Tag Archives: writing

Dichos for Summer Research

by Theresa Delgadillo

For many years, members of my family often referred to my summer schedule as my “time off” or my “long summer vacation” in contrast to their one or two weeks. As the working-class daughter of working-class parents, I understand well the fascination and misunderstanding with which many view the summer life of academics. I’ve also spent many a hot summer working in a factory, mill or sweatshop or in what seemed like a hermetically sealed over-air conditioned office. From that perspective, an academic summer schedule looks pretty good. Yet, if you’re on the tenure-track or trying to get on the tenure-track, summer is definitely not playtime. It’s precious research and writing time. Here are a few notes to remind you that even though it may seem like campus is deserted or, if you’re teaching this summer, like the school year never ends, that there are many, many people, just like you, trying to get as much research and writing in over the summer as possible. Because we know that the readers of Mujeres Talk have a wealth of knowledge to offer us all, we wish you well in that work. In recognition of this seasonal shift in our collective work rhythms, Mujeres Talk will change from a weekly to a biweekly publication schedule in July and August. We will return to a weekly publication schedule in September.

“Cada maestrillo/a tiene su librillo.”

We each do things in our own way, so stick to what works for you. If you don’t know what your process is for getting to the writing and research, think back on how you’ve done it. Are you the kind of writer/researcher who needs to finish up all obligations to others (service, reviewing, reports, letters) before you can concentrate on your project? If so, create a reasonable schedule for clearing your desk of writing and work you owe others. Would making a map or list of what you’d like to accomplish this summer help you to achieve it? If so, consider penciling in some timelines or due dates for parts of the project. Do you know that support is essential to keeping you on track? Find writing/research partners. A colleague recently told me about her “writing accountability” group where everyone reports on their daily writing accomplishments. Another colleague is now away at the second two-day writer’s retreat with peers that she has organized already this summer. Do you need to have the physical stacks of books related to each piece of writing/research visible on your desk to keep you on track and moving through it? A visit to the library will get you started. Will working at the office or at home or some other third location make writing possible? I’ll never forget the poet Annie Dillard’s description of her choice of workplace and time: a deserted library in the wee hours, equipped with thermos and writing instruments.

“El comer y el rascar, todo es empezar.”

Even the shortest piece of writing, or note-taking or reading is a start, and we all have to start somewhere. Start. Begin. Are you going to start generating new text? Are you going to start revising and editing? Are you going to start by reviewing your field notes, or feedback you received at a conference or workshop? Are you going to start by reading and note-taking? Are you going to start by creating questions and goals for fieldwork? Do you need to begin interviewing or analyzing data? If starting is hard, set a shorter time period for beginning on first day and then add to it everyday until you get to your optimal working hours. Write down, every day, a short note on what you accomplished for that day. Once you really get going, it may be difficult to tear yourself away from your work.

“Más vale maña que fuerza.”

This saying cautions us to make intelligent use of our time and resources rather than muscling our way through. One way to think of this is to consider structuring your work so that you are writing and generating new text at times when you are most alert and creative, and revising and editing when you’ve temporarily run out of ideas or need a break from writing but still have time to do work. Flexibility and willingness to shift into another aspect of research/writing can work really well to complement the time you focus on writing and generating new work. This saying might also apply to establishing a regular writing practice for the summer, doing some work all the time rather than squeezing it all into a shorter period.

Reference: Bermejo, Belén. Refranes Populares. Madrid: Editorial Luis Vives, 2002. 33, 51,79.

Theresa Delgadillo is an Associate Professor of Comparative Studies and Coordinator of the Latina/o Studies Program at The Ohio State University. She has served as an Editor of Mujeres Talk since January 2011. 

Latina/o Futures, Literatures, and Necessary Tensions

April 15, 2013

"2009-12-04 JJAY -27" by Aloucha from Flickr.

“2009-12-04 JJAY -27” by Aloucha from Flickr.

by Susan C. Méndez

Recently, I attended John Jay College of Criminal Justice’s 1st Biennial Latina/o Literary Theory & Criticism Conference entitled, “Haciendo Caminos: Mapping the Futures of U.S. Latina/o Literatures.” The conference organizers Richard Perez and Belinda Linn Rincón did a phenomenal job of arranging provocative keynote addresses by Ramón Saldívar, José Esteban Muñoz, Mary Pat Brady, and Silvio Torres-Saillant. They also assembled two days of panels on Latina/o literatures. For a conference-goer such as myself, who always has a hard time finding the one-to perhaps-three panels that actually pertain to what she researches and/or teaches at every literature conference she attends, this event was a veritable cornucopia of literary insights. As a former co-chair conference organizer for MELUS 2010, I could especially appreciate all the hard work and dedication that it took, on the parts of Perez and Rincón and their support staff, to pull off such an endeavor.

