I'm Natalie Moore. I fell in love with soap operas when I was just five years old, and I still

watch them. Their television's longest scripted series and have zero reruns. Now let me tell you,

soap operas aren't just some silly art form. They are significant. In this season of making,

Stories Without End from WBEZ Chicago.

Join me as I share how the genre began, their social impact, and why these stories endure.

Listen wherever you get your podcast.

From WBEZ Chicago, this is Nerdette.

I'm Greta Johnson.

I'm Trisha Bobita, and this week we're talking to one of my very favorite authors in the whole world.

John Grisham. No. R. L. Stein. No. George R.R.R. Martin. He needs to finish that book, so he should be busy.

Oh, wait. I know. Sandra Cisneros. Yes, Sandra Cisneros. I should have guessed. She's the author of many of my

favorite books, Chief Among Them, The House on Mango Street, which I reread maybe once a year.

The House on Mango Street is a book that I vaguely remember reading in American Lit in high school.

Why did it stick with you? My dad was a Puerto Rican kid who grew up on the streets in New York.

He didn't tell us a ton of stories about his family.

He didn't know his family very well.

But the stories I do know about his childhood, his mother, his brothers, they all have this connection to the stories in Cisneros work.

And so when I read her books, it feels like I'm getting to know my own family a little better.

And I have to say,

it's not just because I feel a connection to what the stories are about. It's also how she writes.

She writes these earnest characters that are fiercely feminist. The main character in The House on Mango

Street is a teenage girl named Esperanza, and you're seeing the world through her eyes.

...