Cristina Rivera Garza is a Mexican writer and professor who has developed

her career on both sides of the US-Mexico border. Her novels in Spanish
have won literary awards in Mexico, and shes taught writing both in
Mexico and the United States.

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So she knows what its like to work and write in both Spanish and English. Producer Betto
Arcos caught up with her at LaLA, the Spanish-language book fair in Los Angeles, and
asked her what it's like being a published author in two languages, and how living on both
sides of the border has affected her work. Heres an edited transcript of their conversation.
Cristina Rivera Garza: I'm a Mexican author who's been living in the United States for
the last 25, 26 years. Im a Nortea in Mexico, I was born in Matamoros, Tamaulipas. This
is the city on the other side of the border from Brownsville, Texas. And I've been living in
San Diego, California, for a number of years on the other extreme of the border as well.
You know, most of my creative work, I've been publishing that in Spanish. Most of my
academic work, I've published in English. And for a while that kind of division worked
quite well. But for the last 7 years I've been teaching in the MFA program in creative
writing at the University of California-San Diego, and I've been teaching in English mostly.
No, not mostly, only. And so that difference, the fact that I saw myself as a Mexican author
writing in Spanish and as a continental academic writing in English all of that was
somewhat subverted by this experience. Obviously, I've been here for such a long time that
I've been writing also in English, things that Ive decided not to publish. But that might be
changing in the near future.
Betto Arcos: What do you mean subverted? What's that experience about?
CRG: Well, Ive been very concerned with, and I want to maintain, my dialogue with
Mexican literature, with Mexican authors, with Mexican readers as well. But living here for
such a long time, Ive had to be aware of the fact that we not only have Mexican readers on
this side of the border but also Mexicans who've been reading both in English and Spanish.
So for me it has become an issue of just plain awareness, of where Im located and the kind
of critical conversation that I would like to engage with. Based on that, I had to subvert my
own way of thinking. You know, that difference between a Mexican author who publishes
in Spanish, and an academic who can publish in both Spanish and English it does make
sense, and its kind of easy. But at the same time, it does not cover the complexity of our
contemporary world, the geopolitics on which Im located right now. So that has to change,
and it has changed in fact.

BA: Is it fair to say that you have a thinking cap you put on when you write in
English, and a thinking cap you use when you write in Spanish? What's the difference
between the two?
CRG: That's a very interesting question, and a very hard one to answer. I thought that there
was a difference until very recently, when I was forced to be aware of something. That is,
I've been writing material in Spanish that once I get to read it very carefully, and once some
translators have been trying to translate this into English, I realized that very often I'm
writing this material both in English and Spanish, the original version. And that somehow
that gets into the very DNA of the writing. So there is no special side or special
compartment for each of these languages. They come in waves, they are totally intertwined.
And its more a matter of with whom I want to have this conversation, rather than what
kind of material Im working with closely on my own.
So I've been writing bilingually for a number of years. But I've been publishing that in
Spanish because that's the conversation that I've been fostering. And [now] I see the
tremendous richness that comes to my own world by fostering the same kind of
conversation with readers on this side of the border who might be reading both in Spanish
and in English.
And I'm not talking about mastery of both languages. I'm talking about taking or borrowing
aspects of English, and aspects of Spanish, and combining them in ways that are even to me
ways that Im not necessarily expecting. And what I'm looking at right now is just to start
fostering, and to engage actively with, a conversation with the men and women that I live
with here in this country. I've been here for such a long time, and it seems to me I've been
waiting, Ive been slow to react and that's my time right now.
BA: You touch on something very interesting. Because when I write, when I try to say
something, there are so many ways I can say it in English. And then I try and adapt it
to Spanish, and sometimes it doesnt work. What's your experience with that?
CRG: Yeah, but the thing is if you're trying to force that well, that happens to me. If I
dont follow not only the language but the format, the structure, the syntax in which that
thought or that specific construction came to me, then I get into a lot of trouble. And at
times its so massive that I become paralyzed! And its much easier and much more organic
when I just let it go, and I start to write in a way that seems to be more faithful to my own
perception, and to the way in which my body reacts to the world that is surrounding me at
that point.
So I guess that's the transformation that I'm talking about. Instead of looking at languages
as straitjackets, as disciplinarian ways in which I have to behave, I'm taking what is more
useful, what is more truthful to the kinds of things that I want to convey, to the kinds of
materials that I want to share. And so I've been doing it, and I mean this might not be in
perfect Spanish or it might not be in perfect English. But when we write we're not
concerned about matters of mastery or dominion or power. When we write, we're talking
about a deeper sense of communication, a deeper way of getting in contact with other
human beings. So that's what concerns me right now. That kind of possibility.

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Tagged: San Diego North America Mexico United States California Cristina Rivera
Garza books language culture