I spent the summer after my freshman year of college assistant teaching an English class for 5th and 6th graders through an organization that prepped underprivileged minority students to attend elite college prep schools.  We spent the summer reading (among other books) The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros.

Andrea, the head English teacher, was amazing.  She taught me to appreciate Cisneros’ work and  how to connect with others through literature.  I had read House on Mango Street in high school and didn’t like it then.  With Andrea, the book took on so many more layers of meaning.  I’ve since lost contact with her, but at the end of the summer, she gave me two gifts that I always keep handy: Loose Woman by Sandra Cisneros and the copy of Strunk and White that I still work from today.  I find myself reading Loose Woman in its entirety every year (if not every six months).

My favorite poem from that book: You Like to Give and Watch Me My Pleasure

You like to give and watch me my
pleasure. Machete me in two.
Take for the taking what is yours.
This is how you like to have me.

I’m as naked as a field of cane,
as alone as all of Cuba
before you.

You could descend like rain,
destroy like fire
if you chose to.

If you chose to.

I could rise like huracan.
I could erupt as sudden as
a coup d’etat of trumpets,
the sleepless eye of ocean,
a sky of black urracas.
If I chose to.

I don’t choose to.
I let myself be taken.

This power is my gift to you.

— Sandra Cisneros