Scarlet Woman, Violet House

"Not a flat. Not an apartment in back. Not a man's house. Not a daddy's. A house of my own. With my porch and my pillow, my pretty purple petunias. My books and my stories. My two shoes waiting beside my bed. Nobody to shake a stick at. Nobody's garbage to pick up after.

 Only a house quiet as snow…" (House, 108)

So muses Esperanza of Mango Street, planning her dream house on the doorstep of her ramshackle dwelling in the barrio. The young Sandra must have done the same, thinking of her future home, a nice stable place to wake up in and come back to.

Now that Sandra has found success and the money to go with it, she can get herself a house and make it into her own, right? In August 1997, Sandra bought a Victorian cottage in San Antonio, Texas's historic King William district and decided to personalize it. The authorities of the town explained the rules of altering the property; they looked over and ok'd almost all the changes she planned to make. However, they slapped a definite refusal on her bid to paint the thing a blazing periwinkle purple--deciding that it wasn't a color contemporary to the historic period.

Well, Sandra went ahead and did it anyway. Almost immediately, the town erupted into a dispute. Should we allow her to keep it that way? Or should we make her conform to the district's rules, like any other homeowner? This conflict spread like a tumor when the media honed in on the story-so much for a house quiet as snow.

Reporters flocked to her door and to City Hall, where Sandra fiercely defended her actions. "Rufino Tamayo" periwinkle-as well as "mango yellow, papaya orange, Frida Kahlo cobalt, rosa mexicana and, yes, even enchilada red"-fit the historical period, according to Sandra. Since the days of the Aztecs, the Mexicans have used those colors, she points out; the San Antonio tejanos (Texans of Mexican descent) surely painted their dwellings with them during the King William period. But this was on the other side of town, in the poor barrios whose history no one recorded, and no preservation committee cared about-until now. Sandra declares that her house visually represents the historic tejano culture. She asks for people with oral stories of the tejanos and their colors to share them, legitimizing her attempt to share their culture.

However, the town board eventually rejected her appeal, and the two parties finangled a compromise-light pink with green trim. Sandra's lavender-garbed gang of supporters trudged home downcast, while her opponents castigated her for pulling a publicity stunt, then playing the race card when she got into trouble. Rooted Magazine asks, "So is the question really more of a literary artist's search for publicity than a question of homeowner's rights? One thing is for sure, if Cisneros is allowed to maintain the color purple, she will win the hearts of many dreamy-eyed little girls, or anyone else, for that matter, with a passionate heart." Certainly her crusade has won the heart of this dreamy-eyed little girl. Yes, I view it at least partly as a calculated publicity act, with a highly successful payoff. Her books flew off the shelves at the San Antonio public library; one can find fifteen articles and news stories about her house on Electric Library (compared to three about her work).

Yet again and again in her works, Sandra emphasizes the need to "write about the powerless,…that world, the world of thousands of silent [people] …needs to be, must be recorded, so that their stories can finally be heard." (Notes, 52) This causes me to wonder what exactly Sandra tried to publicize. Her own self in hopes that her book sales will improve-or the limbo of her people's history and culture?