Sandra Cisneros (b.1954), a poet and novelist born in Chicago, is from a large Mexican-American family that includes her mother, her father, and six brothers. Cisneros has worked as a teacher, a college recruiter, and an arts administrator. She has published a volume of poetry and a collection of fictional pieces called The House on Mango Street, about a girl named Esperanza growing up in the Hispanic quarter of Chicago. "Eleven" is taken from her collection of short stories, Woman Hollering Creek.