CANTO A SAN FRANCISCO: An interview

One of the pleasures of directing Letras Latinas is forging all manner of relationships in various literary spaces. Some years ago, in San Antonio, TX, I had the pleasure of meeting Sara Campos at the Macondo Writers Workshop. In 2012, Sara was designated the Letras Latinas Residency Fellow.

Recently, I learned that Sara, along with Leticia Del Toro—both Bay Area natives—have embarked on a project that resonates with me: the curation of an anthology of Latino writing, whose working title is Canto a San Francisco.

—FA

What are you attempting to do in this collection?

Our intent is to showcase contemporary Latino writers, both established and emerging, in a multi-genre collection that evokes a deep sense of place and leaves readers with the lived experience of Latinos in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Why are you doing this?

The Bay Area consists of approximately 7 million people, approximately 23% of which identify as Latino. Yet, despite the rich historical imprints left by Latino ancestors and the significant contributions Latinos are currently making in the Bay Area, our community remains largely invisible. When we are seen, it is often as Hollywood stereotypes -- migrants, drug dealers, nannies, and gardeners. We want to tear down clichés and feature stories that present the vast experiences of our community – we are lawyers, dancers, bankers, curanderas, vaqueros, tech moguls, abuelitas, teachers, punk poets, playwrights, sex workers, stockbrokers, santeros, cholos, queer parents, nuns and more. We want to the world to see the vibrant tapestry that makes up our community.

What was the impetus for this project? 

Over the past two decades, the Bay Area has undergone major demographic shifts. An influx of tech money and other wealth has changed the face of San Francisco and its surrounding cities. Streets that had been thoroughfares for low-riders are now dedicated for valet parking. Uptown Oakland is one of hippest foodie hoods in the nation. As hipster economies thrive, families that have lived here for multiple generations are being pushed out. From 2009-2013, the Mission District, one of San Francisco’s historic Latino neighborhoods, shrank by 27 percent.  A recent report from the San Francisco City Budget Analyst projected that the number of Latino households with children would drop from 21% in 2013 to 11% in 2025, with the overall population of Latinos dropping from 48% in 2009-2013 to 31% in 2025.

We feel these demographic changes intensely and personally. We are both Bay Area natives -- Sara was born and raised in San Francisco and Leticia is from Vallejo, California. We both now live in the East Bay, but maintain strong ties to San Francisco. We have seen the Bay Area shift in unprecedented ways.

Why focus on the Bay Area as a place?

Place goes beyond the setting – it is a character that shapes us and helps mold our identities. As Dorothy Allison so aptly says, “Place is not just what your feet are crossing to get to somewhere. Place is feeling, and feeling is something a character expresses…Place is emotion.”

Since its earliest recorded history, the Bay Area has demonstrated an open and rebellious spirit, its westernmost port open not only to people from all parts of the world, but to an abundance of ideas. It has birthed movements – from labor to free speech, Beats to Hippies to refugees of Central American wars and sexual minorities seeking freedom and acceptance. It has been a left-leaning area, often on the vanguard of change, a bellwether for the rest of the nation. It is also place of unparalleled physical beauty, wealth and poverty, and innovation. How has this magnificent tierra inspired us and given us our Latino identity? This anthology seeks to answer that question.

How might this collection differ from previous anthologies of Latino literature?

 

The last Latino anthologies appeared over a decade ago. Since then, new writing deserving national attention has emerged. We aim to showcase some influential pioneers as well as emerging contemporary voices. We want to curate a range of work that reflects the multitude of sensibilities and experiences that are unique to San Francisco and its surrounding communities. Readers are familiar with Jack London, Dashell Hammett, Mark Twain, Armistead Maupin, Ferlinghetti and the Beats, but can the average reader comment on the Latino literary landscape?  It definitely exists! Cultural centers and galleries offer readings featuring Latino talent year-round. We want to celebrate that talent and capture the pulse of the city, particularly now that gentrification forces are attempting to force us out.

The Librotraficante movement, the We Need Diverse Books campaign and the VIDA count are all manifestations of communities clamoring for more representation in distribution and publishing. Have any of these movements influenced your project?

Absolutely. At the start of the Librotraficante movement, many Latino scholars, writers, and educators felt that the works they had studied at universities, classics of ethnic studies courses and books that gave voice to Latino identities were being targeted. It was a battle cry. We realized we not only had a literary heritage to protect, but also have a responsibility to find and publish more Latino literature. By seeking out emerging voices we are sustaining a vision for the newer generation of readers. Both of us are mothers who are strongly invested in our young readers. We are constantly asking ourselves, “What kinds of stories and poems are not out in the world and still need to be told?”

