Sandra Cisneros | Martita, I Remember You/Martita, te recuerdo

welcome to the free library of philadelphia and thank you very much for joining us i'm laura kovacs and i'm honored to be here sandra cisneros explores themes of place identity and the lives of the working class in her novels poems and short stories including woman hollering creek and other stories loose woman and of course her classic coming of age novel the house on mango street which has required reading in schools around the world her many honors include national endowment for the arts fellowships in both poetry and fiction a macarthur fellowship and the national medal of the arts award presented to her by president obama in 2016. the new york times book review calls her not only a gifted writer but an absolutely essential one this evening she will be joined in conversation with poet novelist critic and journalist luis j rodriguez thank you so much for being here the screen is all yours thank you what a blessing sandra to be able to share this um i i said it earlier but i mean it you're one of my favorite people we've known each other i don't even know if it's three decades i don't know but a long time a long time and our friendship has stayed very rich and i appreciate it we don't see each other that often as you know but it when we do we always have this kind of connection and i really appreciate it training my wife says hello everybody here at the achuchas they know that i'm talking with you they all love you as you know everybody here loves you so um i think this is a great opportunity um and again we are promoting this very beautiful wonderful book uh martita remember you which i think will be the main thing we're going to talk about but i know we're going to share other things uh the one thing i just want to start maybe because i think the book is important um to make sure we don't lose sight of that i i i read the book i found it to be extremely and i know that the word sensuous gets used a lot and everything but i think what's really powerful was the presence of the women the presence of the of you as an author um and when people say well there's three women in paris that could go all kinds of ways what i loved about this was the descriptive images the the power of being able to get a soul sense of these relationships and how important relationships are i mean it doesn't there's a lot of things that happens with these women you know but not a lot of big dramatic things the one thing i i liked is corrina says the protagonist he says i'm waiting for something big to happen but i think what's beautiful is that it doesn't require big big things for people to live you know what i'm saying to find life and it's death i think that's religious things happen relationships miss relationships uh you know all kinds of things happens but i think what's beautiful is just being present with the medicine of your friends was very powerful maybe you can speak on that yeah well uh another city that's mentioned in the book besides paris is chicago a town we we both know very well louise so that's why it's very special that you're here tonight and gifting us all but especially me the gift of your time and you know the older we get the more i appreciate the most expensive thing we can give one another is time so thank you for taking the time to be here with me to celebrate marthita to read it and share it with the viewers today um i always enjoy talking to you because one of the people of my generation that i respect uh you know we've come a long way we've grown up together and now we're the elders together as we lose some of our elders like rudy and i has gone and you know we're coming up to our own time when we'll be on the front lines but um this story for me you know started a long time ago when i was probably 35 i wrote it and uh put it away and took it out of storage because i couldn't finish it it was supposed to be part of woman hollering creek and i couldn't get to an end that was satisfactory from for anybody including me so i put it aside came back to it and it was inspired by uh real people real women real friendships and people i met when i was traveling uh when i was 28 i got an nea grant that allowed me to finish house on street and i bought a one-way ticket from chicago first to boston and i went to provincetown to try to finish the book and then another ticket from new york city to athens to a uh well i didn't finish the book in in provincetown i had to finish it in athens in uh in an island in the aegean and after i did my homework and mailed the manuscript and from cintagma square in athens then i was free to travel and i wanted to travel because you know for those of us who come from working-class homes our family doesn't encourage us to travel they want us to stay close uh why you want to go there you know something could happen to you or if you do go somewhere like take your brother you know my family it was always take your brother one of your brothers to have six and you know i really wanted to learn how to voyage on my own without being afraid growing up in humble park and you know humble park my father would always send one of my six brothers to pick me up or to wait at the bus stop or to take me somewhere because it was the kind of neighborhood you couldn't go to the bus stop alone without male or female without encountering trouble so you know i had this terrifying dream of traveling and not being able to communicate or getting lost of something terrible unmentionable happening to me and i wanted to get over that fear so that's all the back story but then everywhere i went i i met incredible women in different countries they were they were friends to me sometimes for a day or a weekend or a couple of months some i still stay in touch with some i lost and writing this story was a means for me to gather all of the marquitas in my life that i met during that trip and subsequent trips and to write about them and gain clarity of what those people that sometimes come into our life so briefly when we're in need when we depend on the kindness of strangers you know what do they mean to us so maybe th this story looks like three people but in my mind it's more than three well yes and i um i found it to be really a book of gratitude yes and there's a lot of gratitude for knowledge [Music] i've lived with them to have shared things part of the book and in the end there's a lot of gratitude for having known those relationships and i think that's important because people can't or maybe they can't imagine that books could be about that but this book is definitely you gotta slow down take your time and really see the world and then really be grateful that you could do that maybe you can speak a little bit about that because i found out to be very powerful well you know i think the the whole pandemic