Parenting & Family Quote by Sandra Cisneros

Cisneros turns a coming-of-voice story into a blunt audit of power: who gets to speak, who gets shushed, and what it costs to stop cooperating. The opening clause, “silent as a child,” sounds almost natural, like temperament. Then she corrects the record: “silenced as a young woman.” That single verb swap is the tell. Silence isn’t a personality trait; it’s an arrangement enforced by family, school, culture, gender. She’s not confessing shyness. She’s naming an ecosystem.

“Taking my lumps and bumps” lands with physicality, like bruises you can’t theorize away. It’s also wry: the punishment for being a “big mouth” is framed as the expected fee for refusing the old rules. Cisneros is describing a familiar arc for women writers, especially Chicanas: you’re praised when you’re palatable, punished when you’re precise. The subtext is that voice isn’t granted through self-esteem seminars; it’s seized through conflict.

The last move is the sharpest. “Usually from those whose opinion I don’t respect” isn’t just clapback bravado. It’s a strategy for survival and a critique of gatekeeping. She’s demoting the authority of the very people most invested in her compliance: critics of “tone,” protectors of “good manners,” arbiters of who counts as “serious.” In that sense, the quote doubles as a manifesto about audience. Cisneros isn’t arguing she’s beyond criticism; she’s arguing that not all judgment is equal, and much of it is just discipline dressed up as taste.