Welcome to Litsy!

"To have a house means that you have a space in which you can retreat from society and create your own monastery or convent. And it's really the house of the imagination that you're looking for: some space that is uncensored, uninterrupted, and that inspires you to sit with yourself and have a nice, thorough conversation." -Sandra Cisneros in an interview with NPR's Natalie Escobar regarding her memoir (tagged book)

We find ourselves at home, or homing, in books that allow us to become more ourselves. Home "is not just the place where you were born," as the travel writer Pico Iyer once noted. "It's the place where you become yourself."

Absolutely gorgeous evening to spend dining outside with a new book. If the introduction is any indication of what's to come, I'm going to love this one! #firstlines

But “A House of My Own” cut me to the bone. For as long as I can remember, I‘ve always wanted a place to call my home. Read the rest of my review: https://wp.me/p9KtkP-k6 #amreading #bookworm #bibliophile #bookish #booknerdigans #bookblogger #tsundoku #greatreads #readmorebooks #coolgirlsread

#two4tuesday @TheSpineView i am looking forward to having my very own yard for the first time in my life since moving out of my parent's home 20 years ago!!! We move into our new house tomorrow. Clearly the yard needs a little work but i think it'll end up amazing! And i can't wait to listen to audiobooks while I work on it.

“Say what they say, some may doubt the existence of God, but everyone is certain of the existence of love.”

This book was wonderful on different levels. First, because there are references and recommendations for places, writers, artists and musicians that inspire Cisneros. Second, the essays are masterful! Each one is a jewel. I admire her writing and the way she embraces the many follies of being human.

“I have always been a day dreamer, and that is a lucky thing for a writer. Because what is a daydreamer if not another word for a thinker, visionary, intuitive—all wonderful words synonymous with “girl.””

“My family suffers stories no one dares to tell.”

I do what I always do when I‘m lost: I take a nap. When I wake, I ask myself this: What is the story we won‘t tell? And when is the time to tell it?” 📸: Montage, Laguna Beach

“It‘s not half as tiring to talk as it is to listen.”

“I do want to create art beyond rage. Rage is a place to begin, but not end.”

“I want to believe that everyone falls in love with a book in much the same way one falls in love with a person, that one has an intimate, personal exchange, a mystical exchange, as spiritual And charged as the figure eight meaning infinity.”

”Books and more books, and more changes to the house one calls the self.”

“And poetry, of course, is like magic.” “Bread,dreams and poetry. That‘s all I‘m after.”

“Every Chicano writing is a Chicano writer. Chicano poetry is human poetry- that‘s where the heart of the matter lies- human compassion.”

“If that book shelters me and keeps me warm, I know I‘ve come home.”

Cisnero's memoir, A House of My Own, provides an a deeper understanding of the author's process of writing, the difficult struggles she has faced (and continues to face); she provides readers with childhood memories and, the uniqueness and importance of understanding familial and historical roots through gender and race identity, and nationality.

"The Little House sparked a lifelong hunger for a house of my own, a place to restore yourself from the world that might rough you up a bit now and then." (pg.346)

"Kiki and I got a fifty-cent allowance each Sunday. If we pooled our money and saved for a few months, we could own our favorite book. We meant to tell the librarian we'd lost it and pay for It, so it wasn't technically a theft. But the idea of lying to a librarian was infinitely more difficult than stealing a book, and we gave up on the plan before carrying it out."
(pg.342)

"My first crush was over a book, and not just any book, but a book about a house. Virginia Lee Burton's The Little House." (pg.341)

"It was gone as suddenly as it come. But it belonged to me, it had been given to me.
I kept it a secret inside the car and inside my heart., as if, as if I'd unearthed an exquisite artifact that might be confiscated at the border. Something ancient yet new, something of great value, like a coin I would have to hide under my tongue." (pg.340)

"And I felt something that has come and gone in my life at odd times without my asking. A sense of detaching from myself, or sliding out of myself and connecting everything in the universe. Of being empty so I could fill up with everything." (pg.339-340)

"The water, warm as a body, lapped at my earlobes, and the trees set a dappled light waving the sunlight gently over me as if giving me a cleansing." (pg.339)

"Once, when Mexico was the belly button of the universe, Isabel Vargas Lizano ran away from Costs Rica and resolved to make herself into a Mexican singer." (pg.326)