has been an awakening spiritually for me to have gratitude as you say for every moment for the lives we're living and for those of us who have family members as you do who are ill or have been ill or friends who have crossed over it really makes us genuinely aware of how much we depend on one another for our well-being and that's a powerful spiritual belief that in order for me to be safe i have to take care of you that is key to many ancient religions and it's certainly true with this pandemic waking us up to that reality that we have to take care of each other and the planet and the animals and the environment if it's going to take care of us that's a a true indigenous belief kennel it is absolutely and you know again the book really resonates with me on that because as a pandemic seem to be going down i know it goes up and down i made a lot of calls to a lot of friends i realized that i was so busy that i was forgetting those relationships and and i and i just called people and i just checked in with them and turned out to be sometimes i would talk to them for quite a long time we hadn't talked in a long time and so i think that is a what's really powerful what you just said you need to check in with you you're reminding me because i never want to bother you i never want to bother you but i need to check in with you because the supports one another guides us and i need support hearing from you just hearing that that's going to make me get on the phone we need to and i'm not much of a talker that way that's kind of weird but i need to be because i how else do we connect nowadays one thing i do want to say about chicago and i think that's one thing that ties us and i love the idea that that was brought up that the working class and chicago is a thoroughly working-class city it's one of them i love chicago it's my second home um my daughter ended up in the same high school that you were at josephine she was standing up there and uh we were we lived in humble park as well and so what i loved about um those neighborhoods and the people and how gracious they could be it's hard life chicago is no joke it's a hard life but i've always loved about the the openness that people had and their first move is to be kind it may be the second move might mean i'm going to get you but the first move is to be kind which is quite extraordinary you know i i've been a new york city for example i love new york city i've been going there for 40 years i got friends i got a granddaughter in brooklyn you know so but i think the first move in new york city is to be mean and then they get kind you know what i'm saying you start getting characters from people in different cities and i mean right away in new york city they'll tell you what you think get out of the way but then if you sit down and talk with them they're actually good people in chicago the first move is a kind move you know to be really nice and then of course if you give them a dirty look you're done but and i love that about that we have those connections i think it's the working class the old steel mills the stockyards that are all gone but that still permeates the way people are and and i think that even shows in your books because i think your books carry you're in the world you're i think fortunately being a writer we get to travel and my wife tells me that traveling is one of the ways to get knowledge books is another way but traveling is one of the good ways i learned a lot traveling but i never thought in my working class world that i would travel as usa we were stuck to our body we were struck to this industry we were struck to where we were and the fact that i could travel isn't freeing thing but i don't want to lose that groundedness so i find that to be very important in your work there's a lot of that working class i don't know if it's aesthetic or whatever it is my father appears in this story which i wrote before caramello and his uh upholstery shop yeah you know which is something i know very intimately and i had not written about it before until the story then later on carmelo came up with the upholstery again but this was the first time that that working class shop appears in my work and um i forgot about that you know when i looked at the story and get oh yeah i wrote that so long ago that was the first part of the story that i wrote decades ago and then the middle and the last section uh i worked on more recently uh so that i could finish the story so it would have some closure and i'm really happy with how it turned out i'm happy to share it with a fellow uh chicago and who recognizes that uh west uh and also park neighborhood that i used to live in west of humboldt park as well as humble park yeah yeah you know one of the things that my mom my mom picked cotton in south texas when she was nine years old so when i was nine years old she told me it was time for me to work so there was an old rusty manual lawnmower i got that lawnmower and i would drag it from neighbor to neighbor for 25 cents i'd kept their lawns and we're talking about people that didn't really have lawns there were dirt yards with few little weeds there and there but it didn't matter i would cut their lawns at 25 cents and she got me i had that work ethic very young you had to work to survive and uh and it it was helpful in the sense of when you're a writer to be had that self-discipline to get up in the morning because you know how people can say well i'm working for myself now and they don't got you know they're kicking back they're drinking coffee all day long you know we're all drinking or some people do but i think that working class ethic of get up get the job done um and especially if you do it for yourself it's better than when you do it for others who don't really care about you you know what i'm saying so i i learned that from my mother and i and one story connected to your dad is that she used to go around the neighborhood and pick up furniture to re-oppose to them on her own and then resell them or to the neighbors which very cheap mom did that my mom did that she taught me not my dad my mom did that too yeah that's really that's how you have to do it you go around the dumpster diving pick up old stuff and remake them and she taught me my mom did that but she didn't do it to sell it she brought things home for us to use yeah my mom would do that too the best stuff were kept but then she would reposter them and sometimes she'd give them away it really wasn't even about the money and then and she eventually started making dolls she found it ball's head in a dumpster and she put a beautiful dress around it and then she started thinking about how can i buy these doll's heads you know those kind of dolls faces and then found a way to do that where it was and she started making all these dolls with different dresses but don't