Recently in Latina/o Category

Fair and tender readers, I am todo excited about the proposal I submitted for a panel at the 2011 AWP conference in Washington, D.C.  (No thing's a sure thing, but I'm hopeful that it'll be accepted.)

The panel is called, "Memoir and Latinidad," and here are the rock-star panelists:

Esmeralda Santiago
















Rigoberto González


















Luis Rodriguez















Gustavo Pérez Firmat.












In the literary world?  Seriously:  these folks are rock stars.  I am a crazy fan of all of them, so I'm very happy that they all agreed to be on the panel.

As you may know, U.S. Latina/o memoir has developed a rich contemporary tradition that spans the political and stylistic spectrum from Richard Rodriguez to Gloria Anzaldúa.  But what, if anything, makes a memoir "Latina/o"?  Does latinidad influence aesthetics and craft as well as content?  Do contemporary Latina/o memoirists see themselves as inheriting the life-writing techniques and traditions of the U.S., or Latin America, or both?  And--perhaps the most vexing question for working writers--how do Latina/o memoirists navigate expectations by the mainstream, broader U.S. culture that their memoirs will represent whole cultures and nations?

These are the questions these amazing writers will be discussing.  I can't wait to hear their conversation.  (I will just be moderating.)

A panel addressing this specific conjunction of genre and ethnicity will be new for AWP, too.  The conference has never showcased anything like this before, and it's very relevant.  As the role of Latinos in the U.S. continues to spark national controversy (ay, Arizona), a discussion of the literary construction of self will contribute to the articulation and understanding of Latina/o identity, politics, & aesthetics. 

Since all four of the panelists are established senior writers, they'll bring the maturity of long reflection, as well as a diversity of cultural and political backgrounds--Chicano (Rodriguez y González), Cuban-American (Pérez Firmat), and Puerto Rican (Santiago)--to this important public conversation. 

These panelists have been serious community activists, too.  Por ejemplo, L.A.'s Tia Chucha Centro Cultural was co-founded by Luis J. Rodriguez, who has worked against gang violence and the socioeconomic injustices that foster it for many years.  Tia Chucha's annual benefit, featuring Perla Batalla, Ceci Bastida, Kristina Wong, and National Book Award finalist Wanda Coleman, is coming up on August 1st.  If you'll be in the L.A. area, check out a good thing!

And if you'll be at AWP in D.C. next February, come to our panel "Memoir and Latinidad"!  (If it gets accepted.  Fingers crossed.)  Maybe we'll see each other there!

For some vernal frivolity, take a gander at Advanced Style, a blog about style and fashion among the "silver-haired set." Check out the elegance.

It's cold and overcast outside but cozy in our apartment.  The walls are splashed with swatches of yellow, gold, and orange paints we're trying out in the living room, the ficus has recovered from the trauma of being moved and is putting out baby green leaf-shoots, the rosemary plants are loving the windowsill, and I'm busily writing my pieces for two panels at this spring's AWP Conference in Denver.  If you're there, I hope to see you! 

For the first time, I'm dragging the handsome husband along, so if you spot a beautiful man wandering lost around the bookfair, point him in my direction, would you?  (I mean, just in case.)

Speaking of the husband, my lyric essay about his body (yup) is coming out any minute now in the latest issue of Seneca Review.  I'm told Adrienne Rich has a piece in it.  Apparently, the contributors' copies are just about to go into the mail, and I can't wait to read mine.

How it happened is that one of the guest editors, the lovely Ralph Savarese, invited me to write a piece for a special issue on the body.  I knew Ralph had taught The Truth Book at Grinnell, so I kinda sorta guessed he might have wanted a piece that dealt with The Body in those terms, but I honestly, really didn't wanna write another piece on the abused body, the molested body, etc., etc., etc.--I just wasn't in the mood.  So I sent one piece about manufacturing artificial hip joints in a factory in West Virginia, which was my first job in high school, but they rejected that one.  So then I wrote about loving my husband's body, which happens to be an awfully nice specimen of the genre.  And to my surprise, they took the piece.

James and I have been together for--dear God--about 18 years now, and we'll celebrate our 15th wedding anniversary in April.  Because of my background (sexual abuse, philandering father, etc.), I was not especially prone to monogamy when we met, and I had to learn how not to run away.  Love taught me staying power.  18 years is a long time with the same body.  (Don't guffaw, Faye S.; I know we've got nothing on you and Marv.  I'm just sayin.') 

Here's a snippet:

Famous men have always written of the beauty of women, how poignant or pitiable or repulsive its twilight is, how the loathsomeness of pleating flesh drives them to withdraw their shrinking love and find someone fresh, a girl smooth and buoyant with promise.

For me to gaze back, then--to see the man's aging body; to fail to loathe it, and not to fret about my own:  is that a radical act?  A strike against fascism?  I don't feel bad about my neck.

The essay is called "Vesper Adest," which is the opening line of an epithalamium, a wedding poem, by Catullus.  It means, "Evening is come," and of course evening is when the bride and bridegroom get to finally head off to the bridal chamber, but I think it works nicely with the idea of getting older, too.  (I do cringe a little at the pretension of titling something in Latin, but I really liked the doubled way the phrase worked with the subject matter:  celebratory, elegiac.)

In upcoming events, poet Meg Kearney will be reading here in Lincoln on Thursday, March 25th at Nebraska Wesleyan.  Meg is the director and a founder of the Pine Manor low-residency MFA program in creative writing, for which I happily taught for three years.  Her poetry is moving and wonderful; I always loved the readings she gave at Pine Manor, and I'm looking forward to hearing her again on the 25th.  Her reading's at 7:30 p.m. in the Callen Conference Center, which is at 5000 Saint Paul Avenue.

