SOURCE: Randall, Margaret. “Weaving a Spell.” Women's Review of Books 20, no. 1 (October 2002): 1, 3.

In the following review, Randall offers high praise for Cisneros's Caramelo, judging it to be an ambitious, captivating, and masterfully written novel.

In 1984 Arte Publico Press in Houston published The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros. Neither press nor author were known beyond the circles of those who were beginning to enjoy a burgeoning Chicana literature. A few Chicano names were just then entering the mainstream. Cisneros was one of what would soon emerge as a brilliant and diverse group of women—from an array of Latina origins—whose books demanded attention. The House on Mango Street guaranteed Arte Publico Press a future; only four years after it first hit bookstores, the brief novel had won the prestigious Before Columbus American Book Award and gone into its fourth edition. It has been translated into a...