you think that part of that isn't just surviving but part of that is your spirit surviving absolutely as our spirit survives when we create whether we're making a garden or dress for a dumpster doll or a chair you found in the alley it's about keeping your spirit alive yeah and you know for mothers and fathers i guess but for mothers particularly their so my mother was so frustrated because she really couldn't be the artist that i'm sure she wanted to be she didn't do that yeah yeah she had to take care of the kids and my dad i don't know if your dad was like this was emotionally detached you know what i'm saying and so it made it harder because he wouldn't connect with the kids he wouldn't connect with her he was had no intimacy she stayed with him was emotionally available my mother was the more detached one okay i'm not switching around here it's because it's sun is setting from my window here so i'm twisting around so i don't get hit by the sunlight but just so you know why i'm doing this little twist so the sun okay did we get to see more of your little house there oh you can see that's the entrance and the thing in mexico is when we do these zooms i have to sometimes get my assistant to stand outside because even though you put a sign that says they still knock on the door i've done a lot of zooms with ernesto standing out in the street not letting anyone knock on the door and right now i have his daughter babysitting my dog so that they won't bark and obsess there and then there's my um here my eternal christmas tree oh that's me hammock it's been up since then because once pandemic started i was going to leave it up till the fiesta de la candelaria but i thought hey once a pandemic started i said we need that christmas tree so it's been absolutely well hopefully when everything's done i might just come by and visit and knock on your door i don't say that to just anybody but i say it to you yeah no no that'd be great um so anyway i love this that we're able to touch on family and working class spirit and the spirit of creativity as you're saying because even when work permeates our gente our family try to be creative they have to being creative keeps them human especially when we're depressed i found like when i've gotten into severe depressions and clinical depressions it's one i wasn't creating and sometimes uh like when we have those dramas you know like a death a loss of a loved one that we forget that if we made anything a cake a cupcake a card a song a poem a drawing anything make anything a garden that that will save you for that day i i have to say something that's kind of counter to what i said about my mom but i still love my mom she's gone now she hated that i was going to be a writer what yes she thought it was a waste of time and she would um actually she burned all my writings i had him in a closer grocery bag when i was like and she got rid of i was painting she got rid of all my murals and plywood murals and you know i would get mad at her but at the same time now that i'm older and hopefully a little wiser i totally get it she was she grew up in a rough time in mexico during the mexican revolution in the cristero rebellion she grew up and telling you how to work or die she she grew up and tell me you couldn't waste time you know what i'm saying and she i do yeah she was just trying to inculcate you know something that she thought would be hopeful i think in the long run before she died we did reconcile and she did tell me one thing that i always recognize she says you're the only one of my brothers and sisters that did what i want i thought i needed to do and she respected me for it she may not have liked what i wanted to do but she respected that i did it i had the opposite thing with my dad i had it with my dad the same thing where you know he was like didn't want me to become a writer uh just wanted me to get married and have children and why did i choose to be poor because he knew i could get a job a better paying job than the ones i was getting and it would but like you at the end of my father's life he understood was proud of me as forgiveness yeah and we made our peace but we never stopped loving each other we never i never disrespected my father he just saw the world from a different and he was an immigrant from from a practical point of view i get it yeah and that and that's and that's important to recognize the fact that uh your book also deals with creativity uh in the sense that um corrina is a seeker she doesn't know what she's seeking but he's in the church that to me is another powerful thing about the character it doesn't always seem like we know where we're going but you got there's that spirit that i don't know where i'm going but i'm i'm in the search it's a powerful thing and you can tell that karina was open she was hungry yeah something to happen you know that a lot of who we are as young people that we're waiting for something to happen we don't know that we have to make it happen we're just waiting we think the right person will come in my life especially women if the right man comes in my life then my life can change instead of working helping your distine a little bit so that you can make that change up and i think i spent most of my 20s all of my 20s like with that hope and then realizing when i turned 30 oh i'm wasting time i got to make things happen i better stop trying to please everybody and start working on my dream beautiful beautiful thing i i tell people that when they say you know where i'm in trouble and i'm drowning and i'm depressed whatever i say well the lifeline isn't really outside of you there's always resources that help the life is inside of you and that's what you got to remember you have to pull yourself through that lifeline of course it's great to have mentors and guides and friends it's great to to know there's a world out there that will help i always said that you know when i finally figured out what i was going to do the angels came out of the woodwork and you know they existed i thought it was going to be a one single battle but you know once i was clear all of a sudden the aim just popped up to all the people don't you think luis now that we're older that we recognize that we have that strength inside us all along that we have that we just need to focus and you know for me it's always uh important that i understand i have a gift i was born with it but that's not going to make it great yeah i've got to work on it and i have a life path and if i work really hard then things will take off and and i have to remember i'm not ever alone i remind myself i have my spirit allies i have my ancestors i want to make them proud every day in the work that i do so when i start writing i connect with my spirit allies and i say okay you had a rougher life than i did you had to migrate during the