Reporter Leo Biga has just finished interviewing Amelia Montes and me because of our pieces in An Angle of Vision:  Women Writers on their Poor and Working-Class Roots, edited by Lorraine López.  He's writing a piece for El Perico, a bilingual newspaper in Omaha.  Six or so of the writers included in the collection are Latina, so it's very cool that word about the book will be getting out to the Latin@ population here in Nebraska.   Thanks, Leo!  Thanks, El Perico!

My beautiful, funny, and generous friend Lorraine López, about whom you've read on here before (multiple times), has just been catapulted into the national limelight!  Her latest book, Homicide Survivors Picnic, a collection of short fiction, has been named a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award.   The other finalists are Barbara Kingsolver, Sherman Alexie, Colson Whitehead, and Lorrie Moore.   (Thanks to Tayari's blog for the heads-up.)

Always modest, Lorraine says she's still stunned and ecstatic.  It's going to be a whirlwind until March 23, when the winner is announced.  Wow!

Regarding the issue of representing latinidad, Lorraine says that she "intended to produce stories for [the colllection] that would shift the focus from the performance of ethnicity that essentializes cultural experience. . . ."  The L.A. Times includes a lengthy passage from a lovely 2-page interview, which you can access in full at BkMk's webpage for the book:

Q: Your collection has many Latino characters, and they all interact with characters from other backgrounds. Did you intend this bicultural or multicultural dimension of the book from the start, and do you think Latino writers face any special challenges in writing about Latino characters and culture for today’s varied literary audiences?

Lopez: This is a complicated question, and I thank you for asking it. For me, I did not set out to do more than explore characters beyond their cultural definition. As mentioned, I wanted to avoid that performance of identity that essentializes cultural experience. I am not interested in providing the usual themes, characters, and props that many associate with Latino literature. These do not characterize my experience as a Latina, so why should I artificially simulate such things to validate stereotypic notions? I can think of no reason to do this, except to gratify expectations of others....

I am not out to give anyone (including myself) what he or she might be expecting. In speaking to other Latino writers, I find that we similarly resist gratifying expectations that our characters perform in culturally expected ways, say, rolling tortillas, bopping around the barrio, or gathering wisdom from a sweet abuela. More and more, Latino literature is evolving away from such stereotypes, and becoming more interesting and challenging in the process.

Lorraine's also co-editing a new collection, The Other Latino, that addresses this very issue--the expected performance of Latina/o ethnicity--from multiple perspectives.  It's due out next year from University of Arizona Press. 

In the meantime, lift a glass to Lorraine! 

Tomorrow, my Chican@ lit students and I will be discussing Lorraine López's bleakly hilarious, moving short story of cultural loss and reclamation, "Soy la Avon Lady," the title story from her collection that won the Miguel Mármol Prize when it came out in 2002.

I'm wondering about an idea for a possible scholarly article that explores the role of the city as a site of interpersonal misreading in contemporary Chican@ short fiction.  Here's the basic notion.  Displaced from the locating context of village, family, and homeland of origin, Chican@ characters on their own in the metropolis become subject to diminished legibility, misreading each other and/or being misread, sometimes to humorous effect but sometimes with devastating and violent results.  I'm thinking particularly about stories that foreground the role of the city, such as Viramontes's "Cariboo Café," Chacón's "The Biggest City in the World," Troncoso's "My Life in the City," and this story, "Soy la Avon Lady," by Lorraine.  In each, ethnicity, history, and identity are at stake.  In each, there's some degree of alienation from Mexican culture.  In each, individuals' spatial mobility plays a significant literal role in the story.   How are all these facets working together? 

And are there questions of genre to be asked?  Why does this set of issues crop up so markedly in short stories?  (Maybe it's just as prevalent in novels and poetry, and I'm not reading widely enough.)

I'm just kind of kicking this idea around, wondering what it means and what, if anything, I can/should do with it, in a scholarly way.  If you're familiar with these stories and/or with the issues and want to respond with your take on it, please do.  I'd really welcome your perspective.

And if you just want an entertaining and thought-provoking read, definitely check out "Soy la Avon Lady."  I can't wait to hear what my students say about it tomorrow.

Hats off to Timothy Schaffert, who ran another great (downtown) omaha lit fest this weekend!  I loved the setting--the cooler-than-cool KANEKO in the Old Market.  Cody Lumpkin, a UNL grad student and compelling poet, did a beautiful job moderating the panel I was on with writers Amelia Montes, Belinda Acosta (about whom you've heard so much of late), Jeff Koterba, and publicist Lauren Cerand.  We talked about options for meaningful and effective self-promotion in the age of Twitter to a huge, lovely, and gracious audience.  (Jamie, please come by and see me!  Yes, you!  Yoga lady, drop me a line!)

Hats off to Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn, who've donated hundreds of copies of their terrific new book, Half the Sky:  Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide (reviewed in today's NYTBR, featured in a recent NYTimes Magazine), so that they could get their important message of investment and uplift out into the community.  Many thanks to Jacqueline Scoones, associate director of KANEKO, where Kristof and WuDunn will be speaking this fall, who sent me home with a box of 12 brand-new hardcover copies to distribute to colleagues here at UNL.