Do you think your focus on one geographic area will have a limited regional appeal?

San Francisco is a world-class city and the Bay Area remains a place of infinite imaginative possibilities. We believe U.S. and international readers are curious about the region, its inhabitants, the movements it has birthed, and the cultural forces that shape it.

What are you looking for?

We are seeking fiction, poetry, and nonfiction that speak to the richly textured experiences that make up Latino experience today. We welcome experimental language and poetry in Spanish. We are especially interested in how Latinos navigate changes amongst the mélange of cultures and class differences that currently inhabit the Bay Area.

Who are some of your influences and Latino literary heroes?

Leticia: I love the poetry of Lucha Corpi, Alejandro Murguia and Juan Felipe Herrera. For fiction, I turn to Helena Maria Viramontes, Julia Alvarez, Luis Alberto Urrea, and of course, Junot Diaz. From Mexico, Elena Poniatowska and Juan Rulfo remain my favorites.

Sara: I second all of the above-mentioned writers and add Gloria Anzaldua, Sandra Cisneros, Richard Rodriguez, Cristina Garcia, Francisco Goldman, Lorna Dee Cervantes, Daniel Alarcon, and too many others to name.

Where should people send in their pieces? 

Writers should send their best work to cantosf2016@gmail.com. 

Please review the submission call here: 

                                      CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS
Canto a San Francisco – An anthology of Latino Writing (working title): A call for poetry, fiction, and essays by and about Latinos in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Who are we as Latinos in the Bay Area? This anthology aims to showcase our stories and impressions of beloved characters, barrios, movimientos, coastal hangouts, quinceañeras, street fights, business negocios, victories and sorrows. We are busboys, lawyers, dancers, bankers, curanderas, vaqueros, tech moguls, abuelitas, teachers, punk poets, playwrights, sex workers, stockbrokers, santeros, cholos, queer parents, nuns,  sci-fi nerds and more. Tell us about the Bay Area city that has cradled you, called you, exalted or abandoned you. We welcome triunfos, tragedias and everything in between as long as your work involves Latino characters who are rooted in the locales of the greater San Francisco Bay Area. We want our lives present on the page.

Submission Guidelines: We are calling for submissions of fiction (up to 4000 words), poetry (up to 5 poems), and prose (up to 3000 words). All prose and poetry must be written by Latinos and must connect to the Bay Area. We want your most vibrant prose, poetry, and fiction. Spanish submissions welcome in poetry. Please submit a cover letter, specify the title of your piece, the genre, and any writing credits. Submit in rtf. doc., or pdf. Deadline: March 31st, 2016

Please send any inquiries and submissions to cantosf2016@gmail.com.

About the editors:

Sara Campos is a writer, consultant, and immigrant rights attorney with an MFA in creative writing from Mills College. She has published fiction, poetry, and nonfiction in a number of publications including, St. Anne’s Review, Rio Grande Review, Great River Review, Platte Valley Review, Cipactli, Colorlines, AlterNet Media, the San Francisco Chronicle and the Los Angeles Review of Books. She is also the recipient of the Letras Latinas Residency Fellowship, an Elizabeth George Foundation grant, residencies with Hedgebrook and the Anderson Center, and has been a Voices of Our Nation (VONA) and Macondo fellow. She is currently writing a novel of historical fiction set in Spain and Guatemala.

Leticia Del Toro is a Xicana writer, arts activist and teacher from Northern California with roots in Jalisco, Mexico. Her work has appeared in Zyzzyva, Mutha Magazine and  Palabra, among others. Her awards include a Hedgebrook Residency for Women Authoring Change, a fellowship from the New York State Writers Institute and other prizes. She holds degrees from UC Berkeley, UC Davis and is a VONA Voices fellow. She is currently producing a short story collection, Café Colima, which was a finalist for the Maurice Prize in fiction from UC Davis.


 

CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS: Canto a San Francisco...

CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS

Canto a San Francisco – An anthology of Latino Writing (working title): A call for poetry, fiction, and essays by and about Latinos in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Who are we as Latinos in the Bay Area? This anthology aims to showcase our stories and impressions of beloved characters, barrios, movimientos, coastal hangouts, quinceañeras, street fights, business negocios, victories and sorrows. We are busboys, lawyers, dancers, bankers, curanderas, vaqueros, tech moguls, abuelitas, teachers, punk poets, playwrights, sex workers, stockbrokers, santeros, cholos, queer parents, nuns,  sci-fi nerds and more. Tell us about the Bay Area city that has cradled you, called you, exalted or abandoned you. We welcome triunfos, tragedias and everything in between as long as your work involves Latino characters who are rooted in the locales of the greater San Francisco Bay Area. We want our lives present on the page.

