going to the theater in Mexico with going to a theater in America. The things they can do in a theater at Mexico they cannot do in an American theater. For instance “Kiki's still little, he likes to run up an down the aisles, up and down with the other kids, like little horses,” in America that would not be possible. They are stricter in the American’s Theater than in the Mexican’s