Hats off to Amelia Montes for her great reading today at the Bennett Martin Public Library here in downtown Lincoln!  She read from the introduction, letters, notes, and text of her brand-new Penguin Classics edition of María Amparo Ruiz de Burton's 1872 novel Who Would Have Thought It?.  If you're in the mood for a witty Civil War satire by one of the first Latina writers published in North America (the style reminds me a lot of Dickens), you should check it out.  Amelia followed the Ruiz de Burton reading with an essay of her own, "Queen for a Day," that had us all moved and laughing.  Luckily, it will be published this December in An Angle of Vision:  Women Writers on their Poor and Working Class Roots.

Regarding Peter Schjeldahl's piece in the recent New Yorker, however, I feel much as the narrator does at the opening of Moby Dick:  "that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people's hats off."  Here's why.

The concept of the destructive and reductive potential of the male gaze has been around in the culture for, oh, 30 years or so now, since John Berger and Laura Mulvey, so it's an unpleasant surprise to read not really much at all about the new Vermeer show at the Met in Schjeldahl's "Dutch Touch" but rather about the fact that one of Vermeer's milkmaid subjects is not quite to Schjeldahl's personal taste.  She is "husky," he tells us--and then, two columns later, back on the topic, he makes sure to specify that she is "sturdy."  Just in case we're unsure, he tells us that her "mass," "monumentally composed," "would stand [him] off, in an attitude of reverence, even if she were naked." 

Um, thank you?  (Oh, wait:  Schjeldahl reads Proust, too, he wants you to know, and himself has a Proustian sensibility.)

This is what passes for art criticism in The New Yorker?  Psssht.  For shame.
 

Gentle Readers, good news!  More magazine has just published this moving piece by the wonderful journalist Beatriz Terrazas.  It's about making peace with wrenching childhood trauma and with the imperfect, inadequate actions of the adults most responsible for protecting us.

It was my privilege to meet Beatriz when she took a memoir-writing workshop with Lorraine López and me at Macondo in 2008.  Our week together was so intense and sparked so much good work.  I loved getting to know Beatriz there in San Antonio and have since taught one of her other essays in the Chicana/Chicano lit classroom.

I love the bravery and strength of this new memoir piece and am so glad that More is sharing it with a broad readership.  Congratulations, Beatriz! 

I'm still catching my breath after finishing THE DESIRE PROJECTS, but I want to share a bunch of great and interesting things with you:

Step up, Sotomayor fans, and get your hot pink "Wise Latina" t-shirts here--with props to the UT Latinas for making it happen.

Scroll to the bottom of O Magazine's "How to Write Your Own Memoir" (redundant title? but okay, whatever) for ten good exercises.  (Thanks, Rachel Rinehart Johnson!)

Here's some really smart advice on writing memoir--from an agent, no less.  My favorite bits are these:

Memoir is a tricky category, one that I love but one in which the bar for writing is high and the demand for platform still higher. . . .   [N]ot only had you better write very, very, very well, but do so in service of a story in which the whole is somehow greater than the sum of its parts.

And again:

[Good memoir is] work that has drama, that surprises, that toggles between the personal and the universal, and is also very, very well written.

I couldn't have said it better.   But there's more on the site--and she links to another site she likes--so check it out.

Speaking of agents, some of you have asked me about mine, and I'm excruciatingly proud to show off Curtis Brown's pretty new website.   I love the image at the top.   (And guess which one my agent is!)

For instant humility, scroll through "Bestsellers & Awards," as I did.  Feel immediately wee.  Resolve not to care.  Fail.  Sigh.  Resign yourself to caring.  Turn to chocolate. 

Which leads me to . . . 

At Pine Manor, writer Anne-Marie Oomen gave me a taste of Grocer's Daughter chocolates (which she hand-carried with her from Michigan to Boston), and I am now in love.  They make Godiva taste like wax.  Sorry, but they do.  They're now my go-to gift for special occasions.  (Note that I had to add a new category, below.)

Last but definitely not least, the launch party for Belinda Acosta's new novel (which I blabbed about here--and Belinda and I gabbed together about here) is coming up in Austin, Texas.  Who wouldn't want to celebrate at Cuba Libre for an evening?  If you're in town, you should so go.  (Yes, you too, Julie.)

Tuesday, August 18
6:00 to 8:00 p.m.
Cuba Libre
409 Colorado

So you don't know Belinda.  So you haven't read the book.  So what?   If you were throwing a launch party for your first novel, wouldn't you love it if an enthusiastic stranger showed up?

Early this week, I wrote to you about Belinda Acosta’s debut novel, Damas, Dramas, and Ana Ruiz, forthcoming from Grand Central Publishing on August 11.

Full disclosure, gentle readers:  I feel particularly invested in and curious about this project because I was initially involved in conversations with the book packager Ellen Jacob of jacob packaged goods, which brokered the deal.  Writing a chica-lit project seemed like a fun, safe, structured way for me to learn to write a novel, and it also lured me with the opportunity to smuggle some of my political views into entertainment literature.  I was really attracted to the idea, but I ultimately chickened out.  So imagine my surprise when I learned, after the fact, that Belinda had taken on this project.  I was todo excited that she had decided to go for it.

Since most of you are writers with strong interests in writing and publishing, I thought I’d ask her about the publishing process. 

Me:  What was useful about working with a book packager?

Belinda:  Ellen was the one who pitched the idea to publishers and did that leg work. If you don’t have an agent and your own project brewing, and you like the packager’s project and can play with the palette they provide, then working with a book packager may be perfect for you.

Me:  How much guidance did you receive (on issues like plot and character) from the packager, and how much freedom did you have to write exactly the book you wanted to write?

