Feb. 23--"The House on Mango Street" author Sandra Cisneros explores her childhood in Chicago and the origin of her storytelling genes in Tuesday's episode of "Finding Your Roots."
Cisneros, activist Gloria Steinem and actor Neil Patrick Harris learn their lineage in the PBS ancestry show set to air at 8 p.m. on WTTW-Ch. 11.
Cisneros, 61, was the only daughter of seven children and she said she started writing at a young age. "Finding Your Roots" host Henry Louis Gates, Jr. wondered whether Cisneros got her fiction-writing ability from her father, who joined the U.S. Army under a fake name.
"My father told so many stories we didn't know what to believe," Cisneros said.
Cisneros attended Loyola University and won a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship in 1995.
"Finding Your Roots" airs Tuesdays at 8 p.m. Chicago-area native Shonda Rhimes, the creator of "Scandal" and "Grey's Anatomy," appeared in an episode last month.
