Cisneros is best known for her book “The House on Mango Street,” a coming-of-age novel written from the perspective of a Latina teenager. The novel combines old Mexican traditions with modern American customs and explores the struggles Latinos face in this country.

Cisneros has received numerous awards, including a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, and she was awarded one of 25 new Ford Foundation Art of Change fellowships in 2017. In addition to her writing, she has fostered the careers of many aspiring and emerging writers through two non-profits she founded: the Macondo Foundation and the Alfredo Cisneros del Moral Foundation.