Now to turn to the ideas presented at the conference; first, let me state a disclaimer that these summaries derive from my personal and admittedly incomplete notes as a single conference participant. Please forgive any unintentional inaccuracies. Ramón Saldívar set the tone of the conference with his key note address which examined the role of speculative realism in the future of Latina/o literatures. He offered a framework for understanding how the past and the future are more intimately connected than we may think. Saldívar asserted that for Latinas/os, our relationship to the future should be to realize the history not made. Speculative realist texts can act as a set of alternative thought experiments in order to create a new imaginary for the Latina/o community.

The next day, José Esteban Muñoz and Mary Pat Brady delivered powerful meditations linking politics and art. In their presentations, there was an uneasiness stated about hyphenated identities and other identity labels such as “Hispanic” and “Latina/o”; subsequently, Muñoz suggested returning to the label “Brown.” According to my notes, Muñoz explains that in “Brownness,” there is no ranking of “Brown” individuals or conditions; there is just the grounded experience of being “Brown” based on a shared sense of harm and yet flourishing as well. I particularly liked this idea about identity because it seemed to fit so well with feminist organizations like MALCS, where we have always stressed an non-hierarchical, heterogeneous inclusion of all women who share in the grounded experience of being from or connected to the Latina/o or Latin American community or world regions, and this experience is often rooted in a history of political and social oppression but is also marked by cultural flourishing and expression as women. Aesthetic practices and places can serve in the rehearsal of this identity, allowing Latinas/os to be who we want to be in the world. For Brady and Muñoz, this led to a consideration of recent reflections on “failure” by Halberstam and others, as well as recent discussions of “negative aesthetics in art” for understanding queer Latina/o literature and performance.

Lastly, there was the closing keynote address and conversation where Silvio Torres-Saillant posed the following questions to authors Helena María Viramontes and Ernesto Quiñonez: How does one study Latina/o literature without relying on literalization? Do critics do enough to emphasize the art of literature? How do we get students to do the artistic work? These questions caused quite a stir for the panelists and the audience. Several scholars contested the implied sentiment that current scholar-teachers are not getting their students to appreciate Latina/o literature as art. The writers, including author Angie Cruz from the audience, expressed interest in the feminist and other readings of their work by literary scholars. Sadly, I missed how the chaotic stir of discussion at this last session concluded; I had my own stirring chaos to contend with in visiting my dad and brother that last night in New York before I had to return home early the next day.

Putting the rich ideas of this conference aside for a moment, this last session emphasized the types of heated yet productive discussions that happened throughout the conference. These moments seemed to happen for two reasons: generational and gender gaps. In one roundtable conversation, a senior Latina/o literature scholar took offense with the assertion that critical studies of Latina/o literature did not flourish until the late 1980s, a perspective that overlooks earlier critical work. In another instance, following a reading of Pedro Monge’s “Lagrimas del alma” (a short play about the aftermath of the flight of Pedro Pan for one Cuban-American family), another debate occurred over what language the play should be performed in: English, Spanish, or a mix of both. Many audience members expressed the view that use of both languages seemed to be realistic and audience-friendly. However, one participant, an older gentleman, favored a seemingly purist view of language: a play by a Cuban man about Cuban history should be in Spanish. At still another panel, a scholar took issue with the frequent teaching of Junot Díaz’s The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao (2007) as a feminist text. The rich discussion on all sides of this issue among the audience included more than one participant explaining how Oscar Wao is about much more than Yunior trying to score “pussy.” It escaped these audience members’ attention that by using words such as “pussy” in their discussion, they were not doing much to advance their assertion of feminism in this text. In this way, my feminist training, which is reinforced daily through my work with MALCS, reminds me of the importance of not only what I am talking about but also of how I am talking about the subject-matter at hand. “Pussy” only invokes a colonial and patriarchal legacy of violence that reduces targeted women and their communities to be mere objects and not the true subjects that they are. “Pussy” does little to flesh out a study of feminist agency, collaboration, and societal transformation in almost any work.

The take-away from all these passionate discussions is the need to keep having these important conversations about the history of Latina/o Literary Studies, language, and gender. We need to have these arguments, to be reminded of the importance of this history and these concepts, amongst our own community members engaged in Latina/o Literary and cultural production. Asking these questions of each other in our continued work and study should be a first and foremost concern for everyone involved. We need to keep each other honest and knowledgeable about our work always and most significantly before we present our work in more general venues and conferences. In this way, the new ideas, arguments, and theories presented at conferences such as this one are not the only benefit to be had; these other meaningful discussions maintain the field in a healthy state of self-awareness. Hence, conferences devoted to any facet of Latina/o Studies are crucial, should be strongly supported, and the organizers of such events deserve to be recognized for their substantial service to the professional community.

Susan C. Méndez is an Assistant Professor in the Department of English & Theatre and the Department of Latin American & Women’s Studies at the University of Scranton. She teaches courses on Multi-Ethnic American Literature and Women’s Studies. Primarily, she conducts research on novels written by Latino/a authors. Méndez is a 2011-2013 At Large Representative of MALCS.

One Latina Life: Feminism, Rage, Punk Rock

by Alicia Velasquez (AKA Alice Bag)

“I’m not a writer,” I whined.