"There is no getting over death, only learning how to travel alongside it. It know a no linear time. Sometimes the pain is as fresh as if it just happened. Sometimes it's a space I tap with my tongue daily like a missing molar."
(pg.302)

"I wish somebody had told me then that death allows you the chance to experience the world soulfully, that the heart is open like the aperture of a camera, taking everything painful as well as joyous, sensitive as the skin of water."
(pg.300)

"In Mexico they say when someone you loves dies, a part of you dies with them. But they forget to mention that a part of them is born in you, not immediately, I've learned, but eventually and gradually." (pg.298)

"Her book is four pages long and was bound together on a kitchen table with a stapler and a spoon. Many of the other guests, she soon realizes, have written real books, hardback from big New York houses, printed in editions of hundreds of thousands on actual presses. Is she really a writer, or is she only pretending to be a writer?" (p.279)

"She stared at the ceilings and walls of her apartment the way she once stared at the ceilings and walls of the apartments she grew up in, inventing pictures in the cracks in the plaster, inventing stories to go with these picture. At night, under the circle of light from a cheap metal lamp clamped to the kitchen table, she sits with a paper and a pen and pretends she's not afraid. She's trying to live like a writer." (p.274)

"I have always been a daydreamer, and that's a lucky thing for a writer. Because what is a daydreamer if not another word for thinker, visionary, intuitive---all wonderful words synonymous with 'girl'" (p.269)

"My sister-in-law is the color of coffee with not enough milk, my brother and I the color of café con leche, and the color of a cappuccino...we loo Iike what we are.
And who the hell knows what that is."
(p.260-261)

"Love resuscitates the living dead, don't you think? For others, it's laughter. For writers, the pen is our savior. For some the needle, I suppose, or the bottle, or perhaps that rare elixir: poetry. I don't know how it is for others, for those without words, I mean. I can only imagine. For me, there are the writers like you [Eduardo Galeano] who remind me why I write." (p.211)

Day 3: A House of My Own #4newfavesin4days this gem was new to me this year and I loved it.

I regret taking so long to open this book. I remember being flabbergasted when shared Cisneros‘ poetry collection Loose Women and this book reminds of the fierce spirit and lyricism i was shown then and fell in love with. #poetrychallenge2018 #readwomen

Found my word for the year and my first #poet for the #poetrychallenge2018.

"Sky and clouds don't need papers to cross the border."

The contents of my #cupidgoespostal package! My Litten-tine (yup, I just did that!) thoughtfully picked out some titles to help me meet the Bingo board #litsyreadingchallenge!!! I am so excited to read these diverse picks! 😻 Thank you, thank you @nadine_swartz ! Your gifts are very much appreciated! @BookishMarginalia , can't wait for the Summer Solstice Book Exchange!! Happy Valentine's and happy #valentinesbookexchange day to all! 💗😘📖

This was really lovely, felt very much like a friend telling you about her life and experiences. I like how well she writes about emotions and the things they are attached to and grow from, and the connections she makes among the elements of her life. Also, now I want to live in a cottage on a Greek Island. (I can't fly, so it'll remain a daydream, but a nice one!) 4/5 ⭐

Is home the place where you feel safe? What about those whose home isn't safe? Are they homeless, or is home an ideal just out of reach, like heaven? Is home something you move toward instead of going back? Homesickness, then, would be a malaise not for a place left behind in memory, but one remembered in the future.

But when we are sick in the soul, it takes a long time to realize a spirit wound that won't heal is equally as dangerous as a flesh wound that can't.

Next door to my old apartment! I mean, many many years before I lived there, but still! 😬

I picked this up on a whim in B&N and it sounds like it's gonna be good 😊 #nowreading

Happy birthday to Sandra Cisneros! To celebrate, we recommend picking up her most recent book, a collection of nonfiction essays that, together, form a memoir of her life and lived experiences. It's full of Cisneros' signature wisdom and grace & is a great peek into her life as a Latina woman in the US, issues of economic inequality, cultural critique, & overcoming misogyny with female identity & sexuality. 🙌🏽

#TBRTuesday

I completed this book in fetal position as I cried both silently and loudly. I cried because I'm a Latina living in America (whose survived poverty and injustice) and those stories are hard to find. I cried in fetal position, because to see yourself in literature is a gift. I cried, because I too yearn for a house of my own.