Submission Guidelines: We are calling for submissions of fiction (up to 4000 words), poetry (up to 5 poems), and prose (up to 3000 words). All prose and poetry must be written by Latinos and must connect to the Bay Area. We want your most vibrant prose, poetry, and fiction. Spanish submissions welcome in poetry. Please submit a cover letter, specify the title of your piece, the genre, and any writing credits. Submit in rtf. doc., or pdf. Deadline: March 31^st, 2016

Please send any inquiries and submissions to cantosf2016@gmail.com.

About the editors:

Sara Campos is a writer, consultant, and immigrant rights attorney with an MFA in creative writing from Mills College. She has published fiction, poetry, and nonfiction in a number of publications including, St. Anne’s Review, Rio Grande Review, Great River Review, Platte Valley Review, Cipactli, Colorlines, AlterNet Media, the San Francisco Chronicle and the Los Angeles Review of Books. She is also the recipient of the Letras Latinas Residency Fellowship, an Elizabeth George Foundation grant, residencies with Hedgebrook and the Anderson Center, and has been a Voices of Our Nation (VONA) and Macondo fellow. She is currently writing a novel of historical fiction set in Spain and Guatemala.

Leticia Del Toro is a Xicana writer, arts activist and teacher from Northern California with roots in Jalisco, Mexico. Her work has appeared in Zyzzyva, Mutha Magazine and  Palabra, among others. Her awards include a Hedgebrook Residency for Women Authoring Change, a fellowship from the New York State Writers Institute and other prizes. She holds degrees from UC Berkeley, UC Davis and is a VONA Voices fellow. She is currently producing a short story collection, Café Colima, which was a finalist for the Maurice Prize in fiction from UC Davis.

LETRAS LATINAS is pleased to announce....

Sara Campos

Sara Campos, who resides in Northern California, is the 2012 recipient of the Letras Latinas Residency Fellowship. She will be in residence at the Anderson Center in Red Wing Minnesota in July and a receive a $1000 stipend. This annual distinction is part of an ongoing partnership between Letras Latinas and the Anderson Center. The aim of the initiative is to identify a Latino or Latina writer who is working on a first full-length book, and for whom a one-month residency would suppose a significant boost in this endeavor.

A writer of Guatemalan descent, Sara Campos holds degrees from the University of San Francisco, Mills College, and the University of California/Los Angeles School of Law, where she was the editor of the Chicano Law Review. She has worked at the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, for the California Supreme Court, and as a press officer for the Mexican American Legal Defense Fund. Her fiction, nonfiction, and poetry have appeared in a number of publications, including St. Ann’s Review, Rio Grande Review, and San Francisco Chronicle.

*

Sara was nice enough to answer a few questions

for Letras Latinas Blog.

LLB:

Here’s a thought that came to mind when I was reading your novel excerpt: As in Julia Alvarez’s In the Time of the Butterflies, or Gioconda Belli’s, The Country Under My Skin, where women are the protagonists in Latin American countries undergoing political change, your work seems to be treading similar terrain. In the case of these examples the countries are the Dominican Republic and Nicaragua, respectively. In the case of your novel, it's Guatemala. So I guess my question is:  What role, if any, did either of these aforementioned books or writers have when it came to shaping your novel? If these particular writers/books were not in any way models, could you talk about the writers and/or books that have served as inspiration or models?

SC:

Although I’ve read both Country Under My Skin and In the Time of the Butterflies, they did not play a role in the initial development of my novel. I did not purposely intend to write a political novel; I wanted to write a love story, in this case, between a white woman and an indigenous man in Guatemala. My mother is Guatemalan and the germ of the story came to me from a photograph of an indigenous young man she kept among mementos. I looked at the picture and wondered whether he loved her. She denied it. Whether he did or not, I became fixated with it. If she/they had been in love, they would not have been able to marry, not because of her class (she was poor), but because of an apartheid that treated indigenous people as less than human. When I began my novel, I quickly realized that if my protagonist had a relationship with an indigenous man, she could not have been part of the culture. She must have come from somewhere else. I looked for places and reasons why she and her family might have arrived in Guatemala at that time and I landed in Spain; she might have left because of the civil war in 1936.

