Pilgrim Soul

A Reminder - What Writers Produce Is Alive

2012-01-22T00:01:00.005-05:00

I had fun imagining my stories and novels dancing with the works of Chekhov, King, Lispector, Achebe .... and my smile was huge. I hope this brought a smile to you too.

Short Stories and More

2012-01-08T00:01:00.008-05:00

So the new year began. I had some time between real life projects, was waiting to hear from my readers about my novel, and could focus on my short stories. I opened up my short story folder, identified which short stories to send out, researched potential literary markets, and started submitting stories. At last count, I have about twenty queries sent. More will be submitted as time etc. permit.

The targeted literary reviews range from brand new to long established. Obviously, the probabilities of acceptance will differ. But, regardless of the publication’s pedigree, it is always uplifting to hear that someone likes what you have written. We'll see what the new year brings. I look forward to finding out.

Happy New Year

2012-01-01T00:01:00.005-05:00

a new year begins
fresh hopes and aspirations
to live life fully

Merry Christmas y Feliz Navidad

2011-12-25T00:01:00.008-05:00

A Christmas greeting
to you and your family.
Wishing you much joy.

“It’s business. It’s not personal.”

2011-12-18T00:01:00.040-05:00

“It’s business. It’s not personal.” How often has one heard that? I admit the usefulness of the concept. Decisions made under the spell of emotion and private urges do not always bode well for the greater good.

But, does downplaying the personal bode well for a writer of fiction? Except for formulaic writing, what is fiction except a personal statement? Then, having written the story, what additional obligation does an author have to his readers? How much of his personal life should the author reveal?

In my case, my writing has been influenced by my unique life story, including culture, religion, business career, and overcoming illness. Those influences individually, though, are not what I find compelling about my life story. Instead, I find compelling how I have built bridges across them. Indeed, the challenge of building bridges is usually at the heart of the conflicts addressed in my fiction.

There is, however, no fiction market segment called “Building Bridges.” I have always believed that I could rely on the content of my writing to reveal my unique perspective to the world. I wonder, though, if I have missed a bet in connecting with readers. After all, what starts off as a country song can cross over into the more general market. It might not pull that off, though, if not already successful in the country arena.

I also remind myself that once the product has left the computer and forays into the commercial world, it is no longer solely a personal statement but, indeed, a business. And, business requires identifying market segments.

My head hears that. My heart resists. Could insistence on the theme of "Building Bridges" ever work? Or should I just go the expected route and self identify focused solely on culture or religion or business or overcoming illness or something else? Will my choice make any difference in how my writing is received? And, in marketing my work, how much of Judith Mercado should be revealed to motivate someone to buy my work?

This last question, by the way, is what prompted me to write this post after a recent encounter with someone who had not realized the role illness had played in my life. He did not realize it because I never talked about it. So it got me to thinking about what an author's obligation is to his readers. The result is this post. Obviously, I have not answered my own question.

Nerve Wracking

2011-12-04T00:01:00.000-05:00

So my novel’s manuscript has gone out to my readers. Second guessing is now in full force. They will hate it! How embarrassing. What was I thinking? Such is my internal chatter.

Okay, so I am sure they will find glimpses of good writing. They might even think it well written. But, they might not. And, as I wait, there is little I can do. The book has been sent out. It is no longer under my protection. It has been exposed to the cold light of day. Can I handle it?

Have you ever felt this way?

Met My Goal!

2011-11-20T00:01:00.005-05:00

My goal for my novel’s current revision was to reduce it by 10%, what I call the Stephen King rule. Well, I am happy to report I have met my goal. More importantly, I also believe that my novel is much improved. Now, I’m farming it out to my critique partners. Next stop, incorporating their feedback. Next stop beyond that, start sending queries out.

All I can say is that this feels a whole lot better than wondering if I was even going to finish the novel. Thank you, Phillip Roth, Jimi Hendrix, Stephen King, and those who have been my cheering squad along the way. And that includes all those who read my blog and comment. Special thanks to you.

Now It Is Phillip Roth Who Inspires

2011-11-06T00:01:00.008-04:00

As mentioned before, I am editing the first draft of my latest novel. I am now just over halfway through. Among the changes made, both profound and trivial, one issue stands above all the others. It is whether I should allow one of my characters to remain as emotionally troubled as she is. The truth is, she is sometimes downright unsympathetic.

Then I found the following Phillip Roth statement in The Paris Review.

“I am not interested in writing about what they [Roth’s characters] should do for the good of the human race and pretending that’s what they do do, but writing about what they do indeed do.”

I am following his advice. The outcome, I hope, will be that my novel—to use another quote from The Paris Review interview—will have the following effect on eventual readers.

“What I want is to possess my readers while they are reading my book….”

A worthy goal indeed.

The entire interview can be read at

http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/2957/the-art-of-fiction-no-84-phillip-roth

If you had trouble with The Paris Review link previously, it now works. I still don't know why my normal way of posting a link didn't work. It's a great interview.

Okay to Play Hooky?

2011-10-23T00:01:00.014-04:00

I thought of a post
then found myself asking if
it really mattered.

Scheduled posting day
met social network fatigue.
Could I play hooky?

Real life trumps blogging,
even Nathan B admits.
I paid attention.

Jimi Hendrix Inspires Me

2011-10-09T00:01:00.018-04:00

Only Jimi Hendrix could make me enjoy another version of "Like a Rolling Stone" as much as I enjoy Bob Dylan’s. I have been listening to it while editing my novel.

Please note that, to view the video on YouTube, after clicking on the photo below, you might have to click again where indicated on the dark screen.

And how does this inspire me? By being so vital and by reminding me that excellence is worth striving for. OMG, that guitar!

10% or Bust!

2011-09-25T00:01:00.010-04:00

When I edit, I usually follow the Stephen King 10% rule.

2nd Draft = (1st Draft – 10%)

A funny thing has happened so far in my novel editing.

I eliminated a third of what was in my first draft. A third! Mostly, that was back story at the beginning of the novel.

Then I inserted new text, primarily for deeper exploration of character. The outcome? My second draft is now 25% longer than the original draft! Definitely not following the Stephen King 10% rule, eh?

Well, yes, but the edit is not yet complete. What I do know is that the Stephen King rule has made me ruthless about assessing whether a passage is critical for the forward progress of the novel. And it is amazing how creative one can get about communicating the essence of a character and/or action when the goal is to reduce and reduce and reduce.

Yet, right now, my second draft is 25% longer rather than 10% shorter than the first draft.

I won’t beat up on myself yet. This is an unfolding story. There will be more rounds of 10% reductions.

As We Remember 9/11

2011-09-11T00:01:00.005-04:00

Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that. Hate multiplies hate, violence multiplies violence, and toughness multiplies toughness in a descending spiral of destruction.... The chain reaction of evil — hate begetting hate, wars producing more wars — must be broken, or we shall be plunged into the dark abyss of annihilation.

Martin Luther King, Jr.

The Rewrite

2011-09-04T00:01:00.005-04:00

The novel rewrite has begun. All I can say is that if the rest of the draft manuscript needs as much work as the first chapter, I am in trouble.

Perhaps, though, I should cut myself some slack. This is the first chapter, after all. It was written well before I had a comprehensive sense of what the final product would be. Now, with the novel’s first draft completed, I can evaluate the all-important first chapter to see if it sends the right signals and to make sure it is not loaded with back story. I can also incorporate nuances about my characters, which have been revealed to me through the process of writing the novel itself. The time lines may be different than first envisioned. Etc. etc. and etc.

So, I will remain relatively scarce from the blogosphere far longer than I had anticipated. I will keep reading your blogs and, time permitting, occasionally comment. On a biweekly basis, I will drop in here with a post.

Now, back to work.

Newly Published Short Story - “Anna B’s Owner”

2011-08-23T16:16:00.005-04:00

“I hear your brother’s living on a boat in the Florida Keys.”

I stared at this childhood friend, in town for a short visit, who had no idea what he had just done. Finally, I heard myself say, “Really? Where in the Florida Keys?”

“I don't know where exactly.” He squinted. “It's not Key West or I think I'd remember. Not Key Largo either . . . .”

Please don’t remember, Bob.

For the rest of the story, please continue reading at the SNReview.

The End! Of the First Draft, Anyway

2011-08-07T00:01:00.006-04:00

Finally, the first draft of my novel is done. It has a beginning, a middle, and an end, characters who love and argue and grow, and conflicts with at least a promise of resolution. Most importantly, it has given me the structure with which to evaluate this project in a holistic way. Who knows? The final version might be 33% smaller. That last chapter I decided wasn’t necessary might be essential after all. And the beginning? Well, the beginning, that cemetery of new novels, it may prove not to be the right place to start. Or, smile, it might all be just fine.

That’s all stuff for me to look at later. I want to savor for now the sense of accomplishment I have. What an exhilarating feeling! I finished my new novel. For the first time in almost a year, I don’t have the threat of not finishing lurking in the shadows. I can take a break from my self-imposed homework assignment without fearing that I will never be able to write, "The End." Yes, I am giving myself a vacation for a while before I start striking out sentences and replacing verbs and eliminating passive voice and this’s and that’s and, well, you get the picture.

For now, I’ll just lift my glass and say, “Attagirl!”

What’s In a Name?

2011-07-24T00:01:00.004-04:00

With only two chapters left to finish the first draft of my work-in-progress novel, I have changed a main character’s name. That may not seem to be a big deal, but it is the first time I have ever done it this late in the process. Usually, by this stage, the characters in a novel or short story have become like real people to me. On an ongoing basis, I have been thinking about and having inner dialogue with, for example, a Juan or a Juana or Abigail. So to now change a Juana into a Miriam is disconcerting [not the names I used].

Names are not mere bagatelles, it turns out. Think what these fictional names evoke:

• Ishmael (Moby-Dick)
• Santiago (The Old Man and the Sea)
• Sancho Panza (Don Quijote)
• Hester Prynne (The Scarlet Letter)
• Scrooge (A Christmas Carol)
• James Bond (Casino Royale et al.)

These names have turned into archetypal giants. Were they whims of the authors? I don’t know. I just know what their impact has been after publication. Would James Bond have been as evocative if his name had been Walter Qwiatkowski? Hmm, I doubt it, though I really can’t know.

So names are not insignificant, and when my inner sense kept nudging me that there was something wrong with the name I had given my character, I finally paid attention. Thank goodness for Microsoft Word’s Find and Replace function. With a few keystrokes, the deed was done. Interestingly, as I have started writing the next-to-last chapter, using the new name has made the writing easier. I had not realized my shoulders had been tensing up the whole time I was using the old name.

What still remains a question for me is whether the unease with the name happened because it was a poor choice in the first place or whether it resulted from the character’s growth within the novel. If the latter, am I being short-sighted in not letting her have the original name since after all that might help signal the character’s evolution? I don’t know. For now, I’ll just go with the fact that it makes the writing easier. After all, I still can use Word’s Find and Replace again.

Troubling the Twilight Stillness

2011-07-10T00:01:00.028-04:00

As I near the end of my novel’s first draft, I've turned to reading others' novels to remind me of why storytelling matters as an art. The joy I experienced as a reader has motivated me to provide that same experience for someone else. In particular, a moving passage in Ngugi Wa Thiongo’o’s Petals of Blood has spurred me on. [Thanks Cuban for suggesting I read this novel!]

In Petals of Blood, one of the lead characters, while experiencing rejection from a love interest, talks about being caught “. . . in a twilight gloom somewhere between sleeping and waking, and should I not rest there, and not trouble that twilight stillness with passionate insistence?”

With that passage, Thiongo’o reminded me of what is at stake for me personally. As so many other writers have said about themselves, I can’t not write. Writing is such an intrinsic part of who I am that, though I may change venue and format, I must write. Not writing would be the equivalent of dwelling in Thiongo’o’s twilight gloom. While there are people and endeavors in my life which also evoke passion, writing is a singularly powerful force for generating that experience.

When I feel discouraged in my current project, it is tempting to say, especially since there is no publisher waiting with bated breath for my novel, that I should just quit. Then I ask myself, Do I grab life in a passionate embrace or do I choose not to trouble the twilight stillness?

My Musical Helpers

2011-06-26T00:01:00.019-04:00

As I near the end of the first draft of my work-in-progress novel, I have been running scared. The fear comes from two sources. First, though the end is in sight, I still worry I will not pull off finishing the novel. Second, I will soon have to bid so long to the characters who have inhabited my life since last Fall. My fictional characters invariably come to feel like real people to me, and I miss them when they are gone.

I have used various coping mechanisms, but none so effective as a performance by the South African Drakensberg Boys Choir. Judy Croome introduced them to me in one of her recent posts, and I keep listening again and again to their music. Sometimes I am just carried along with their joy. Sometimes I think of how improbable their gathering would have been not so long ago. It may be a bit of a stretch but that accomplishment gives me hope that I too can pull off my (admittedly less consequential) endeavor.

Here is The Drakensberg Boys Choir:

This is the comment I left on Judy's post:

"May the joy on those boys' faces be translated into a way of life for them and the world. May their harmony smooth any harshness life brings as they navigate the separateness the world may impose on them. May through them love find its way to all of us."

May they also help me finish my novel.

Happy Father's Day

2011-06-19T00:48:00.004-04:00

They come in all types
outrageous, timid, and brave,
our loving dads.

Dancing in the Shadows of Love

2011-06-05T00:01:00.017-04:00

An Interview with Author Judy Croome

Following the release of her novel Dancing in the Shadows of Love, Judy Croome was gracious enough to answer my questions about her intriguing novel. Judy lives and writes in Johannesburg, South Africa. Her short stories have been published in ITCH magazine and “Notes from Underground Anthology”. She was recently shortlisted in the African Writing Flash Fiction 2011 competition. Her novel Dancing in the Shadows of Love explores, through the eyes of three very different women, how an ordinary person, one who doesn’t have what it takes to be a hero, can also find a way to repair the fractures of a broken world.

In Dancing in the Shadows of Love, there are recurring themes of buried secrets from the past, a sense of otherness, betrayal, the need for inclusion in a greater social circle and family, and people who are from neither Here nor There. What do you believe ties these varied themes together?

The interconnectedness of all life ties these themes together. Like a pebble rippling the surface of a pond, every act we do, every thought we have, sends waves of energy that affect everything else. The quote that introduces the Glossary of Terms encapsulates the connection between the varied themes in the book: no matter what the cultural differences, no matter what the different obstacles we each face, we are all the same. And we each carry within us the equal potential to rise above our own pain and suffering and change the world around us, even if only in a small way. When we can do that—make lasting changes for good in our own hearts, in our families and in our neighbourhoods—then perhaps we can finally return to that pre-lapserian Eden where man and nature, man and his god, and man and woman can live in peace.

In Dancing in the Shadows of Love, your character Zahra speaks of a hopeless dream of love. She says, “We are lost, and I was aware that the glimpses we have of love, a transcendental love that is sacrosanct, are reserved for the privileged few.” How do you define transcendental love?

It’s an a priori human potential that exists within all of us, irrespective of our culture or religion or life circumstances. When we find within us that capacity to overcome our subjective hurts and emotions; when we can reach out a helping hand to others, across all the external barriers and differences that separate us, and all the pain and suffering of our own secret wounds, we transcend our humanity and reach our Divine potential. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow once said, "If we could read the secret history of our enemies, we should find in each man's life sorrow and suffering enough to disarm all hostility." When we’re hurting or angry or betrayed, and we can still find the inner strength to tap into that a priori compassion within our soul to disarm our hostility towards others, then we have made the dream of transcendental love a reality. Zahra, lost in her despair, does not realise that this love is available to all of us…if we choose compassion instead of hatred; peace over anger and forgiveness over revenge.

In another section of Dancing in the Shadows of Love, you write: “The secrets of life eat away at the foundations of our being and even their weight cannot keep them drowned forever.” Can secrets be transmuted into a positive experience?

Absolutely. And sometimes that transmutation is purely an inner alchemy; nothing external changes, only the way the individual responds changes as she comes to terms with those painful secrets.

Why was it important to write Dancing in the Shadows of Love using three points of view?

Symbolically, three carries the weight of accumulated authority: something happening once or twice can be a coincidence; but if the same thing happens three times it carries a power and sense of certainty (e.g Thrice Greatest Hermes, three witches in MacBeth; three wishes.) In this story, Grace (as her name suggests) is the ideal human; she has achieved the capacity to see beyond differences and experiences real compassion for others. To give that ideal a sense of certainty, I had three very different women struggle to transform their own human suffering into the capacity for Divine Love (transcendental love) that Grace has.

Dancing in the Shadows of Love carries a lot of hidden symbolism. Can you explain some of it?

A reader can read this book just for the enjoyment of seeing how Lulu, Jamila and Zahra overcome their challenges, because I wanted this story to be an entertaining read. However, I also wove in deeper aspects to the story for those who want to look for a hidden meaning—from the flowers to the colours to the names of the characters, everything was chosen for a specific symbolic purpose.

A common example of the symbolism in the story is the importance of Jamila’s wedding. Symbolically, a wedding/marriage represents the reconciliation and union of opposites; the merging of heaven and earth. While on one level, the story’s plot is a simple one about a woman’s desperate need to marry and leave her underprivileged past behind her; on a deeper level, it’s about the struggle of all three women to achieve a spiritual union between their flawed humanity and their Divine essence.

What are your impressions so far of the self-publishing experience?

Interesting. Hard work. A lot of freedom, but a lot responsibility too. As big a struggle as the traditional publishing route, but in a different way. I prefer it because by nature I’m a loner and I prefer to walk to the sound of my own drum. But, before anyone thinks of self-publishing, I’d suggest they consider very carefully whether they have the personality to be a successful self-published author.

Is there anything you would have done differently?

Yes. I would’ve planned better, but as there were things I didn’t know and which hadn’t been mentioned in any of the self-publishing sites I researched, my first foray into self-publishing was too disorganised for my liking. I wasted a lot of energy that could have been better used. I would also not try to “launch” my book with a big bang: to self-publish you need time and patience and to get your name branded. The hard sell doesn’t work. Even my launch competitions, which I thought had big prizes (US$100 Amazon voucher or a full manuscript critique) have not been successful. I’m learning what works best is a slow steady natural presence on the web. By natural, I mean, just participate in forums and blogs and other social media. Let the readers come to you; don’t try and drag them in for a visit.

Judith, thanks so much for hosting me here. I really enjoyed my visit and, to say thanks, I’d like to ask you to draw the name of a random commentator, who will win an Amazon US$15 gift voucher (or the UK/South African equivalent!)

If anyone would like me to do a guest post on their blog, please email me at judy@judycroome.com to discuss a suitable topic and a mutually agreeable date.

Judy Croome's independently published novel Dancing in the Shadows of Love is available from Amazon and Smashwords.

New Short Story - "Coins Dropping"

2011-05-22T00:01:00.014-04:00

Cacti tendrils brim over the clay pots below the peeling Rita’s Resale Shoppe sign. With her mitten, Ana picks at the hoarfrost at the window’s edge, trying to read the movie poster stuck inside the window. She has uncovered “Sandra Dee, Romanoff and” when Mami pulls her to the shop door.

For the rest of the story, please continue reading at Writes for All literary review.

***

Back Story to "Coins Dropping"

Years ago, this story was accepted by another literary review, but I withdrew it before publication. The Editor wanted to change the title, but I felt strongly that the title was at the heart of the story. Usually, I am very responsive to editorial suggestions. They result in an improved story and, furthermore, accepting editorial change is a normal part of the publishing process. This has been the only time I have dug in my heels and refused to accept an Editor's suggestions.

In the years since, I have had ample opportunity to reflect on my decision to withdraw the story and to second guess my being so adamant about not changing the title. It was only a title, for goodness sake! My second guessing only became more insistent as the story did not find a home; in part, I was told, because it was a period piece. Thankfully, Writes for All recognized that "'Coins Dropping' takes us back in time while addressing stereotypes still relevant today."

Back Story for "The Details"

2011-05-18T00:01:00.001-04:00

Rose & Thorn Journal has a recurring feature, called "Back Story," in which authors published in their journal discuss how their work evolved. As was previously announced here, they published my short story "The Details," about a young couple whose wife is dying. How three unrelated nonfictional experiences influenced the development of my short story can be read in Rose & Thorn here.

The Education of a Writer

2011-05-08T00:01:00.019-04:00

At a local university, I recently attended a Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o lecture titled “The Education of a Writer.” This University of California professor, novelist, essayist, and Kenyan refugee discussed the influences which shaped him as a writer.

Thiong’o's varied life experiences as political activist, prisoner, exile, and literature professor have all informed his writing. It was when he spoke of the storytelling tradition of his native Kenyan village, though, that I took special notice. Members of his childhood village frequently gathered to tell stories as a group. Those gatherings, Thiong’o suggested, had a critical impact on him as a storyteller. The spontaneity and audience participation of those gatherings motivated him to seek in his later years a participatory form of storytelling.

I had an aha moment as I heard him describe his village experience. I realized I had an equivalent experience in my own life. My childhood “village,” the church, had gathered every night (yes, every night) to sing, give personal testimony, and share Biblical stories. It was done with music, chant, and prayer, as well as with lecture.

I have often spoken of my father’s influence on me as a writer. I have not highlighted though how the nightly church services of my childhood impacted me as a storyteller. Layered throughout my writing are the cadences and voices of those nightly services. It was in church then that I learned to tell stories with song and meaning. It was there that I became a storyteller, even if my own stories later turned out to be vastly different.

Was there an equivalent collective experience which formed you as a writer?

Pilgrim Soul

Visiting Zora – My Latest Published Short Story

2011-04-24T00:01:00.002-04:00

Sarita didn’t really know where she was going. Before leaving for Ft. Pierce, an hour north of where she lived in Palm Beach County, she had not found the Garden of Heavenly Rest Cemetery on any map. She knew for a fact, though, that the place existed. Novelist Alice Walker had tracked down Zora Neale Hurston’s abandoned grave there and marked it with a stone memorial.

Continue at Subtle Fiction

When Is Your Work Ready?

