Introducing a new series: Nefelibata

Nefelibata: Interviews with Latina Writers

curated and conducted

by ire’ne lara silva

nefelibata

(n.) lit. "cloud walker"; one who lives in the clouds of their own imagination, or one who does not obey the conventions of society, literature, or art

Installment #1: Natalia Treviño

ils:   ire’ne lara silva

NT:  Natalia Treviño

ils: There’s an interesting tension between the title of your book, Lavando la Dirty Laundry, and the poems found in the book. The title makes me think first of Ricky Martin’s “Livin’ la Vida Loca” and then it makes me think of “airing dirty laundry” in public, the gossip, the looks, the rumors, and all the scandal. And while there is plenty of gossip and rumors, what captures me is the earnestness of this collection—its real desire to actually ‘do’ the laundry…to wash, to make clean, to make useful, to care for family history, the individuality of family members, and wounds both old and new. What was it that drew you so powerfully to the metaphor and reality of 'washing'?

NT:  You are asking me to come clean about this title, a title that hurts me to the bone. The title is literally about a family scandal that I discuss in the title poem. But the metaphor I am attracted to is about the science of cleansing. In chemistry class, I learned about the chemical function of soap, which I talk about in my poem, “A Lesson of Elements.” The soap molecule is like a chain, and one end of that chain wants to chemically bond with that which is insoluble in water: grease, and grime. This part of the soap molecule accepts the oil (and is accompanying dirt) and becomes complete when it is attached to it. There are so many lessons in this embrace. What if we do this too? Accept our dirt? Then we can move on right? The water loving end of the molecule, says, ‘Let’s go with the rest of this water.’ Water likes itself, wants to form unions, puddles, and leaves swiftly. I hope many of my poems are accepting the dirt, and leave a clear, bare essence behind. When I do not face my own dirt, I get into trouble. I become false, and the truth is that I will stink with hypocrisy.

ils: At the end of the first section, your concern/connection with Greek mythology takes the foreground. At first, I was rather surprised by the abrupt switch from family poems to Greek poems and back again. It wasn't until after some thought that it occurred to me that this was actually the perfect placement. It seems to me that as a girl your definitions of femininity, womanhood, family roles, etc. were being shaped by the women around you. And while you were learning those things, you were exposed to Greek mythology and that also shaped your ideas about womanhood. What is it about the stories of Penelope, Aphrodite, etc. that so struck you then and continue to speak to you now?

NT: The stories about Penelope and Aphrodite did not really resonate with me until I was really examining marriage and relationships after my divorce.  I began to see literary characters of all sorts in a much softer, more human light. Knowing facts about their stories, I began to imagine their inner dialogues, the feelings of separation Penelope must have felt, the arrogance Odysseus may have felt before he left her, the feeling of rejection from Adonis Aphrodite must have felt, a feeling that would be totally foreign to her as the goddess of love and beauty, and I began to fictionalize these stories in short poems.

Feelings of loss, rejection, and separation are universal and human feelings whether they are about a grandmother on the other side of the border, a wife in South Texas, or a literary mother in a book from the other side of the world. I am talking about the inner lives of women through family and familiar characters, and those characters are a part of our collective imaginations.

In movies, books, and schools, children are exposed to Hera’s jealousy and Zeus’ lust long before they understand those feelings within themselves. For many kids under ten, this may be the first time they get to know someone else’s ‘dirty laundry,’ and is it a wonder that so many claim a love for mythology before they start middle school? It is their dirt attached to the dirt on the page, and reading about dirt allows readers to start to heal, to begin to let go, to understand they can flush it out of their system.

ils: From 'Tortilla Skins': 

"Years after 'Buelito had died, you were a new kind of/ woman. Certain eyes. Laughing, traveling, playing cards. Able to/ wake and say, no, to skip the simmering heat of guisados and/ flame-burnt tortillas by the main noon meal. Bake a cake instead,/ at night. Crochet and smoke at the same time. Speak up around/the men. Accept a small glass of beer...Would you/ remarry, I ask. You are quick to answer: Yes, it is ugly to live/ alone." I think this poem speaks fundamentally to the ambivalence some women may feel in the space between tradition and freedom. Each comes with its own costs and rewards—and is powerfully associated with one’s identity. As a poet and a woman, how do you see your voice negotiating that space?