mexican revolution you lost children during that pandemic of the spanish flu and i'm here in this nice house and i work at home i don't have to take the risk i'm jumping on the back of a train to get to another country i don't have to live under a tenth like you did all i need is it right a page and a quarter that's my thing so please just channel your strength and your courage and help me with this and once i feel connected to all my ancestors all the survivors i feel like i can do anything you know i i when i was a teenager i didn't recognize it then but i knew that i was kind of suicidal i i couldn't recognize it i i do have in my book the point where i tried to cut my wrists and i couldn't do it but it was because there was a song in my head and i realized as long as you have a song in your head you're not going to commit suicide the sad thing is i lost a lot of friends to suicide even recently in the last 10 years i lost three friends and i know how hard it is so this is not an easy thing but i felt that when you begin to see that thread of a purpose it's very hard to want to destroy this life even if you don't know where that purpose is going to take you and i think that's very important for everybody to understand you know luis i want to also confess that i also went through suicidal times in my life especially when i was 33 the year of the cross and it was because i was disconnected from everybody i purposely disconnected and when you're disconnected you you just feel your life is your own and when you are connected you realize that you're like this uh spider web that whatever happens to you affects all these others you can't just destroy yourself because you will destroy your mother your brother your cousin your grandmother all these people who love you your friends you are uh part of the fabric of being and you can't just pull one thread the whole thing will come undone so but however when you're depressed you don't realize that you're you're so detached your disconnect on purpose and your wound is so great that um death seems like a like a beautiful solution yeah and if i really did have to come back to the living i felt like i was on an ice floe too far away from anyone that could help me i'm very grateful that i had one friend my friend dennis mathis who's been alongside me my fiction colleague that helped me write this story in many of my books and he recognized because he suffers from depression too he recognized how gone i was and he didn't say you've got to talk to somebody he made an appointment he said coming to chicago if you don't come to chicago i'll come and get you that's how immobile i was and uh the anonymity of coming to chicago and talking to a jungian therapist who nobody would know i felt this great shame of being depressed but i could do it secretly and afterwards i realized well there's nothing to be ashamed about and the depression is like any other illness and you need to see a professional you need to see healer you need to do a sweat or whatever is your medicine but there's a lot of times you can't do it alone there's no shame in that yeah i was taken by how a beautiful fright day could never take away my friends suicide ideation they were always in the dark you know i mean even a beautiful right they can do they were still in the in the dark so i agree with you i always tell people make a move any move including talking to somebody creating any move that allows you to get away from that guard don't don't uh uh stagnate you have yeah to move money creating for me i had stopped creating during that year so i i think creating is the antidote to your spirit dying it is and i really agree with that and that's been my my story creation has helped me that's why we write luis because to me in my medicine every time i write it it makes me a better human being less angry and less small it's my best self on the page yeah that's powerful the practice of a creative act is very powerful and um and you're an example of it and this discussion i think shows how the depth of your own pain could be but also the the the way you've been able to get through it by finding that creativity by going towards it making a move towards it it is it isn't even about to find a book it's about making a move towards something creative it could be a book it could be all kinds of things but i think that that's important that people can understand how powerful that is well to me the great power of art is how it's we start from the darkest parts of ourselves from the most degraded and humiliated parts that's where i always begin some horrible memories things i wish i could forget and i know that by writing slow by slow little by little it will compost to a transformational moment when i will write something i didn't know i knew that would change me and and suddenly make me see oh all of this darkness was so i could get here that's so powerful for that was compost so i could get this little illumination you know one day i was talking at some reading and uh there were some people outside there were former addicts that went ahead a table just convinced people to get some help and this one lady you can tell she was in bad shape she just recently like six months she said she was recovered and she looked at me and she says you had 28 years of drugs and alcohol you don't look that bad and i told her this you're looking at me one of my best days of my life you should have seen me in my worst days because people don't realize that transformation is also you can see it transformation is real you know what i'm trying to say and i think it's important for people to know so that they don't feel uh so bogged down that she needs she should transform too a little bit more time and recovery she's going to have those days where she realized man i am i didn't realize how far removed i am from that depth that i was in because they still carry that death for a long time so that's important the transformation it's possible it's palpable it's real it isn't just i'm i'm stuck in you know as you know anyway stuck in anything with the suicide whether it's i was on heroin and then drinking all these terrible things that people could do to themselves we can get through them if we understand that that transformative capacity and that transformative power of something creative something that's within you to me it's it's really vital one of the things that's great for me living in mexico is i you know i moved here to mexico i live in san miguel is i don't feel alone here uh well for one thing everybody's always ringing my doorbell but that's another story but i mean i feel connected to the spirit's world my spirit allies to all my ancestors that whenever i feel like you know i used to feel sometimes in the united states oh if i die my my pets are going to eat me no one will ever discover me until