Belinda:  The idea of the book started from a very different place than where it ended up. Ellen’s original idea was for a young adult novel set in Los Angeles. Not having any experience with LA Latin@s, I asked if the book could be set in San Antonio, a place where I’d spent some time and was more familiar with. Ultimately, the book became an adult novel, centered on the women and mothers but I insisted on keeping the story of the teenagers in there, mainly because I thought it was more interesting. Ultimately, I came up with the story, the plot, etc. Ellen and Selina McLemore (the editor at Grand Central Publishing) requested an outline of the book. Once Selina approved that, I started writing but even with an outline to work from, the book veered and changed as it took shape. I ultimately had a lot of freedom to write the story I wanted to write.

Me:  Can you tell us about your process?  What kind of timeline did you have, start to finish, for Damas, Dramas, and Ana Ruiz, and how did you organize your writing time while still working (full-time? part-time?) as a journalist?

Belinda:  Honestly, I’ve blotted it from my memory. Meeting the deadline was the most challenging aspect of the whole thing, mainly because it was extremely compressed. I think I turned the thing around in a few months. All together, from start to turning in the last, edited galley—maybe eight months? I don’t recommend it. Essentially, Sunday through Tuesday were TV Eye days, the column I write for the Austin Chronicle, and the rest of the time was spent on the novel. But I also had some features due in there. It’s hard to have a regular schedule when you work for a newspaper. TV Eye—that happens like clockwork. It’s due Tuesday mornings. But of course, I still have to watch and read about TV, so saying I worked Sunday through Thursday on my column is misleading. Really, my whole waking life was consumed with some kind of writing—the book, or the column, or some assigned feature. I didn’t get much sleep during that time.

Me:  What surprised you the most about the process of writing your first novel?

Belinda:  I had been writing my own novel off and on since I finished graduate school, but it was stalled. The main reason I took on the jacob packaged goods project was because I wanted to experience writing a complete novel, beginning to end, with the idea that there was something about the process I needed to learn. If I could learn that, I assumed I could then return to my own work and finish it.  What surprised me the most about actually writing and finishing a novel was what an intimate process it is, particularly since I was on a tight deadline. Writing a novel is like having this perpetually nursing child who always needs you, is always there. You can’t forget about it because you can’t ever let it go. You sleep with it and eat with it. It’s there when you’re trying to relax. It never leaves your consciousness. It always needs something from you—it’s working itself out in the background when you’re doing something else. Some of my “break-through” moments came when I awoke in the morning and, for some reason, while grocery shopping! Part of the reason I didn’t sleep much during that time was because my brain wouldn’t shut down. I was an insomniac for part of that period—an experience I never had before and never understood until I wrote this book. I sleep like a baby, now!

Me:  If literary chisme has got it right, you’ve just completed your second novel for the Quinceañera Club series.  Serious respect!  How has your process been different the second time around?

Belinda:  Yes, I turned in the manuscript for the second book in the series on June 1. That was after asking for two extensions. The process was essentially the same, except I lost the month of March because of SXSW, the music, film, and interactive conference I help cover for the Chronicle. I thought I might get some writing in during that time, but after the first few days, I had to put the book aside. When I had time to worry, I really feared I would lose momentum, lose the groove. Thankfully, the break from the book was useful. And after working SXSW, working on the novel was almost relaxing!

Me:  You also report on film, TV, media, and literature for the Austin Chronicle.  Were there narrative aspects of particular shows or movies (structure, dialogue, characterization, etc.) that you learned from in writing the novels?

Belinda:  One of the reasons I insisted on the kids’ story and the mother/parents’ story being parallel to one another was because I liked how it worked in several popular TV series. In The OC, in particular, I liked how the parents were not just “waa-waa” voices in the background, clueless to the lives of their teenagers, and how the teenagers were kids, but well-developed characters. Parts of the adult lives and the kid’s lives were always separate, but their lives intersected. I liked that. In the case of Damas, it was convenient that the intersection came with the departure of Esteban and the breakdown of the family. Everyone, the kids and the adults, had a stake in that change.

Me:  You have an MFA in creative writing from the University of Texas at Austin.  How much of what you learned in grad school was applicable to writing a project for a popular audience?  Did your skills translate easily, or was there anything you had to unlearn?

Belinda:  I deeply appreciate the fact that I got a MFA on a full fellowship. I loved that I had three years to write and read, explore and experiment. But ultimately, what I learned about writing I learned as a working journalist. I met a lot of great writers and teachers in grad school, but I think I spent a lot of time playing with my “precious prose.” When you work on deadline for a newspaper or a magazine, you learn very quickly how to trim and edit. Suddenly, all those words aren’t so precious anymore when the clock is ticking. Another part of your brain kicks in when you’re on deadline. I can’t quite articulate it, but I love it when things rhyme—when good prose is accomplished with an economy of language and time. It’s the most satisfying thing.

I think the thing I had to “unlearn” from grad school was this other voice I adopted. I think I went into the program with a very distinctive voice that got, well, squashed. It took me five years to recover from that. I was using some Spanish in my work while in the program and there were a couple of classmates who rolled their eyes at that, sighing that they didn’t understand, and since they didn’t understand, they stopped reading. At the time, I was flabbergasted. I mean, no one worried if I had to struggle to get through Faulkner’s interminable sentences. Some of his colloquialisms may as well have been in Greek. I didn’t understand them—and yet I never heard a discussion anywhere about his use of those colloquialisms as “hard” or “difficult” for the reader. They were simply accepted. The unspoken message was that if I didn’t understand and accept, it was my fault, not the writer’s. In my graduate class, where the student complained about the use of Spanish—which wasn’t that much, by the way—the unspoken message was that since he had to work at understanding, I, the writer was at fault. Nowadays, if and when I get a complaint about my use of Spanish, or the criticism that the words are too “foreign,” my response is, “You mean like schlep, toochas(sp?), verklempt, or schmuck?”

