A poet, short story writer, novelist, and essayist, Cisneros explores the lives of working-class and Latinx people in the United States. She is best known for her novel The House on Mango Street, about a young Latina woman coming of age in Chicago, drawn from real conversations she heard from ordinary people, in both English and Spanish. She has founded several organizations supporting emerging writers, including the Macondo Foundation, and in 2026 joined the American Academy of Arts and Letters.