NT: Imagine extending your arms fully, and at the end of one arm, you are holding on to tradition. It is pulling at you with a mighty force, holding you up, all of the safety and acceptance that comes along with it. At the end of the other arm, you are holding on to freedom, and it is also holding you up, all of the promise and possibilities for happiness that can come along with it. Each force can pull your chest apart if the pull of each is too strong. And many women feel torn right down the middle of their bodies. Do they marry or stay single? Do they have children? Do they only date men?

When we are pulled by opposing forces, what allows us to feel balanced? If I give in to one pull or the other, I will lose balance and fall to that side. I think it takes strength to acknowledge the pull of each, to understand the attraction to and resistance of each. The only way I know to negotiate that space in life is to acknowledge the power of both forces pulling on me and not let one or the other fully win. By resisting the total victory of either, I can keep my balance. There are traditions in my poems that I embrace—love and marriage, motherhood, self-sacrifice, but these traditions do not go unexamined. There are freedoms I embrace as well— to criticize unfair marriage and unfair love, to show the mutilation of the self that occurs in motherhood, to give voice to silenced women who get lost in the struggle.

ils: In “Translating Birth,” you write “My grandmother once told me,/todos mis partos fueron bonitos/of her five births. In Spanish,/ the word for birth is parto,/and being raised gringa,/ I had been translating words to English/ by removing the o. It almost always worked:/banco, bank, santo, saint…/The Spanish for born was nacer. There was no nace./ At least birth and born alliterated in Texas./ Nacer and parto did not. I heard all of my partings were pretty./ Could the language be that wise?/ The child parts. Departs? Departe de meant from whom./ I saw the baby as a part that came from the mother.” In this poem, I see the poet’s need to relate the two languages, to find the places where words mean the same in both tongues, and also to find the places where translation is its own poetry whether beautiful or not.

NT: I love how you see this poem and how you explain it. As a bilingual child, I was constantly looking for a way to understand one language or the other, and when there was a connection between the two, the world briefly made sense. There was common ground between my quiet little house in suburban San Antonio and my home country, all that is terrible, greasy, polluted, candied, delicious, and loving that makes Mexico. There was common language that could float in my imagination, where I could hold a conversation with myself, where it was safe to say it or understand it incorrectly. And when a word had no sister cognate in English or no brother root in Spanish, it was extra hard just to remember what it meant. Every cognate was a rescue boat for me. It meant I could speak and understand the world around me. Words like dog and perro were a challenge. Cat and gato made me feel better, even if I was adjusting the sound a little to make them twins. 

Often the translation is poetry because poetry at its best offers a brief moment of enlightenment, and it is done through an illumination on an already known idea. I can write a poem about a cat, but when I compare a cat to a difficult friend, my reader will see those elements of the cat which align with my metaphor. My son recently wrote a poem with the line, “life is just death stuck in some traffic.” Woah. We are all stuck in the traffic on the way to death. He gave me something new. And translations do this all the time. A friend of mine and I were recently talking about Chinese characters and how we each learned the same thing in two unrelated workshops, that the character for autumn is two symbols, a tree and fire. This makes me see autumn in a whole new light. The trees are red and gold, the colors of fire. I have always loved the smell of Halloween, which is simply the smell of burning leaves.

I think many poets embrace the ugly, the gristled stone within the walls of the heart, the bleeding eyes that are cooked with the barbacoa. Sometimes there is too much emphasis on the gore for the shock value it can bring. There needs to be a reason that illuminates, that sheds light on the subject. The gristle on the heart needs to be compared to a lover or a politician. The bleeding eyes to Jesus. How often do we put Jesus in a taco and eat him alive, calling it border security or the Iron Dome?

ils: One of the poems that most affected me was 'Graft Draft.' No, not just affected me, I broke down crying in public and walked home with tears streaming down my face—because I identify so strongly with that desire to ‘carry’ a loved one’s pain, even if only for a little while. In a very brief space, this poem enacts a journey of healing—not the medical aspects but the emotional and psychological aspects of living with an illness/disease and how we, as humans, make peace with it and bring it into our daily lives. And yet in this poem and others, you don’t shy away from the very real and physical aspects of your husband’s melanoma. What did bringing these experiences into poetry do for you? 

