Today, we have the honor of welcoming two writers whose
presence would be impressive enough on its own,
but we're even more grateful for today
considering the long drive that took them both to get here.
Loida Maritza Pérez and Denise Chávez are both writers who,
if one were to sit around lumping writers into specific
categories, both fit into the boxes of female and Latina.
Upon reading their work, however, these categories
quickly start to seem insufficient.
To put them in the same box doesn't give justice
to their considerable and considerably different
strengths and voices.
Something the two do share, however,
is an open embracing of mythology.
Pérez said in an interview, 'To deal with horrible times,
nationally or in a family, you have to mythicize them.
I do think something specific to Hispanic culture is accepting
extremes.'
About Latin America, she said, 'Even weather-wise, everything
is extreme there.
It alters your sense of reality.'
And reality is certainly altered in her first novel,
'Geographies of Home'.
Though the story is, at times, magical,
this isn't a familiar brand of magical realism.
One critic called Pérez not a direct descendant,
but a godchild to writers like García Márquez.
Pérez explains it more simply, 'I'm coming from a culture
in which we know we can receive information from dreams.'
And a variation on the adage you can't go home again
in the novel, one character warns the protagonist
on her return to her parents' house that home is never fun.
With the immigrant experience as a backdrop,
Pérez shows us the workings of a family that falters
and, at times, fails.
The story is as relentless as it is unforgettable.
Some of the writers in the audience will perhaps be
heartened to know that Pérez spent 10 years writing short
stories and receiving rejections before she, as she put it,
stumbled upon writing this novel.
These rejections, she said, forced her to ask herself
why she was writing.
Her answer was to fill an internal need.
Perez was born in the Dominican Republic
but emigrated to the US with her parents at the age of 3.
She was educated at Cornell University
and considered medicine and painting
before actively pursuing her career as a writer.
On the opposite end of the mythologizing spectrum is
Denise Chávez who writes, 'What can I tell you about Pedro
Infante?
If you're a Mexicana or Mexicano and don't know who he is,
you should be tied to a hot stove with yucca rope
and be beaten with sharp dry corn husks
as you stand in a vat of soggy fideos.
If you're racial and cultural ethnicity is other,
then it's about time you learned about the most famous
of Mexican singers and actors.'
And what can I tell you about Denise Chávez?
If you're one to keep an ear to the literary world or simply
one who likes a good laugh and a warm narrative voice,
you should know who Denise Chávez is.
Called by one critic a member of the Latina literati
and self-described performance writer,
Chávez is the author of 'The Last of the Menu
Girls', 'Face of An Angel', and, of course, her latest,
'Loving Pedro Infante', which, as a true fan,
Chávez set to be released on the anniversary of Infante's death.
She is the winner of the American Book Award,
recipient of a Lila Acheson Wallace Reader's Digest Funds
Writers award, and founder of the Border Book Festival
in Las Cruces, New Mexico.
She holds both a Bachelor's and a Master's
of Fine Arts degree in Drama, in addition to her Masters of Arts
and Writing, which she received from the University of New
Mexico.
Her other awards, publications, and honors
are too numerous to mention.
'A writer, actor, and teacher who's even been anthologized
by Norton,' Chávez gives us this description of watching
the legendary Pedro Infante.
'God help us if he takes off his shirt.
Who would have ever thought a man's nipples could express
anger?'
Writing in both Spanish and English,
Chávez's voice is distinctly American.
She takes her less than glamorous protagonist
Terry Avila through themes which anyone from a border town
or not can easily identify.
'All my characters are seeking that elusive state
of grace,' she said in an interview.
'That inner balance in their lives that will allow them
to become themselves.'
She also said that, in the early stages of her writing career,
she didn't spend a lot of energy trying to get published.
'I was just trying to learn to write and doing a lot of other
things.'
Tonight, we have the privilege of hearing
her unique and memorable voice, the fruit of what many of us--
of what to many of us is a familiar labor
of learning to write.
I only hope that those of us who are still trying
can somehow master it the way she did.
Please join me in welcoming both Denise Chávez and Loida Maritza
Pérez.