after three months but i don't feel that in mexico i just feel this connection with community i feel connected to my ancestors to the spirit world the spirit world is much more vocal here for uh maybe because i'm listening more and i just i never feel alone again no my spirit allies are here what the ghosts are always with everyone there's a story among the third round of my mother's descended from tara mata so i went to sierra that might have copper canyon and there's one thing that they do they have idea that after it gets dark don't knock on anybody's door because only ghosts will do that so the ghosts are walking with them but when it gets to a certain point the ghosts come out so if you show up let me tell you they come out of twilight because my sister and ernesto is unintuitive and he sees them so he always tells me don't don't put on don't put candles out a day of the day because we have enough ghosts coming through here that's exactly their attitude and you know but it's a good thing they know those those goals are real for them and that's the way they live it and they accept it and it's not like they're but they're terrible ghosts that it could be benign it's just that they're there and you can actually feel them and you make a point a certain point don't do certain things because that goes i only put the altares and i have to do like olympia and and only i put my that is for my ancestors and i say nobody only my guardians and my loved ones enter here when i do my own that's beautiful that's a beautiful thing uh we're getting a lot of questions oh i would like the questions i think let's get into some of them and um i'm gonna just read them as a as i see them the first one that i see here has to do with how did you come up with the plot for the house on mangle street all right first i have to say you think i think when i'm writing and i'm not plot driven some authors are but i don't come up with a plot the plot comes to me i don't go after it i write from people and events and memories that it hurts me to think about and so i write from that place from here and then i like not in the order you see them in the book in in different order like like what i call buttons i write the scenes and even within one chapter i'll write them and rearrange them and move them like the walnut game until i see what this works best and so i don't think about the plot i just write from my corazon and later uh they plot surfaces like those old timey photographs when they used to develop and then the black room image rises i don't even know what i'm creating when i'm writing it it will come by itself so i i always tell students think when you're editing but not at the same time just feel when you're writing and do your drafts from this place and then later on shut this off and turn this on and you can do that yeah but you know what i think it's a trust it's a trust and intuition it's a trust in the feminine it's a trust in the spirit trust it it will take you places uh if you want to control it too much you won't get into where it needs to go so i do believe in that i mean there's a lot of skill that is required to ride and everything but open it up and trust that this plot this story this character will find their own way and let me add also if you're doing it like to win a prize or to impress somebody or you're thinking of the reader you'll never write anything good because your ego gets in the way so to erase that uh write as if what you have to say is too dangerous to get published in this time and do it to honor your ancestors and do con puro amor on behalf of those you love do it as a service with no agenda what and getting anything back and then it'll come out in a pure stronger more beautiful way you still will have to edit it but yeah i'm just talking about first drafts yeah you know what i i this is a great lesson in writing i hope it hope the writers can get this i always i always like to use the feminine and masculine energies because in mexico indigenous people we always do that and i have pointed out that the feminine is the constant and the masculine variable the feminine is the leading energy and the and the masculine secondary it doesn't mean mexican is important you can't have creation without either one of them you need both but what i find is the editing process to me is more the masculine more of the shape more of okay now the language the word is this but you got to first open up to that creative imaginative space that the magi that the feminine really that allows you to swim in be open to that and give it fullness because the more fullness the imagination is the more fullness the second part will be you know you're right i like how you said that i always think phrase it a little differently like i'll say when you're writing from the heart it's like a mother who says that's nice me home anything you write if that's so good me oh that's wonderful so you do it from that feminine loving mother part and then you turn that off and it's like the father says no you got to move that cut that return exactly right beautiful metaphor beautiful so okay good this is a great lesson in writing um the next question has to do with um your travels with your family your goal did those travels help you um it broke up a little bit so i want to make sure i understand the question did the travels to mexico when i was a child we are with your family to mexico that they help you when it came time for you to travel on your own to mexico and beyond my father was a mama's boy and without wanting to he planted a seed in us to have a love of mexico to love of the mexican culture and to be aware of our history simply from the trips that we made and things that we saw so without his being aware of it he was planting a seed especially in me about feeling at home here feeling most at home more than in my hometown so um yeah he you know i think travel is essential for every human being as you said mark twain said travel is the antidote to bigotry if we want to teach children to be more generous and compassionate of spirit we should take them to places where maybe they don't speak the language my friend who lives around the corner is a handicapped individual who was born with only his arms up to here and uh he uh used to travel to mexico with his parents because as he says uh you know when he traveled in the united states he's from the u.s people would come up to his mother and father and scold them for why did you take drugs that allowed your child to be when he wasn't one of those babies that was born because the mother's medication so they felt that bringing their handicapped child to mexico that mexico was more generous and kind to the handicapped and to the parents and they didn't treat him like if he was a freak now he lives here and started a company that hires handicapped people