I figure if Latin@s are the fastest growing ethnic minority in the states and Spanish is still in use, even among those of us not strongly bilingual, the rest of the world is going to have to catch up. My use of colloquialisms or Spanglish is used to reflect the way my characters think and talk. American English, by virtue of our immigrant base, is a highly dynamic language. It is not static. And I think that the words and phrases that seep into the larger vocabulary (like schlep, schmuck, etc) are because we respond to the music of the language—it says something in the musicality of the word. It sings! It strikes at the core of its meaning. I mean, can you think of a better word for “schmuck” or “mamasota” or my new favorite, “hombrazo”?

I like what Lorraine López (The Gifted Gabaldón Sisters) told me recently: she said that she thinks readers should have to work a bit. I don’t think they should have to labor over every word, or graph, or idea, but there is some satisfaction to be gleaned from putting some work into reading a text (unfortunately, I didn’t have that experience with Faulkner, but maybe I need to return to him!).

I know this may all sound surprising coming from someone who has just written a popular novel, and I think I went far afield from your question, but asking about graduate school made me consider that experience in all its intensity.

Overall, I’m glad I went to grad school but the writer I am today is because of who I read, working as a journalist, and my own stubbornness.

Me:  Who are your own favorite writers?  Are any of them particularly influential on your own style?

Belinda:  My two sheroes are Flannery O’Connor and Harper Lee. I have great respect for Lorna Dee Cervantes, Wendell Berry, Sandra Cisneros, Julia Alvarez, Helena María Viramontes, Lorraine López, Alex Espinosa, Luis Alberto Urrea, Manuel Muñoz, and many others. When I was younger, I was trying to mimic O’Connor, which is hilarious—a Midwest Chicana going southern gothic? But I love that I tried. Ultimately, what I take from all the writers I admire is an appreciation for the beauty of their prose. I revel in a well-written sentence, a lovely image, and words that make you want to lift them from the page and examine them like tiny stones. I like to think that all of them influence me in some way, but that somehow, I’ve happened upon my own style.  I hope I’ve outgrown my mimicking days. For one thing, I don’t have time! But I also think it’s a common thing among young writers. Except for those few savants out there, I think writers spend a long time in their journeyman years, experimenting, mimicking, reading, writing, failing, waiting, giving up and finally learning what kind of writer we want to be.

Me:  With these two novels, do you see yourself as working within a Latina/Chicana literary tradition?  If so, in what ways?

Belinda:  Well, Manuel Muñoz told me this funny story once about Lorna Dee Cervantes. Someone once asked her after a reading what made a book a Chicana or Latina book and her response was: “It’s a Chicana book because a Chicana wrote it.” I love that because for most of my life, I was not even considered a “real” Chican@/Latin@ in other parts of the nation because I grew up in Nebraska. People actually told me, “There aren’t any Latin@s in Nebraska,” or, “I don’t know what you are, but you’re not Chican@.” I found that very hurtful. How can you look at me, as big and brown as I am, and tell me I don’t exist? The Latin@ experience that was most written and talked about in the media and in literature is in the southwest, California, and the east—and those were not always Mexican. As you know, the Mexican American experience is very different from the Puerto Rican experience in New York, the Cuban experience in Miami, or the Mexican American experience in Chicago, Indiana, and yes, Nebraska.

In the earlier piece you wrote, you mention the scene with Bianca responding to someone who didn’t think she was Mexican because she was light-skinned. That scene came specifically from a conversation with someone who didn’t believe that a light-skinned Mexican co-worker was really Mexican. Bianca’s line in the book, “We come in all flavors,” actually came from my mouth. That scene is also inspired from my experience of having to prove that my experience in the Midwest was real. Today, when someone flips out about me being from Nebraska, I say, “Yeah, I grew up in the breadbasket of Aztlan!” If they’re still looking at me blankly, I say “Nebraska is the CORNHUSKER State. Put it together.” Sometimes you have to mess with people’s reality.

Me:  In Damas, Dramas, and Ana Ruiz, were there any stereotypical motifs or attitudes of Latina/Chicana culture or psychology that you deliberately avoided, and why?

Belinda:  There were two things I was especially conscious of. One, that I didn’t want Esteban to be “the bad macho.” Second, that I didn’t want Ana to be the all good, saintly, all suffering mother—though she does suffer, doesn’t she? But I didn’t want her struggle to be tied to the fact that she was a mother or a Mexican American woman, but to the fact that she was in a dying relationship and the pain that comes from knowing that, but being unable to let it go. That was the real heartbreak of her character for me—the fact that she knows what she has to do, but that it’s so damn painful to just end it. It’s the hanging on, not the letting go that is killing her.

As for the kids, another reviewer said she was pleasantly surprised that there were no pregnant teenage girls or boys in gangs in the book. The kids in Damas are pleasantly ordinary, good kids. I realize that teenage pregnancy and suicide are alarmingly prevalent in our community (especially among our Latinas), but I had no direct experience with that. I guess I was a boring kid. All I did was go to school, be a theater geek, read, write, and not get into trouble.