NT: Those poems came very quickly and fluidly after we were past some major stages and worries with his cancer. As Wordsworth says, so much poetry is “emotion recollected in tranquility,” and as my mentor and friend Palmer Hall once said to me, “It takes about ten years to write about it,
doesn’t it?” We carry what haunts us. Taking these things to the page was a form of healing, of giving the emotions their due place, out and exposed in a non-violent manner. I say non-violent because this poem is about ripping off my skin to give it to my husband, to protect him. It is a desperate poem about the desperate feelings we both had when we were in the worst stage of his cancer, the not knowing. The emotions we felt made us want to tear the walls down, made us want to kill or die, and just end the fear.

We dwelled in the not knowing privately, with him not wanting to tell his family overseas in Australia and London until he knew, and me not being able to tell mine here in San Antonio until his family knew. My son was very young, and there was no point in sharing it with him as it would only frighten him, making us feel more desperate facing his questions within the sanctity and safety of our own home. And dealing with the not knowing went on for a long time. First we did not know what stage it was. Next we did not know if he would get chemo and surgery or just surgery. And then there would be another surgery. Next, we did not know if it had spread to the sentinel lymphs, and so we had to wait for yet another surgery. Pressure, pressure, pressure. Fear, fear, fear, surgery on days off with no one from his job knowing either, and we only had each other to turn to for comfort and for release, and we were facing his mortality alone and together. Doctors, nurses, and oncologists were very kind, but casual about all prognoses: “It may go to the brain. Call if you feel ANYTHING weird, ANYTHING hurt. It loves to travel to the eye. And the heart too, so call if you feel ANYTHING strange.” The man feels strange every day. He was over fifty. Oh, and surgery, in four weeks, or three, or, really, it felt like three hundred weeks.

Poetry allowed me to use extreme language to recollect and understand my anguish, my fear, and my sense of guilt. He moved here to marry me, and the Texan sun gave him cancer? The poems flowed easily. It was as if I had put a tourniquet on the wound that wanted to bleed, and in the poems, I bled freely.

ils: I am fascinated by the voice of Mary Magdalene towards the end of this collection:

“Jesus, my love, you didn’t have to do it/ that way, accept the thrush. Wings, flutter/ of beatings, serrated beaks against your back./ We’d only but touched in good ways--/And wife of yours I was,” and later, “Husband, that night, blankets/ I wanted to give you. Your body open/ to the rain. My face—ready for pluck/ and the ants gathered at my feet as you died./ Hundreds upon me before I knew, crawling/ curled like frightened dirt to my feet and legs.” There’s something passionate and unrestrained about her voice, her emotions. I would love to hear more about how this voice came to inhabit you, and to ask what it is about Mary Magdalene that fascinates you so?

NT: Certain stories hit me hard. I think we are all built that way. Around 2005, I heard the stories about Mary Magdalene being the wife of Jesus. It was in the news because Dan Brown called it into question in The DaVinci Code, and news about The Gospel of Mary emerged, as well as the
controversies regarding The Gospel of Thomas. I was floored. I looked into it, and I saw that the language used to defend the idea that Mary could have been the wife of Jesus had to do with Jesus kissing Mary on the blank. A hole is in this Gnostic document right where this word would be, but people presume it is the Coptic word for mouth, and there is language that Jesus loved Mary best.

It is a longshot, a very long shot to think that their marriage would have been deleted and concealed in each of the gospels that are now accepted. I came to inhabit this voice, first, as feminist rebellion against the idea in the Catholic church that Jesus only chose men as disciples. That is the precise reason given why women may not be priests. So many women’s lives could have changed, and they could have had such a positive impact on the world as Catholicism came to rule the West. Maybe.

And if this is true, historically, that she had been his wife, that she may have borne him children, I was even more angry. She would have to be the ultimate silenced woman, silenced because Christianity has been so loud in the shaping of so many cultures and countries. Her teachings, her history wiped out for centuries. This text, which was used to carve out the destinies of so many people through war, through Crusades, through unregulated global power, could have had the voice of a woman in it, a voice of an intimate soul, perhaps a voice of reason.

Again, there is no hard evidence that they were married, and it is all fiction in my book, even blasphemous, but the possibilities stirred my imagination, and I wanted to know what would she say about the last events of his life if she had been his wife as well as his disciple.

ils: In this book, we see you, the poet, as witness, as myth-reader, as grand-daughter, as daughter, as niece, and later, as mother and wife—we see you always in relationship to someone or something else. I’m curious to learn more about where you are—as poet/writer, as an immigrant, as a woman of color, as an academic, as a feminist, as a Latina. What other stories are you still wanting to tell?

