You are a human animal.

You are a very special breed, for you are the only animal.

Who can think, who can reason, who can read.

Welcome to Bookworm.

Today, my guest is Sandra Cisneros, the author most recently of a book of poetry, Loose Woman.

Her previously published book was My Wicked Wicked Ways.

She's the author as well of two books of prose, The House on Mango Street and Woman

Hollering Creek. The most recent book

is from vintage. It's loose woman. And I wanted to begin by asking you, I've been told that you

don't like the term Hispanic writer, that you prefer Latina or Chicana. Why? What is the, what are the differences between those three?

I also go by Mexican and American Mexican, U.S. Mexican, or Mexicana de este laado, Mexican

from this side of the border. Well, the difference is that all of the above, except for Hispanic, were names I called myself.

And Hispanic was not a word that I ever used to call myself.

It was imposed without asking my community what we called ourselves.

So it was a bit of a kind of, it's offensive to some groups because it didn't take into account that we had a name,

which we already called ourselves as a group in the United States.

It arose and some people feel it is not inclusive of indigenous people, that it's just Eurocentric.

And some people find offensive in it because it happened to come from an administration that's not real popular with the economists.

But I think, more than anything, it would be the same as the slaves that were renamed without asking them what name they call themselves.

And I take great offense because, you know, we did have a name for ourselves.

Granted, all of us in the United States had different names for ourselves, but that just goes to

say how diversified we are as opposed to unified. Now, your writing has an interesting history,

...