2011-04-10T00:01:00.012-04:00

I just received a rejection notice for one of my short stories. The prestigious literary review had held on to the story for so long that I began to hope they were accepting it. Alas, no.

So I reread the story. It was an OMG moment. What had I been thinking when I sent in the story? There was so much wrong with it! Not the least of which was that the story didn’t really begin until page three.

Just so you know, before I sent the story in, I edited it repeatedly. Others also read and commented on the story. How could we all miss something so basic? Do I have to lock something away for a year to avoid fooling myself into thinking it is polished?

I am no stranger to getting rejections for my written work. Anyone who writes fiction knows the drill. That doesn’t make the sting of rejection any easier, but this post is not about the emotional cost of rejections. It is about my disappointment in myself that, as improved a writer as I think I am, I can still make stupid mistakes.

I have now altered my story’s beginning, along with making other editorial changes. I hope this revised version will cause an editor to smile and say, “This is for me.” I can’t shake the feeling, though, that I am missing something that will be obvious to me a year from now.

How do you know when your work is polished enough to send it out? Or does it only get that designation when someone decides to publish it?

Pilgrim Soul

A Storyteller's Worth

2011-03-26T00:01:00.004-04:00

Writing a novel is a marathon. It starts out as an energetic and optimistic activity. Predictably for me, though, at about the three-quarter mark, a shift occurs. After writing again and again about the same characters, I am tempted to throw the lot out the window. At this point in a work-in-progress novel, it is superbly easy for me to generate a long list of what is wrong my writing. Completing the novel becomes a more daunting task than what has already been accomplished. The ignominy of not finishing is experienced daily.

Luckily for me, in this latest novel project, when I have been ready to quit, I received metaphorical refreshing drinks and pep talks. It started with the news that another of my short stories had been accepted by a literary review, which goes a long way toward renewing my faith in my writing abilities. When an editor says, I like your story enough to publish it, I am reminded that, at least in moments, I can write well. Parenthetically, when this story is published later this year, I will provide the link in a blog post.

The other refreshing drink and pep talk came from a surprising source, my late father. No, I’m not talking about séance-like contact. Instead, recently, I had the privilege of compiling an anthology of his essays, poems, and sermons which allowed me to hear his “voice” again. It was another soft landing to calm my jitters. It reminded me that writing, even if vastly different in content, is the family business, and I am doing exactly what I was born to do.

Then, I received the first installment of surveys being carried out about my dad's legacy. All the living members of the church my gentle, wise, and humble father pastored for thirty-three years have been queried. The project leader said, “The stories are pouring in. Many hand in their questionnaires with tears in their eyes.” While reading the questionnaire results, I was struck by how my father’s written and spoken words sustain a living quality. Words matter, I concluded. The role of the storyteller is essential to the human psyche.

So I pick up my banner as storyteller and know it is not a frivolous undertaking. I embark on the final quarter of my novel, renewed in my commitment to make my words matter. Because, if I write the story well, they will matter.

"Til Next Year" - Flash Fiction

2011-03-12T00:01:00.019-05:00

Last year, I came across a request for submissions from Glossolalia, a literary review “… dedicated to the art of flash fiction ... only publish[ing] stories under 500 words.” I had a 229-word story “Til Next Year” which had always been too short to submit to anyone. So I reread it, tweaked it a bit and sent it off, truly not expecting much. To my surprise, Glossolalia published my story.

Belatedly, I focused on the name of the literary review. Glossolalia can refer to the religious practice of speaking in tongues familiar to me from my fundamentalist childhood. But, having surveyed the submission guidelines and read their other published stories, I found that the review had nothing to do with religious “speaking in tongues.” Nor did it seem to have anything to do with that other definition of glossolalia: “nonsensical or invented speech, especially resulting from a trance or schizophrenia.”

Oh well, the review does focus on flash fiction, and my short story definitely qualified as flash fiction. So, whatever the reason for the review’s name, I am honored that Glossolalia chose my story. Here is the link: Til Next Year And, no, my story has nothing to do with religious speaking in tongues either.

Guilt about Not Blogging?

2011-02-26T11:49:00.010-05:00

Recently, Nathan Bransford asked if blogging had peaked, eliciting 138 interesting comments, many citing blogging's excessive time requirements and also competition from Facebook and Twitter. I had noticed that some of my writer colleagues have been blogging less frequently. I also had been feeling guilty about my relative blogging inactivity since announcing last November that I would be giving priority to completing my work-in-progress novel.

Nathan Bransford's post and my own progress on my novel have made me feel less guilty. My novel is now at about 70% of my goal for the first draft. I don’t think I could have accomplished that, and also taken care of Life, if I had not stepped away from blogging full time.

Having broken my discipline of posting weekly, and then hearing from Bransford et al., though, I find myself tempted to never post again. Then I realize that, despite my already demanding schedule, I still find myself drifting back to my favorite blogs. Because I enjoy them! Invariably, I have to pull myself away or I would do nothing but read blogs. I also realize that I miss posting about issues that matter to me.

So blogging is not dead in my estimation. It has perhaps accommodated itself to the reality that we all have just twenty-four hours a day to take care of Life. I know that, as soon as I can get my novel in shape to start the publishing querying process, I will return to active blogging. I actually miss it.

Meaning of Religion

2011-02-05T00:01:00.005-05:00

Blogger A Cuban in London recently hosted a discussion about the meaning of religion. I was one of the participants. He posed questions about the nature of religion, its role in modern democracies, and the role religion plays in things like individualism, rampant consumerism and unchallenged materialism. In today’s post, I feature my answer to Cuban’s challenge to define religion. The link to the entire discussion is provided at the end of the post.

Religion is, on a personal level, finite humanity’s endeavor to explain itself vis-à-vis the infinite. On a social level, religion establishes codes of morality and behavior. Culturally, it facilitates expression of cultural norms. Politically, it can serve as a tool for creating and defending the political unit. It is paradoxically both unifying and divisive. In other words, religion is a protean concept.

That is my answer through a cognitive filter. But, if religion appealed only to the mind, it would not have achieved its enduring quality. It would also not explain why, despite significant differences, the overwhelming majority of people associate, formally or loosely, with religion in all its variants.

The opening line of my favorite hymn says, “Oh, Lord, My God, when I in awesome wonder consider all the works Thy hand hath made.” Am I a churchgoer? No. Do I believe that there is a Creator responsible for bringing our world into existence? Not in the anthropomorphic sense. And yet that hymn moves me every single time I hear it. Is that because it is a relic from my childhood? Perhaps. Or could it be that the hymn appeals to an unknown and unknowable part of me that wants to connect with that dimension of life which, science’s efforts notwithstanding, we fall short of grasping in all its beauty. Of science’s efforts, Max Planck himself said that future progress in understanding liminal conditions “…will never enable us to grasp the real world in its totality any more than human intelligence will ever rise into the sphere of ideal spirit: these will always remain abstractions which by their very definition lie outside actuality.”

Rather than try to understand or judge the human predilection toward embracing religion, I simply accept that it exists. Indeed, I respect that religions seek coherence and order in a world that intrinsically may be incoherent and chaotic. I also embrace religion’s attempt to connect with the numinous, which has little to do with the mind. Of course, my respect and tolerance do not extend to the use of violence and oppression.

I come to this stance having experienced the full spectrum of religious belief. As the daughter of evangelical ministers, I grew up in a theistic environment. I then became an atheist, only to later shift to an embrace of the numinous. In my fiction, I spend a lot of time in churches, with characters who embrace, characters who flee from, but always characters who try to make sense of religion and spirituality in their lives. In this, they reflect my own life's journey. In a larger sense, they may reflect humanity’s journey as well.

The entire discussion can be read here.

Caught Peeking - Two Short Stories

2011-01-22T00:01:00.006-05:00

Recently, I shared with a friend two of my newly published short stories. He said he enjoyed them and that, “I see you peeking through in both of them.”

I was stunned. The stories were so not about my life. Indeed, one of the main characters was a young male. Except for the fact that I once cruised on a boat, there was nothing related to my life in those stories.

And then I realized. Of course, my friend would find me peeking in my stories. I was the author. It was my voice telling the stories. I could not help but be there. Even when I didn’t think I was.

So here are the two recently published stories in which my friend caught me peeking:

“The Details” published in Rose and Thorn.

“About a Boy” published in Gemini Magazine.

Thank you, Gemini Magazine and Rose and Thorn for selecting my stories.

A Spanglish Christmas Eve Encore

2010-12-18T09:45:00.002-05:00

I take a break from novel writing et al. to wish you a wonderful holiday. Here's a repeat of the Spanglish version of "Twas the Night Before Christmas."

Chihuahuas y La Noche Buena

Adapted by Río Lara-Bellon.

'Twas the night before Christmas
And all through the casa
Ni un ratón se movía. ¡Caramba! ¿Qué pasa?
Los niños were all tucked away en sus camas,
Some in long underwear, some in pijamas.
While Mamá worked late in her little cocina
El viejo was down at the corner cantina
Living it up with amigos, ¡carajo!
Muy contento y un poco borracho.
While hanging the stockings with mucho cuidado,
In hopes that old Santa would feel obligado
To bring a los niños both buenos y malos,
A nice batch of dulces y otros regalos.
Outside in the yard there arose such a grito
That I jumped to my feet like a frightened cabrito.
I ran to the window y miré afuera
And who in the world do you think that it era?
Santo Nikos in a sleigh and a big red sombrero
Came dashing along like a crazy bombero!
And pulling his sleigh, instead of venados,
Were eight little chihuahuas, approaching volados.
I watched as they came and this quaint little hombre
Was shouting and whistling and calling by nombre:
¡Ay Milo! ¡Ay Tobee! ¡Ay Frida y Sasha!
¡Ay Todo! ¡Ay Pepe! ¡Ay Paco y Nacho!
Then standing erect with hand en su pecho
He flew to the top of our very own techo
With his round little belly like a bowl of jalea
He struggled to squeeze down our old chimenea.
Then huffing and puffing, at last in our sala,
With soot smeared all over his traje de gala,
He filled all the stockings with bonitos regalos
For none of the niños had been muy malos.
Then chuckling aloud, seeming muy contento,
He turned like a flash y voló como el viento.
And I heard him exclaim (¡ay, es la verdad!)
“¡MERRY CHRISTMAS A TODOS! ¡FELIZ NAVIDAD!”

Adaptation Copyright © 1996 by Río Lara-Bellon All Rights Reserved.

I now bid you so long for the remainder of the holiday season. Have a Happy New Year!

Checking In

2010-12-04T00:01:00.010-05:00

A lot has happened since I went on hiatus three weeks ago. I have written three chapters for my novel (no, this is not NaNo-speed writing). I have had a short story accepted for publication next year. And I was able to attend to pressing personal stuff needing my attention. I will remain on hiatus, though, to continue working on my novel. At my current glacial pace, it may be a looooong time before The End can be typed. I will continue to read your blogs. Please forgive me if I do not comment yet. I have to admit that your wonderful writing frequently tempts me to resume blogging actively. So far I have managed to restrain myself. So again, hasta luego.

The following are links to already published posts grouped under my major themes:

A Hero's Journey

Multicultural

Religion

Writing

I Am Taking a Break

2010-11-13T00:01:00.016-05:00

I am taking a break from blogging to devote myself more fully to finishing my novel and to attend to Life in general. This is not goodbye but "bye for now" or as it is expressed in Spanish, hasta luego. As always, I welcome your comments or questions. See you on the other side of my break.

The following are links to already published posts grouped under my major themes:

A Hero's Journey

Multicultural

Religion

Writing

Chinua Achebe and Ron Rash - Themes in Common

2010-11-06T00:01:00.004-04:00

As a followup to last week's A Hero's Journey post on Chinua Achebe, I am providing a redacted version of the very first post published in this blog. It compares the themes of Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart with those of American writer Ron Rash’s One Foot in Eden.

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By some measures, Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe and One Foot in Eden by Ron Rash could not be more different. Achebe’s novel takes place in pre- and post-colonial Nigeria in the 1890s. Rash’s novel is located in the Appalachian region of South Carolina beginning in the early 1950s. Despite these fundamental differences, the two novels share the following elements.

They portray the tragic outcome of a clash of cultures. In Achebe’s Things Fall Apart, the arrival of the British colonialists pits existing, functional Ibo customs against the conquerors’ incompatible legal, social, and religious customs. Compromise or assimilation with the British without destruction of the traditional culture is virtually impossible. The same is true in Rash’s One Foot in Eden. The utility company takeover of family-owned farmland, to be flooded in order to build a dam, obliterates a long-standing way of life.

As a consequence of the clash in cultures, the contributions and value of the elder generation are compromised. Traditional social structures are vanquished or modified beyond recognition. In Things Fall Apart, the ancestors’ guidance in daily life is lost. A functional tribal leadership and justice system is replaced by an external, foreign governing structure. The oracles for the Ibo Gods lose their power in favor of a Christian clergy advocating for Jesus Christ. The traditional stratification of society into desirables and undesirables is upended in favor of the undesirables when the latter become ready and welcomed disciples of the foreign Christian religion. In One Foot in Eden, an agricultural way of life is replaced by one not tied to the land. Instead of a farm, whether sharecropped or owned, the textile mills become the employers. In the process, the older generation is gelded.

Suicide figures as the only acceptable choice for those who cannot imagine themselves integrating into the new way of life. In Things Fall Apart, Okonkwo, the lead character, cannot accommodate himself to the powerlessness he foresees for himself living under British rule and hangs himself. In One Foot in Eden, the Widow Winchester sets herself on fire rather than move out of her home so the utility company can flood her land. Billy and Amy in effect commit suicide when they plunge into a swiftly moving river from which they have no hope of emerging.

The integration of religion into daily life is seamless. In Things Fall Apart, the Gods and their oracles weigh in on every decision from planting to marriage to the survival of infants. In One Foot in Eden, the Christian church is not only the social glue of the community, but it influences attitudes such as the inability to flee punishment for ill deeds. In addition, Ron Rash utilizes extensively Biblical imagery, such as the flood and the crucifixion.

Exile plays a role. In Things Fall Apart, Okonkwo is temporarily exiled to his motherland after he accidentally kills someone. In One Foot in Eden, an entire society of land-based owners and workers is exiled from its traditional way of life.

More than one language is in play. Chinua Achebe has referred to his work as a conversation between two languages: the traditional Ibo and the new English. In One Foot in Eden, the traditional Appalachian rural expressions begin to be supplanted by urban language.

The cultural clash does not have uplifting consequences. In each novel, a sense of inevitability drives the tragic outcome. Despite this, both present a glimmer of hope in the end. In Things Fall Apart, it is in the form of the clan’s refusal to take down Okonkwo’s body, signifying that, despite all, they can still cleave to their traditions. In One Foot in Eden, the Sheriff’s likely parenting of Isaac and Isaac’s entry into Clemson open possibilities for a functional future life.

A Hero’s Journey - Chinua Achebe – Who Gets to Tell the Story?

2010-10-30T00:01:00.024-04:00

Nigerian author Chinua Achebe has frequently referred to the proverb that “…until the lions have their own historians, the history of the hunt will always glorify the hunter.” Correcting the European historical viewpoint about Africa motivated him 50 years ago to write his seminal novel Things Fall Apart. Set in the Igbo region of Nigeria before and after the arrival of English colonialists, that novel was one of the first to tell the story of European colonization from an African perspective.

I am also giving Chinua Achebe my Hero’s Journey nod for his courage in taking on a literary classic and presenting a course-altering alternative point of view. Specifically, I refer to Achebe’s now famous essay in which he decried damaging stereotypes about Africans in Joseph Conrad’s novel, Heart of Darkness. Many have since weighed in, pro and con, about Achebe's assertions. British scholar Cedric Watts has provided an often cited rebuttal whose full text I have not been able to find on the internet, except for this excerpt.

This post, though, is not about whether Achebe was right in describing Conrad's Heart of Darkness as racist. For that, I suggest reading the novel to arrive at a conclusion. My own take is that Conrad's novel exhibits both genius and deplorable flaws. Each of these writers, Nigerian Chinua Achebe and Polish/Anglo Joseph Conrad, is a brilliant writer who wrote novels today acknowledged as classics. Implicit in their work, though, is a polemic, which can inform any reader or writer, about who is authorized to write authentically about an experience and a people.

Whatever one feels about his take on Conrad, it took a great deal of courage 36 years ago for Achebe to take on the literary establishment over one of its icons. In the process, he changed forever largely unchallenged or unnoticed assumptions about how stories of Africa could be told. "The question," he said, "is whether a novel which celebrates this dehumanization, which depersonalizes a portion of the human race, can be called a great work of art. My answer is: No, it cannot." In making this point, Achebe spoke for all people dehumanized in literature.

There is a broader lesson here for any fiction writer. I believe writing about characters unlike oneself has to be part of a good writer’s DNA. Otherwise, all that would be written would be soliloquies. The overarching obligation is simply to write well by avoiding the easy superficial treatment in favor of a more thoughtful one. In taking on Joseph Conrad, that is exactly what Chinua Achebe encourages us to do.

A Graceful, Wise, and Humble Man

2010-10-23T00:01:00.021-04:00

A young woman new to the country shows up crying at the front door of the minister’s house. Her husband has abandoned her penniless and with a newborn child. She is invited to stay until a solution can be found.

A meeting among ministers goes on endlessly. Words are heated. A man who has been seated quietly says, “Here is another way to look at this.” The room grows silent. The matter is soon resolved.

These are just two of the many stories people love to tell about my late father, Rev. Miguel Angel Mercado.

This weekend, his church is dedicating its new library, which it is naming the Mercado Library. In today’s mega-church environment, that a church of modest means establishes a library and names it after someone already deceased is hardly media-worthy news. That it is my father who is honored is also of minimal interest, even for followers of this blog. Why then do I write about it here?

When I received the email informing me of the dedication ceremony, I was thrilled, of course. It’s my dad after all. Then I reflected on how amazing it is that almost 23 years after his death, my father still has such a sentimental hold on members of his church. He was their minister for 33 years, yes, but enough time has passed by that a sizeable portion of the current membership never knew him. Those new members, though, may have heard so much about him that they feel as if they knew him.

That the stories are retold at every opportunity is perhaps not surprising. For a man who was unassuming to a fault, his influence is still felt far and wide. From his modestly sized church emerged thirty-three ministers who went on to lead congregations across national borders. Indeed, I sometimes regret that I was born with a deaf ear when it came to his particular religious beliefs. I wish my eyes could also light up and my smile become dewy whenever I hear what an amazing man of God my father was. When thinking of my father, my eyes and smile will do the same, but only because I remember what an incredibly gentle, wise, and humble man he was.

Perhaps it all comes down to the same thing. Maybe, like all politics being local, all religion is ultimately personal. Others’ memories of my father may be couched in religious terms, but his impact was essentially personal. And I am in awe of anyone who can have such a lasting influence on people that, long after he is gone, others are eager to share their recollections about him. More importantly, their current lives are elevated through the recollection. That is a service of the highest order.

And that is why I write about him in the installment usually dedicated to discussing religion. His religious beliefs were not mine, but in the end he helped me keep an open mind about why religion matters to people and how it can have a positive impact on their lives. Nurtured by my father’s example, I am also led to ask on an ongoing basis how I can live a life of meaning and of service.

To read my remarks at the dedication ceremony, I invite you to visit my other blog. Though my remarks were delivered in Spanish, I have provided an English translation. In any event, thank you for allowing me to share this with you.

Back Story – When Is It Appropriate?

2010-10-16T00:01:00.000-04:00

How Much? How little? Where and how to insert? When to use the flashback form versus ordinary summary? How to avoid making the current action stop cold?

These are the questions troubling me as I write my work-in-progress novel. While I am writing the text, I am not aware of how much back story has crept in. It just feels like a natural telling of the story. Then I’ll do my first read and realize that the sections marked Back Story (BS!) are piling up dangerously.

That’s terrible, I tell myself. I know enough not to start the novel itself with back story or to go for pages on end with it. But at some point, don’t I have to demonstrate that the characters and present action are not sui generis? That means introducing back story, doesn’t it?

So, to see how they used back story, I checked out two masters of the writing craft: Pulitzer-Prize-winning Marilynne Robinson and Nobel-Prize-winner Gabriel García Márquez. And I was shocked.

Marilynne Robinson not only won a Pulitzer, but she is on the faculty of the Iowa Writers' Workshop. Surely she would be a model for how to handle back story. Imagine my surprise then when I picked up her latest novel, Home, and discovered that in the first ten pages, all but the first paragraph and opening lines of the second paragraph were back story.

I then read Gabriel García Márquez’ short story collection Strange Pilgrims to examine what he did with back story. My thought was that, if there is a medium in which back story has to be used economically, surely it is the short story. Imagine my surprise again when I discovered that he was a heavy user of back story, frequently in its flashback mode. In one 33-page story, for example, most of the first 16 pages were back story. In another 18-page story, all but the opening and closing paragraphs were back story.

I realize that one has to learn first the rules of writing craft before attempting to break them. I also know that Marilynne Robinson and Gabriel García Márquez no longer have to prove to anyone that they are capable writers. Still, it gave me pause to observe just how heavily they used back story. I mean, pages and pages of it! And a lot of it in the beginning of a tale.

So now I am confused. Do I use a heavy hand excising the back story I have identified in my current work-in-progress? Or do I grant myself, at least a temporary, freedom to revisit later the appropriateness of those sections? Ordinarily I would say yes to this last question, except that what I decide now will affect subsequent unwritten material because the information in those back story sections is critical information. So do I leave them in or take them out and hope I can find an appropriate entry for them later?

I would love to hear from both readers and also writers of fiction about how they feel about back story.

A Week with Two Queens

2010-10-09T00:01:00.022-04:00

Okay, neither wore a real crown and one would probably be insulted at being included in the other’s company. But I had such a good time with each in the last week that I wanted to share them with you.

First Queen: the Queen of Salsa, Celia Cruz. Celia has been gone now for seven years. It’s only that every time I hear her unique voice she sounds as alive as ever. She was exiled from Cuba after Castro came to power. She subsequently came to the attention of the world beyond Latin America during her 1970s Fania All-Stars tours with other artists of the salsa genre. The thing about Celia was that her outrageous wigs and flamboyant costumes were absolutely unnecessary given her resplendent voice. They just made us appreciate her uniqueness even more.