NT: I am entering new spaces, collecting what I can learn about Mary for my new poetry collection, not Mary Magdalene, but Mary Mary, the mother of the big JC. I am doing this as a gentle way to finally grieve for my grandmother Socorro’s death and celebrating her life. There are many explorations in front of me with this journey, and it has taken me over five years since her death for me to begin. I think I am delaying grieving not just for her, but for Mexico, all of its grittiness, and all of its beauty that I always accepted as my home country. My grandmother’s death coincides with a great separation I have now with Mexico.

When she died, several important family traditions also ended. And her death came just before the increase in violence in her home city of Monterrey, which kept me from my frequent travels there, and so the grief over my loss became not only about her, but for a connection to home. 

By exploring Mary, I am entering the spaces I once inhabited with my grandmother, a space of unconditional love, motherhood, and endless storytelling. My grandmother worshipped Mary every day for over an hour a day, and the stories about Mary echo in apparition stories, in healing stories, in pilgrimage stories, and in her being used for the purposes of colonization of Mexico via the apparition story of the Virgen de Guadalupe and the Virgen de San Juan de los Lagos. I want to create stories out of facts and learn more about the sacred. My dear friend and mentor, Sandra Cisneros says writing is prayer, and I cannot agree more with that.

I am also in the final stages of completing my novel, La Cruzada. This is a story about a teenager named Berta who leaves her three-year-old daughter to come live in San Antonio as an indentured servant. She is a compilation of several women I have known who have made this difficult choice, and who suffered greatly as a result. I am moved by their silent suffering, their lack of education, and their lack of options. Often, their only choice in Mexico is prostitution. They have babies, and they want to keep their babies alive. They will do anything. What teenager knows how a decision will impact her? I have been working on this novel for over seven years, first as a short story, but it grew and grew. I feel for the mothers, and I desperately want more people to understand their position. When we understand their ‘dirty laundry,’ we might act more like neighbors than enemies.  

**

Born in Mexico City and raised in San Antonio, Texas, Natalia Treviño is the author of Lavando La Dirty Laundry, (Mongrel Empire Press, 2014). She is an Associate Professor of Englishat Northwest Vista College and a member of the Macondo Foundation. Natalia completed her Master’s degree in English at The University of Texas, and her MFA from The University of Nebraska at Omaha. Her poems have won the Alfredo Moral de Cisneros Award, the Wendy Barker Creative Writing Award, the  Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Prize, and the San Antonio Artist Foundation Literary Prize. Her poems have appeared in several literary journals including Bordersenses, Borderlands, Texas Poetry Review, Sugar House Review, burntdistrict, and Voices de la Luna. She has been anthologized as a poet, fiction, and non-fiction writer, with fiction appearing in Curbstone Press’ Mirrors Beneath the Earth,and essays inShifting Balance Sheets:Women’s Stories of Naturalized Citizens and Complex Allegiances: Constellations of Immigration. She is finishing her first novel, La Cruzada, a testimony of a teenage mother who leaves her daughter and her home in Mexico to work in the United States in an arrangement meant to last two years. Having experienced a bi-national childhood, she hopes to raise understanding between people on both sides of the Mexican-American border. She

lives with her husband and son just outside of San Antonio. Website: nataliatrevino.com  

*

ire’ne lara silva lives in Austin, TX, and is the author of furia (poetry, Mouthfeel Press,

2010) which received an Honorable Mention for the 2011 International Latino Book Award and flesh to bone (short stories, Aunt Lute Books, 2013) which won the 2013 Premio Aztlan, placed 2nd for the 2014 NACCS Tejas Foco Award for Fiction, and was a finalist for Foreward Review’s Book of the Year Award in Multicultural Fiction. ire’ne is the recipient of the 2014 Alredo Cisneros del Moral Award, the Fiction Finalist for AROHO’s 2013 Gift of Freedom Award, and the 2008 recipient of the Gloria Anzaldua Milagro Award, as well as a Macondo Workshop member and  CantoMundo Inaugural Fellow. She and Moises S. L. Lara are currently co-coordinators for the Flor De Nopal Literary Festival. 

