I didn't know of any Latina writers growing up. Of the Latino writers I knew of, I knew their long pieces of work, their novels. Novels is what real writers did. Short pieces come from poets. If you want to write short pieces, you should be a poet. This is what I had learned when I was a child. When I learned about The House on Mango, I wasn't taught about the book nor about the writer, but I saved her name: Sandra Cisneros, a published writer, a published Latina writer. When I finally has the chance to get the book, I flipped through it and was immediately heartbroken--It wasn't a novel. I was still under the impression that great writers are novelists and instead of seeing the praise given to the book as a sign of great writing, I took it as a mockery. I took it as if the literary world was mocking the ability of Latina writers, as if short stories were the only thing we could do. It's complicated now for me to talk about what I felt because in truth it had nothing