Here she is, probably already in her 70s, surrounded by young people in Miami Beach who can’t help but dance to her music. The song is “La Vida Es un Carnaval” (tr. Life Is a Carnival). In it, she says, “There is no need to cry. Life is a carnival, and it’s better to live singing … your pain will leave while singing ….” It’s a song I will listen to if I am feeling sad, and it usually brings a smile to my face.

Second Queen: Teresa Mendoza, heroine of The Queen of the South, written by Arturo Pérez-Reverte. This respected Spanish writer whose fiction and nonfiction have been translated widely is also a former investigative journalist. La Reina del Sur was given to me by a family member who did not inform me that it was a novel. For the first 80 pages, I thought I was reading Pérez-Reverte’s exposé of the drug trafficking trade in México and Spain as seen through the eyes of Teresa Mendoza, a moll who later became head of the biggest drug smuggling operation in the western Mediterranean. I thought she was such a fascinating woman that I wanted to see what else had been written about her so I went on the internet. That was when I discovered that the gripping tale I was reading was actually a novel; a thriller, a type of novel I rarely read.

According to the customer reviews on Amazon, the novel is excellent even in translation, which I had wondered about because of the pervasive use of Mexican and Spanish slang. Perhaps what makes this such an interesting read is that Pérez-Reverte, availing himself of the tools of journalism, did extensive background research which is reflected in the novel’s feel of authenticity. If you want a novel you can escape into and also learn a great deal, The Queen of the South (La Reina del Sur) is it.

A Hero’s Journey — Ingrid Betancourt, A Complex Truth

2010-10-02T00:01:00.017-04:00

During her recent publicity tour for Even Silence Has an End, a riveting memoir of her experience as a political hostage, Ingrid Betancourt has sometimes been hailed as a hero. Dissenting voices, which include her estranged husband and several fellow hostages, have challenged that designation. The truth, I suspect, is a complex one. Sometimes heroism is thrust upon one, bestowing heroism despite oneself. Sometimes the heroism consists in simply surviving the challenge and continuing to live. Both of these may be the case with Ingrid Betancourt.

This one-time candidate for President of Colombia was kidnapped by guerrillas in 2002 and kept imprisoned in the Amazon jungle for six-and-a-half years. In a dramatic rescue which electrified the world in 2008, she and fourteen fellow hostages were liberated by the Colombian military. Betancourt has since mostly lived in France. In an incomprehensible move, this year Betancourt sued the Colombian government for economic and moral damages resulting from her captivity, a suit she then quickly dropped. In Colombia, widespread enmity against her has ensued as a result.

It is not surprising then that the reviews of her book are divided into two opposing camps. And yet, Betancourt’s experience as a captive offers insights into the nature of heroism. Who can imagine what it is like to live chained by the neck to a tree for months on end? Who has the courage to defy her captors by attempting to escape four times while imprisoned in the deepest Amazon jungle? Who can say what it is like to live for years in hot and primitive conditions, cheek to jowl with incompatible fellow prisoners and bullying jailers? To survive that with any shred of dignity is heroic all on its own. And, despite what her detractors say, Betancourt did use her experience in the jungle as an opportunity to hold a mirror to her own darkness.

“I did not want to emerge from the jungle as a shriveled old woman, ravaged by acrimony and hate …. I looked at myself in the mirror of other people and saw there all the defects of humanity—hatred, jealousy, greed, selfishness. But it was in myself that I observed them. … I did not like who I had become. … I decided to monitor myself … [but] ended up doing just the opposite of what my good resolutions dictated. My only solace was that I’d become aware of it."

Whether in freedom she has managed to follow her good resolutions is still an open question. Her actions since her release, both in having sued the government which rescued her and in shunning the husband who spent six-and-a-half years working for her freedom, might suggest otherwise. Her well-written memoir at the very least shows a self awareness of her defects of character. What she does about them in the remainder of her life may well decide whether she deserves to be called a hero.

Of potential interest: other posts in the A Hero’s Journey series.

Writing and Religion

2010-09-25T00:01:00.034-04:00

Recently, I found myself vexed by a discussion which turned on religious belief. It is easy to get vexed when the subject of religion comes up, you say? Sure, except the irony for me was that instead of my being the secular voice holding off convinced religious believers, I was the “religious” voice trying to hold my own with decidedly secular nonbelievers.

As I explained in my earlier post Religion, My Writing, and Me, I probably reside in the interstices between conventional belief and nonbelief. So to have to stand up for religion was unexpected. But there I was with the members of my long-time book discussion group explaining why I felt they were shortchanging the validity of religious belief. Myths and religion, I tried to tell them, are not simply infantile representations of truths eventually reducible to scientific axioms.

At one point in the discussion, I felt so frustrated that I found myself doodling in Spanish, convenient because no one around me could understand it. I found that scrap of paper while cleaning my desk the other day, and here is part of what I had written: “Mythology helps one navigate the space between the known and the unknown. It can exist outside the confines of intellectual truths that cannot and may not ever capture reality in its entirety.”

Then I discovered that Joseph Campbell in “The Historical Development of Mythology” had said it much more elegantly than I:

“… whenever a myth has been taken literally its sense has been perverted; but also, reciprocally, that whenever it has been dismissed as a mere priestly fraud or a sign of inferior intelligence, truth has slipped out the other door.”

Mythology and Religion are not necessarily synonymous, but I believe that the above Campbell quote applies to both. Many of us are probably somewhere in the middle of the spectrum of religious belief. If I am any indication, we in the middle may usually choose to remain silent about personal religious beliefs in the face of opposing views. My experience with my book discussion group was definitely anomalous for me.

That experience made me realize how real-life silence about personal religious and spiritual beliefs can also be reflected in one's writing. To be clear, I do not embrace a style of writing which engages in proselytizing or hagiography. I am simply suggesting that fine literary work can incorporate spirituality in the seamless way it does so in ordinary life. Marilynne Robinson has done it. Graham Greene has done it. So has Chinua Achebe. Why do I have the feeling, though, that today they represent the exception rather than the rule?

I end with the following questions:

o If you write fiction, do you find it easy to incorporate religion and spirituality?

o How is religion best incorporated in a fictional work? Should it be treated any differently than any other subject?

About Stuff

2010-09-18T00:01:00.010-04:00

So Husband comes across a neighbor who inquires about our well-being and then asks, “How’s Judy’s writing coming along?”

Husband says, ‘It’s coming along fine.”

"Is there anywhere online where one can read her work?"

“She’s got a blog,” Husband says.

“Really, what’s it about?”

“Oh, she writes about . . . stuff.”

“Stuff, hunh?”

In defense of Husband, Neighbor is known to hold a point of view about most things contrary to ours. So any meaningful discussion about what my blog consists of might have landed Husband in contentious territory.

When Husband shared the anecdote over dinner, we laughed but I, mindful that I had a post deadline looming, instantly followed with blog existential despair. I still had not nailed what my next post would be about. I had two potential ones sort of written, but each did not seem right for one reason or another. I only post once a week so you might think that blog posting angst would be minimal. Not so. More than once, I end up questioning why I started a blog in the first place and especially why I keep doing it

Husband's response to our neighbor may just have made my life easier. If I just write about Stuff, how hard can that be? At the top of this blog is a section called "About This Blog" in which I say that Pilgrim Soul offers reflections about my fiction, culture, religion, Puerto Rican identity, and writing craft. But it appears that what I really write about is . . . Stuff.

Thanks for reading my Stuff.

Have You Ever Read a Novel Out Loud?

2010-09-11T00:01:00.024-04:00

It took me two months, but I just finished reading out loud Rayuela [Hopscotch] by Julio Cortázar, one of the most innovative and fun novels I have read in a long time. I have never before read out loud an entire novel, not even my own, and I felt as if I had returned to the days when stories were only communicated orally. I was drawn into the story in a multi-sensorial way which engaged me far more deeply than reading silently would have.

I discuss later why I chose to read out loud this stunning novel, a seminal work in Latin-American literature. First, let me fill in some background. Rayuela was published in 1963 by the Argentine Cortázar. Hopscotch, its translation into English by Gregory Rabassa, won the 1967 U.S. National Book Award.

The novel is an, at times, unruly journey through the life of Horacio Oliveira; first, as a expatriate living in Paris; second, upon his return home to Buenos Aires. It often employs stream of consciousness and is presented in two parts. The first, nearly two-thirds of the book, reads like a normal novel. At the end of each Part 1 chapter, one is directed to a specific section in Part 2, which Cortázar characterizes as expendable. Those selections contribute to the philosophical underpinnings of this unusual novel.

If Rayuela [Hopscotch] had to be read out loud to enjoy it, it would not have achieved its current renown. It has enough experimental technique, brilliant narrative, and spot-on dialogue to stretch one’s literary chops. And I have no doubt that the humor which pervades this novel would still be appreciated. That humor is especially remarkable because Cortázar is actually writing about serious themes like the purpose of life and the nature of consciousness.

That said, I have never laughed so hard while reading a novel as I did while reading Rayuela out loud in Spanish. Indeed, I frequently guffawed. I can’t think of the last literary work which has made me do that. I cannot unread the novel so I can’t say that the humor would have been less had I read it silently or in English. Reviews of this novel often cite its humor so it must be evident even with a silent reading.

Why, though, did I read Rayuela out loud? I tend to scan read. It became clear to me early on that I couldn’t do that with this decidedly nonlinear novel. To force myself to read more carefully, I started reading out loud. Doing so heightened my appreciation of Cortázar’s skill in making one feel uncannily present in a scene. The absurdities often present in normal casual conversation and in life suddenly seemed natural and appropriate. Such was Cortázar's skill with language that I often forgot I was reading and not actually present.

On a personal note, reading Rayuela out loud in Spanish recalled for me the Argentine accent and idiom I remembered from when I lived in Buenos Aires. Indeed, I became amused by how easy it was for my pronunciation and inflection to fall into the distinctive Argentine pattern. I even started drinking mate tea again. On another personal note, I want to acknowledge the masterful review of Rayuela [Hopscotch] by blogger Cuban in London, which prompted me to read the book in the first place.

My delightful experience with reading Rayuela out loud brought home for me that reading fiction works best when the reader is fully engaged in a multi-sensorial way. I hope that I will again make time in the future to read another novel out loud. It was an amazing experience.

Le Lo Lai - Puerto Rico's Plena Music

2010-09-04T00:01:00.033-04:00

Plena is a musical folkloric genre of Puerto Rico, whose creation was influenced by African and Spanish music. I could tell you that I am posting this to introduce plena to those not familiar with this type of music. The truth is, I’m posting this because I love the sound. Plena is the music I grew up with, even if it was often in its church incarnation.

Here’s Ricky Martin with a contemporary version of the genre, Pégate [come closer, unite] And you don't have to really understand the words. Just dance along or sing, "Le lo lei le lo le lo lai." That's a quintessentially Puerto Rican expression of pure happiness.

Link for the entire Puerto Rican identity and culture series

A Hero’s Journey - Dr. Joan Barice - Advocate for “Love Never Fails”

2010-08-28T00:01:00.021-04:00

Imagine being desperately ill but so poor you have to wait for hours, penned up with others like cattle, while you await medical attention. When it is finally your turn, you are treated by a harried physician whose first choice likely would not be employment in such a clinic. It is hard to hold on to hope and dignity under such circumstances. Alas, the poor and the victimized often find themselves in such a predicament.

Dr. Joan Barice found this situation intolerable, though not because she was a patient or one of those harried doctors. She simply felt strongly that treating patients with dignity and respect is conducive to health. She took seriously her motto of “Love Never Fails” and worked to transform one such clinic into one in which patients had specific appointments and also enjoyed treatment by the area's best doctors. This achievement would be remarkable all on its own, but it is only one of many such accomplishments from one of the most amazing women I have ever met.

Service to others through healing and love has been the unifying principle of Dr. Barice's life. As a graduate of Stanford Medical School and the Harvard School of Public Health, she could have chosen a life of ease. Instead, she has dedicated herself to caring for the poor, the elderly, and those afflicted by addiction and HIV.

Faced with her enthusiastic demeanor, one would not guess that she suffers from chronic, sometimes disabling, pain. Graced by her gentle spirit, one would not know that this intrepid woman has made 250 skydives and survived a plane crash in the arctic wilderness. Always motivated to keep learning, she lived in China for a year, studying qigong and acupuncture.

Just as she has tested the boundaries of her personal life, she has also been on the forefront of advancing the integration of safe and effective alternative healing therapies with those of conventional medicine. She has done this in clinical settings, in the academic and research arenas, as well as with her professional associations. For her accomplishments, she received the Certificate of Merit, the highest honor given by the Florida Medical Association for contributions to the health of the community and physicians.

The list of Dr. Barice’s achievements is indeed extensive. In this post, I highlight only a few. At the clinic mentioned above, Dr. Barice was instrumental not only in recruiting the highest quality doctors but also in offering education for conditions such as high blood pressure, diabetes management et al.

Another instance in which she made a difference in people’s lives, this time across the economic spectrum, was through her role in getting addiction recognized as a disease to be treated in parity with other illnesses. Her successful activism at the state level eventually led to a similar shift at the national level. This has meant, among other things, that people seeking treatment for addiction could be covered by health insurance.

Dr. Barice's own experience with disabling pain and the helplessness it engendered brought home for her the connection between the mind and the body. In Dr. Barice’s words, “A lot of things we don’t know about, but the importance of the mind/body connection is profound. Thinking can make you sick, and thinking can make you well.”

Her personal involvement with chronic pain has led her to test the limits and the possibilities both of mainstream medicine and of the so-called alternative healing therapies. She believes in accessing the best of both approaches to health care. For treatment of her pain, for example, she has undergone surgery but has also used alternative therapies such as acupuncture, essential oils, and nutritional supplements. Today, she lectures to medical students about the integration of mainstream and alternative therapies.

A discussion of Dr. Barice would be incomplete without also touching on another factor she considers significant for health—the spiritual component. Her strong faith is critical in helping her navigate the challenge of chronic pain. In her treatment of others, Dr. Barice, a devout Catholic, takes very seriously Jesus’ assertion, “What you do for the least among you, you do for me.” Nor would the discussion be complete without her insistence on giving credit to the many who helped and mentored her along the way.

I celebrate Dr. Joan Barice for her unflagging dedication to improving the wellbeing of so many in need. I honor her commitment to integrating the best of conventional and alternative therapies. I am pleased that someone of her caliber champions recognition of the role that mind and spirit play in health. For all this, as well as for her unstinting bravery and strength of character, she meets the definition of a hero. For her willingness to journey down paths less traveled in her search for greater truths, she is deserving of mention in a blog called Pilgrim Soul.

Link to the complete A Hero’s Journey series.

It’s Been Quite a Year

2010-08-21T00:01:00.018-04:00

My Pilgrim Soul adventure started August of last year with a post about the similarities between authors Chinua Achebe, Ron Rash, and, I hoped, one of my novels. To my delight, blogging introduced me to a richly rewarding online community. What's more, for the first time the publishing decision about my writing was, for better or worse, entirely mine. Wow, what a privilege.

So here’s a great big thank you to those who have been with me on my pilgrimage as it evolved from focusing solely on my fiction to embracing broader issues of culture, religion, writing craft, and heroism. Because most of you were not here at the beginning, I am sharing an updated version of one of my earliest posts:

“How the Rediscovery of My Father’s Words Led to My Writing Fiction.”

The first novel I ever wrote was birthed in a time of great upheaval in my life. I had walked away from my business career the year before. My marriage had ended. My father died soon after. In retrospect, it is not surprising that I might try something new like writing fiction. How it actually happened though still astounds me.

After my father's death, I began transcribing his poetry, essays, and sermons to distribute to family and friends. It was challenging work for several reasons. Many of the audio tapes were of abysmal quality. Despite that, his familiar voice still rose above the scratchiness, and I grieved that I would never again hear him speak directly to me. More than once, I almost abandoned the project, convinced I was only prolonging my grieving.

As if that weren’t already challenging enough, my father’s sermons were all in Spanish, no longer my primary language. I found myself rummaging through his huge unabridged dictionary, trying to find words no one used in ordinary language. At least I never heard them. It was often frustrating as I was never sure I had heard a word correctly, given the sometimes awful quality of the tapes.

Several months later, having listened to the final tape and transcribed the last sermon, I sent out the material to family and friends. That was when I realized that, instead of prolonging my grieving process, my transcription project had actually eased my transition into a world in which I could no longer pick up the phone to talk to my dad.

That was not the only surprise. I woke up one morning with the lines of an unfamiliar Spanish poem swirling in my head. I wrote down the poem and, for the next few months, found myself writing poetry in Spanish, something I’d never done before. And, no, I’ve not looked at those poems recently. I’d rather keep alive the memory of how magical a time writing those poems was rather than think about editing.

The period of writing poems in Spanish lasted about half a year. One morning, as surprising as when it first appeared, the impulse to write poetry vanished. Soon after, though, I found myself, again, waking up with material sloshing in my brain that seemed to want to be written down. That turned out to be the beginning of a novel. And for the first time in my adult life, I felt I was exactly where I should be, writing fiction.

In the years since, my writing craft has improved, and I have come to appreciate how the hard work of creating a novel or story involves taking that initial magical spark of inspiration and, through dogged hard work, transforming it into something in which story, characters, dialogue, conflict, and style cohere. I wonder, though, if any of my subsequent novels and short stories would have been written had I not undertaken transcribing my father’s work.

***

Thank you, papi, for your marvelous gift of prompting me to write fiction. Thank you, readers, for sharing my pilgrimage over the last year.

The Ladies’ Gallery by Irene Vilar, a Book Review

2010-08-14T00:01:00.037-04:00

A review of this memoir had been planned well before the author’s legendary grandmother Lolita Lebrón died in early August. I almost cancelled the review as a result. I did not want this to be viewed as yet another eulogy about the woman who in 1954 led a small armed group into the visitor’s gallery of the U.S. House of Representatives. There, after a cry of “Long Live a Free Puerto Rico!” Lolita Lebrón and her companions opened fire, wounding five lawmakers. For that act, which I do not condone, she served 25 years in prison.

Then I realized that I probably would not have read The Ladies' Gallery except for the fact that the author was Lolita Lebrón’s granddaughter. The book is a commendable addition to the body of mental illness memoirs, but what makes it unique is the behind-the-scenes insight into the family of a mythic figure in Puerto Rican history. This memoir is, at times, disturbing because suicide and mental illness figure prominently across generations. It could also be considered a cautionary tale about the perils of pursuing zealously a consuming dream; in Lebrón’s case, the independence of Puerto Rico.

In The Ladies’ Gallery, Irene Vilar alternates italicized sections focused on the author’s prior mental illness with non-italicized sections focused on her unique family history. We discover that when Lolita Lebrón moved to New York in 1941, she turned over her infant daughter Gladys to her mother and then barely saw her again. Thirty-seven years later, Gladys herself will abandon her own daughter Irene Vilar by throwing herself from a moving car. The author, then eight years old, would try to stop her mother, only to be left holding a remnant of lace. Vilar later navigates her own journey with suicidal depression.

The Ladies’ Gallery is a sometimes emotionally raw voyage into desperate mental illness. It also provides a unique view of the lasting impact on a family when a member becomes a controversial and iconic public figure. The intertwined tale of three generations of women is told with honesty and pain. Lolita Lebrón looms large in this tale. About her grandmother, Vilar says, “My grandmother obviously saw herself as a martyr for the liberation of Puerto Rico.” The cost of that martyrdom for Lebrón's extended family was huge. In the end, Vilar compares her grandmother, mother, and herself to Homer’s Sirens, about whom she says, “The song of the Sirens is the great paradox that suicides and madmen know.”

Of potential interest:

Pilgrim Soul posts about Puerto Rico

A Short Story Took Over My Life

2010-08-07T00:01:00.010-04:00

An idea about a woman in conflict came to me, and I immediately recognized its potential for the basis of a short story. I was concerned, though, about taking precious time away from my work-in-progress novel, which already had to compete for time with daily life obligations.

It’s a short story, I told myself. With a brief leave of absence, I could write the story and then return to my novel.

I immediately banged out a reasonably complete 1200-word story. I liked what I saw. It had all the necessary components of a story: conflict, setbacks, resolution, etc. I had even created multi-dimensional characters.

The next morning I read the story with a sinking feeling. It was a good story, but incomplete. So I added emotional shading to my protagonist. I printed the new version, read it, and thought, Great! Then I went off to take care of Life.

The story was there when I approached my computer the next morning. This time, I discovered that the order of the paragraphs (read action) was clumsy. I fixed all that, printed the story, liked what I saw, and moved on to Life.

I arrived the next morning with the intention of researching potential markets for the story. Except I read the story again and discovered that I didn’t like this adjective here or that verb there and, by the way, the woman’s husband had no sympathetic qualities. This meant that the reader’s identification with the female protagonist was in jeopardy because what worthy woman would fall in love with such a flawed man? That happens all the time in real life, I know, but as the writer I had to communicate why she was attracted to him. So I worked on adding dimensionality to the husband. And, yes, printed the story, liked it; you must be seeing a pattern here.

I won’t describe in more detail how this process has repeated itself for the last three weeks, during which time I have not written a single word for my novel. I finally achieved, though, a 1985-word short story which looks to be in more-than-decent shape. And, yes, I feel this way after successive morning readings.

I still couldn't get back to my novel, though. I now had to allot my writing time quota to thinking about where to send my newly minted short story. I opened my literary review files, only to be blasted away by the sheer number of potential reviews to which I could submit my story. Mind you, that master list has long since been culled to include only what I consider to be suitable/desirable markets for my type of writing. That was when I realized that this part of the process was going to take more time away from ... yeah, my novel.

I asked myself if I even remembered anymore what my novel characters were doing and realized I had better reread the work-in-progress novel to find out. I started doing that, only to discover that there is so much to fix, it's not funny. So now I am tearing apart the early chapters of the WIP novel. In other words, I still am not writing new material. At least, though, I am in novel mode, I console myself.

