Bily teaches literature and writing at Adrian College in Adrian, Michigan. In the following essay, she discusses "Little Miracles, Kept Promises" as a demonstration of Cisneros's intentions to create a new form of literature to celebrate a new people.

Readers who encounter Sandra Cisneros's "Little Miracles, Kept Promises" for the first time immediately notice several ways in which this story is unlike other, more conventional, short stories. There is no plot in the usual sense—no series of incidents in chronological order. In fact, there is no action in the story, and no central character around whom action might revolve. The only element approaching dialogue is the one-way conversations represented by the two dozen letters left behind by those who have prayed to various saints. The story's setting is only roughly suggested by the reader's understanding that the letters and milagritos have been placed in churches...