In 2009, Cisneros wrote a new introduction to the novel. Here she includes a few remarks on the process of writing the book. She had first come up with a title "The House on Mango Street"; under it she included several stories, poems, vignettes, that she had already written or was in the process of writing, she adds that she does not consider the book a novel but as a "jar of buttons," a group of mismatched stories. These stories were written over different periods of time, the first three were written in Iowa as a side project, for at the time Cisneros was studying for a MFA. When orchestrating this book, Cisneros wants it to be "a book that can be opened at any page and will still make sense to the reader who doesn't know what came before or comes after." She says the people she wrote about were real, amalgamations of persons she met over the years, she tailored together events of the past and the present so that the story being told could have a beginning a middle and an end, and that all the emotions felt are hers.