But I haven’t sent out my short story yet! And Life Obligations are grumbling about being ignored. OMG. Isn’t this supposed to be fun?

Religion, My Writing, and Me

2010-07-31T00:01:00.025-04:00

“I am wise in this small respect: I do not think I know what I do not.”
Socrates

It has been a while since I addressed what is, after all, one of the major themes of my fiction and this blog — my relationship with religion. This probably reflects my reluctance, even fear, to address a topic known to raise the hackles of many.

I am also aware of a curious phenomenon, which is that my readers span a startling range of religious belief, from avowed atheists to passionate evangelizers. I sometimes wonder why that is and speculate that perhaps they share or at least respect my impulse to create a big tent under which a veritable bazaar of religious beliefs and disbeliefs can exist.

As stated in my earlier My Religious Primer post: “Except when they resort to violence and excessive proselytizing, I deeply respect the attempt of most religions to seek coherence and order in a world that intrinsically may be incoherent and chaotic.” To this I add that I find the same impulse in nonreligious people as well. You won’t find religions bashed in this blog. Nor will you find proselytizing for any religion or for atheism. I am as prone to cite a Buddhist text as I am to mention a Bible verse or a scientist’s aloof statement regarding matters of the spirit.

But, other than respecting people’s individual choices, what do I believe? In one sense, the totality of this blog describes it. I believe we all follow a deep yearning to be free, to be whole, to live in joy and in safety. I like to hope that we could all love each other even as we don’t know each other. In the end, I believe life is both blessing and mystery.

If that seems childlike, perhaps it is. In one of my novels, there is a tropical scene which inspired this blog’s waterfall images. In it, the infant protagonist escapes her mother’s attention and wanders off to a nearby waterfall. The child's impressions come close to describing my own awe when faced with the numinous dimension.

"She stumbled her way toward the boulder which had a flat ledge about 14 inches off the ground. She scrambled up on the ledge and inched forward on her chest until she discovered below her a stream leading away from a gentle waterfall on her left to another one about 20 feet to her right.

"The air was now so misty it seemed almost iridescent. Even with the nearby rush of falling water, she could still hear birds twittering and the call of a coquí. She slid forward to dip her hand in the stream’s water and slipped. Grabbing the edges of the narrow ledge, she managed to keep from falling into the stream .… Fully covered in mud, she looked around her at the dense green vegetation blurred by mist. She no longer felt afraid. The sounds around her were so soft …. The palm trees, the ferns, the moss-covered pebbles all seemed to glisten, and she felt as if a delicate presence expanded and contracted and wrapped itself around her. "

I embrace the essential Mystery at the core of existence which perhaps only a child can experience without fear. I try mightily not to reduce that Mystery to doctrine. When Socrates says, “I do not think I know what I do not,” that is the extent of the religious wisdom I claim.

A Hero’s Journey – Kafka’s Gregor Samsa as the Voice of Disability

2010-07-24T00:01:00.017-04:00

“As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams
he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect.”
Franz Kafka, The Metamorphosis

Once again, I use a fictional character to help depict heroism. But a man turned insect, you say? Where is the heroism in that? Before I am accused of trivializing disability, let me share that three generations of disabling illness in my family have sensitized me to the very real challenges faced with severe disability. The Metamorphosis, once past the fantastical element, is one of the best depictions I have ever read about the challenges, consequences, and ultimately the heroism associated with disability, both for the individual sufferer and for his caregiving family.

As I read the story, I kept wondering how Kafka was able to capture so poignantly the dilemma of a disabled person and his family. Indeed, no analysis I have come across has honed in on Gregor Samsa as a symbol of disability. Then I found out that Kafka had suffered from tuberculosis, requiring frequent stays in sanitariums, extended support and caretaking by his family, until he died from complications of the illness. I realized then that Kafka had lived the limitations and ostracism associated with disability, an experience he transmuted into that of a man imprisoned in an insect body.

A brief recap of The Metamorphosis: The secure if unexciting life of Gregor Samsa, a traveling salesman, is completely overturned when he awakes transformed into a gigantic insect. His parents and sister, who have depended on him economically, are also thrown into a turmoil over how to integrate this new reality. Though everyone sees him as a terrifying insect, Gregor inside still feels and thinks like a normal person and is heartbroken when others can’t see that. Eventually, after being shunned and attacked by his family, strangers, and a work colleague, Gregor succumbs to a fatal wound and dies, whereupon his family thrives financially and socially.

The trajectory of Gregor and his family is reprised daily all over the world in families living with disability. Many a disabled former head of household exhibits a similar selfless concern for his family. Gregor internalizes his emotional and physical pain while attempting outwardly to guide his family in their new reality. Many a family starts out with the best intentions only to be overwhelmed by the demands imposed on them. Gregor's family, undergoing its own grief and also burdened with caregiving, initially attempts to act honorably, only to be overcome with impatience and disdain.

Ultimately, though, the tragedy is uniquely Gregor’s. He is the one suffering the limited mobility and inability to speak, the rejection, his diminished status, and his having become a burden to those who loved him. Like so many struck with disability, he carries on with the quiet courage that is his most heroic quality. His trajectory begins with a plaintive “What has happened to me?” and progresses through the classic stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. It ends sadly with the realization that “The decision that he must disappear was one that he held to even more strongly than his sister.” He dies not long after.

Gregor Samsa’s story, of course, has wider applicability than the compelling one of disability. Vladimir Nabokov has said about this story, “Kafka’s private nightmare was that the central human character belongs to the same private fantastic world as the inhuman characters around him but pathetically and tragically he attempts to struggle out of that world into the world of humans and dies in despair.”

I focus on Gregor Samsa’s life here, though, to highlight the quiet courage and heroism of people whose ordinary lives are made extraordinary by the tragedy of disability. Often, as in Gregor’s case, that tragedy is transmuted into heroism. Sometimes, as in the case of the Samsa family, it manifests as craven rejection and selfishness. Kafka’s genius is that he was able to communicate all this through a story about a man-turned-insect.

Of possible interest:

Vladimir Nabokov, acted by Christopher Plummer, lectures about The Metamorphosis and reads excerpts. Part I Part II Part III

The complete A Hero's Journey series here

Prince Royce, Shakira, and Blended Cultural Identity

2010-07-17T00:01:00.023-04:00

My car radio had just finished playing Prince Royce’s version of “Stand by Me” when Shakira came on with “NO,” and I thought, what a great way to portray the multicultural reality of most Latin Americans. These two artists demonstrate how racially and culturally we are a powerful amalgam of centuries-old forces which have created a daily reality of intrinsic crossover.

Prince Royce is a young Dominican who grew up in New York. Shakira is Colombian-Lebanese. Prince Royce, by featuring Dominican bachata and interweaving Spanish and English, transformed a classic song. Shakira, while singing entirely in Spanish, created a unique sound by incorporating hints of Middle Eastern intonations.

Because this blog focuses frequently on the blended culture of most Latin Americans, I wanted to share these songs with you. Enjoy.

Turning Fact Into Fiction

2010-07-10T00:01:00.018-04:00

Well before normal retirement age, we sold the house, stored our belongings, and took off on a trawler for three years. We traveled up and down the US East Coast, down the Caribbean chain, reaching Venezuela, and returning via Bermuda.

Recently, I reread the trip log of that adventure, which sometimes reminded me of “Be careful what you wish.” What started out with starry eyes ended with gutted finances. However, this trip of a lifetime also produced an amazing treasure trove of unique experiences. Some were used as inspiration for a collection of short stories.

Though some of those stories about life aboard a boat have been published, most now reside on a computer disk, largely ignored. The trip log mentioned earlier had also been ignored. When I picked it up last week, though, I remembered why our cruising experience had been worth recording both in fact and in fiction. Here is an entry from the trip log:

“Cold, rainy, windy. … Heavily wooded [banks]. Little sign of human habitation. Nice to have this all to ourselves. … sleepy, peaceful ride.”

Sounds idyllic, right? But, below the above entry I entered a curt:

“Terrible storm. 50-knot winds. Turned on our ear 3-4 times.”

That’s it, but that terse last line was the inspiration for ”Faint Outline of a Bridge,” a short story. Here is an excerpt:

“Inchon slammed to starboard. Meg’s legs collapsed, sending her sprawling to the deck. Below, doors banged open and shut. As she shot past the galley companionway, Meg looked down, only to see dishes and pasta, soup cans and dried beans shooting out of the cabinets onto the deck.

Stunned, Meg waited for Inchon to right herself up. At least, she hoped Inchon would come back up. If the boat stayed on her side and water came rushing in, Meg was now too shaky to swim to safety.

At the wheel, Burt shouted, 'Come on, you sorry excuse for a trawler, get up.'

It didn’t happen. Inchon remained caught on her side. Meg couldn’t help it. Vomit dribbled out of her mouth.

‘Time to ditch, Meg! The boat's not coming back.’

She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand and looked up. Burt had abandoned the wheel and now lurched toward the aft cabin door. There, he grabbed two life jackets from a locker and threw one at Meg. The other one dangled from his arm. As soon as he opened the door, the banshee wind came wailing in. Pummeled by waves, Inchon groaned and creaked.

Meg thought she heard water pouring in and couldn’t understand why she didn’t feel wet already.”

It has been said all writing is autobiographical. How much of the above story excerpt was fact and how much was fiction? All I can say is that, while living through our real-life near disaster on North Carolina’s Albemarle Sound, I was not recording the events for posterity. I was terrified, and the terror part of the short story is real. The blow-by-blow account of the incident is likely not. And that’s why I write fiction and not memoir, so I don’t feel constrained by reality. Actually, that’s what makes writing fiction fun.

Why Writers Should Read, Too

2010-07-03T00:01:00.016-04:00

How can a writer find time for both writing a novel and also reading other novels? Already that novel-in-progress is likely to be competing for available time with job, family, blogging, et al. Indeed, I marvel at bloggers who sustain prolific blog and fiction output while also tending to young children or work. Something’s got to give, I think, unless they are simply time management mavens.

To that I say, of course there are aspects of fiction writing that can be organized effectively, like whether to write in the morning or evening, at the kitchen table or office, and so on. My best fiction, though, seems to emerge when I remember that I am not on a widgets assembly line; the widgets, in this case, being words, sentences, and paragraphs.

Given the time constraints then, if I am in the midst of a fiction project, how can I afford to take time to read other novels? The only way I can answer that is by citing recent experience. I just finished reading Saul Bellow’s The Adventures of Augie March. I am also now reading Rayuela(Hopscotch) by Julio Cortázar, which came highly recommended in a book review by Cuban in London. (As an aside, it is interesting, given my recent "Speaking 'Bilingual'” post, that I read back-to-back a book in English and then one in Spanish.)

Both books have upped my game in my current work-in-progress novel. Compared to the lush style of Nobel Prize winner Saul Bellow, my preferred writing style is more spare. Yet, after overcoming my initial impatience with Bellow, I found myself admiring his preternatural talent for description. He does not just say that a downtown crowded dime store is a jumble of inexpensive odds and ends. Instead, it is:

“… a tin-tough, creaking, jazzy bazaar of hardware, glassware, chocolate, chickenfeed, jewelry, dry goods, oilcloth, and song hits … the floor bore up under the ambling weight of hundreds, with the fanning, breathing movie organ next door and the rumble descending from the trolleys ….”

For his part, the seminal Argentine writer Julio Cortázar does an amazing job of recreating the fluid nature of an experience. Life in his fiction (as in life itself) does not occur in orderly logically linked sentences. In a memorable scene, some bohemian friends gather in Paris for an all-nighter of drinking and listening to jazz. As Cortázar describes it, those jazz selections then weave in and out of their thoughts and interactions. An excerpt is difficult to select because the prose sometimes is written in stream of consciousness. The mood of the scene, though, is caught fairly in the following:

“…Bessie’s [Smith] singing, Coleman Hawkin’s cooing, weren’t they illusions, or something even worse, the illusion of other illusions, a dizzy chain going backwards, back to a monkey looking at himself in the water on that first day? But Babs was crying, Babs had said, ‘Oh yes, oh yes it is true,’ and Oliveira, a little drunk too, felt that the truth now lay in that Bessie and Hawkins were illusions, because only illusions were capable of moving their adherents, illusion and not truths….” [translation by Gregory Rabassa ]

Whereas Bellow prompts me to hone my descriptions, Cortázar encourages me to remember that human experience is chaotic. In each instance, these authors have wrested me away from the widgets assembly line and dropped me on a metaphorical cliff edge, where I suffer vertigo as I watch waves pounding the jagged rocks below me. Bellow and Cortázar remind me that good writing is a complex art, not something to be done lazily or mechanically. They have, lastly, dared me to be original.

Cultural Identity – Speaking "Bilingual"

2010-06-25T00:01:00.002-04:00

The language purists among you may not want to read further as you might be scandalized. I am proposing that for those of us who are bilingual, speaking in both languages within the same conversation is not only acceptable but also may be the most optimal way to communicate.

On the phone with my cousin the other day, we found ourselves speaking at different times in Spanish; at other times, in English. We would complete two or three sentences in one language and then follow with two or three in the other. Only after shifting to the other language would I suddenly become aware of the shift. The transition had been that seamless and unconscious.

It was a fun conversation. It was as if my cousin and I shared a private code which freed us to be natural with each other. We didn’t have to confine ourselves to a given language box. Indeed, one of the reasons speaking that way is so rewarding is that it is the only time I can reflect fully in my speech my specific life story. I came to the US from Puerto Rico at a very young age, after which I spoke only Spanish at home and in church, while at school I only spoke English. The two tracks remained essentially parallel, and to a large extent, except in conversations like the one with my cousin, they remain so today.

I am not proposing that we stop honoring the syntax of each language when in a monolingual setting. I believe in mastering the grammar and vocabulary of each language, and it is only polite to be place appropriate. Though I am sometimes guilty of this, I also try to avoid a language shift within the same sentence. However, when two people fluent in the same languages are conversing, why not take advantage of the greater supply of vocabulary and grammatical structures available?

Literature will inevitably reflect this. One of the things I found appealing about the Pulitzer-Prize-winning The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Díaz was his seamless incorporation of different languages and styles of speech: colloquial versus learned diction, English versus Spanish, science fiction/comic book language versus regular English. Díaz seemed to recognize that language can no longer be defined by the classroom. It is a lived language. In our increasingly culturally fungible world, this will likely result in more variety and freedom in our modes of expression. At least I hope so.

A Hero’s Journey – Literature's Forgotten Older Woman

2010-06-18T08:51:00.001-04:00

In literature, and in life, older women are often lumped into the crone category, desiccated and asexual. Brazilian author Clarice Lispector says it well in her short story, “Looking for Some Dignity.” “… she was dry, like a dried fig …. In old men she had seen many lecherous eyes. But not in old women. Out of season.”

Lespector then says: “But inside she wasn’t parched. On the contrary. Inside she was like moist gums ... And she was alive, as if she were someone, she who was no one [in old age].” The latter refers to the invisibility that also often comes with age for women. Indeed, Lispector’s short story describes a frustrating succession of efforts by the 70-year-old Mrs. Jorge B. Xavier to free herself from the physical, mental, and emotional labyrinths in which, as an old woman, she finds herself trapped. In the end, she fantasizes about romance with a famous young male singer, but asks herself whether it might “… perhaps be repugnant [for him] to kiss the mouth of an old woman?” Demoralized by that possibility, she declares, “there!—has!—to!—be!—a!—way!—out!”

You might ask why I have included this subject as part of my A Hero’s Journey series in this blog. Ah, you say, a crone who is also sensual has pulled off an amazing feat! For that alone, she could be considered heroic. Perhaps, but I am also writing about the older woman/crone in her capacity as the “main character in a fictional plot,” one of the definitions of the word hero.

I was also motivated to write about this subject after seeing an older woman described as “a woman of a certain age.” I then started to survey short stories, mostly, and discovered that, apart from mythology and fantasy, the older woman/crone as a positive figure is largely absent. The literary landscape is full of dewy ingénues, mothers, virgins, wives, and whores but, as in real life, a woman past her supposed sexual prime tends toward invisibility.

There are some notable exceptions. In Chaucer’s 14th century Canterbury Tales, the bawdy Wife of Bath is unapologetically lusty. But, even she, who has wed five different husbands, acknowledges the repulsion her latest, younger husband feels about her. “You say I’m old and fouler than a fen.” Despite that, with the emotional wisdom perhaps only an older woman could have acquired, she manages to overcome his repugnance.

In Milan Kundera’s “Let the Old Dead Make Room for the Young Dead,” a younger man tries to convince an older woman to make love to him fifteen years after their one-time tryst. She, though, is afraid both of what her son will think (“…the idea that his mother could still have a sex life disgusted him”) and of what her lover will think (“…if he got her to make love it would end in disgust…”)

Here are some other delightful stories which focus on the older woman breaking out of her archetypal confines. In “Sophie and the Angel” by Cuban author Dora Alonso, the 80-year-old and ultra-religious Sophie engages in flirtation, and perhaps more, with a supposed male angel, scandalizing her family and priest. In Costa Rican author Rima Vallbona’s “The Secret World of Grandmama Anacleta,” a nonagenarian grandmother bursts out of her long-time bed confinement and goes bowling because someone gifts her with bowling balls (thereby acknowledging her as a vibrant person). Margaret Atwood’s “Hair Jewelry” is poignant in its description of the conflicted feelings an older woman has when she comes across a former lover from her youth.

The crone in mythology, literature, and real life presents a complex subject worthy of exhaustive academic treatment. This post is obviously not that. It is merely my attempt to redress an historical imbalance by including the older woman/crone in a pantheon of heroes, where I believe she rightfully belongs. I would love to hear from you about any examples you have of the crone/older woman in literature. Actually, I would welcome any insights you have, related or not to literature.

Sources:

Short Stores by Latin American Women: The Magic and the Real, edited by Celia Correas de Zapata
Beyond the Border: A New Age in Latin American Women’s Fiction, edited by Nora Erro-Peralta and Caridad Silva-Nuñez
The Art of the Tale: An International Anthology of Short Stories, edited by Daniel Halpern
The CanterburyTales, translated by Nevill Coghill

Other A Hero’s Journey Posts:

Nelson Mandela

William Joseph Seymour - A Son of Slaves Sparks an International Religious Revival

Mercedes Sosa

Gilgamesh – The Original Literary Hero
Pancho Valverde

The Secret in Their Eyes

2010-06-12T00:01:00.009-04:00

The Oscar-winning Best Foreign Film The Secret in Their Eyes is characterized by many reviewers as a crime thriller. Pay scant attention to that. While this brilliant film has a crime which needs to be solved, it is also a haunting psychological drama about obsession, justice, retribution, and love. It is a nuanced vehicle for examining the role a singular passion plays in transforming otherwise empty and ordinary lives.

Here is a brief summary of this superbly acted film, whose original title is El Secreto de Sus Ojos. Set in Argentina, starting in 1974, the film’s inciting incident is the brutal rape and murder of a young woman. Her disconsolate banker husband, unable to come to terms with her death, daily visits a rotation of train stations, believing her murderer must some day pass through there. A Justice Department agent starts an investigation that, despite setbacks and false arrests, he cannot stop thinking about, even in retirement 25 years later. In that time, the husband, too, cannot sever the hold his beloved Liliana still holds over him. Along the way, the true murderer, betrayed by his eyes in a photograph, is caught, only to be released by cynical government forces who turn a blind eye as the murderer wreaks revenge. Told in a series of flashbacks with surprising twists, this is ultimately a poignant portrayal of three love stories: that of the widower and his late wife, the agent and his Ivy-League-educated female boss, and the platonic one between the agent and his alcoholic work colleague/friend.

In Spanish with English subtitles, the movie is based on Argentine novelist Eduardo Sacheri's The Question in Her Eyes. For me, it was a delightful return to hearing again the unique Buenos Aires accent and idiom, but I wondered if the subtitles could truly capture the fast-paced dialogue and Argentine slang. My husband, though, enjoyed the movie immensely despite his only modest comprehension of Spanish. This tale of the tension between love and fear will surely linger with you for a very long time.

Water As Leit Motif

2010-06-05T00:01:00.004-04:00

Is there a leit motif in your life and in your writing? Mine is water. Indeed, the defining image of this blog is a waterfall. Its inspiration comes from a scene in one of my novels in which the young protagonist escapes her mother’s attention and wanders off to a nearby waterfall. While there, she experiences a mysterious sense of wellbeing, which she yearns to replicate for the rest of her life. My other novels also feature important scenes on or near water. I have written a short story collection whose common thread is living on boats. So water is an important theme in my writing.

It is also a recurring theme in my life. I have mostly lived within sight or walking distance of large bodies of water. I am in awe of desert panoramas and have joyously hiked mountain trails but my deepest self is drawn to water. Is this because I was born on an island?

The real estate market usually attaches a premium to waterfront property, suggesting that the desire to be within sight of water is common. I’m sure historical reasons (like being next to trade routes), environmental (air quality), and prestige of location et al. can account for this desire. Or is there something else at play here? Since we are as much as 78 % water, is it a matter of like yearning toward like? We spend our gestation in a liquid-filled amniotic sac, so are we just yearning towards our origins?

Moving away from hard science, some ancient religions have deities with water identification. In the African Ifá religion and its Western syncretistic variants like santería, each person is thought to be intrinsically a “daughter” or “son” of a particular deity. Does my predilection for water suggest I could be a daughter of Yemayá, a deity associated with water? Interesting thought.

And that is where I will have to leave this post, at the level of interesting thoughts. I don’t have any answers. I simply observe and wonder, particularly at myself for what seem to be instinctual responses I have not consciously generated and do not fully understand.

I would love to know if you have a leit motif in your life and in your writing.

Farewell to an Old Friend

2010-05-29T00:01:00.024-04:00

Just yesterday, I handed the keys of my aging silver car to its new owner. I watched him open the door and then drive away. Well, that’s a relief, I thought. The car is sold. The transaction went smoothly. I received a decent price. Then I headed for my husband’s car.