When I began looking at the Guatemala of my protagonist, I realized it was a pivotal period in the country’s history. Once I stumbled upon it, I felt compelled to learn more about it. Only then did I begin reading fiction that treated political stories. I read a number of books, including the aforementioned texts and a host of others; a few that come to mind are Asturias’ Senior Presidente, Garcia Marquez’ novel A Hundred Years of Solitude, Laleh Khadivi’s Age of Orphans, Carolina De Robertis, Invisible Mountain, and Chimandmanda Ngozi Adiche, Half of a Yellow Sun.

LLB:

Your novel excerpt depicts events that took place in 1944. This suggests, at least to me, not only writing about a particular time and place, but also: research. Could you share with us what role research has played in working on your novel. Have you done much? And if so, what did it consist of? How do you balance research with the writing of fiction?

SC:

Research has played an enormous role in my novel and as I work through the second draft, I continue to engage in it. I want to know what life was like in the 40’s; I want to get into the heads of my characters. I’ve read just about everything I could get my hands on that has dealt with Guatemala during the period. I’ve also read biographies and memoirs in Spanish. Also, in 2010, I traveled to Guatemala to conduct some interviews. I was able to talk with a ninety year-old man who served in government during the period. I do believe, however, that one can do too much research. Research can help but it can also be an easy place to hide. When I think I’m getting too bogged down in research, I need to ask myself whether I’m procrastinating and keeping myself from writing.

LLB:

My first question suggests or implies that some of your models may have been Latin American/Latina writers. But of course we know that writers find models and inspiration from a wide range of sources.  Could talk about not only other writers whose work you have found crucial in your development, but also other artists (in whatever genre) or people in other disciplines, as well (history, anthropology, etc)

SC:

When I did my MFA, I worked with writer and professor Micheline Marcom (Three Apples Fell From Heaven; Daydreaming Boy). She believed the only way to teach writing was to learn from the masters themselves, even if (or perhaps especially) they were dead. We read dozens of books for inspiration and influence. Early on, I was smitten by the work of Michael Ondaatje. I couldn’t read enough of him. I loved what he did with language. I also loved Arunhati Roy’s The God of Small Things. The way she weaves the story in such a conventional, circular way, still dazzles me. The same could be said for Francisco Goldman’s The Long Night of White Chickens. I think I read Frank’s book at least five or six times.

LLB:

You and I had the pleasure of meeting at what may have been the last Macondo Writers’ Workshop. Could you share with us what that week in San Antonio was like for you, and what it meant for you as a writer?

SC:

I’m heartbroken that Macondo will not happen again. My week in July of 2011 was extraordinary. What was not to love? The writers, the community, the insights I gained were so valuable and affirming. Although I loved my workshop, I was especially moved by Naomi Shihab Nye and Julia Alvarez. I found them both so generous in spirit and deed. Julia gave a talk called, “Ask Me Anything.” For some reason, I expected her to talk about publishing. Instead, she surprised me by talking about process, her process. She shared a slide presentation that included a painting of a sleigh in a snow storm. Another depicted a woman completely entangled in string, snipping away one piece at a time. These illustrations signified how she spent her days, sometimes practically blinded by blizzards. Despite her fear, she had to find her way through the unknown. Her words honored the process and were exactly what I needed to hear at the time.

LLB:

You will soon be in residence for one month at the Anderson Center as the fourth Letras Latinas Residency Fellow. First question: could share with us what project(s) you’ll be working on and what goal you are setting for yourself? And second: my understanding is that you have had the experience of being in residence at Hedgebrook. What advice might you give to a writer who is about to experience his/her first residency?

SC:

I have amassed a very lengthy manuscript and hope to hone it down to manageable size. I anticipate that my novel will take the lion’s share of my time. I’m shipping a box full of books to greet me when I arrive. They include numerous books on Guatemala – books on anthropology, botany, and history as well as some non-Guatemalan-themed fiction and poetry that deal with some of the issues in my novel

My advice to writers about to experience their first residency is to write every day, even if it is just freewriting in a journal. Try to establish a routine and develop a rhythm for what works. My routine at Hedgebrook began with an early run or walk, followed by a quick breakfast. I then spent my first hour of work reading. Only then was I able to work on my novel.

I would tell new writing residents to expect to feel frustrated at times and to forgive themselves in advance for all those hours (or days) when the writing does not come easily. I would encourage them to find ways to coax themselves to write anyway, even if they hate what they’re writing. I told myself to write badly from the get go; it was a way of fooling myself into writing.

Finally, I’d tell new residents to take breaks and enjoy their beautiful surroundings, take walks and inhale the fresh air. Bask in the moments; they will pass far too quickly.