Biographical Blog Sandra Cisneros Barbie Q

Pictured is Sandra Cisneros

Who exactly is Sandra Cisneros?

Born and raised in Chicago in 1954, Sandra Cisneros is a Mexican American writer who grew up with a loving family and a passion to create, her time originally being spent towards becoming a teacher and counselor for at risk kids at school, and shifting the minds of young people to more creative and productive outlets of expression. She was a teacher, a college recruiter, an arts administrator, and a writer. Her first books include a poetry collection entitled Bad Boys, a collection of short stories called Women Hollering Creek, and another book entitled Caramelo, as well as a whole lot more. Cisneros has received more than her fair share of critical acclaim over the years, having received the PEN Center West Award for Best Fiction of l99l, the Quality Paperback Book Club New Voices Award, the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award, the Lannan Foundation Literary Award, and most recently the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize by the Poetry Foundation.

Why Barbie-Q Was Written

Barbie-Q visual Reference Image
Sandra Cisneros wrote Barbie-Q as a response to the world around her. Not seeing her own culture or identity represented in the luxury and iconography that is Mattel's Barbie, Cisneros decided to write a story exemplifying the things such as race, class, feminism, gender expectations, and more found within our society. Cisnero's story is a personal meditation on gender and race, and Cisneros attempts to showcase the hispanic perspective that she has as both a woman and a writer through her story Barbie-Q. Many have found the words within Barbie-Q to be incredibly relatable and thought provoking, as a woman Sandra Cisneros understands firsthand the trials and tribulations of being a woman in a male dominated society, and echoes this triumphantly within her own work.

Barbie-Q's Message

Barbie-Q is ultimately about the way we view and interpret class, consumerism, and gender from an outside lens, and is explored through the story's narrator and her friend as they play with their barbies. The story explores class through the idea that the girls are aware that their barbies are in fact not new or polished, but instead hand me downs from thrift stores and flea markets, but don't care any less on account of their happiness to have the toys to begin with. This idea is also illustrated in how the girls must create and fashion new clothes for their Barbie dolls to wear out of recycled trash and garbage, a byproduct of not being able to afford fashion sets and cosmetics for the toys like other people can. The gender expectations that society places unto women also seep its way into the way the girls play, as the girls playing with Barbies specifically could be read as a statement on the unrealistic beauty norms and expectations of women, and the societal pressure that society places on them. This is the reality that Sandra Cisneros knows, and ultimately she found it to be a narrative that many others could relate to, despite not being able to find it being represented anywhere anywhere around her; which she eventually changed.

WORKS CITED:

Cisneros, Sandra. Sandra Cisneros, www.sandracisneros.com/. Accessed 12 May 2023. 

Alexander, Kerri Lee. “Biography: Sandra Cisneros.” National Women’s History Museum, www.womenshistory.org/education-resources/biographies/sandra-cisneros. Accessed 12 May 2023.

Gross, Rebecca. “Sandra Cisneros.” National Endowment for the Arts, www.arts.gov/stories/magazine/2016/1/telling-all-our-stories-arts-and-diversity/sandra-cisneros. Accessed 12 May 2023.