Let me tell you something about Husband's car. Its custom license plate makes reference to having fun, something which turned ironic when a policeman stopped him for speeding and said, “You having fun?” Anyway, he had waited for me in his dark green convertible with the top down while I watched the new owner drive away. After our years together, my husband recognized that I needed my sentimental moment of saying good-bye to my faithful companion of many years. I then opened the door of my husband's car, sat down, and noticed absently that music was playing.

Then I realized what the music was, and my eyes teared. He had chosen a CD which, when the album first came out, was a favorite for us while on trips in my old car. All the songs of that Buena Vista Social Club album are still loved, but Chan Chan remains a first among equals. Hearing it was a reminder that the transaction which had just occurred was not a simple head decision. It also involved the heart.

We then went on a drive while Chan Chan played. The wind lifted my hair. The sun warmed my face. I listened to those Cuban old-timers weave their magic while I reminisced about the wonderful moments my old car and I had shared. So here again is my fond farewell to my silver companion, my good friend of many years.

For the impact of music on the brain, you might also want to check out my earlier post:

Musicophilia

Puerto Rican Culture – Mofongo

2010-05-22T00:01:00.021-04:00

mofongo [moh – fohn′ – goh]

All the way home from school, I wondered if my mother’s morning promise would actually happen. Would she or would she not prepare mofongo as she had said that morning? I could barely contain my excitement as I opened our door. An aroma of garlic wafted toward me, but was it from the mofongo? The moment I walked into our kitchen and saw the pilón wood mortar, I knew I had gotten my wish. I didn’t need milk and cookies as an after-school treat. Mami had prepared the mashed plaintain dish for me. I could sit and eat mofongo directly from the pilón. If my nonPuerto Rican classmates only knew what they were missing!

Though mofongo is a traditional Puerto Rican dish, its origins may have been the fufu dish of Africa. It is also now popular in the Dominican Republic and elsewhere in the Caribbean. Indeed, today, I will travel an hour and a half to reach a Cuban restaurant that serves the best authentic mofongo around.

There are probably as many mofongo recipes as there are cooks, but here is a basic one, courtesy of ElBoricua.com:

MOFONGO

(Makes about 3 medium size balls)

Monfongo is made by mashing tostones (twice fried plantains) with garlic, olive oil, and chicharrón or bacon.

3 green plantains

1 tablespoon crushed garlic

1 tablespoon olive oil

½ lb. chicharrón or cooked bacon (crumbled)

Vegetable oil for frying

First make tostones as follows:

green plantains

oil for frying

garlic powder

salt

Slice the peeled plantains diagonally into 1" slices. Fry the slices over medium heat until they soften. Remove from oil and drain on paper towels. Using a tostonera (a press), slightly mash each piece to about half an inch in thickness. If a tostonera is not available insert the pieces between a folded piece of brown-paper sack and press down using a saucer. It is best to press all the pieces first before going on the next step. Dip each piece in warm salted water and fry again until crispy. Remove from the oil and drain on paper towels.

Next, mix together the garlic olive oil and chicharrón or bacon.

Mash the tostones, a few at a time in the pilón (never use a food processor), adding a little bit of the garlic mixture. You will have to work a few slices at a time. When all done mix all the batches together for even distribution of seasoning. Add salt if needed. This is a side dish that needs to be served warm. Keep forming balls until mixture is all used up.

Serve with fried pork meat and fried onions, or with soup, or as a side dish….. yummy!

Even The New York Times has recognized the humble mofongo, though their version looks a little too gentrified for my tastes. You can also have the relleno versions, where the mofongo is stuffed with additional ingredients. Pork, shrimp, and chicken are among the favorites, but stewed beef and other seafood can also be used. All delicious. And, seriously, almost the best part of eating mofongo is eating it right out of the pilón.

Now let me see if I can convince my husband to hop in our car and head for La Carreta Restaurant.

A Hero’s Journey – Pancho Valverde and the Silent Voices of Society

2010-05-15T00:01:00.020-04:00

“Slide In, My Dark One, Between the Crosstie and the Whistle”

Elena Poniatowski

In a shift from this series’ earlier focus on public figures, this time I highlight a hero from what Mexico’s Elena Poniatowski calls the silent voices of society. I do so by reviewing her above-mentioned short story, in which Pancho, a steam train engineer, copes with being displaced by the innovation of the diesel engine.

Poniatowski’s portrayal of this ordinary train engineer is elevated, first, by her sensuously written analogy of the love Pancho has for his wife Teresa and the love he also holds for his train engine La Prieta. “… when Teresa sat on top of him while they made love, … Pancho felt as satisfied then as he did before his engine’s control panel. A dense happiness slid through him.”

The story is also elevated by Poniatowski’s exquisite sensitivity to the psychology of loss. Pancho’s heartbreak is expressed with the resignation of the powerless and dispossessed, “Anyway, he’s used to it by now; he can put up with that and a lot more; he can put up with a helluva lot.”

Both of Pancho’s loves end up betraying him: Teresa, by leaving him for another man; and La Prieta, by being displaced by a diesel engine. Though the doubly heartbroken Pancho tries valiantly to fit into the new modern order, his now obsolete skills offer him no place there. He is further destabilized because Teresa’s absence left him bereft of a soft landing in the face of jarring professional loss.

For a while, Pancho runs the impersonal new diesels while continuing as a union leader. “…the older guys respect Pancho and the younger ones want to be noticed by him. The superintendent feels the same way.” In the end, though, Pancho acknowledges the permanency and enormity of his losses: his Teresa, his beloved Prieta, and his full value as a steam rail engineer.

Pancho then steals with impunity his old engine La Prieta and disappears into the countryside. After a while, “… a rumor is spreading of a runaway engine that makes ghost runs, and at night you can hear how the engineer opens the steam valve and then the mountain echoes with a long lament, like the cry of a wounded animal, a deep pained cry that cuts the mountains of Puebla in two.”

Elena Poniatowski was born in Paris to a Polish father and Mexican mother and has worked as a journalist. She published a novel, Hasta No Verte, Jesús Mío, about Mexican history from pre-Revolutionary days to more recent times. She has also written a testimonial narrative of the 1968 Tlatelco massacre, Massacre in Mexico. Again, melding history with social commentary, she has written a number of other short stories.

Fundamentally, this particular story, “Slide In, My Dark One …,” depicts how an individual, faced with deep loss and armed with limited resources, strives to maintain intact his personal dignity. Pancho’s is a quiet heroism, as is true of so many of the silent voices of society who live challenging lives without acclaim. Pancho made his final heroic stand by disappearing, perhaps in recognition of being powerless to change the new order; in the process, becoming a mythic figure. Dramatic technological, political, and socio-economic shifts are today an increasing reality for many. Let us hope they too can find their voices.

Source Anthology: Beyond the Border: A New Age in Latin American Women's Fiction

Other Hero’s Journey Posts:

Nelson Mandela

William Joseph Seymour - A Son of Slaves Sparks an International Religious Revival

Mercedes Sosa

Gilgamesh – The Original Literary Hero

A Father's Poem

2010-05-08T00:01:00.017-04:00

My father wrote me a poem for my second birthday. He was living in the U.S., far from our sleepy Puerto Rican village, and he mailed the poem to my mother so she could read it to me. The poem exceeded the comprehension of a two-year-old, but the tattered letter became something I resurrected over the years on my birthday.

Originally, I had no intention of posting that poem. After three attempts at writing a post for today, though, nothing seemed particularly appropriate or ready or something. I was about to forgo posting anything new on the 8th when I recalled my father’s poem. Since today is my birthday, I decided to post the poem.

So here it is; first, in the original Spanish; and, second, as translated by me. Poetry is notoriously difficult to translate and furthermore I am not a professional translator so the English product is a mere glimmer of the Spanish original. If anyone has suggestions for improved translation, please leave them in the comments section. I thank you in advance.

You may scroll down for the English translation.

En el día de tu cumpleaños

En el límpido cielo de tu día
un reflejo auroral te está besando.
¡La natura se viste de alegría!
¡Todo parece estar en armonía!
al saludar tu alegre cumpleaños.

Todo ante ti es piélago de ensueños
donde te irradia el sol de Puerto Rico.
¡Todo recibe inspiración del cielo!
Mi lira de cantor en raudo vuelo
llega hasta ti para cantarte un himno.

Hoy, cumples dos abriles ¡qué dichosa!
Dos años que se van … nunca ellos vuelven,
pero dejan en mí la bella historia
de los primeros lampos de tu gloria,
que al celebrar tu día resplandecen.

¡Oh mi Judith! ¡mi cariñosa hijita!
remanso en que se borra mi amargura;
ese aliento, que en Lares tú respiras,
de allá viene a confrontar mi vida,
pues yo siento al respirarlo tu frescura.

Ya que en mi suerte deparó el destino
que en tu día besarte yo no pueda,
oraré con fervor al Dios divino,
que las rosas alfombren tu camino
y de Cristo conserves la nobleza.

On Your Birthday

In the limpid sky of your day
an auroral reflection is kissing you.
Nature is dressed in joy!
All seems to be in harmony!
to greet your joyous birthday.

Everything before you is a sea of dreams
where the sun of Puerto Rico irradiates you.
Everything receives inspiration from heaven!
My lyre of singer in swift flight
reaches you to sing a hymn.

Today, you reach two years. How blessed you are!
Two years that leave ... never to return,
but they leave in me the lovely history
of the first lampos [?] of your glory,
which glow while celebrating your day.

Oh, my Judith, my loving daughter!
haven which erases my bitterness;
this encouragement, which in Lares you breathe,
reaches here to confront my life
because I feel your freshness as I breathe.

Since fate would have my destiny be
that on your day I could not kiss you,
I will pray fervently to divine God
that roses carpet your path
and that you retain Christ’s nobility.

-Miguel Angel Mercado

Which Do You Prefer - Novels or Short Stories?

2010-05-01T00:01:00.008-04:00

“Unlike the novel, a short story may be, for all purposes, essential.”
— Jorge Luís Borges

Recently, I reread the masterful short story "Tell Me a Riddle" by Tillie Olsen, which won the 1961 O. Henry Award. The story’s emotional impact was so powerful that I asked myself how it was possible that a 30-page story could do that. It might seem as if writing a novel is more difficult than writing a short story, but the technical skill employed in Olsen’s story demolishes that argument.

I might be alone in having written novels before I ever got around to writing short stories. In that, perhaps I had fallen prey to the attitude that only novels could be important. I began writing short stories only to satisfy the requirements of a writing class. I complied, but still clung to my first love, writing novels. Over thirty stories later, though, I looked up and said, wow, I really like the short story form.

As I began writing this post about the differences between novels and short stories, I quickly found myself speaking in similes. That bothered me until I realized that perhaps no definition, other than word count, evokes the telling distinction between a novel and a short story. So bear with me as I indulge in simile.

A novelist has to be like a symphony composer as well as an orchestra conductor. In those capacities, the writer is in charge of lots of moving parts, in harmony or disharmony, threatening at any point to run away from the group or remaining happily seamless.

A short story is like a single drop of water which freefalls to a new destination; clear, whole, its parts conjoined in compact form, having a subversive power. Over time, like its relative—the torrent—a drop of water will etch through rock. Carrying the water simile further, the torrent is of course the novel, except that sometimes novels are more like eddies.

A short story, like an exposed nerve, can only be borne for a short period of time. A novel is more like a recent bruise, whose healing allows time to reflect on its cause and also to watch its slow healing.

They are both powerful forms. Indeed, two of my favorite movies of the previous decade bring home this point for me. Both Oscar-winning movies were developed from previously published print material. The Hours was adapted from the novel by Michael Cunningham; Brokeback Mountain, from the short story by Annie Proulx. In both cases, I believe the movie caught the essential power of the source material. Did Cunningham then waste his readers’ time since Annie Proulx packed an equally powerful emotional punch in a tenth the length of the novel? I suspect the answer to this will be as individual as the person who opines. Let us just perhaps agree that both source materials were excellent.

By the way, writing short stories did improve my writing craft. I am a much better novelist for it. I would like to think that even though only a few of my stories have been published, I have also turned into a decent short story writer. I suspect that, once I have done some ruthless editing, more of my stories will be published. I have just sent out for consideration a story which is now half of its former size. Let’s see what happens.

I would love to hear your thoughts about the short story form versus the novel form.

About My Blog and Me

2010-04-24T00:01:00.016-04:00

Some of you may have noticed that last week I modified slightly the layout of this blog. Where the About Me section used to be, I introduced an About This Blog paragraph to identify the themes of Pilgrim Soul. The About Me section moved to the right column.

This change may seem minor, but it reflects an important evolution in me as a blog writer. When I first began Pilgrim Soul in 2009, it was to develop a platform to introduce my fiction. Very quickly, though, blogging turned into something more as I began meeting fellow bloggers from around the world who engaged me on fascinating topics with varied points of view. Their comments have even resulted in my incorporating topics I had not expected to address separately from my fiction; for example, my series on Puerto Rican identity. Pilgrim Soul became my gateway to an international party, and I didn’t even have to go through airport security to get there!

That would have been rewarding enough but along the way, I made another discovery. In writing for Pilgrim Soul, I also met myself fully. The blog’s label gadget surprised me by highlighting just how often I wrote about topics having to do with the intersection of culture and religion. That made me conscious of something I have lived with all my life, but which I had not acknowledged fully, the degree to which I have been formed by that intersection and how it continues to influence me.

In my exchanges with the international community of fellow bloggers, I also became aware of how my personal experience was part of a greater development. The identification of historical shifts is often left to historians after the fact. I believe we are living in a time in which those shifts are so palpable we don’t have to wait for historians. Important cultural and racial paradigms are at a juncture in which the old definitions are faltering but new ones have not yet been well established. I thank my blog for helping me personally to acknowledge and revel in the blessing and challenge of experiencing an historical turning point like this one. I also thank my readers for facilitating my pilgrimage of self knowledge.

Writing on a Budget

2010-04-17T00:01:00.020-04:00

My early drafts are long. A 125,000-word novel is not unusual. Mindful of market realities limiting first novels to a range of 80 to 100,000 words, I then use a scalpel. Usually I start this process grudgingly. After all, which of my darlings will I have to sacrifice, and won’t my novel be mortally wounded by their exit?

Having gone through this process recently with two of my novels, I have made an interesting discovery. A goal of reducing my novel to 100k or less is my best friend. The resulting novel post-surgery turns out to be a much better novel. Mind you, I am usually closer to 100k than to 80k; but, hey, a 25% cut is huge, and I’m proud of myself for pulling it off.

My process has two steps. I usually cut around 10k words just by eliminating passive voice, avoiding thens, ands, buts, ofs, saids, excessive stage direction, etc. That’s the easy part, especially when I see the salutary effect on the word count at the bottom of the screen. The hard part comes in stage two when I must excise an entire scene or, oh my, a chapter, maybe even a character. That hurts.

That 100k taskmaster, though, pierces my sentimental balloon quite easily. Of course, I save the earlier draft so that I can always rescue my maimed darlings. In the meantime, though, reaching that 100k-or-less goal clarifies in no uncertain terms what is at stake. Is this darling really, really necessary? Because if I save her, I might have to kill two other darlings instead of just this one.

I do sometimes gaze longingly at the long novels of prior times and wish our standards had not changed. In this Twitter et al. world, though, it is probably best to discard that sentiment. Otherwise, I might be ensuring that my novels never come out of their inglorious residence in computer memory.

As for those novels already succesfully reduced to below 100k, alas, I have since found out that to land an agent, I probably should reduce them further to fit the even shorter but Totally Cool category, as described in the Guide To Literary Agents Editor's Blog.

· 80,000 - 89,999: Totally cool
· 90,000 - 99,999: Generally safe
· 70,000 - 79,999: Might be too short; probably all right
· 100,000 - 109,999: Might be too long; probably all right
· Below 70,000: Too short
· 110,000 or above: Too long

I was therefore about to wield my scalpel again when I heard from a writer friend:

“You can actually reduce so much that you have only Story left and have eliminated your individuality as a writer, your Voice or whatever it is that makes your work particularly you... which is what agents really want. Maybe the unique Voice of your piece is still strong or even stronger because of all your cuts, but just in case, it might be interesting to focus as much on Voice as on Word Count... at least for a while.”

So I'm taking a breather from editing to finish my current work-in-progress novel. Oh, and to do food shopping, too.

Other relevant posts:

Write What You Know,” Marketing, and Me

What is Multicultural Fiction?

For Whom Does the Writer Write?

A Hero's Journey - Gilgamesh: The Original Literary Hero

2010-04-10T00:01:00.007-04:00

The following selection from The Epic of Gilgamesh was etched onto stone tablets about four thousand years ago:

"Now there is a sound throughout the land
that can only mean one thing.
I hear the voice of grief and I know that you have been taken
somewhere by death.
Weep. Let the roads we walked together flood themselves with tears.
Let the beasts we hunted cry out for this:
the lion and the leopard, the tiger and the panther.
Let their strength be put into their tears.
Let the cloudlike mountain where you killed
the guardian of woodland treasures
place grief upon its sky blue top.
Let the river which soothed our feet overflow its banks
as tears do that swell and rush across my dusty cheeks.
Let the clouds and stars race swiftly with you into death.
Let the rain that makes us dream
tell the story of your life tonight.
Who mourns for you now, Brother?
Everyone who knew you does.
… a cruel fate robbed me
of my dearest friend too soon.
What state of being holds you now? Are you lost forever?
Do you hear my song?"

Written well before Homer’s Odyssey, this epic poem might represent literature's first treatment of a hero. Margaret Atwood has said, “It all started with Gilgamesh.” The poem’s events unfold in what is now Iraq. They recount the tales of demigod King Gilgamesh and his half-wild best friend Enkidu as they undertake dangerous quests and face issues of immortality, love and sensuality, power and greatness, the battle between our mythic and ordinary selves, and the nature of grief.

The poem, first discovered by westerners in 1849, also describes a great flood and an “ark” whose common elements with the Biblical story electrified the western world of the late 1800s. The Epic of Gilgamesh, though, was written about 1500 years before the similar tale told in Genesis. It also predates other Greek et al. recountings of the destruction of humanity through flood. Written in cuneiform on clay tablets, the poem is believed to have been inspired by the real-life King Gilgamesh who ruled circa 2700 BCE.

Because the tablets are fragmented, translators since the late 1800s have struggled to provide meaningful translations. Not only have they had to fill in the gaps of missing sections, but they have also been challenged by differing versions of the epic found in the ongoing series of discoveries.

All of the above would be interesting enough on its own. What brings me to write about The Epic of Gilgamesh here is that I was so struck by the sophistication and beauty of a poem which antedates us by four thousand years, long before Plato, the Enlightenment, and modern psychology. This is a wonderful piece of literature about profound transformation brought about by hardship and loss. King Gilgamesh evolves from a despot into a compassionate leader as a result of his friendship with Enkidu, their challenging adventures, and finally Gilgamesh’s desolation after Enkidu’s death. Rather than continue his search for immortality and dwell on his grief, Gilgamesh was encouraged to do the following:

“What is best for us to do
is now to sing and dance.
Relish warm food and cool drinks.
Cherish children to whom your love gives life.
Bathe easily in sweet, refreshing waters.
Play joyfully with your chosen wife.

“It is the will of the gods for you to smile
on simple pleasure in the leisure time of your short days.”

That still sounds like great advice. If you find an opportunity to read this seminal work, I think you might find it both startling and rewarding.

The above selections from The Epic of Gilgamesh are from the Danny P. Jackson translation.

Other posts in the A Hero's Journey series:

Nelson Mandela

William Joseph Seymour - A Son of Slaves Sparks an International Religious Revival

Mercedes Sosa

Puerto Rican Identity – The U.S. Census and Race

2010-04-03T00:01:00.017-04:00

Filled the census form
and was left shaking my head.
I don’t know my race.

Hispanics carry
the gene pool of the planet.
Europe Africa Asia ….

I marked three boxes
proclaiming my race to be
indeterminate.

Marking three boxes, incidentally, is permissible. However imperfect their designations are, I salute the Census Bureau for at least recognizing that some of us do not fit into the old either-or categories. Indeed, they go to great lengths to accommodate the question of Hispanic origin, with question 8 asking whether the Hispanic origins were Mexican, Puerto Rican, Cuban et al. That said, how does an Hispanic then answer the next question about race? Here are the options:

Question 9. What is Person 1’s race? Mark one or more boxes.

· White
· Black, African Am., or Negro
· American Indian or Alaska Native
· Asian Indian
· Japanese
· Native Hawaiian
· Chinese
· Korean
· Guamanian or Chamorro
· Filipino
· Vietnamese
· Samoan
· Other Asian
· Other Pacific Islander
· Some other race

I’ll stick with the question of Hispanic racial origin and not address why Asians got so many variants, and whites and blacks so few; or even why Koreans, for example, are now considered a race. At least the Bureau was trying to accommodate racial diversity. The problem for me is that because Hispanic racial mixture took place over centuries, identifying racial origin with certainty is difficult. My racial identification has always been problematic. Most people looking at me would instantly identify me as white. A careful look at my features, though, gives evidence that somewhere in my gene pool also existed the Africans and Amerindians who contributed to the genealogy of those now identified as Puerto Ricans.

I marked all three boxes, albeit with a lingering uncertainty about whether I was answering properly. I am not sure, for example, whether the decidedly Asian cast of some of my relatives' features has its origins in Puerto Rico's Taíno Indians or whether it is the result of cross fertilization occurring in the Canary Islands from which some of my ancestors came. The racial mix is there. Where it came from, I really can't say.

Responding to the Census question also made me uneasy because it prompted me to think of the shortfalls we Hispanics still have in our own racial self identification. Hispanics, who have been called The Cosmic Race because of our racial inclusivity, should glory in our broad racial heritage. We are in the vanguard, after all, in a world with increasingly permeable cultural and racial boundaries. Yet, if one looks at the race of actors appearing in popular telenovelas, arguably a substitute for prevailing attitudes, the preponderance of the Caucasian Hispanic is striking. Sometimes when I look at Spanish-speaking television, I feel as if I am in a time warp because the lack of racial diversity resembles what existed in English-speaking media back in the 1970s or earlier. Maybe by forcing a discussion among Hispanics about racial identity, the Census Bureau will have done us a great service.

Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award Quarterfinalist!

2010-03-29T09:19:00.004-04:00

Amazon.com has selected my novel Choosing Sides as a quarterfinalist in its third annual international competition for unpublished and previously self-published novels waiting to be discovered. The winner will receive a publishing contract with Penguin.

Like any Amazon offering, my novel is open to customer reviews. While these do not determine who progresses to the semifinals and finals, the judges may read these reviews as they deliberate. I would welcome your customer reviews. You can download for free Amazon’s excerpt of Choosing Sides here. If you do not have a Kindle, Amazon provides on the right hand column an app for downloading Kindle capability to your PC or Mac; also, for free.

A description of Choosing Sides: Forced by ruinous poverty to emigrate from Puerto Rico to the Midwest, Angélica Miranda's family abandons its rain forest cabin for a two-room walk-up next to busy railroad tracks. They find the stark English language as unwelcoming as the frigid winter and yearn for the palm trees, gardenias, and gurgling mountain stream they left behind. This family of a former sugarcane field laborer is barely making ends meet when Angélica's father suffers a disabling industrial accident. Already esteemed by the Latino Pentecostal community for his spiritual wisdom and kindness, he accepts, after a protracted recovery, becoming their ill-paid minister. Angélica must now navigate two cultural divides: her American versus Puerto Rican worlds and also the secular world of school versus the spiritual one of church. After violent confrontations with her mother, Angélica abandons her parent's church and belief system, only to learn the high cost of choosing sides.

The semifinalists will be announced on April 27. I have my fingers crossed.

“Write What You Know,” Marketing, and Me

2010-03-27T00:01:00.009-04:00

Every writer who has taken a writing class or received a critique has heard, “Write what you know.” It is a good rule, encouraging depth and originality. Defining What I Know, though, can get really complicated. Of all the various facets of a person, which is worthy of being mined for a story? To make self branding effective, should a writer always aim her pick at the same pile of rocks? And why does this matter in the quest to publish one’s novels?

My novels and short stories address such disparate subjects as religion, Latino culture, the immigrant experience, life aboard a boat, the business world, the challenges of poverty, illness, addiction, et al. What I Know comes from having sojourned among the religiously devout as well as the devoutly atheist. I have lived in a mountainside shack and have worked in the White House. I have mingled among the wealthy and powerful and have lived among the humble and destitute. I consider both English and Spanish to be my native tongues. This is the What I Know that has fed my writing.

Viewed singly, samples of my writing might be construed by a marketer to fit any of the following genres: literary, religion/spiritual, ethnic, multicultural, adventure, inspirational, politics, and business. In my understandable reluctance to force fit myself into any single genre, I apparently am not unique among authors. I can hear my compatriot writers chant, “I am not a uni-dimensional being.” The problem is that this self-reinforcing sense of specialness will not help us facilitate our work’s journey from computer disk to bookstore.

I come from a business background and deeply respect the business world’s imperative to create market segments in order to sell effectively. Certainly, in the publishing realm, we recognize that the market for a John Grisham novel might be different than that for a Salmon Rushdie one. If I want someone to invest real money to publish and sell my books, I have to be mindful of market realities. If good writing has its rules of engagement so does good business. Stacy Glick from Dystel & Goderich says it best. “I usually find this [inability to choose a single genre] problematic for the simple reason that a book that is described this way often suffers from an identity crisis, and publishers want to be able to clearly identify how a book will be positioned, marketed, promoted, and at its most basic level, where it will "live" in the bookstores….”

Practical person that I am, I acknowledge that if I want to achieve my publishing dream, I must take a stand about the nature of my work, i.e., choose a genre. This is true even if I believe that all the genres listed above, while each a possible fit, miss the point of my work. I write, I like to think, not about my chameleon-like residence within any of the multiple genres, but about my pilgrimage across their boundaries. If I’m going to play with other people’s money, though, I think it’s a fair requirement to follow their rules.

Luckily for me, I have been told that the quality of my writing is good enough to fit into that, itself, amorphous genre known as Literary. From now on, whenever I write a query letter to an agent, I will call my work literary. Sure, Literary is apparently not selling at the moment, but the issue of publishing fads has to be the subject of another post or else this already long one will never end.

Perhaps for me, though, What I Know is Not Belonging. One of my blog readers once said that “belonging to not belonging” might better define my writing. She wrote that in a comment about my short story “The Cry of Lares,” where the protagonist talks about living with a dual awareness of “…who I’ve left behind versus who I’ve taken up with.”

My deep suspicion is that many of us live with a sense of Otherness that we mask by fostering intense attachment to some group, be it school, nation, sports team, culture, family, advocacy group, etc. My other suspicion is that, in our increasingly mobile and interconnected world, more and more of us will navigate the interstices of previously rigid national and cultural boundaries. In the here and now, though, publishers, agents, and authors must acknowledge those boundaries.

Does this mean that the commercial realities of publishing will favor those who can self define easily at the expense of those squiggling across borders, when ironically the latter might represent an increasing percentage of writers and readers? What do you think?

Related posts

What Is Multicultural Fiction?

For Whom Does the Writer Write?

A library-loving blog challenge. You comment. I donate.

2010-03-20T00:01:00.017-04:00

Today, I join other bloggers who have chosen to promote awareness of and raise funds for local libraries. For every commenter on this post between now and March 27, 2010 12:01 a.m., I will donate $1 to my home town library: East Chicago, Indiana Public Library, up to a total amount of $200.

My hometown’s libraries were an oasis for me when I was young. There, I met great thinkers from centuries past as well as the popular writers of the day. Today, my home town suffers from significant economic hardship due not only to general economic woes, but also because much of its industrial base has left. A substantial portion of the town’s residents, predominantly African American and Latino, live below the poverty line. The East Chicago Public Library once helped me to dream. I’d like to help others do the same.

The challenge is easy. If you comment below, I will provide the East Chicago Public Library a gift. If you don’t know what to say in your comment, “I love libraries” will do.

Note that my pledge is “per commenter”—so if a single person leaves 50 comments, that still only counts once! But you can do more by spreading the word ... please link to this post, tweet about it, and send your friends here so they can comment and raise more money.

If you’re moved to make a flat-fee donation to your library, or to start your own challenge, you are quite welcome, and please leave that information in the comments.

The official time period for this challenge is March 23-27. You may find a complete list of participating bloggers (or other sites where you can help libraries just by leaving a comment!) at the following link:

http://writerjenn.livejournal.com/

UPDATE: 65 wonderful people left comments. Thank you! I increased my contribution to $2 per commenter and have sent the East Chicago Public Library a check for $130.

Puerto Rican Identity - Birth Certificates

2010-03-13T00:01:00.016-05:00

A recent AP article said, “Native Puerto Ricans living outside the island territory are reacting with surprise and confusion after learning their birth certificates will become no good this summer.”

This news got my attention. Puerto Ricans are U.S. citizens at birth, and while this new requirement does not imperil their U.S. citizenship, it highlights the unique political circumstance of Puerto Ricans.

The reason for the new requirement is a recently enacted island law targeted at combating identity theft. According to the U.S. State Department, as much as 40 percent of identity fraud in the U.S. involves birth certificates from Puerto Rico. It would be speculation on my part to say why that might be. Perhaps, for people needing Spanish surnames for entry into the US, a birth certificate from Puerto Rico is akin to gold. Another reason may be, according to Puerto Rican government official Kenneth D. McClintock, that in Puerto Rico, “…. birth certificates were required and filed away for everything in life, every school you registered in, every summer camp, ballet school, little league and other activities. Up until last December schools were broken into, not to steal computers, but old school records.”

Whatever the reasons for or the effectiveness of this new law, what is clear is that millions of Puerto Ricans must get new birth certificates this summer, including more than a third of the 4.1 million people of Puerto Rican descent living outside the island. The other thing that is predictable is that among those millions will be many irritated folks who probably can’t even remember the last time they had to access their birth certificate, but who now must obtain a new one. When was the last time you had to produce your birth certificate?

Related Post:

Who Is Puerto Rican?

My Debt to Ralph Waldo Emerson and Ayn Rand

2010-03-06T00:01:00.015-05:00

At fourteen, I devoured countless pulp romance novels, in addition to Hugo, de Maupassant, Austen, et al. They did not change my life, though, the way two other writers did: Ayn Rand and Ralph Waldo Emerson. In retrospect, this was an improbable combination of mentors since transcendentalist Emerson would have thought little of atheist Rand, and Rand herself dismissed Emerson’s abilities as a philosopher. Perhaps, then, it is a testimony to how unformed a person I was at fourteen that both of them had a towering influence on me at the same time.

The first mentor, Ayn Rand, helped me address my unease with the highly charged religious atmosphere I was born into. I became her devoted acolyte (!), reading all her novels and essays. Indeed, I hung on to her every word for years until, well, I didn’t anymore. I am no longer an atheist . For a summary of my current beliefs, read My Religious Primer post.

Apart from easing my transition into my then atheism, Rand is directly responsible for steering me into a business career. I so admired her fictional heroines, who tackled as equals men in the business world, that I thought, “I can do that!” Much to my family’s amazement, I went on to get my MBA and to embark on a business career that eventually took me to several continents. I left that career quite early, but I remain forever grateful to Ayn Rand for spurring me on to try something which, given my family background, I would never have known existed; much less, tried.

My other mentor, Ralph Waldo Emerson, wrote an essay, “Self Reliance,” which gave wings to my inner sense at fourteen that my differentness should be honored and not repressed. I was so smitten by this essay that I taped excerpts from it all over my bedroom walls. My mother never learned English but when she saw those yellow bits of paper stuck on the walls, she’d grumble, sensing correctly that their content was rebellious somehow. My father and brother did understand English but their reaction was simply to stand in front of the quotes and then turn around to look at me quizzically. My brother might even have said I was nuts.

Recently, my discussion group studied this Emerson essay, and I quickly found myself remembering that bedroom wall papered with Emerson quotes. I also re-discovered the source of the quote I had coincidentally added last year to this blog’s favorite quotes section.

“Insist on yourself; never imitate. Your own gift you can present every moment with the cumulative force of a whole life's cultivation; but of the adopted talent of another you have only an extemporaneous half possession ... Do that which is assigned to you, and you cannot hope too much or dare too much.”

The more mature me can take issue with Emerson on many fronts, but this quote remains compelling in its admonition to honor my uniqueness. This is true not only for my personal life, but also for my fiction, where I always strive to avoid being derivative.

A Hero's Journey - Mercedes Sosa

2010-02-27T00:01:00.027-05:00

In February 1982, Argentine folksinger Mercedes Sosa returned from exile and appeared on a Buenos Aires concert stage for the first time in three years. Simply appearing on stage took considerable courage since at her last concert in Argentina, Mercedes Sosa had been arrested, along with her audience. After that, bowing to international pressure, the military junta allowed her to go into exile, where she first lived in Paris and then in Spain.

Given that background, the atmosphere in the theater was understandably electric on that February summer night twenty-eight years ago. In an auditorium filled to capacity, fans lined the walls and stood in the back, waiting anxiously. As it turned out, no one needed to know Mercedes Sosa’s already stirring history to be captivated. When La Negra's voice, banned by the junta for years, rang out with its first pure chords, all knew they were in the presence of musical genius. As the evening wore on, Mercedes Sosa sang their hopes of liberation and expressed their sorrow about a grief still otherwise unspoken. Whether young or old, all faces shone with tears and joy. It was as if a nation, so long immersed in terror and persecution, found its voice again.

As for Argentina, within two months of this concert, the junta, perhaps sensing their waning support, launched the disastrous Falkland Islands/Las Malvinas war. That ultimately so discredited them in the eyes of the world and their own countrymen that, by the end of the year, the military was out of power and Argentina held its first democratic election in ten years.

Mercedes Sosa died at 74 in October 2009, having lived a remarkable life that took her from a provincial Argentine town to performing in front of sold-out crowds all over the world. In honor of her courage, indeed heroism, in February 1982 and throughout her life, I post these videos of some of my favorite Mercedes Sosa songs.

"La Cigarra" [The Cicada] The song talks of repeatedly being killed and then resurrecting after being given up for dead. The chorus: "I kept singing like the cicada which, after a year underground, sings to the sun; like the survivor, who returns from war."

"Gracias a la Vida " [Thank you, Life] with Joan Baez

"Canción con Todos" [Song with Everyone] This is frequently referred to as the Latin American anthem. One of its lines says: "I feel as I walk all the skin of America in my skin and in my blood runs a river that liberates its flow in my voice."

Other posts in the A Hero's Journey series:

Nelson Mandela

William Joseph Seymour - A Son of Slaves Sparks an International Religious Revival

The Original Literary Hero - Gilgamesh

Peace Is Every Step by Thich Nhat Hanh

2010-02-20T00:01:00.017-05:00

During a recent challenge, as I confronted real fear, I happened to remember the above 134-page book. Someone recommended it to me a while back, but I had fairly quickly set it aside without reading it completely. Now, I found myself drawn to the words of its author, a Vietnamese Buddhist monk, about whom the Dalai Lama has said, “He shows us the connection between personal, inner peace and peace on Earth.” By the time I finished reading the book, I found I could breathe again, even though the challenge was still not fully resolved. As I am grateful for the transformation this book facilitated in me, I thought I would share it with you.

Born in 1926, the author Thich Nhat Hanh is a Zen master, poet, and peace activist whom Martin Luther King, Jr. nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. Finding it necessary to seek asylum outside his native land, he has lived in France in his later years. In addition to promoting mindfulness practice through various means, he has published more than 100 books.

Peace Is Every Step was assembled by friends who used the author's lectures, published and unpublished writings, and informal conversations. The collection is arranged in three parts: 1. “Breathe! You Are Alive;” 2. “Transformation and Healing;” and 3. “Peace Is Every Step.” I suspect some will find the book’s lean style, maybe even its content, disappointing. I know I had to be ready before I could embrace the complexity behind its deceptive simplicity. When I did, the words became pellucid insights into existential truths. At the risk of stripping the book of its elegant intricacy, I share with you some favorite quotes:

The present moment is filled with joy and happiness. If you are attentive, you will see it.

Most of us are victims of a kind of living that is not mindful ….

When you begin to see that your enemy is suffering, that is the beginning of insight.

Understanding … intense suffering and realizing compassion in the midst of it, you become a joyful person, even if your life is very hard.

Peace is available in every moment, in every breath, in every step.

Puerto Rican Culture - Pasteles

2010-02-13T00:01:00.017-05:00

pasteles [pahs tehl' ehs]

An eight-year-old girl squeezes in between her aunts' ample hips and peeks at the mounds of grated tropical vegetables—plantain, guineo verde, and yautía—crowding her mother’s kitchen table. An aroma of garlic and onions wafts in from the huge bowl holding chopped pork, already browned in achiote oil. Near the meat are cilantro, garbanzos, and sweet peppers. And olives! The girl loves, just loves olives, and it takes every bit of self control not to extend her arm through the narrow space between her aunts’ hips to grab an olive and drop it in her mouth. Indeed, she is about to do that when her tía Rosa reaches across the table to pick up a banana leaf to wrap a pastel before it’s dropped in the caldero’s boiling water. The girl tries to back out, but her aunts’ hips now lock her in a soft grip. If she moves, one of the ladies on the pasteles assembly line might notice that the little girl is not doing what a Puerto Rican niña has to learn as a rite of passage—how to make the pasteles she will be preparing for the rest of her life.

Why are pasteles such a big deal in the Puerto Rican firmament? I could say it’s because pasteles are delicious—they are!—but I’ve discovered from some of my nonPR friends that they might be an acquired taste. I wouldn’t know anything about that. In my childhood, this quintessential Puerto Rican dish was always present. It was served on holidays, sold for fundraisers or was available whenever a relative or neighbor took on—thank you!—the arduous task of producing these meat-filled cakes made from soft tropical vegetable dough.

But it’s not just the taste that makes pasteles wonderful. It's the social aspect of the preparation. Making pasteles is so complex and time consuming that it requires a horde of perspiring women chattering on in Spanish, resolving all the ills befalling the extended family. So it’s not just a food event. It's a family one and, ultimately, a cultural one interspersed with a lot of love, sometimes stern, but mostly kind. If it takes a village to raise a child elsewhere, it takes a committee of madrinas to raise an eight-year-old girl (who by now you've guessed was once me) so she understands what it means to be a Puerto Rican woman.

If you really and truly want to see a recipe, click on this picture. The recipe is too long to include in this post.

I’ll end with a memory of my younger brother who used to walk into the kitchen and, noticing the mounds of vegetables waiting to be peeled and grated, would vanish before anyone could say, “Help!” He was of course the first one to turn up hours later when the steaming pasteles were lifted from the big caldero, the first one to smack his lips after eating, even though he’d been repeatedly warned about such uncouthness. Never mind. He was always forgiven. He was, after all, a member of that cadre of foreigners—males—who lavishly praised the skill of the cooks, but who somehow never managed to arrive while any of us were grating vegetables or spooning meat into one interminable pocket of soft dough after another.

Originally, I had another clip, a humorous one which has since been withdrawn by the author. It talked about a more current version of the female comité. It turns out that little boys and men are now included in the ritual.

If you ever get around to tasting or preparing this food, ¡buen provecho!

Other Puerto Rican culture and identity posts:

Who Is Puerto Rican?
Cultural Identity - Part 2
My Puerto Rican Lament - Part 1
My Puerto Rican Lament - Part 2
The Cry of Lares - A Short Story
A Spanglish Christmas Eve
El Cuatro

A Hero's Journey - A Son of Slaves Sparks an International Religious Movement

2010-02-06T00:01:00.036-05:00

In 1906, William Joseph Seymour, a pockmarked, half-blind son of former slaves, began a religious revival in a former stable in working class Los Angeles. Within two-and-a-half years, members of his multiracial Asuza Street mission had fanned out across the U.S. and 50 countries. By the end of the 20th century, this spiritual gold rush had converted Pentecostalism into a mainstream, even dominant, form of Christianity in many areas of the world. Today, with half a billion followers on all continents, Pentecostalism is the world’s fastest growing religion. Some scholars describe Pentecostalism as "the most important event in religious history since the Reformation."

Before I proceed, I want to disclose that, in speaking of Pentecostalism’s vertiginous rise, it is not as adherent. Though I am the daughter of Pentecostal ministers, I left the religion in my teens. If I sometimes sound admiring of what has happened globally to Pentecostalism, it is because I appreciate a fascinating story about how an ordinary black man changed the religious landscape and, by extension, the world. In so doing, he met one of the Encarta definitions of a hero: "somebody who is admired for outstanding qualities or achievements."

On Azusa Street, William Joseph Seymour inspired viable multiracial and socioeconomic fraternizing at a time when such a thing was unprecedented; indeed, criminalized. Though the revival began with poor blacks, it soon spanned the color, gender, and socioeconomic spectrum. Seekers from around the globe—European; Asian; American Hispanic, white and black; et al.—quickly converged on Asuza Street, lured by the riveting stories heard about Holy Spirit baptism, prophesying, and physical healing. Charwoman, business owner, and university president worshipped side by side, drawn to Asuza Street’s fiery revival, which many believed hearkened back to the earliest days of Christianity. And all this was led by an impoverished black man with limited educational and social resources, a man whose dying words would be “a plea for love among the brethren everywhere.”

Unfortunately, Asuza’s early bridging of racial divisions soon ran into rough weather. Its racially diverse worship devolved in less than five years into numerous Pentecostal sects, largely organized along racially segregated lines. It would take until the latter part of the 20th century for these divisions to start healing, and today Pentecostalism is one of the least segregated forms of Christianity. What seems undeniable is that, despite the racial and theological conflicts that emerged later, what many recognize today as Pentecostalism unleashed its global spiritual storm at Los Angeles' Asuza Street under the direction of William Joseph Seymour.

The remainder of this post can be read at my other blog, where I also discuss what Pentecostalism is, more about William Joseph Seymour and the Asuza Street mission, and my family’s involvement in the rise of Pentecostalism in the U.S. Scroll down to the fifth paragraph if you do not wish to reread the above.

Related Post: Music in Pentecostalism

Sources:

The Life and Ministry of William J. Seymour and a History of the Azusa Street Revival by Larry E. Martin, a Pentecostal minister.

Fire from Heaven: the Rise of Pentecostal Spirituality and the Reshaping of Religion in the Twenty-first Century by Harvey Cox, a Harvard University professor. One of the most interesting chapters in this book is the comparison of jazz and Pentecostalism. Professor Cox, a jazz musician but not a Pentecostal, found parallels in the birth, development, and style of both movements.

Another post in the A Hero's Journey series:

Nelson Mandela

Music in Pentecostalism

2010-02-03T00:01:00.006-05:00

Recently, I have surprised myself by segueing from writing about Puerto Rican cuatro music to reviewing a book about music and neurology and, next Saturday, to talking about the origins of the Pentecostal religion. In the end, I concluded that these posts share in common the unique role music plays in piercing cognitive barriers.

In my February 6 post, I will be disussing the special role that William Joseph Seymour, a son of slaves, played in sparking the international religious revival which led to Pentecostalism, which has become the world's fastest growing religion. As a preamble to that discussion, I provide the following two videos featuring the music of two Pentecostal churches. This music is important to hear in order to understand a religion which can never be completely understood in a cognitive sense. It is a religion which must be experienced, and there is no better way to experience it than through its music, always an integral part of its worship tradition. And if these videos sometimes seem like rock concerts, be aware that this style of worship preceded the earliest rock musicians.

Before I end, I want to clarify that, although I am the daughter of Pentecostal ministers, I left the religion in my teens. Despite that, when I hear this rousing Pentecostal music, I am stirred to my deepest core. In the process, I sometimes feel like the perpetual exile, destined to continue hearing the evocative music of her homeland, while knowing at the same time that she can never return. For now, listening to this music will have to satisfy my nostalgia for the environment of my childhood.