Me:  Yes, I really liked the relentless middle-class normalcy of the teenagers in the novel.  They do have problems, but they aren't tragic figures, aren't in crisis.  It's a welcome break from how Latin@ youth are often depicted.  Do you currently plan to write additional books for the Quinceañera Club series?

Belinda:  I’ve only been contracted to write two. I have no idea what’s next, though there’s been some cursory mention about book three.

Me:  What advice would you give writers who are considering working with a book packager?

Belinda:  Spend some time getting to know the packager. Find out how they plan to work with you as a writer and if that suits your way of working. Find out what kind of freedom you have. I was lucky, I think, in that I was given a few suggested character names and the quinceañera as the backdrop. From there, I was on my own. I don’t think I could have worked on the project if there were more guidelines imposed or more direct intervention in the writing process. I am not, nor have I ever been on a writing team and the idea does not appeal to me. I’m not interested in being a ghostwriter. Think about your time and your projects. Time spent on a packager’s project is time taken away from your own. For me, the project came at a good time. I learned what I needed to learn, and hopefully, will be able to translate those skills into my future work.

Me:  Publicists, editors, and agents talk frequently about the need for writers to have/build a platform—even before a manuscript is accepted.  Can you talk about how you’ve built yours?

Belinda:  I’ve just barely started thinking about promotion and platform building. Fortunately, because of my 10 years as a working journalist, I have a wide network of contacts. I am a member of Macondo, the writing collective started by Sandra Cisneros, and that has been helpful. I know that I can call a Macondista in nearly every part of the nation and get leads on ideal places to read—places that are not necessarily on the publisher’s p.r. list. I started a fan page on my Facebook profile, which I will link (after I work out some bugs) to my blog. Here are the links:
Facebook fan page
My blog.

Me:  What kinds of publicity plans do you have for the book’s launch?  Have you hired a publicist, or are you working with GCP’s publicity department?  How has that been?  Has jacob packaged goods participated in marketing and publicity discussions? 

Belinda:  Locally, I and a few friends are planning a book release party on August 18, 2009. It’s patterned after a quinceañera with actual quinces in their gowns, a slide show featuring quinceañera photos, music, a manicurist and a “presentation” ceremony preceding a short reading. It’s going to be fabulous. I’ve been working with the GCP publicist to arrange readings—apparently, all the publishing houses are cutting back on book tours overall. So, I’m looking into doing an online tour and exploiting social media to get the word out. I haven’t hired my own publicist. I have a friend who is a fabulous publicist who I would hire in an instant if I could afford her. She’s Elaine Garza of Giant Noise, based here in Austin. She used to do publicity at Random House, I believe. So, she knows that world. She’s helping as much as she can. She’s in high demand, with high profile clients like Spin, Latina, and others, and she and another friend in town, Rose Reyes of the Austin Convention and Visitors’ Bureau are throwing their support behind the book release party. Nora Comstock, who started the Las Comadres network, will help me get the word out through her powerful listserve. I think there are Las Comadre’s groups in nearly every state now. I am fortunate to be surrounded by many well-connected Latinas who have literally come forward to ask how they can help me, knowing that I have nothing to offer except my thanks. Oh! And my home newspaper, the Austin Chronicle, is helping me, too.

It’s hard trying to explain to those who are still trying to crack the Latin@ market that so much of the promotion involves relationships. Sending a press release to Borders in San Antonio, for example, is not enough. The approach has to be targeted and hit multiple bases at once—community and commercial—and knowing which venues are Latin@ friendly. If I had all the time and the money in the world, I could organize and plan a tour of Texas, California, and the Midwest—upper and lower. But alas, there are only so many hours in the day and I still have a day job.

Me:  What launch and publicity advice do you have for first-time novelists?

Belinda:  That’s a question I can’t fully answer at this time. I’m still in the thick of it. But the first thing I would suggest is making sure you get to see all the publicity copy that goes out on behalf of your book. I’ve heard too many horror stories of factually incorrect press releases and cover letters going out. There’s no excuse for that. But also realize that you are probably not the only writer the publisher’s publicist is handling. Be kind, be understanding, be diplomatic, but don’t let factually incorrect information of your book go out.

Me:  In your heart of hearts, who do you most hope will read Damas, Dramas, and Ana Ruiz?

Belinda:  I would die a happy woman if I got on the bus and saw that one Latinita on the bus, the one who always has a book in her backpack, reading Damas, Dramas, and Ana Ruiz; that one copy that has gone through several hands. I know the goal is to sell books, but the idea of the book being passed from sister, to mother, to aunt, to daughter, really makes me happy.

~
Belinda also has a Q&A with Marcela Landres, who also asks about working with book packagers, available on Latinidad.  Dale gas, Belinda!

Chica lit, done right, is no easy genre.  It needs to mix froth with genuine tugs to the heartstrings, and the best practitioners also weave in smart social commentary about class, culture, and gender, as does mi reina Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez, who broke out in 2003 with The Dirty Girls Social Club, a kind of Waiting to Exhale for Latina readers.  The Dirty Girls Social Club blazed a viable trail for commercial Latina writers by demonstrating to the publishing industry that, hey, Latinas read for fun.  Alas, sometimes the host of imitators spawned by Valdes-Rodriguez just rehash standard chick-lit formulas with the occasional ¡Híjole! tossed in.  (I’m not naming names here; they know who they are.)

I’m proud and excited that my friend and fellow Macondista Belinda Acosta has thrown her hat solidly in the ring with her forthcoming novel Damas, Dramas, and Ana Ruiz, due out from Grand Central Publishing this August.  (Her editor there, Selina McLemore, is also the wonderful Lorraine López’s editor--and was Josefina Lopez’s editor for Hungry Woman in Paris; it’s a small Latina world.)