and works uh within the community in the country with the people that might not get a job anywhere else so you know see how life-changing that was for him traveling as a child and that's why i think it's important that we take children outside of their zone of comfort to maybe take them into their destiny you know i think because mexico is poverty and i know mexico is more diverse now and there's a lot of layers to it but uh my uncle one of my uncles was blind because he had chickenpox and when my mom told me that i go i've got chicken pox i didn't understand how we they don't have the kind of help that we would get um he said he's blind because he's a little kid and then i had a sister who i never knew because she died before i was born who died of diarrhea and diarrhea doesn't kill people in this country but in mexico at the time i don't care if you have diarrhea in your baby you're gonna die it's just one of those things people did not know how to deal with diarrhea and sure enough she was an infant she got diarrhea my dad used to sell chicharrones down the street in a basket and unfortunately he put the basket down and the little girl somehow crawled over and ate some chicharrones and gave her diarrhea and she and they couldn't help her and she died and they blamed him for it he was completely blamed for her death it was awful he's he went through that's why i think he got closed off he had some things happen to him that i don't even know half of it that alone is enough but i it it is something where in mexico especially in those days you didn't have too much room with every room even now like you know i'm here and we're waiting still for the second vaccines when all the first world countries have them and people don't even take them and here people are waiting the 40 to 50 year olds still haven't gotten their second vaccine forget about everybody younger it's like you know right i was lucky that i was able to fly to the united states and get my vaccine and i felt guilty about that because i wanted to wait with everybody but i had high risk because of bronchial issues i had so i said i better go and now i'm like you know when is when is mexico where are we in line are we in line one of the mexicanos going to uh have the the medication and that they need uh they're they're in the back of the line that is where people forget we are one world that the more developed countries are getting the help but they don't realize that the less developed countries that don't get help variants are coming from them that end up coming up to get us it's like you can't really help yourself in isolation you know all the variants that come how interconnected we are yes absolutely so anyway i love mexico i'm glad you talk about mexico like that i've been going to mexico for so many years and then the beginning they didn't really care for my chicanes mo my being chicano but you know over the years i'll be i would tell you honestly they have become more open my work is actually being used in some of the schools uh i was at the while i had a book fair not long ago and i was on panels all over the place and people media people were talking because i can speak good spanish and that always throws up for a loop you're chicano speaks good spanish but um they were more open because you know why a lot of deportees over the last 20 years are chicanalos you know what i'm saying they don't really have like mexicans so they've now they have to deal with so many of them that now they have to address wait a minute we can't just attack mexicans for being chicanos for being pochos or whatever you know we have to see that they're part of who we are there are people who got pushed out of whatever reason had to leave but now they're being brought back and it's changing the country as you know and so now i think there's people that are more open i find more open to it it's just getting older that i'm not afraid to make mistakes like the way i was when i was younger i didn't want to do any interviews in spanish because i didn't want to fail or have people make fun of my spanish but now you know if i don't know word i just ask the interviewer or the audience you know say it in english how do you say it oh okay we just keep going so it's nice it's a nice thing about getting older that you don't care what people think no okay now you're frozen yeah i know yeah you know i was 11 years old okay i was 11 years old when uh we ended up in sioux juarez to visit family and i thought i spoke perfect spanish because i spoke spanish at home all the time and i didn't know how imperfect it was until they made fun of us all my cousins and everybody was like what and they were big i thought i was a perfect spanish speaker because i'm better at it now but yeah it's it's hard it's hard to deal with that um i think there's another question so let me see what this one okay this is another question it goes like this how do you feel about hispanic people not being represented in some schools and workplaces during hispanic heritage month well maybe you can help me answer that because i don't know the answer to that question you know one there was a hispanic heritage month when i was coming up growing up so i really don't have an answer for that do you have an answer luis well here's what i would say i i don't really care about spanish characters once done months months that much every day right that's right so in my community when you realize if you really know your history you're here before the world was round so it doesn't really pick back me i know it impacts others which is fine if people want to know about our heritage our peoples the diversity of our peoples fine that's a good month to learn it but i never think about it as i'm in my community my community's spanish-speaking mexican central american beautiful amazing combination of people so i never think about it too much i guess for others it's fine like people invite me to do hispanic heritage month things i'm really doing it for others you know because for me it's like it's every day so i don't think about it as a certain time of the year um if it allows for schools to finally put some emphasis on people's heritage that come from the americas but to me uh one of the things i learned when i left school is so much of my heritage was not taught to me i had to discover it on my own and i'm still learning even now at 66 i'm still learning yeah and that's the thing i don't find that our schools really teach that to anybody our kids they don't really know who they are they don't understand mexico in this depth and i think that's what will be the best thing not just hispanic heritage you have a beautiful book club about social awareness at your bookstore i also post books on my instagram and i'm always uh mentioning books that people should read like roxanne dunbar ortiz's