Natalia Treviño on the re-birth of Macondo at the Guadalupe Cultural Arts Center

Letras Latinas Blog:

First of all, thank you for agreeing to this modest interview. Before we get to the matter at hand—the Macondo Writers’ Workshop prospective re-birth—could you briefly share with the readers of Letras Latinas Blog what the Macondo Writers’ Workshop is, generally speaking. And more specifically, what it has meant to you?

Natalia Treviño:

Francisco, I’m thrilled to share the news we have about the developments about Macondo here in Letras Latinas Blog because I imagine that many of your readers and many Macondo members are already literary siblings, interested in letras, and the life-changing power that these letras have when used in a socially conscious way. It is with awe that I attempt to describe The Macondo Writers’ Workshop and what is has meant to me because it truly did generate a transformation in my life, not only as a writer, but as a person. Generally speaking, the Macondo Writers’ Workshop is a weeklong residency for writers who are socially engaged and committed to changing the world through creative and non-violent means. I can easily compare it to the pace and caliber of an MFA residency, but with special perks that just do not happen in MFA programs. So many members who have their MFA’s from all over the country, have told me the same thing year after year: “I learned more this week than I did in my entire MFA program.” Truly, they say this with a genuine look of astonishment in their new eyes. That look has become the recognizable look of Macondo membership, a look of warmth, disbelief, and relief all mixed into one soft expression.

At the Worshop, there is a very tailored structure. There are multiple workshops where writers are working on new material together, giving and getting necessary feedback. The workshops are taught by writers like Sandra Cisneros, the founder of Macondo, Luis Rodriguez, Ai, and many others. There is magic in these workshops because of the special way workshop is introduced and carried out, inspired by Sandra’s idea of an ideal homeland, a crucial space for a writer to learn about his or her own writing gifts and limits with a supportive, like-minded, and astute group. This is a place where writers are treated with compassion, but it is with a firm commitment to improving the words on the page as they appear, and for the thin-skinned, it can be a little difficult. It is a place where ego must be left at the door. Sandra has always insisted on that being the key to our mutual assistance of one another.

After workshops, there are seminars which take on all kinds of subjects ranging from how to address your spiritual life as a writer, how to address your health as a writer, to how to publish your first book of poetry, and so on. There are also readings and social elements, which are equally important to the week and allow members a time to learn more about the culture of the host city, San Antonio, and the culture of Macondo.  Macondistas are tired by the end of the week! But they are also extraordinarily energized by what they have experienced. I went as an invited auditor as Sandra’s guest after I won the Alfredo Cisneros Del Moral award in 2004, and then I became a full member the next year. What has happened to me as a person and writer is that I went from being a teacher who occasionally wrote poetry and short stories, to a writer with a burning purpose and the ganas to get it down on the page before I die. My first book of poetry, Lavando La Dirty Laundry is due to come out this year, and I am in the final stages of completing my first novel, La Cruzada, which is something that would not have happened without the Macondo Workshop experience. I met agents and authors at Macondo who told me it needed more work, a better structure. I decided I needed to go ahead and get the year-round support I needed to complete this novel by enrolling in an MFA program focusing on fiction. Thankfully, the University of Nebraska at Omaha accepted me, and now the novel is in a first draft stage, with parts of it already published. But poems are coming again now as I have actually begun a second book of poetry. I am now a writer who teaches from a whole new perspective, and this is a shift that has been a long time coming. It is hard to name what Macondo and Sandra Cisneros mean to me personally because it would be like a healthy and emerging ear of corn saying how much it had been impacted by the sun. Yes, I have to bring a lot to the table, but my growth would have been slow and undernourished without Macondo.

Letras Latinas Blog:

The Macondo Writers’ Workshop is inextricably associated with Sandra Cisneros. Could you share what Sandra’s involvement with Macondo has been over the years, to the best of your knowledge? Will she have any role in Macondo’s next phase?

