If environment shapes our perception of reality, what happens when our language also provides a glimpse into what we value and hold true? A report from the United States Census Bureau from 2011 showed that over 60 million people in the country spoke a language other than English in their home, 62% being Spanish. Despite what the political landscape says or does, no one can deny that language is a powerful thing. It connects us to our heritage and helps mold our identity. Governments can try to destroy families through policies, yet language and culture will continue to keep them together. Regardless, the future generations of young Americans will be mostly bilingual. Their reality will not be limited to one narrative or nationalistic idea, but instead will come from the marriage of several cultures and ideologies.
Cristina Rivera Garza is a Mexican author who has managed to have critical success for her work, which has been all done in Spanish, while also creating a career as an academic in the United States. She has been able to perpetuate this duality that has become a reality to most of us in the current environment. As someone who left her country in order to find new possibilities north of the border, the writer often says she is not unlike other migrants who are forced to leave their homeland for a chance.
We recently had the chance to chat with this novelist and poet, who has also written nonfiction such as her most recent book, Había mucha neblina, o humo, o no sé qué (There Was Fog, or Smoke, or Something Else). Among the different topics we asked about the current role of literature and art in our world, the complications of living in different languages, as well as the happy accidents that come with merging language and culture.
Considering the tumultuous state of the global landscape, our first question was how can literature and art coexist with the constant violence of our world. There’s war and conflict, racism and discrimination, so where can art find its place? Rivera Garza’s answer is that literature can work in favor of these groups: “I think that writing literature that is self-aware, that embraces its connection with the community, is a type of literature that not only leads to critical thinking, but also one that eventually can become a practice on questioning reality.”
There’s been plenty of talk regarding the influence of gender on literature. Whether it’s about the fact that female writers are usually secluded to only a few corners of the literary world, the lack of women protagonists, and even the constant misrepresentations of gender in both written works and other medium, one thing’s for sure: Gender is a complicated topic when speaking about the craft of writing. Rivera Garza’s books usually focus on protagonists who are delightfully three dimensional, full of layers and internal conflict. “I believe that fiction is a chance to embody other experiences. We do not turn to literature to express our own experience but to produce a different one. It’s in that sense that, as a writer, I need to make use of my resources and tools to build complex characters.”
Her novel No One Will See Me Cry is a historical novel set in La Castañeda, a now defunct infamous mental institution in Mexico City where several people were sent, regardless of their actual condition. It is within this setting where one man becomes enthralled with uncovering the story of a woman who is committed there. Love and insanity are topics that constantly appear in literature because they are our most primal emotions as humans. It is when we strip ourselves of the façade that we can see how these ideas come into play: “I see gender as one of the several layers or levels that provide a story with a particular complexity. I’m not interested in female roles just because I am a woman. I’ve written complex male characters, as well. I’ve written institutional environment, such as La Castañeda insane asylum, which served as a character itself. But among all these intricate layers there are basic differences such as gender, race, class, geography, generational, or all these other elements that connect us on different levels to specific places and situations.”
One of the most interesting things about Rivera Garza is the fact that, despite being based in the United States, her books continue to be products of Spanish language. It might seem like an unexplainable occurrence. Why write in a language that is not the one you are in constant contact with? Or is it possible that not having easy access to a language, creates a different concept altogether? “Most of work has been written in the United States. That means I’ve been writing in Spanish while existing in a context where my life is in English. It felt like a very natural decision and as time has gone by, I’ve seen how it was actually a choice rather than an obvious route. It’s through this continuous echo, sound, and reverberation between the Spanish I write, the English I’m hearing, as well as the several combinations that exist, that I have found a freedom to generate different approaches and themes.”
When our reality is shaped by the push and pull of contradicting ideas and cultures, we learn to bargain with what we can bend and what cannot be changed in our personal ideology. Crossing borders means also breaking with the standards of a particular community. We never stop being part of the culture we were born into, nor do we entirely adopt the one we find ourselves adapting to. Instead, we balance between these two and create our own cultural perception: “I think the idea of crossing borders is another element that influences language, aside from the material and critical aspects. There are borders everywhere. However, I think that the great geopolitical difference, between the US-Mexico border and other places, is that this is a border where your identity is constantly questioned. And the answer you give results in whether you can cross or not. That reality will permeate into the different borders that exist in our lives. Literary genres are types of borders, and I’m constantly blending and merging these.”
During a time when most of us are being forced to pick a side or point of view, rather than explore the possibilities, literature and art are our only defenses. Our mind can be liberated even if the narrative constantly spewed from News and pundits keeps holding us back from reaching our potential. When we discover how language can be a way to connect with love and primal emotions, we lose sight of the barriers and borders that surround us.
“When you’re constantly questioning how you say something, how you interpret it, and what is being said, we enter a deep critical connection with language. It’s then then that you get rid of this myth that the way we speak is a reflection of the entire world. This is when we stop thinking that language is not a vehicle that carries meaning, but that it is a powerful mercurial tool in itself. One that can unleash a myriad of possibilities.”
Poems that capture the feeling of unrequited love.
Letter from an unnaturalized American.
Sources:
Language Use in the United States
