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Pomona College Magazine is published three times a year by Pomona College
550 N. College Ave, Claremont, CA 91711
Online Editor: Mark Kendall
For editorial matters:
Editor: Mark Wood
Phone: (909) 621-8158
Fax: (909) 621-8203
PCM Editorial Guidelines
Contact Alumni Records for changes of address, class notes, or notice
of births or deaths.
Phone: (909) 621-8635
Fax: (909) 621-8535
Email: alumni@pomona.edu
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Bookshelf:
Voices de Amor
Professor Susana Chavez-Silverman's bilingual
memoir is a "delicate act of seduction."
Killer Crónicas: Bilingual Memories
By Susana Chávez-Silverman
Associate Professor of Romance Languages and Literatures, Pomona College
The University of Wisconsin Press, 2004
152 pages • $19.95
By Erika Gamst '01
“Voice” entails not only one’s words but also the tone, language, form
and function of the
words chosen.
In her new book Killer Crónicas: Bilingual Memories, the voice of Susana Chávez-Silverman,
professor of romance languages and literatures at Pomona College, stands
out as honest,
sarcastic and strangely comfortable—familiar, despite a fresh and
inventive linguistic
approach.
 Chávez-Silverman speaks to her readers in a combination of both English
and Spanish. The
so-called “Spanglish” idiom has been around for ages, and as the author
explains, “Linguists call this ‘phenomenon’ code-switching, and it
happens quite regularly, not only en las Américas, but just about
anywhere two (or more) languages come into contact. Killer Crónicas
is itself a collection of chronicles: letters relating the author’s time
spent abroad, accounts of everyday events, as well as descriptions of
the unforgettable—original and stylistic descriptions of experiences
como lo del Bar El Chino and the ride around town con el taxista de
terror. Through detailed accounts of life in Buenos Aires, Chávez-Silverman
takes the reader into a time and place that still lives and breathes in
her memory, making the experiences livable for those who are willing to
pick up her text and travel with her.
 The narrative—not entirely an autobiography, nor a memoir, prose or
poetry—is a mixture of
ideas, ranging from a reminiscence of time spent at home in an
unfamiliar country to a
candid and therapeutic study of the author’s relationships with
community, places and the
general details of life that are so often overlooked.
Chávez-Silverman herself explains, “These crónicas began as letters:
cartas a amigos
extrañados, love letters to cities, smells, people, voices and
geographies I missed.” She
places within each letter a certain dedication to perfect
correspondence, complete and
detailed descriptions, in her words, “fairly baroque, involved,
soul-searching missives.”
Each of the crónicas is dedicated to a time, location and person (or
people) of rapport,
those people who have inspired Chávez-Silverman to think and to write or
to those people
whose memories have been revitalized through the everyday events that
she has
re-scripted for the reader.
Her “Anniversary Crónica” was awarded el Andar Prize for Literary
Excellence in the
category of personal memoir. The crónica relates her observations and
memories as inspired
by the June 16 wedding anniversary of her parents, coupled with the
anniversary of the
Soweto Riots (South Africa, June 13-16, 1976). The description, an
anomalous comparison of
two unrelated events, is provocative as the reader is encouraged in this
instance to think
like the author: “… forever my parents’ aniversario de boda, linked en
la historia and in
my memory al aniversario de la masacre de los estudiantes en Soweto.”
Over the course of the publication, it becomes evident that Chávez-Silverman
is constantly
rethinking and reinvigorating her method of writing.
“Living in Buenos Aires,” she says about her foremost inspiration, “that
gorgeous, turn of
the century city in a country on the brink of (economic) collapse—home
to many of the
authors and artists I had long admired (Borges, Cortázar, Storni,
Pizarnik, and before
them, the foundational Romantics, Sarmiento and Echeverría)—brought out
a sense of self,
displaced yet oddly at home in a cultural, linguistic and even tangible
way. In Buenos
Aires, the fragmented parts of me, the voices, cultures and places
inside of me, rubbed up
against each other and struck fire. I called my e-mail missives ‘Crónicas,’
inspired by
the early conquistadores, and refashioned by modern-day counterparts
such as Carlos
Monsiváis, Elena Poniatowska and Cristina Pacheco.”
A master of descriptive language, Chávez-Silverman is a writer who has
impressed critics
and contemporaries with an innate ability to illustrate her thoughts.
She draws clear
pictures with her statements, word images that can be envisioned both by
readers who can
easily maneuver the Spanglish text, as well as by those whose knowledge
of Spanish is
limited.
Although it poses more of a challenge to the reader who knows little or
no Spanish, the
text is like word art as opposed to a story, a mingling of the two
idioms, chronicles
expressing delight and desire, nostalgia and anxiety in the same breath.
Whether the
reader is versed in Spanglish or not, the author’s voice is clearly
heard and routinely
met with an appreciation for her obvious mastery of language itself.
When pressed about the free and open quality of her crónicas, Chávez-Silverman
replied,
“It is not entirely true that I put down ‘all my thoughts and feelings.’
... I reveal
exactly and only what I choose. It’s a delicate act of seduction: I like
to tease the
reader and keep her and him wanting more.
“Always more.”
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