Natalia Treviño:

When Macondo was a literary partner to AWP a couple of years ago, I spent quite a bit of time volunteering at our table at the book fair, and after a few other questions about it, a writer said to me:  “Well, if I join, will Sandra be a part of it? I heard she’s getting out.” And this statement jolted me, not because I knew Sandra wanted to step down as head financial backer and administrative leader, but because there is no way to separate Sandra from Macondo. I said, “Sandra is as much a part of Macondo as the blood that is flowing through your body right now.” Macondo is Sandra’s living novel. She has written it, but it is open enough to evolve in the hands of responsible Macondistas who get her vision and want to carry it forward. Over the years, Sandra has managed and overseen every single aspect of Macondo. She has tirelessly lined up the major writers to come. She has approved of, thought of, and imagined all of the special events associated with Macondo, the seminar speakers, the Indigenous performers, the curandera, the after-parties, the final fundraiser, the goodbye breakfasts. She has come out in full costume to perform at readings, once as Luz, the Good Witch of the Southwest, with wand and crown, for an auction to help a writer who had her belongings stolen that year. Sandra has generously put herself in the place of the writer who needs support and then fulfills the wishes she would have for herself, and so that means all members are served, and served very well. She has described it as being the mother of the bride for a wedding that lasts eight days. It is an exhausting undertaking for her. Now she is taking time to regroup and write after spending so many years helping other writers, and yet, she is being briefed about every meeting we have, and she is making suggestions from afar. She is intimately aware of what is happening, and her input is very important to the decisions that will be made. She is frequently in direct contact with Bill Sanchez, the president of the Macondo board, and she is also in constant contact with many other Macondistas, her friends and loved ones. She wants this to succeed. Sandra will always be the face and heart of Macondo, but she needs to nourish her own writing and her own needs right now. Her vision has helped so many Macondistas in what they all say are immeasurable ways, and they in turn, want to keep that alive and provide it for future members.  

Letras Latinas Blog:

It appears that the Guadalupe Cultural Arts Center in San Antonio will be the institutional home of Macondo (which is a nice twist since it’s my understanding that one of the reasons Sandra came to San Antonio so many years ago was to work at the Guadalupe!) Can you comment on how that relationship came about, and say a little something about Orlando Graves Bolaño and his role in Macondo’s transition to this institution?

Natalia Treviño:

It is true that destiny has come to play a role in this amazing cuento. In a letter to Macondistas recently, Orlando wrote, “We are also thrilled to discover the many ways this story has come full circle!  The Macondo archives have come to rest in the exact same place where Sandra had her first office at the Guadalupe when she  moved to San Antonio to take up her position as Director of the GCAC’s Literature Program.” That story sent chills through me. That exact little room, that space at the Guadalupe was sanctified and occupied by Sandra years ago! And now this institution she created is housed right there.

Sandra has always had a strong relationship with many cultural centers here in San Antonio, the Guadalupe, Gemini Ink, and the Esperanza Peace and Justice Center to name a few. I would be hard pressed to think of a literary or cultural institution here in San Antonio that did not enjoy a visit or a symbiotic relationship with Sandra. Our universities work with her regularly, as recently as this spring during Poetry month. It is my understanding that the board made strong recommendations for the new home to be at the Guadalupe, and with Sandra’s final blessing, this happened. Patty Ortiz, Bill Sanchez, and Orlando have been working on this for months, and it is here! It is alive and happening! Orlando’s role has been to assist with this transition and carry out a full scale Macondo week in 2014. He is taking his personal time to familiarize himself with Macondo, and then he is taking his professional time for budget planning with his team, programming, and envisioning how the Guadalupe can synergize best with the Macondo vision. He is open to receiving the Macondo spirit and programming content from several local Macondistas who are meeting with him regularly to ensure that the pace, inclusions, and flavor of Macondo stay intact. He is so perfect for this role. He is a great listener, a visionary in his own right, and he understands the physical and metaphysical choreography of planning cultural events. Already his ideas have us excited, and his flexbility has made us feel at home with this transition.

Letras Latinas Blog:

My understanding is that this past May 25th, there was a meet and greet at Macondo board president Bill Sanchez’s home. Could you share with our readers what that meet and greet consisted of, and how it unfolded?