“You’ve been writing a blog for years,” my husband said.

“But I’m not a REAL writer. I can’t describe people and places in flowery detail.” My husband gave me a pained look. That settles that, I thought to myself as I walked over to my latest craft project ready to take it up again, but my husband was not finished.

“We’ll set it up as a separate blog. You have time to write while I’m at work and Sophia’s at school.” I was tempted to list all the things that housewives do during the day that are never noticed: the beds that make themselves, the laundry that appears neatly folded atop the family dressers, the cupboards magically full of organic vegetarian food choices, the Sisyphean work of women. I decided to hold my tongue, sensing my husband’s insistence was a genuine effort to support my artistic growth and not simply create more work for me.

violencegirl

The previous day, a group of my girlfriends from Los Angeles had driven down to visit me in San Diego and we’d walked over to a little neighborhood bar for a drink. Two of the girls were writing a play called The Barber of East L.A. and were doing research by gathering oral histories from women who had grown up in East L.A. during the 1960’s and 70’s. Halfway through the interview one of the playwrights, Raquefella turned to me and suggested, “You should write a book.” I laughed it off but continued to think about the idea.

I had casually mentioned the comment to my husband before going to bed and this morning he brought up the subject again with renewed enthusiasm. “I’m going to set up the blog for you,” he told me. We had recently been to Comic-con, where I discovered that a friend of mine had written her own comic book. The idea had thrilled me and my husband knew it. He had found the perfect bait. “Maybe if you start writing, an illustrator will read it and help you turn it into a graphic novel. You can call it The True Life Adventures of Violence Girl.” That did it. I had been a voracious comic book reader as a child and still enjoyed graphic novels. The succinct text in graphic novels was not intimidating yet I also knew that many graphic novels had complex themes and ideas. I thought of my story in those terms. I wanted my book to be easy to read but challenging in terms of ideas.

The following Monday morning I stared at the laptop on the kitchen table. I walked by it, grabbed a box of old photos and let the memories wash over me. I looked at an old picture of my mom and dad, took in my earliest memory and started to write.

Every morning from 10:00 to 12:00 I’d sit at the kitchen table and write. I’d send my blog post to my husband, he’d edit it for me and give me immediate feedback. The journey was therapeutic. Suddenly, scenes I had blocked out of my memory were coming back to me. On more than one occasion I called my husband at work, crying, my stomach in knots, sobbing “I can’t write this, it makes me sick.” Other times my husband would call me from work to tell me he had laughed or cried at a particular entry.

A few weeks into the process our daughter told us she was being bullied at school. I had spoken to the school administration on several occasions but the situation had not improved. Back in Arizona the prices of houses had dropped dramatically and our old house was still on the market. We decided that my daughter and I would move back into our old house so that our daughter could return to her former school while my husband applied for a transfer at work.

I continued to blog and send my entries to my husband everyday. Now that we were living apart, sharing this intimate part of myself with him made me feel close to him despite the fact that we were living in different cities. The deeper I dug into my memories the more I learned about myself. I started to see recurring themes and cause and effect because I was looking from a new perspective using my writer’s vantage point. I understood that the seeds of feminism had been planted in my childhood. I saw that my punk stage persona had been an outlet for the impotent rage I had harbored for years.

At the same time, I was picking up followers on my blog. People were reading at their desks at work or at their own kitchen tables. If I tried to take a day off from blogging, I heard about it from my readers. It dawned on me that these people were following a story and expected me to finish it. Not only that, they expected a new entry Monday through Friday. I established a routine, I wrote everyday after my daughter left for school. I would not allow myself to start any other project or leave the house until I had written the next part of the story. I pretended I was a real writer, I visualized chatting about my book on Oprah. I thought about who would play my father in the movie (Edward James Olmos).

When the story was finished, I posted a question to my readers: “Who should I send this to?” We brainstormed together; I felt like I had a think tank behind me. We decided to approach an independent publisher called Feral House. I sent them an unsolicited manuscript with an introductory letter and within the week, I received a call on my cell phone: “Alice Bag, you sent me some of your writing. You may not remember me, but I met you many years ago…” It was the head of Feral House, and he wanted my book.

Alicia Velasquez (AKA Alice Bag) is a musician, Craftivista, author, blogger, junior pastry chef and master trouble maker. Her book Violence Girl is available now at http://feralhouse.com/violence-girl/

Comments:

  1. Anonymous  September 27, 2011 at 10:02 AM

    Hey Alice Bag,

    Amazing, keep writing, I sent you a message already but lost it because I did not sign into WordPress. Anyway, you keep doing what brings you some bliss. You will inspire others to do the same.
    Juanita Suarez
    of the Latina Dance Theater Project

  2. darksidegirl77  September 28, 2011 at 12:11 PM

    I loved your Violence Girl Blog and adore the book that the blog created. You are truly an inspiring person !!!!
    Thank You for sharing your stories…

  3. Alice Bag  September 29, 2011 at 8:16 AM

    Thank you both for your supportive comments, they are much appreciated.