The Spanish-speaking Tabernáculo Cristiano. Trust me when I say that you do not have to understand a word of Spanish to appreciate this.

The English-speaking Atlanta West Pentecostal Church. You will notice that about five minutes into the video, there is "speaking in tongues," a distinctive feature of Pentecostal worship.

Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain by Oliver Sacks

2010-01-30T00:01:00.005-05:00

"Familiar music acts as a sort of Proustian mnemonic, eliciting emotions and associations that had long been forgotten, giving ... access once again to moods and memories, thoughts and words that had seemingly been completely lost."

In my recent post about the Puerto Rican cuatro, I mentioned that cuatro music had the capacity to ferry me back instantly to the music of my childhood church. It seemed to me that music of any sort has the ability to penetrate cognitive barriers. That led me to reread Musicophilia, Dr. Oliver Sacks’ book about the intersection of music and neurology. Some of you may remember Dr. Sacks from his portrayal by Robin Williams in the movie Awakenings. In that fictionalized version of a real-life event, a neurologist helps his patient [Robert De Niro] emerge from a decades-long frozen state, if only for a tragically limited time.

In Musicophilia, Dr. Sacks says that "Music, uniquely among the arts, is both completely abstract and profoundly emotional." Drawing on decades of clinical practice, he concludes that, even in the most brain-damaged individuals, “there is still a self to be called upon, even if music, and only music, can do the calling." The implicit suggestion is that people with normal brain function can also access and be affected by music in ways that transcend cognition. For all of us, the “propensity to music … lies so deep in human nature that one must think of it as innate.”

He cites examples of persons with no apparent musical talent who become talented musicians after an inciting event like being struck by lightning. Others, who might have been musically inclined before losing significant cognitive function, are still able to discuss and perform music skillfully. He points to the example of a patient whose leg after a stroke only moved in response to music and how music therapy ultimately enabled her to recover fully.

Dr. Sacks concludes that “… in the nervous system, whatever else is going on, music can act as an activator, a de-inhibitor. In the case of paralysis, it can kick-start a damaged or inhibited motor system into action again.” Both he and others have, as a result, developed highly effective therapies using music to ameliorate the condition of patients otherwise nonresponsive to treatment.

Musicophilia is not the most well-crafted book in terms of its structural narrative. It sometimes reads like a string of anecdotes about experiences Dr. Sacks’ patients have had with music, both as an affliction and as a treatment. For those interested in exploring the influence of music on the psyche, though, it is still a tantalizing read. For those who suffer from or who know individuals with neurological deficits, it is a particularly worthwhile read.

The Literary Lab Honors My Short Story

2010-01-22T09:05:00.002-05:00

The Literary Lab has honored my short story "Asunder." It won the literary category in their Genre Wars Contest. You may read the full story and my responses to their interview questions here.

Thank you, Literary Lab! I loved your blog before this happened, and now I love you more.

Haiku In Honor of Haiti

2010-01-19T12:18:00.004-05:00

emancipation
leader for your hemisphere
you will rise again

Puerto Rican Culture - El Cuatro

2010-01-16T00:01:00.004-05:00

The cuatro [kwah' tro] is Puerto Rico’s national instrument. It belongs to the lute family of string instruments. Its origins are unclear, though it is believed to have existed on the island in various forms for about 400 years. Its name derives from the original four-stringed instrument, which over time evolved into the current version of ten strings paired in five courses.

The cuatro is the uniquely identifying sound of the island’s folkloric music. Always popular in Puerto Rico, cuatro music is experiencing a surge of popularity on the mainland, with cuatro festivals, schools, and concerts now appearing across the U.S. In addition, the cuatro has expanded its range beyond its traditional folk sound into Latin big bands, soloist performances with symphonic orchestras, and even into hip-hop, pop, and jazz. Its traditional sound, though, is still beloved and is represented in the background music of the following video about the fabrication of a cuatro.

The soloist CDs of accomplished cuatro artists like the standard bearer Pedro Guzmán and the gifted Prodigio Claudio are still mostly available through specialty websites such as musicaboricua.com. In the following appearance at a Puerto Rican community center in Holyoke, Massachusetts, Prodigio Claudio demonstrates his virtuosity and range. I apologize for the “home movie” quality of the video but, after viewing all the available YouTube cuatro music clips, I am convinced that the mainstream world is still not paying attention and therefore not generating the polished videos one might hope for.

I end with a personal note about my own experience with the cuatro. Like so many things Puerto Rican, my introduction to the cuatro was at my childhood Pentecostal church. Most of the parishioners of my father’s church were first-generation Puerto Rican immigrants to the mainland. It is not surprising, then, that church music would incorporate the traditional sounds of the cuatro, guitar, maracas, güiro, tambourines, and drums. The music was no less lively or seductive than its secular counterpart. As a consequence, I need only hear the first bars of cuatro music to be carried back, as if I’d never left, to my childhood church. In the process, I am reminded that music, possibly more than any other genre, seems particularly capable of piercing the cognitive barrier that daily living erects.

A Hero’s Journey - Nelson Mandela

2010-01-09T00:01:00.005-05:00

During my holiday break, I read several books which had the common theme of the hero’s journey. That has inspired me to start a new series on this blog, in which I will explore, through book reviews, interviews, et al., what it means to be a hero. I begin with Nelson Mandela who to me symbolizes, probably more than any other person alive, the meaning of heroism. When quotations appear below, they are from Mr. Mandela’s autobiography, Long Walk to Freedom.

Nelson Mandela defines a hero as someone who “…would not break even under the most trying circumstances.” By his own definition, then, Nelson Mandela is a hero. Despite the humiliation and hardship he suffered for much of his life and during 27 years of harsh imprisonment, he managed to retain intact his dignity, his gentle humor, and a spirit of forgiveness. Indeed, those attributes would prove to be essential to the difficult tasks of negotiating the end of apartheid and then rebuilding a nation.

That Nelson Mandela emerged from prison with such grace is particularly remarkable considering the bleakness of prison life, which included these conditions:

· “… could walk the length of my cell in 3 paces … when I lay down, I could feel the wall with my feet and my head grazed the concrete at the other end.

· “… issued three blankets so flimsy and worn they were practically transparent. Our bedding consisted of a single sisal mat … later given a felt mat …

· “We were only permitted to write to our immediate families, and just one letter of five hundred words every six months.”

He was placed in isolation more than once and spent years pounding rocks in his prison job. In demonstrating extraordinary bravery and strength of character under these conditions and during his lifetime, Nelson Mandela defines the meaning of heroism.

Along with F. W. de Klerk, President of South Africa at the time, Nelson Mandela was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1993. This joint honor highlights what Mandela himself has acknowledged, that there were others vitally important to the success of the freedom struggle in South Africa. One of them is Oliver Tambo, the man who, in exile, helped build international support for the end of apartheid. Others are the members of Mandela’s immediate family who “ … paid a terrible price, perhaps too dear a price for my commitment [to the struggle].” He also recognizes “… the unimaginable sacrifices of thousands of my people, whose suffering and courage can never be counted or repaid.”

I leave to South Africans and to history the complex, final evaluation of Nelson Mandela's success as a nation builder. For now, I draw attention to the personal attributes and insights which I find heroic in him. To that end, I provide the following selected quotes from Long Walk to Freedom.

· … prison … conspires to rob each man of his dignity … In and of itself, that assured that I would survive, for any man or institution that tries to rob me of my dignity will lose because I will not part with it at any price or under any pressure. I never seriously considered the possibility that I would not emerge from prison one day.

· I am fundamentally an optimist.

· Strong convictions are the secret of surviving deprivation. Your spirit can be full even when your stomach is empty.

· Prison was a kind of crucible that tested a man’s character.

· … a leader must temper justice with mercy.

· … all men, even the most seemingly cold-blooded, have a core of decency, and … if their heart is touched, they are capable of changing.

· … during all my years in prison hope never left me … I did not doubt that I would someday be a free man.

· … ordinary things are what one misses most in prison, and dreams about doing when one is free. But I quickly realized [when released from prison] that such things were not going to be possible [because he was called by history into negotiating the end of apartheid].

· To make peace with an enemy one must work with that enemy, and that enemy becomes one’s partner.

· The decades of oppression and brutality [due to apartheid] had another, unintended effect, and that is that it produced … men of such extraordinary courage, wisdom, and generosity that their like may never be known again. Perhaps it requires such depth of oppression to create such heights of character. [NM was referring to his colleagues here, but the same sentiments could be expressed of him as well.]

· The brave man is not he who does not feel afraid, but he who conquers fear.

· I always knew that deep down in every human heart, there is mercy and generosity ... Man’s goodness is a flame.

· Freedom is indivisible; the chains on any one of my people were the chains on all of them; the chains on all of my people were the chains on me.

· … the oppressor must be liberated just as surely as the oppressed.

· The truth is we are not yet free; we have merely achieved the freedom to be free, the right not to be oppressed … to be free is not merely to cast off one’s chains, but to live in a way that respects and enhances the freedoms of others.

· …my long walk [to freedom] is not yet ended.

In this post, I have endeavored to focus on Mandela’s heroic qualities for what they can teach us. Not least among those qualities is his understanding that he is simply a man. In his words, “I wanted to tell the people that I was not a messiah, but an ordinary man who had to become a leader because of extraordinary circumstances.”

The ordinary person who becomes a hero will be a theme that I will revisit in future posts of this new series, A Hero’s Journey. In my regular post next week, I will return to my other series on Puerto Rican Cultural Identity.

Relevant links:
A FrontLine online archive of interviews about Mandela's life

Long Walk to Freedom autobiography

A Spanglish Christmas Eve

2009-12-23T11:04:00.009-05:00

In a continuation of my series on Puerto Rican culture, I began writing a post to highlight the importance of Christmas Eve for the Spanish-speaking world and Puerto Ricans, in particular. I started by saying, “Christmas Eve is called Noche Buena [Good Night]. At least traditionally, Noche Buena, rather than Christmas day, was the premier celebration among family and friends. In Catholic families, dinner and music were usually followed by attending La Misa de Gallos [Midnight Mass].”

I don’t usually start my posts by talking about an earlier draft. In this case, though, it’s relevant. As soon as I had written the above sentences explaining the significance of Noche Buena, I thought I’d better consult with Puerto Rican friends and family. I got a stunning reality check. Reactions ranged from “... the relative importance of Christmas Eve and Christmas Day is now, even in Puerto Rico, not that different ...” to “... the real distinction in Puerto Rico is between rural and urban areas ...” to “...the real difference is between how Catholics and Pentecostals celebrate Christmas Eve ...” to “...what’s up with this Noche Buena stuff? It’s Christmas Eve!” That’s when I realized that, in addressing Puerto Rican culture, I was once again caught in an identity maelstrom.

This is why, when I came across the following poem, Chihuahuas y La Noche Buena, it answered a present need. It showcased, by its use of Spanglish, the cultural reality of predominantly English-speaking individuals with roots in the Spanish-speaking world. While this was written by someone of Mexican-American background, it struck a nerve with this Boricamericana. This last term, by the way, a conflation of Boricua and Americana, is one which apparently I just made up because a Google search produced no results. Like the poem, it illustrates the point that, with cultural boundaries increasingly permeable, one of the results is a hybridized language and experience.

Here's the poem. I apologize to those who don't read Spanish, but translating this seems to defeat the purpose. I'll answer any questions you have, though.

Chihuahuas y La Noche Buena

Adapted by Río Lara-Bellon.

'Twas the night before Christmas
And all through the casa
Ni un ratón se movía. ¡Caramba! ¿Qué pasa?
Los niños were all tucked away en sus camas,
Some in long underwear, some in pijamas.
While Mamá worked late in her little cocina
El viejo was down at the corner cantina
Living it up with amigos, ¡carajo!
Muy contento y un poco borracho.
While hanging the stockings with mucho cuidado,
In hopes that old Santa would feel obligado
To bring a los niños both buenos y malos,
A nice batch of dulces y otros regalos.
Outside in the yard there arose such a grito
That I jumped to my feet like a frightened cabrito.
I ran to the window y miré afuera
And who in the world do you think that it era?
Santo Nikos in a sleigh and a big red sombrero
Came dashing along like a crazy bombero!
And pulling his sleigh, instead of venados,
Were eight little chihuahuas, approaching volados.
I watched as they came and this quaint little hombre
Was shouting and whistling and calling by nombre:
¡Ay Milo! ¡Ay Tobee! ¡Ay Frida y Sasha!
¡Ay Todo! ¡Ay Pepe! ¡Ay Paco y Nacho!
Then standing erect with hand en su pecho
He flew to the top of our very own techo
With his round little belly like a bowl of jalea
He struggled to squeeze down our old chimenea.
Then huffing and puffing, at last in our sala,
With soot smeared all over his traje de gala,
He filled all the stockings with bonitos regalos
For none of the niños had been muy malos.
Then chuckling aloud, seeming muy contento,
He turned like a flash y voló como el viento.
And I heard him exclaim (¡ay, es la verdad!)
“¡MERRY CHRISTMAS A TODOS! ¡FELIZ NAVIDAD!”

I now bid you so long for the remainder of the holiday season. I will be posting again on January 9, 2010. Have a Happy New Year!

Guest Blogger - What Is Good Literature?

2009-12-19T09:06:00.007-05:00

One of the unexpected joys of becoming a blogger has been discovering wonderful bloggers from around the world. One of my favorites is A Cuban in London. I so enjoyed his December 6, 2009 post that, with his permission, it is my guest blog post today. Here is what he has to say on the question, What is good literature?

I have never read a novel by Philip Roth. I recently opened the first page of Joyce's 'Ulysses' and closed it again. It can wait. Especially when the introduction runs almost as long as Sylvia Plath's 'The Bell Jar'. I have yet to read Don DeLillo's 'Underworld' despite many people's claim that it contains one of the best baseball scenes ever written, and I am a fan of that sport. In my early twenties I opened and closed in succession, without reading, the following 'masterpieces': 'La Casa de los Espíritus', 'Steppenwolf', 'Death in Venice' and 'Cien Años de Soledad' (since then opened, read and closed but not liked).

In the meantime, though, I have devoured almost all of Milan Kundera's novels, become acquainted with and enamoured of Margaret Atwood's oeuvre, delighted in Salman Rushdie's fiction and become a fan of Zadie Smith's novels and essays.

So, when my Literary Judgement Day arrives what will I declare? What will my excuse be for not liking 'Don Quijote de la Mancha'?

I'm only asking because it seems to me that ever since papyrus was first used during the Early Dynastic Period in Egypt, there has been a need to have a 'must-read' canon to which we, avid bookworms, must kowtow if we want to be accepted in the lap of literature's gods. This attitude, which I shall call 'the dictatorship of the classics' does not take into account human life span, basic needs or cultures. No, the classics' tyrant's only concern is what he/she calls good literature and our incessant pursuit of it.

And what is good literature? By no means I am attempting to replicate Zadie Smith's magnificent fifteen-part essay which I have been uploading on this blog weekly since September and whose latest instalment focused on the 'corrective critic'. But the question of what good literature is has been roaming my mind since many years ago an acquaintance of mine said to me with a frown on his face and a scold in his voice: 'I can't believe you have not read (insert famous novel title here) yet! But you like reading so much, I always see you with a book. You are so eloquent and passionate about literature. I would have thought you already had (novel title again) under your belt.'

Well, for starters I don't wear a belt most of the time. But what most intrigued me and, I confess, annoyed me from my acquaintance's tirade was the surprise on his face that I had not read this 'classic'.

I don't know about your reading habits, my fellow bloggers and readers, but mine are as follows. I have always had a list of books I wish to read out of pure enjoyment, regardless of their literary merits or lack of them thereof. But sometimes, even if I like the author and I am familiar with his/her work, I hesitate before delving into the narrative they offer me. This uncertainty is mainly based on circumstances rather than volition. The will is there, but the spark is missing. The opening sentence is not enough bait for me to swallow the hook. There are exceptions, though. I started twice and put down the same number of times two Toni Morrison's novels: 'Beloved' and 'Jazz'. The third time around I stuck with them - on separate occasions, mind - and I was rewarded with two magnificent literary behemoths, which I am planning to re-read very soon. But my habits, on the whole, remain the same. I am attracted to a book, be it a novel, essay or poetry collection, for its (potential) literary merit rather than its cultural impact. That the two of them coincide oftentimes these days is more down to the fact that I have fine-tuned my search for good books in the last fifteen years and become choosier.

And economics plays an essential role in that decision. I referred to three elements that 'classics tyrants' overlook when it comes to evaluating a work of art: the length of human life, basic needs and culture. Let's examine each of those aspects separately.

From an early age you will be exposed to a lot of reading material. And bar the small fact that your parents or carers will choose the books they'll read to you when you're little, you will be free most of your teenage, young adult and mature life to pick out which novel or poetry collection you want to read. Assuming that you're not a book reviewer - minority -, your main incentive for reading will be to enjoy the work in front of you. And that's without taking into account the literature you will have to read through your student's years or as part of your job. That means that a novel like 'War and Peace' might not be as appealing as, say, a collection of short stories by Edgar Allan Poe. The seven volumes that make up 'À la Recherche du Temps Perdu' will look like a waste of time and money when you realise that it will not take you as long to read Nadime Gordimer's entire catalogue and still have time to enjoy 'Telling Tales', an excellent compilation of short works by some of the foremost authors nowadays edited by the South African writer; I strongly recommend it. But the classics' dictator will have none of it. To him/her (although it's more 'him' than 'her' if truth be told, so I will start using the masculine from now on), to this person, Proust is the apogee of good literary taste. His is the most beautiful type of literature there is and the fact that not many people can 'get' him is evidence of the critic's own infallible ability to judge what's good and what isn't. Some people call this attitude snobbery. I have a stronger word for it which I won't use because I don't like gratuitous swearing on my blog. My conclusion is, though, life's too short, read what you want without feeling you 'must' digest this or that novel because it's a classic.

Basic needs are better expressed through the current economic downturn, a fine euphemism for a financial crisis if ever I saw one. With unemployment and inflation rising, the time and resources for meandering through aisles of old tomes that call out for our attention are diminishing. The dilemma worrying many people at the moment is how to survive in the midst of this credit crunch and that's why the market is awash with escapist novels and what I call crap lit. This is the type of book that Borders (alas, in receivership now) and Waterstones advertise in their 3 for 2 deals. It's probably why the Katie Prices of this world have supplanted the J. M. Coetzees. And although I also stick my snobbish nose up at the former, this phenomenon has a logical genesis. You think of putting food on the table first and then indulge in your favourite pastime afterwards. But to the classics' inquisitor this shift of loyalties is akin to the original sin, without the snake, mind. My verdict on this aspect is that as much as I love books, I need to look after my family first and foremost, and you can burn me at the stake if you want, Mr Despot.

And so we come to the cultural element which I have left for the end because it's always been a bugbear of mine. So, if you notice an axe being swung it's because I have one to grind.

It's logical that in an English-speaking country most literature will be read in that language. The same goes for Spanish or Chinese. It's not surprising that when people are asked to list their favourite novels or poems, the majority will be works in their own lexicon. It is also reasonable to suppose that we tend to think of many of the books we hold dear as the centre of the universe, what my acquaintance referred to as the 'I-can't-believe-you-haven't-read-that' type of literature. After all, some of us are miniature dictators ourselves.

But when the classics' autocrat gets up on his High Chair to list the 100 Best Novels of all time, or nominate the greatest poem of the 20th century, my ears always prick up and my eyes open wide. I'm usually interested in who makes the cut and who is left out. That's also the moment when my cynicism sets deeper in. Because no matter how broad the scope is, the majority of the works enumerated will be usually European and more specifically in English. And that cuts across the board. Whether you're talking about visual arts, theatre or cinema, the bulk of any 'Best...' list will have at the very least an Anglophone undertone. This is not to detract from the very good art that has been produced in North America and Europe, especially Britain, for many centuries. But it is rather disheartening for anyone who, like me, has been exposed to equally brilliant art from an early age in his/her country of origin, regardless of economic outlook.

My first reaction to Stephen Moss's article on TS Elliot (link above) was to write to The Guardian to let him know the names of five poets from Iberoamerica from whose body of work I could select any poem that could very easily compete with TS Eliot's 'The Waste Land' to win the title of 'greatest poem of the 20th century'. They were: Rafael Alberti, César Vallejo, Gabriela Mistral, Julia de Burgos and Mario Benedetti. If you know your Hispanic poetry you will be aware that I did not include any Cuban poets in that list; I did not want to be accused of jingoism. But on second thoughts I decided against writing the letter because it would have been futile. The classics' dictator has two major shortcomings: monoculture and monolanguage. The landscape in which this literary Stalin lives is monochromatic. He doesn't read Alfonsina Storni's 'Voy a Dormir', not because he doesn't like her but because he doesn't know who she was. This authoritarian ignoramus lives in a secluded intellectual island beyond whose shores he will rarely venture. The thought of learning another language in order to delve into a different culture terrifies him. But this deficiency will not stop him from deciding which writers have the qualities that define good literature.

When non-English speaking writers do make it to the aforementioned lists, it is because they are read in translation, with the usual suspects - at least from my neck of the woods - being showered with all kind of compliments: Gabo, Isabel and Borges. This hurts because the plethora of good writers in the Spanish-speaking world who gets left out is mindblowing. Julio Cortázar's 'Rayuela' is a Latin American classic, paving, as it did, the way for other similarly innovative writers such as the Cuban author Guillermo Cabrera Infante whose 'Tres Tristes Tigres' I devoured earlier this year and it's shaping up to be my Book of the Year. Gabo (Gabriel García Márquez) drew heavily from another compatriot of mine, late writer Alejo Carpentier, to become the doyen of the so-called 'magical realism' genre, however it was the islander who first coined the phrase 'lo real maravilloso (the wonderful reality)' in the prologue of his trail-blazing novel 'El Reino de Este Mundo'.