indigenous people history of the united states an excellent book for young people to read so that you know hey we were here before it was the americas before the world was known as round we have a presence here so i really love looking at work by uh other uh indigenous uh teachers so that i can wake up and and get the history that i didn't get when i was in that's what i would recommend people get these books in our schools and again theatre has a bookstore and does have a social justice book club whatever sandra recommends i know it's going to be a powerful different books in this girl in these schools i just did an interview for by the book for the new york times uh book review section which i named you in there i don't know if you saw it luis as one of the writers i admire and uh there's a whole list of books that i recommend and talk about so google that and put my name in by the book and uh from the book review section and you'll see it and i just to say that i've known that to be true for um chicanos and others when i came up how gracious all of you were to me i say all of you because it was result for anaya and it was jose montoya and there was a yourself and anna castillo everybody that was out there writing before i started getting published were always good to me you know what i'm saying you know what i'm so glad to hear that because people weren't always good to me i know that like they beat me up you know but you guys learned you all learned a house on manga street that's not a chicano book you know no no but you just learned that you learned that you're not going to do that to others because i was never treated that way everybody was kind to me i i really don't recall somebody being mean ugly to me you know we lost greg guardios recently uh he when in my book always running for his camera is one of the first ones to interview me and try to make sure that the book was out there i find i find all of them gary salto all of them were well gary helped me a lot and learned cervantes published my first book was great yeah so i always just have to say that i had maybe i came in after you all learned the hard way i came in with some really good south texas that was that was your good luck [Laughter] that was beautiful so that's always good help somebody else uh here's another question um do you think that a non-native spanish speaker can responsibly use spanish within a story with a mexican protagonist i think so but you know i'm i'm very uh i'm one of those people that want everybody that's working alongside me if you're doing it with respect and if you're doing it with uh intimacy and if you get it proof read by people who are from that community and you're working alongside us with the right cause other people are gonna say different things but i'm gonna say you're my ally you're my ally if you're working alongside me i think it's being authentic and real and if you can do that that's powerful what writers can do uh if you're phony and you're misrepresenting that's that's not cool regardless who you are but i noticed that one time because i went to tokyo to catch the lowrider scene i was there i did poetry readings and things but i also went into the churro store they had shorter stores and i and i was people were telling me telling me that they were appropriating but i told them not the people that i knew they were very respectful they got into the low rider culture scene they got into the total style but they always gave chicanos the respect this is chicano they didn't take it listening and respect that that's to me is key yeah and they were always true too they were always true to the culture they didn't miss apply it so i think it's true you can tell when people are appropriate and you can tell when people are respectfully adapting or taking into other cultures so yeah thank you for that um i think it's really important i think if you don't mind do you have a section of martita that you'd like to read yeah my fellow on the floor so i'm gonna you know adjusting so i'm gonna dive and get my book there you go yeah i have it right here my glasses fell too i don't know if you heard the bladder you want me to read something i think you should read something to be nice to hear your voice with the story part of that story but the book's out on audio too and it's really wonderful because i did it with two actors and it sounds great just a little i'll just do one paragraph it makes me sick to count my money to look and see how little is left i try not to think about it every day i have less and less the money dribbling out like in the french public phones where you drop the coins in the machine and watch them all drop click through the plastic shoots like a waterfall the phone swallows and swallows it wants more and more franks but i don't want to go home i've come from so far away because paris is the city of dreams not yet not yet not yet that's yeah you can get more on the audio which is so much fun to do i love doing it i love audiobooks i did it and louise i did it for the very first time i did the spanish audio too oh good beautiful talk about getting over your um inhibitions about speaking spanish to have to do it in the studio wow that was hard well that's that's the key though to do it i tell people just do it and you'll you'll and you'll be good keep doing it yeah my spanish wasn't that good either but i been speaking so much even with all my mistakes and i learned i learned now i've spoken in argentina and in spain i've done big big events and it's like you just learn you eventually get to come behind people are very i always explain you know my education was in the united states my family emigrated so that's my first language and spanish is my second but i'm going to try and when i make mistakes and i don't know something will you help me and the audience always roars yes yes it's kind of great to have them because you're respectful about it and you know what they don't realize at least i when i went to school may not been your situation but when i went to school starting in watts they would punish you for speaking spanish they would literally take the office and swat you so i couldn't speak spanish in the classes which is terrible and i spoke it at home thank god my parents always spoke spanish that kept it alive for me but you couldn't speak it in in public that was awful i'm glad that's changed if it happens anywhere in the united states today people should get pissed off because that's awful to destroy people's ability to speak and communicate they can learn more languages languages learn about as you know people in the world speak two three languages they have to um it shouldn't be hard but i do think it's terrible that people would say spanish or any like the poor the indigenous people whose languages were taken away from them anybody who loses