Natalia Treviño:

Absolutely. Bill Sanchez is dedicating himself to being a board member who not only dreams and theorizes, but takes action for Macondo. He values the ideas Macondo represents; as Sandra’s close friend and assistant for over fourteen years, he knows her extremely well, and he attends to so many aspects of the incredible mosaic that is her life, even in helping her plan her garden, her rockwork, her estate sales, and he listens to her early drafts of new writing projects. He has listened to her hopes, fears and dreams, and every year Macondo was in session, he and his partner in business, Roger Solis, took a week off just to volunteer at Macondo, to give rides, to help plan, to do anything that was necessary to make it happen and give writers what they needed so that they could focus on their work. All of his life, Bill has been a supporter of cultural arts events. This is something he made sure his children saw growing up, and he is still in awe of what Sandra has created in Macondo because he understands its incredible potential to change lives for those who cannot speak for themselves. He literally tears up when he talks about it, and while he runs his own business to this day, he is helping in minute tasks of all kinds to ignite this flame and keep it lit. After the paperwork was completed, and Macondo was officially housed in the Guadalupe, Bill made phone calls to the local members. He told us what had happened, and he asked that we meet with the members of the Guadalupe who will carry this flame forward into the future. He offered his own home for a “meet and greet,” so that the personal space that Macondo creates for writers was present from the beginning of these meetings. He wanted the people to meet the people, and he knew that this was the best way they could appreciate what Macondo is about. It is not a business. It is about the business of helping writers reach their potential through both craft, personal, emotional, and spiritual development.

Attendees were Macarena Hernandez, a long time Macondista, Maria Limón, who participated in the earliest days of Macondo and drove down all the way from Austin, Rachel Jennings, a wonderful Appalachian poet, Orlando Bolaños Graves, the new education director at the Guadalupe, Bill of course, and his business partner Roger Solis, who has always helped Sandra and Macondo with her events. It turned out that his father was on the original board for the Guadalupe Cultural Arts Center years ago. The time we spent visiting each other over a very generous taco feast provided by Macarena and her friend Lila gave us the opportunity to envision what we wanted the summer Macondo to be, a short time where the members talk to the Guadalupe, and help plan the full fledged 2014 week, but members also said that the Macondistas who take the time to come also need time to talk to each other, to reacquaint themselves with one another and provide the support we have always given each other. We do not need to pack a busy schedule. We need a comfortable pace and space so that we can really hear what the members want, share what they are willing to do to make this happen and hear what the Guadalupe has to offer. Mention of all kinds of possibilities emerged. It was very exciting.

Letras Latinas Blog:

Finally, what’s the next? Mention was made on facebook of a possible Macondo weekend this July? What will take place? Is the plan to have a full fledged Macondo workshop next summer?

Natalia Treviño:

A full-fledged workshop next summer is what we are hoping for, Francisco, and we are doing a Macondo Summit this July. The dates in July are being decided as I write this, but the programming will consist of some of the very important elements that have always been a part of Macondo, a welcome dinner, possibly some time for peer group meetings, and finally, a collective capstone visioning session in which members will have a dialogue with the leadership at the Guadalupe about the future of Macondo. This dreaming and planning session has always been an important part of the Macondo week, and it is why Macondo has taken the shape that it has—the members’ experience and creativity come together to discuss improvements for the next time and voice their vision of what Macondo can become. Changes are always made based on these sessions. Administrative decisions are made such as choosing the selection panel for new Macondistas, and volunteers emerge to take jobs on such as community event, performance, and workshop planning. The Guadalupe understands that the mission of Macondo has always been to attend to the whole writer in a way that Sandra had always hoped she had been attended to on her journey when she was earning her MFA. It has also attended to serving the community in some way, offering workshops to those in detention centers, in underprivileged schools, or to shoe shiners from the community. Macondo is rich in its gifts. Sandra wanted to create an educational center where the mentees/students/participants and the teachers wanted to be—a home for writers to grow. 

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Born in Mexico City and the mother of one, Natalia Treviño was raised in San Antonio, Texas and is an Associate Professor of English at Northwest Vista College as well as a member of the Macondo Writers’ Workshop.  She is a graduate of UTSA’s graduate English program and The University of Nebraska’s MFA in Creative Writing Program. Natalia is the recipient of an Alfredo Moral de Cisneros Award, the Wendy Barker Creative Writing Award, and the Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Prize and most recently, the 2012 Literary Award from the San Antonio Arts Foundation, which is allowing her the much needed time to complete her first novel, La Cruzada. New essays, "The Naturalization" and “Crown Our Good” appear in the anthologies Shifting Balance Sheets: Women's Stories of Naturalization and Complex Allegiances, respectively . Her first book of poems, Lavando La Dirty Laundry, is forthcoming from Mongrel Empire Press.