And it wouldn't matter really, whether these non-English speaking writers were acknowledged or not by an Anglo-Saxon public, because they have already earned their kudos in Iberoamerica. But since it is the Germanic lexicon in which the worldwide literary market chiefly operates, non-recognition equals to small or zero sales, so it does matter in the end. As the Indian author Pankaj Mishra pointed out recently in The Guardian Saturday Review, if you want to be published abroad you have to conform to the stereotypical views many readers have of a particular writer's nation. For Cuban authors, it is 'steamy sex or salsa' or nada at the till. This situation results in a Catch-22 for the writer who has to resort to formulas in order to sustain a living through writing. Which in effect is convenient cannon fodder for the classics' tyrant in order to back up his claim of what he believes to be good literature.

I apologise if I have stepped on some toes today. After all most of the people who visit and comment on this blog are English-speakers. So for the record, this is not a diatribe against the Anglo world or European culture at all - good Lord, probably Nigerian or Jamaican writers are in a similar situation - but against that prejudiced classics' dictator who would like nothing better than lock us up, rebel readers who dare to read for pleasure, in a type of Konzentrationslager, where our hours would be devoted to analysing the symbolism of TS Elliot's second chapter in 'The Waste Land': 'A Game of Chess'. Me? I'm off to read some Girondo.

Tales of Wonder by Huston Smith, A Book Review

2009-12-12T11:06:00.001-05:00

Two strands thread prominently throughout my writing and this blog: multiculturalism and religion. More than any other person, Huston Smith, the now 90-year-old philosophy professor and religious scholar, has informed my thinking about the intersection of culture and religion. His landmark book, The World’s Religions, has sold almost 3 million copies and is a standard textbook in introductory comparative religion classes. Now, in the twilight of a long life in which he has published more than 15 books, taught at various universities, hosted TV shows, and traveled the world several times over, he has consented at last to tell his unusual and riveting life story in Tales of Wonder.

Born in a remote Chinese village to American Methodist missionaries, Huston Smith learned early about differing cultural and religious points of view. His was the only Caucasian and, originally the only Christian, family in a place which also had followers of Buddhism, Confucianism, Taoism, and folk religion. This variety would later serve Smith well as he studied the world’s religions. It would turn out to be critical in his ultimately becoming a follower of the major religions, as well as of the folk and primal ones, all while he " ... never canceled my subscription to Christianity."

After he came to the States for higher education, Smith shed his parents' fundamentalist Methodist tradition and practiced a more secular, social activist version of Christianity. In this, he was influenced by his father-in-law Henry Wieman, the subject of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s doctoral thesis. Eventually, under the influence of other western and eastern teachers, Huston Smith came to embrace a mysticism which defines his religious views to this day.

In his introduction to Tales of Wonder, Pico Iyer says, “Professor Smith … created his own field, by not really comparing religions so much as encountering each one in turn and trying to find its burning core as well as its philosophical uniqueness.” Smith then presents his fascinating autobiography in two parts. Part I describes the historical markers of his life. Part II discusses his personal experiences with Christianity, Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam, mysticism, primal religions, and the use of hallucinogenic drugs.

Smith’s amazing life began with a Medieval-like upbringing in China but then went on to his becoming a professor at some of the finest universities in America and being acknowledged internationally as one of our pre-eminent religious communicators. Along the way, he has been on the frontlines of the U.S. Civil Rights Movement, participated in the 1989 Tiananmen Square demonstrations, danced with Sufis, meditated around the clock for days with his Japanese Zen master, and helped Native Americans gain the legal right to use peyote in their religious rites. Even the Dalai Lama has acknowledged Smith as one of his spiritual teachers.

With such a complex tapestry of experiences and with Smith's first-rate writing skills, his autobiography promised to be fascinating. Tales of Wonder met brilliantly the challenge of describing this unique man. It also satisfied his life-long mission to promote understanding among differing religions. As always, Huston Smith appoaches his religious subjects in a phenomenological way, treating each religion with respect and without judgment. Given how divisive religion has been historically, Smith, in his life and in his writing, may have found the secret to helping us all get along.

Why Do I Write? - Part 2

2009-12-09T08:20:00.003-05:00

Whenever I take my role as Writer/Author too seriously, I recall what Stephen King says in his book On Writing: It's “… just another job like laying pipe or driving long-haul trucks.”

Having dethroned the writer as an exalted being, King does not address why some of us choose to be plumbers and others are drawn to, say, writing novels. Of himself, he says only that writing fiction is “… what makes me happy, because it’s what I was made to do.”

Margaret Atwood, in Negotiating with the Dead, dedicates two pages to listing why writers write. The list includes everything from “To record the world as it is …” or to “… produce order out of chaos …” or to “…attract the love of a beautiful woman … man ….” In the end, she concludes that “… any search for a clutch of common motives would prove fruitless ….”

Pablo Neruda in his poem Poet’s Obligation seems to allude to some higher calling. "So, drawn on by my destiny, … through me, freedom and the sea will call in answer to the shrouded heart.”

When asked why I write, I usually respond by saying, I do it because I can’t not write. As described in my post, The Family Business, I seem to be genetically coded for writing.

The tenor of my response changes, though, when I receive a rejection from yet another literary publication or agent. That’s when I scratch my head and wonder why I’m giving so much precious energy to an endeavor that sometimes no one but me sees. At times, I force myself to take a vacation from writing because “I’m not getting anywhere.”

Then I’ll wake up one morning with my fingers itching to get to the keyboard. I will open up a file and soon I will be racing to catch up with whatever is in me that seeks written expression. In the process, I'll feel as fulfilled as I have ever felt about anything.

When that happens, I recall what Stephen King also said when he admonished the writer to find something you are good at and to do it “... until your fingers bleed or your eyes are ready to fall out of your head. Even when no one is listening (or reading, or watching), every outing is bravura performance, because you as the creator are happy. Perhaps even ecstatic.”

For me, writing—except when I’m engaged in what seems like the infinity-minus-one draft of a work—is an exceedingly pleasurable experience; indeed, sometimes ecstatic.

My current work-in-progress is a case in point. I now laugh with my characters. I weep with them. As the project progresses, their faces become clearer. I begin to understand their silences, their rages, their hopes, as well as their disappointments. When I reach this point in any fiction project, I know I have to surrender to the process. Stopping feels like a betrayal of my responsibility to these characters.

It may be, then, that I also write to give my characters the expression they would otherwise not have, but for which they hunger, wherever it is they reside when they are not around me. Indeed, once the characters appear in my life, I suffer from a serious case of inquietud, a restlessness that won’t diminish until I give the characters their due.

I’ll end with something else Stephen King said:

“Writing is magic, as much the water of life as any other creative art. The water is free. So drink.

“Drink and be filled up.”

Why Do I Write? - Part I

2009-12-05T08:12:00.003-05:00

I was about to publish my next post on this topic when I realized that a while back, I had addressed it by featuring a Pablo Neruda poem. I am republishing "Poet's Obligation" as Part I of Why Do I Write? I will publish Part II mid next week. This poem applies to more than poetry, which I also write occasionally. Nobel-Prize-winner Neruda captures well the nearly mystical impulse which drives me to write fiction. The English translation is provided first, followed by the original in Spanish.

Poet's Obligation

To whoever is not listening to the sea this Friday
morning, to whoever is cooped up
in the house or office, factory or woman
or street or mine or dry prison cell,
to him I come, and without speaking or looking
I arrive and open the door of his prison,
and a vibration starts up, vague and insistent,
a long rumble of thunder adds itself
to the weight of the planet and the foam,
the groaning rivers of the ocean rise,
the star vibrates quickly in its crown
and the sea beats, dies, and goes on beating.

So, drawn on by my destiny,
I ceaselessly must listen to and keep
the sea’s lamenting in my consciousness,
I must feel the crash of the hard water
and gather it up in a perpetual cup
so that, wherever those in prison may be,
wherever they suffer the sentence of the autumn,
I may be present with an errant wave,
I may move in and out of windows,
and hearing me, eyes may lift themselves,
asking “How can I reach the sea?”
And I will pass to them, saying nothing,
the starry echoes of the wave,
a breaking up of foam and quicksand,
a rustling of salt withdrawing itself,
the gray cry of seabirds on the coast.

So, through me, freedom and the sea
will call in answer to the shrouded heart.

Deber del poeta

A quien no escucha el mar en este viernes
por la mañana, a quien adentro de algo,
casa, oficina, fábrica o mujer,
o calle o mina o seco calabozo:
a este yo acudo y sin hablar ni ver
llego y abro la puerta del encierro
y un sin fin se oye vago en la insistencia,
un largo trueno roto se encadena
al peso del planeta y de la espuma,
surgen los ríos roncos del océano,
vibra veloz en su rosal la estrella
y el mar palpíta, muere y continúa.

Así por el destino conducido
debo sin tregua oír y conservar
el lamento marino en mi conciencia,
debo sentir el golpe de agua dura
y recogerlo en una taza eterna
para que donde esté el encarcelado,
donde sufra el castigo del otoño
yo esté presente con una ola errante,
yo circule a través de las ventanas
y al oírme levante la mirada
diciendo: cómo me acercaré al océano?
Y yo transmitiré sin decir nada
los ecos estrellados de la ola,
un quebranto de espuma y arenales,
un susurro de sal que se retira,
el grito gris del ave de la costa.

Y así, por mí, la libertad y el mar
responderán al corazón oscuro.

Cultural Identity - Part 2

2009-12-02T19:44:00.006-05:00

My friend Mari Carmen grew up in Puerto Rico but now lives both on the island and on the mainland. Given her unique perspective, I asked her to share thoughts about Puerto Rico and its people. She highlighted the following items. The first applies to Puerto Ricans everywhere, but the remaining items apply specifically to island life.

"The hospitality and warmth of the Puerto Rican people are absolutely charming, notwithstanding all the irony in the reports of violence and crime, etc. They give you food, even if they have little to eat. I remember being a teacher and going to visit parents of Puerto Rican kids after school, and these were poor kids, but they always had rice and beans and tostones [fried plaintains] to share.

"Christmas in Puerto Rico. The 'asaltos' [the assaults], meaning groups of people who wake you up and then have those 'asaltados' [those assaulted] join the group and go on to the next 'asalto' and wake up the next family all night long until it is time to go to the Misa de Aguinaldo [Carols Mass] at 5:00 AM. Sometimes 50-60 people are in the group.

"Las Máscaras de Hatillo. Right after New Year's, I think, in the town of Hatillo, the people get dressed up with máscaras [masks] and they do travesuras [mischief] all around town dressed in costumes and máscaras that resemble vejigantes but are a little different.

"On the feast of San Sebastián in Old San Juan, they close the old town and they used to parade with his statue. Now it has become more of an arts festival, but it is still a big deal sometime in mid January and the old part of the city becomes a walking mall.

"The elections and political participation. Elections are a big deal, and everyone participates (voter participation is over 80% of those registered). No matter how rich or how poor, everyone has a banner or a decal in their car, their house, their balcony. There is a festive air to the elections, and people take their politics very seriously. It used to be that everyone used to vote on the same Sunday at 3:00 PM in an assigned classroom. If you were not there, the doors would close and you lost the opportunity to vote. Now it is more like the States and you can go any time during the day, so long as you have la tarjeta [voter card]."

Cultural Identity - Who is Puerto Rican?

2009-11-28T09:08:00.010-05:00

After reading my first Lamento Borincano post, a fellow blogger asked me to discuss what the general population should know about Puerto Rican culture.

I was about to whip up a response when I stopped to ask myself which Puerto Rican culture I would write about. At the moment, just as many Puerto Ricans live away from Puerto Rico as do on that beautiful Caribbean island. Anyone born on the island is automatically a U.S. citizen. Many of us who self identify as Puerto Rican have actually never lived in Puerto Rico. Some, like me, lived there for a time, but have spent the rest of our lives elsewhere. Some of us speak Spanish only. Others English only. Some speak both fluently. Others manage a hybrid Spanglish. Some can comprehend both languages but speak only one. Some, like me while growing up, interacted in an English-speaking world away from home and a Spanish-speaking one at home. To this already rich mix, I can add many permutations. All I have to do is overlay variables like historical time period, urban versus rural, religion, politics, age, socioeconomic class, intermarriage, skin color, and gender. Given that, my first exploration of Puerto Rican culture is necessarily a definitional one. Who is Puerto Rican?

The first thing I can say is, “We are surely a hybrid bunch.” Yet, that is not a satisfying answer. Given our diversity, what leads some of us to self identify as Puerto Rican, particularly if we have never lived there? Are we Puerto Rican because our parents or grandparents were born there and/or we eat Puerto Rican food, celebrate Puerto Rican holidays, enjoy the music and dances, identify with the island's history and the issue of its political status? Conversely, what is it that leads others to identify us as Puerto Rican? Why, for example, was my green-eyed, fair-skinned father denied housing once the landlord realized papi was Puerto Rican?

I end with a promise that I will explore this complex issue in future posts. In the meantime, I really, really, really welcome comments any of you, Puerto Rican and not, have on the question: Who Is Puerto Rican? I thought I knew what it meant to be Puerto Rican until I had to explain it to someone else so I need all the help I can get.

My next post on this subject will share what a friend, who grew up on the island but now lives mostly on the mainland, considered noteworthy about Puerto Rican culture.

What Humberto, the Bookworm Hamster, Taught Me

2009-11-22T06:34:00.005-05:00

Okay, admit it, who among you was called a bookworm at some point? I’ll raise my hand. When I was a kid, I even used to take a flashlight to bed so I could read under the covers. I still find myself surrounded by books, with their bookmarks at various stages of progress. So when I recently came across the children's book Humberto, the Bookworm Hamster by Mayra Calvani, my interest was piqued. After reading it, I found myself measuring my life against it.

I guess, at heart, I must still be the targeted 4-8-year-old reader. From the start, Mayra Calvani easily drew me into the tale of Humberto the hamster who loves, just loves, books. He turns down invitations from the squirrel, rabbit, and beaver because “I don’t have time. I’m too busy reading.” He reads while he eats, while he exercises on his wheel, even while he brushes his teeth. Rather than play with others, Humberto prefers to have his books transport him to a Paris café, the Egyptian pyramids or Saturn's rings. Then a storm causes disastrous flooding in his neighborhood, and Humberto’s books are about to be swept away. Tempted to focus on rescuing his books, he turns his attention instead to finding food and shelter for his friends. In the process, he learns the true meaning and joy of friendship.

As a self-admitted bookworm, I had expected to find Calvani’s book interesting. What I did not expect was that this beautifully illustrated children’s tale would apply so resoundingly to my current life, particularly my blogging life. Since I began blogging, I have been struck by how much fun it is to write for my blog and also to read other blogs. I can be carried off for hours and, in the meantime, dinner is not prepared, clothes are not washed, my dear husband has not received a hug, and friends and family have not heard from me. Humberto is a powerful reminder that we are social beings in the flesh and not just on the page.

A Short Story or How The Family Business Launched Me As a Published Writer

2009-11-18T12:14:00.002-05:00

After writing about my family's religious influence, posting this short story seems appropriate. I harbor no illusions that it is New Yorker worthy, but it holds special meaning for me. Not only is it fitting in light of my previous post, but it was also the first of my stories to be published. I can still remember when the editor called to say he wanted to publish it. I burst out laughing and then quickly had to explain that I wasn’t laughing at him, that my laughter was one of sheer joy. I was going to be a published writer!

Reader reactions to this story fascinate me. It is interesting that, of all my stories, this the only one that more than one review wanted to publish. Originally, I had not even intended to submit it for publication. I did so only after, in my critique group, the atheist loved it because it made him laugh and the evangelical Christian asked me to share it with her women's group. I must be doing something right, I thought, if I can engage both ends of the spectrum. Incidentally, my husband swears this is a true story. It is not, though the incident could well have happened, given my family background.

Here is the beginning of the story. You can read the rest of it at my other blog.

This is what happened between the amen and the hallelujah. It was a stormy Sunday morning, not one for venturing out to church, certainly not in a foreign country where we didn't even know where to go. It's not that we were faithful about attending services back home. We went barely once or twice a year, but it became a church morning despite the inclement weather.

The amen came in a thunderclap. I was still in bed, half asleep, not quite awake, when the skies split open and spewed out damnation.

"Amen!" my father would have said.

He was a Pentecostal minister, the kind who breathed fire and then salved the pain by the laying of hands. He was a dancing preacher man. Got up in that pulpit and, Lord, he was gone. Something took him over—I won't say the devil got to him because that's what he was preaching against—but his voice strummed like a bass guitar strutting out a beat or a howling banjo stringing out a scream. It was all jumbled up together and in between came the hush. Like a singer dropping to pianissimo, he pleaded with sinners to come up and fall on their knees….

The Family Business

2009-11-13T09:30:00.004-05:00

The evangelical ministry was the Mercado-Santiago family "business." My mother and father were both ordained ministers. Two of my mother’s sisters entered the ministry. Another married a minister. My uncle's wife embraced the ministry, one of several in-laws to do so. Some of my cousins are currently ministers. Nothing pleased my parents more than that their church produced more than thirty ordained ministers who went on to lead their own congregations.

Given that, expectations were high that I would also be a minister or at least marry one. To my parents’ disappointment, I neither became a minister nor married one. In fact, I left their religion altogether. In the interest of full disclosure, though, I reveal that I “attended” their denomination's seminary in my early teens. My overprotective mother, averse to leaving me alone with potentially sinful influences, took me along while she attended seminary. As a consequence, I sat in on every single class of Biblical history and hermeneutics, often silently arguing with the professor.

Some might say I am still arguing. Believer or nonbeliever? On a given day, I might fall into either camp. What I am not, repeat not, is a proselytizer. There is no surer way to get my hackles up than to come up against someone who believes I must be Saved. Aware of just how unfathomable the nature of reality might be, I respect anybody’s nonviolent attempt to explain the meaning of existence, be it in spiritual or non-spiritual terms. Just don’t try to convert me.

There was a second family business, the words business, and that one I did join. I already posted How the Rediscovery of My Father’s Words Led to My Writing Fiction. In the course of his long ministry, my father wrote well over a thousand sermons. As relaxation, he also wrote poetry, some of which is still recited in various churches. After he died, we found a worksheet, complete with editing marks, on which he had been composing a poem about the challenges in the life of a minister. That tattered piece of paper, which I have framed, constitutes the sum total of my material inheritance. Then again, that peek into my father’s interior struggles added to the valuable emotional and wisdom inheritance I also received from him. Here’s the first verse. On my other blog, I have posted the full text.

Cuando a tus puertas llegue el desaliento
When discouragement shows up at your door

y la tristeza minar quiera tu vida
and sadness wants to undermine your life

recuerda del Señor, su buen ejemplo
remember the Lord’s good example

cuando la embarcación estaba pereciendo
when the vessel was about to capsize

serenó a la mar embravecida.
He calmed the tumultuous seas.

Rev. Miguel A. Mercado

Oh, I almost forgot. My father’s mother at one time was supposedly a Spiritualist medium. So, having been surrounded by religious leaders and also being a preacher’s kid, are you surprised that I write about people coming to terms with religion and spirituality?

Pilgrim Soul

A Reminder - What Writers Produce Is Alive

Short Stories and More

Happy New Year

Merry Christmas y Feliz Navidad

“It’s business. It’s not personal.”

Nerve Wracking

Met My Goal!

Now It Is Phillip Roth Who Inspires

Okay to Play Hooky?

Jimi Hendrix Inspires Me

10% or Bust!

As We Remember 9/11

The Rewrite

Newly Published Short Story - “Anna B’s Owner”

The End! Of the First Draft, Anyway

What’s In a Name?

Troubling the Twilight Stillness

My Musical Helpers

Happy Father's Day

Dancing in the Shadows of Love

New Short Story - "Coins Dropping"

Back Story for "The Details"

The Education of a Writer

Visiting Zora – My Latest Published Short Story

When Is Your Work Ready?

A Storyteller's Worth

"Til Next Year" - Flash Fiction

Guilt about Not Blogging?

Meaning of Religion

Caught Peeking - Two Short Stories

More Short Stories Accepted

A Spanglish Christmas Eve Encore

Checking In

I Am Taking a Break

Chinua Achebe and Ron Rash - Themes in Common

A Hero’s Journey - Chinua Achebe – Who Gets to Tell the Story?

A Graceful, Wise, and Humble Man

Back Story – When Is It Appropriate?

A Week with Two Queens

A Hero’s Journey — Ingrid Betancourt, A Complex Truth

Writing and Religion

About Stuff

Have You Ever Read a Novel Out Loud?

Le Lo Lai - Puerto Rico's Plena Music

A Hero’s Journey - Dr. Joan Barice - Advocate for “Love Never Fails”

It’s Been Quite a Year

The Ladies’ Gallery by Irene Vilar, a Book Review

A Short Story Took Over My Life

Religion, My Writing, and Me

A Hero’s Journey – Kafka’s Gregor Samsa as the Voice of Disability

Prince Royce, Shakira, and Blended Cultural Identity

Turning Fact Into Fiction

Why Writers Should Read, Too

Cultural Identity – Speaking "Bilingual"

A Hero’s Journey – Literature's Forgotten Older Woman

The Secret in Their Eyes

Water As Leit Motif

Farewell to an Old Friend

Puerto Rican Culture – Mofongo

A Hero’s Journey – Pancho Valverde and the Silent Voices of Society

A Father's Poem

Which Do You Prefer - Novels or Short Stories?

About My Blog and Me

Writing on a Budget

A Hero's Journey - Gilgamesh: The Original Literary Hero

Puerto Rican Identity – The U.S. Census and Race

Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award Quarterfinalist!

“Write What You Know,” Marketing, and Me

A library-loving blog challenge. You comment. I donate.

Puerto Rican Identity - Birth Certificates

My Debt to Ralph Waldo Emerson and Ayn Rand

A Hero's Journey - Mercedes Sosa

*Peace Is Every Step* by Thich Nhat Hanh

Puerto Rican Culture - Pasteles

A Hero's Journey - A Son of Slaves Sparks an International Religious Movement

Music in Pentecostalism

Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain by Oliver Sacks

The Literary Lab Honors My Short Story

Haiku In Honor of Haiti

Peace Is Every Step by Thich Nhat Hanh