Belinda has her MFA in creative writing from the University of Texas at Austin and is the TV and media columnist for the Austin Chronicle.  Damas, Dramas, and Ana Ruiz, which will launch on August 11 and is available for pre-order now, is her first novel, and it’s also the first in a series, the Quinceañera Club.  If my sources are correct, Belinda has also written (already!) the second installation.  Very exciting!

Damas, Dramas, and Ana Ruiz traverses new cultural territory, since its heroine Ana Ruiz, rather than being single, is the 38-year-old married (well, separated) mama of two teenagers, one of whom is an openly hostile 14-year-old girl who blames Ana for her husband’s recent departure from their home.  To reconnect with her daughter, Ana wants to plan her quinceañera together, but plans go awry and mayhem ensues.  Meanwhile, Ana has to figure out her own romantic destiny.

Some elements of the story will be familiar to readers of chick and chica lit:  Ana has a best gal-pal who gives advice and comfort from the sidelines, a successful (but not entirely fulfilling) career, and an apparent choice between differently desirable men, in this case Ana’s estranged husband and the handsome visiting artist from Mexico who reawakens Ana’s thrill factor.  Except for a quick scene with lesbian walk-ons, the novel is strongly heteronormative; all the main characters are straight.

But the plotline also diverges from standard chick-lit and chica-lit fare.  While negotiating her own dreams and desires, Ana must also face the complexity of mothering complicated adolescents (as well as her unmothered niece—ah, familia!), and she’s forced to consider the ramifications of her own sexuality upon her family’s future.  In contrast to Sex and the City and its variously inflected ilk, in which 38-year-old women are “girls” who buy snazzy shoes and fly solo, Belinda’s new novel keeps a female protagonist at the center, but work, familia, and responsibilities play a much bigger role, and designer bags and giddy cocktails are noticeably absent.  Unlike the relative free-fall individualism practiced by most chick-lit and chica-lit protagonists, Ana juggles the financial and emotional responsibility for more lives than just her own.

When the novel opens, Ana has been carrying the full responsibilities of adulthood for 20 years already.  As a mother and primary breadwinner, she’s not just in a pickle; she’s tired.  In this key divergence from the typical chica-lit plot and protagonist, Belinda makes a valuable intervention in chica lit.  It’s a welcome shot of realism in a genre that trades in escape.

That said, it’s also a fun read with engaging passages and lively pop-culture references (especially music).  The pace is rapid, and characters are often sketched in a few quick lines.  There’s plenty of dialogue, but on the whole, the narrative mode tends to privilege telling over showing, but the telling functions here as an economical way to deliver a lot of information about the characters and their dilemmas.  Readers of Latina will enjoy Belinda’s breezy, pro-empowerment handling of social issues, as in this passage about colorism within the Latino community:

Bianca . . . was lean and curvy like most of the girls in the family, but unlike the rest of them, she was blond with sea-green eyes, something that used to bother her when she was a little girl.  As a teenager, she came to accept her “güera” label.  So, when some tonto said, “Hey, how come you don’t look Mexican?” Bianca replied, “We come in all flavors, menso!” turning on her heel to leave the baboso, her ponytail snapping like a whip.

Throughout the novel, Belinda weaves in socioeconomic and cultural factors with a light but telling hand.  Ana’s estranged husband Esteban’s crisis of masculinity, for example, is exacerbated by the fact that he was long ago unable to pass the firefighters’ exam—due in part, the novel suggests, to his difficulties learning English—and has been stuck in manual labor while Ana moved on up the educational and socioeconomic ladder without him.  The private tensions of their marriage stem from wider tensions in the culture, and many women of color will recognize elements of that story from their own lives.  I like the fact that Belinda’s sociopolitical and cultural awareness plays a role in the story’s shape, even though the project is ostensibly just for fun.

As a former happy resident of San Antonio, I love the fact that Belinda set her novel there, and I enjoyed coming across references to paleta carts, the Blanco Street Café, Brackenridge Park, the Esperanza Center, and the occasional pecan tree.

In terms of characters, the protagonist Ana’s choices and thoughts seems frequently constrained by guilt, which made me guess that the book will resonate more for readers whose values are more traditional than mine—and if its happy ending (por supuesto it has a happy ending!) offers readers a brighter, lighter vision of what a woman’s life can be, then it will be doing important cultural work.  And a writer-friend who once taught high school says the 14-year-old daughter’s grumpy yet vulnerable behavior and dialogue are spot-on.  

My own favorite character was teenaged Bianca, Ana’s niece, who comes vividly to life in one of the novel’s subplots.  She’s faced with the difficult situation of rebuilding a relationship with an institutionalized mother whose breakdown occurred in conjunction with Bianca’s own quinceañera, during which she destroyed Bianca’s dress.  Because I had painful conflicts with my own mother when I was fourteen, this was a particularly rich moment for me, and I hope the second novel in the series delves further into the psychological tensions that the quinceañera moment provokes in mothers who are forced, in an image-driven society that exhorts women to look young forever, to face their own aging at exactly the moment they’re supposed to be celebrating their daughters’ beauty and maturity.