their languages to me is awful and we need our languages and we can learn more that's the way the world goes so um i i wanna it's kind of hard for me to think about india now we gotta maybe five more minutes or so but i i want you to talk a little bit about um we were kind of touching upon it the solidarity of being a writer the the solidarity in the sense that you're connected with so many people but at the same time it's a very lonely act you know and yet you got to have your spirit allies as you say your ancestors hopefully your friends that you know are around uh but the act is actually quite lonely and maybe you can speak a little bit about that because it could be um i've seen some writers who just hide in the in themselves and lose connection and and they're writing some of them are writing great books but i always find it that it's just the nature of writing that you have so many support and friends and everything but when you're sitting there it's you and that paper you know helped me a lot luis and i miss you know i miss our get-togethers like when denise chavez was organizing the border book festival to me that was family reunion because my real family doesn't understand what i'm doing and when i would run into you or martinez father or uh any other writer it was so great to hang together and even just seeing each other once a year on that reunion spirit or my condo that that's why i created i created mike on the writers workshop so i would have family and not feel so isolated in texas and you know you're coming and and sharing your wisdom with the younger writers and uh joy harjo and all the people elena all people that have gifted us with their presence and their wisdom all of that is is my family you know my friendships with people like joy and liliana valenzuela who translated my book and you know all of these writers uh i i tend to and i was saying this to dorothy ellison the other night when we did an interview on the book i said i i people think that we're in contact but uh it'll be like 10 years before i see her because i know how when we write it's like going under the underground into the coal mine and mining there and chipping away the labor writing a novel writing a book of poetry it's very very internal lonely work and it it takes a great deal of effort to get in the zone and then to come up again so i make appointments but you're reminding me to reconnect with all of us that are of a generation because um we don't have those opportunities those reunions anymore border book festival doesn't exist uh i retreated from macondo writers workshop and kovit has kept us meeting each other virtually so i just need to be reminded that to stay connected with the other writers because i need my spiritual family because you all understand when you look at a book every page is how many hours of solitude yeah everybody should you do the math and think oh my god that's a lot of weeks there and your family doesn't understand that but your colleagues that to me is so beautiful it's so important for writers to know for others to know writing is is that work you're into a place like you're saying you're deep in the earth your own eternal earth you're the and yet you still have to have a sense of community yes so you are part of something bigger yes that community can always nurture you i always tell people community to me is my mother you know i have to come up to air and connect with community because i don't get nurtured and this community is in my life and i know you have we nurture others but who nurtures us right exactly so that's the and i know you do that because even with my condo and other things you have created communities that are still existing and are still moving out there into the world so to me that's powerful very i don't say very few writers but i know a lot of writers that don't think about that uh but i find my nurturing happens outside my writing but at the same time i got to close that door and i got to be in that deep depth of mind as you say and mining that the mud and the gold because there's a lot of minerals in in that mine so john says you know you you have to have the mud for the lotus flower too blossom so no mud no lotus flower you gotta and people shouldn't should recognize that it's not about just being the the glitter you know to get to that gold sometimes you get quite go through a lot of mud and that's okay yeah anyway i i want to say how much i love you i love your work i want you to be safe to be um and make it go someday when all the pandemic's done and i know it'll happen uh we'll we'll make an arrangement i don't say that i love it please you need to take care of yourselves and come and get nurtured mexico's so wonderful and even with all the problems that mexico has i feel safer here than i do in the united states or maybe it's just that the news makes each country look worse i don't know yeah i think most places even i've been to the worst place you can imagine most places are beautiful i was talking to somebody about el salvador i've been there many times it is very violent it's true it's got a lot of poverty but i found the people amazingly beautiful and decent honduras i was in honduras for a month one of the most vital in the world for people and the suffering like whenever i meet a haitian i've never been to haiti but i know they go through hell and back but every time i meet a haitian i meet a decent human being so we can hang on to our decency we can hang on to love we can hang on to our comradeship we can hang on to our fellowship and our and and our communities don't let the pandemics war all these things are real destroy that and that's why i think good writing can do reminders you're reminding us that we can change the world if we just change the everyone we come into contact with there you go and uh i think we should probably say goodbye i hate to do this but i think it was a great discussion i am energized and uh let's do it again but i would just want to wish you well and everybody out there louise tambien you know please invite me if you want to do something for tia chuchas i i'm i'm your ally okay you do so for all you out there thank you for listening buy the book you're going to love it buy the audiobook you love that yeah so i love you and everybody can create an act of peace by reading a story to somebody taking a book out of the library writing making it that's i think you and me i'm sure it's true books saved my life i was a pretty messed up kid but i love that library and i love reading that i don't know i i wouldn't be here if it wasn't for the public library there you go thank you all um um thank you louise take care of trini take care of your family and take care of you you

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Length: 61min 17sec (3677 seconds)

Published: Tue Sep 14 2021