|
|
|
|
|
New
Bilingual Memoir Takes Readers On Lyrical Multicultural
Journey
|
 |
"This is not a memoir written outside the box; it is a
memoir written to obliterate it."
– Publishers Weekly
Susana Chávez-Silverman, a woman living and communicating in
multiple lands, conveys her cultural and linguistic
displacement in a humorous, bittersweet, and even tangible
way in her truly bilingual literary work, Killer Crónicas:
Bilingual Memories, due out this month from the University
of Wisconsin Press.
The meditative and lyrical pieces that make up the book
combine poignant personal confession, detailed daily
observation, and a memorializing drive that shifts across
time and among geocultural spaces. The author's inventive
and flamboyant use of Spanglish, a hybrid English-Spanish
idiom, and her adaptation of the confessional "crónica" make
this memoir compelling and powerful.
As evidenced in the following excerpt, Killer Crónicas
confirms that there is no Latina voice quite like that of
Susana Chávez-Silverman.
It is late en la sultry noche porteña de barrio. We begin to
walk away, right next to the foam-flecked horses (they sweat
right down to their hooves; rico el olor). Nos damos cuenta
de que la perspectiva desde el comienzo de la carrera es, si
cabe, even more thrilling. From here, we can sense the
anticipation of riders and their mounts; the horses turn and
twitch, reluctant or bored, y los jinetes intentan
contenerlos, inspirarlos. They take off like a shot, four
legs pumping together, rider crouched down on the haunches
and then rising up, some of them, nearly vertical. Algunos
caballos fustigados to within an inch of their lives, it
seems- thwack se escucha el crop-mientras otros run like
hell, simplemente porque sí. No látigo required.
The dancers have moved from chacarera and samba to tango
now; la plaza está más atestada que nunca. The night is just
beginning para los vecinos de Mataderos.
Chavez-Silverman began writing the chronicles that make up
this book 2001, when, while working in Buenos Aires on a
book about contemporary Argentine women's poetry, she began
to send bilingual, punning “letters from the southern [cone]
front” to colleagues and friends by email. Her friends and
her editor eventually urged her to collect these intriguing
missives into a book.
“Living in Buenos Aires, 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, Alfonsina Storni, Alejandra Pizarnik, and
before them the foundational Romantics, Sarmiento and
Echeverría)—brought out a sense of self, dis/placed yet
oddly at home, in a cultural, linguistic and even tangible
way,” says Chavez-Silverman. “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 email missives “Crónicas,” inspired by the
somewhat rough-hewn, journalistic, often fantastic
first-hand accounts sent ‘home’ by the early conquistadores,
and refashioned by modern-day counterparts such as Carlos
Monsiváis, Elena Poniatowska and Cristina Pacheco.”
One of the book’s chronicles, “Anniversary Crónica,”
inspired by the June 16th anniversary of both Susana’s
parents’ wedding and that of the so-called “Soweto Riots” in
South Africa, was awarded First Prize in Personal Memoir in
the “Chicano Literary Excellence Contest” sponsored by the
U.S. national literary magazine el Andar.
Chávez-Silverman is associate professor of romance languages
and literatures at Pomona College in Claremont, Calif. She
is coeditor of "Tropicalizations: Transcultural
Representations of Latinidad" and "Reading and Writing the
Ambiente: Queer Sexualities in Latino, Latin American, and
Spanish Culture." She can be contacted at (909) 621-8938.
To request a review copy of the book, contact the University
of Wisconsin Press by phone at (608) 263-0734, by fax at
(608) 263-1132 or by email at publicity@uwpress.wisc.edu.
Pomona College is one of the nation’s premier liberal arts
institutions, offering a comprehensive program in the arts,
humanities, social sciences and natural sciences. Its
hallmarks include small classes, close relationships between
students and faculty, and a range of opportunities for
student research. Visit Pomona College on the web at
www.pomona.edu |
|
|
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
Follow Our News on... |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Quick Links |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Explore Pomona's Web |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Find It |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Search |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