I really love the fascinating narrator Belinda concocted.  She’s omniscient—the voice of the community (sort of like Faulkner’s narrator in “A Rose for Emily”)—yet particularized.  It’s the believable voice of an older, wiser, all-seeing Latina looking down on the whole mess, critiquing the characters and yet rooting for their happiness, like a salty old aunt who’s gonna tell it like it is, sabe?  Belinda has fun with language in the narrator’s voice, too:  Ana, the narrator tells us, is “no spring kitten,” and “not escared of much.”

This voice is especially pronounced in the opening prologue, the beginning of chapter seventeen, and the final pages of the novel, giving it a strong frame.  In the rest of the novel, it works much like a typical omniscient narrator, working flexibly to give Belinda the freedom to shift from one focalizer to another, building understanding and sympathy for a whole cast of characters, and occasionally providing commentary (and comic relief).  In this, the novel works as an ensemble piece, a community and family novel that examines how a variety of sociocultural factors affect everyone’s choices and desires.

As an academic scholar and teacher of Latina/o lit, I particularly admired the book’s seamless, completely natural-sounding integration of Spanish and Spanglish into a predominantly English-language text.  (Belinda has staked out solid political ground for herself here.  For a fascinating academic treatment of the political ramifications of language-use choices, see “In the Contact Zone:  Code-switching Strategies by Latino/a Writers” by Lourdes Torres in MELUS 32 [2007].) 

In Damas, Dramas, and Ana Ruiz, Spanish words are not italicized, and thus not marked as foreign or other.  They’re also almost never cushioned (which is when the word’s or phrase’s definition in English is provided immediately afterward).  Puns dependent on Spanish knowledge aren’t parsed for the reader.  The reader either knows the word, or gathers its meaning from context, or doesn’t; there’s no textual pandering to monolingual English readers.  Yet the book is written primarily in English and would feel, I’m guessing, pretty comfortable to a non-Latina/o reader—or to folks whose Spanish, like mine, is todo rickety.

I have a lot of questions for Belinda, and she has been kind enough to agree to answer them soon.  Watch for the upcoming Q&A!

I'm so psyched about Justice Sonia Sotomayor, her fantastic record, and her excellent chances of being confirmed.  As Jeffrey Toobin observed on last night's Daily Show, there have been 110 justices on the Supreme Court during the U.S.'s history, and 106 of them have been white men.  It's about time.  Sorry about the squeals she's provoking from the right, but folks rarely relinquish unearned privilege gracefully.  Why the right is trying to scare people off the word empathy, though--and why Dems are capitulating--is beyond me.  I wonder what George Lakoff would say.  Progressives currently have power and the will of the people behind them.  It's our turn to shape the discourse, and leaders should take the wheel in that regard. 

Ain't I a princess?  Disney's drawing fire for The Princess and The Frog, an animated film due out this December that features Disney's first black princess, Tiana.  Oprah consulted, and parents are happy, but critics voice concern that the prince is not black enough (or not black at all) and that the princess spends a good chunk of the movie as a frog herself (in a divergence from the original). 

I was wondering why, instead of reshaping a classic European tale (the film retells the Grimms' fairy tale but sets it in 1920s New Orleans), Disney didn't just look to either African or African American narratives.  If I wanted to create a tale that highlighted a black princess/heroine, I'd start by looking at some culturally indigenous stories.  Just a thought. 

If you get a chance to see Examined Life, a documentary of public intellectuals gabbing and moving, go.  It's more accessible than you might think, given the status of some of the subjects as high-powered theorists, and it's often humorous (intentionally or otherwise).  My favorites were Avital Ronnell, who talks about anxiety and ethics (pointing out the way that Bush was notoriously un-anxious about the death penalty in Texas and various crimes against humanity since), and applied ethicist Peter Singer, who questions our moral responsibilities to one another vis-à-vis the issue of conspicuous consumption in front of Fifth Avenue's windows full of designer goods.  (Singer's remarks actually helped me think through a chapter I'm revising, so that was an unexpected plus.)

Cornel West, Slavoj Zizek, Martha Nussbaum, Michael Hardt, Kwame Anthony Appiah, and the filmmaker's sister show up in the film, too, as does Judith Butler, who is much sexier than I'd guessed from her prose.  (Of course, a doorstop is sexier than I'd guess from Judith Butler's prose.)  Sharp hair, Judith.

Thinking about the Other is all over the documentary, so empathy, though not called that by the philosophers, was a theme.  How do we design and implement a just society when people have such different capacities and values?  How do we imagine our way across vast differences into another person's perspective? 

Many thanks to Sonam, Amalia, Julia, and Jon for going with me and talking about it afterward, and to Sonam for dreaming up the outing in the first place.

Today's Grey's first day on the job at a bookstore in Austin, where he's spending the summer, so my mom-heart is all wondering about how it's going for him.  Good luck, Grey!

With the end of classes, I'm getting just a ton of revision done.  A character completely surprised me last night; I love it when that happens. 

I'm so grateful to be a teacher and thus to have summers off.  For three months a year, I get to live and work like a real artist, to dwell in the imagined, constructed worlds of creative projects.  It's such a gift. 

I think it's a gift back to our students, too, though.  If we didn't have this concentrated, different sense of focus on our work, we wouldn't be able to do our work as well, and then we wouldn't have sufficient experiential knowledge when we teach.  In fact, I wish university administrators really comprehended artists' processes better and would structure more "studio" time (time for jello-mind, time to write for hours on end) into the school year, so we could stay juiced up all year long, instead of sticking us onto committee after committee.  I have a few scholarly friends who genuinely like committee and administrative work, and more power to 'em.  I wish they could do it all.  I'd like to just teach and write, teach and write, and then, for the summers, just write.

Hey, a girl can dream.