In addition to columns, humor, and fiction, visitors of Christine Granados’ website may find some words to live by.
“I can rationalize my way out of good sense everyday.”
Granados will be the latest writer to visit Texas A&M International University as part of the Writing Center’s “Voices in the Monte” series. She is scheduled to give a talk on craft and to read from her collection of short stories, “Brides and Sinners in El Chuco,” published in 2006 by University of Arizona Press. “Brides and Sinners in El Chuco” has been named a finalist for Forward Magazine’s Book of the Year Award (short story category), and Granados received the Alfredo Cisneros del Moral Foundation Award. Her work has been featured in Texas Observer, El Andar Magazine, and Hecho en Tejas: An Anthology of Texas-Mexican Literature, among others.
Granados sets foot on campus on Thursday, March 26. She delivers her talk on craft at 10 a.m. (location TBA), and the Writing Center hosts a reading and book signing at 7 p.m. in room 116 of the Center for the Study of Western Hemispheric Trade. Granados recently answered some questions for the Bridge.
H: How much autobiography-if any–is fused into this collection?G: It’s hard to say how much is fiction and how much is truth. … Writers (often) use fiction to get to a greater truth. If we were to go line-by-line, I’d say I weave real life situations into a story or start a story with a real life situation in mind and then, it just grows and gets fantastic. The girl in “The Bride” is a combination of three friends of mine, girls whose life dreams were to get married. One of them made lists, the other bought umpteen bride magazines, and the other was always wondering what men would look like in tuxes. I combined them all to create Rochelle. … The drunken uncle Pilar who fought at every family gathering is based on a close friend of my brother. The scene where Ro and Angel are driving to Las Cruces to get married with the mom in the back seat bawling actually happened to my parents. However, my mother was not pregnant when she married my dad. I made the mistake of not adding that last detail in a panel discussion, a discussion mom was there for, and boy was she upset.
H: On the back cover of the book, you’ve got Dagoberto Gilb, who I also had the privilege of meeting. He praises your work, saying you defy “what is expected of a Chicana writer.” Often times successful writers end up getting claimed by various ethnic/regional schools. In your career, do you feel anyone (critics, reader, teachers, other writers) have tried to pigeonhole you into a certain career identity?
G: Pigeonhole, oh yeah. I’m a Mexican from the border, and I write about Mexicans on the border, so I’m automatically labeled a Chicana writer. For me, Chicano in El Paso did not exist, and I love that it didn’t because over there, we’re all brown. I lived in this great insulated world where I thought everyone else was like me. (I still believe that. We’re all alike with the same hang-ups, desires, etc.) I, we, Mexicans, Latinos, Chicanos, Hispanics, whatever we’re calling ourselves, are just people-assholes, sweethearts, stupids, intellectuals, sluts, womanizers, faithful, loyal, grandpas, grandmas, mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, friends-like everyone else. It wasn’t until I moved away from El Paso and people identified me as other that I became aware that there were people in America who had no contact with Mexicans. While I don’t identify myself as Chicana, I don’t mind when someone calls me one.
H: The novelist Toni Cade Bambara, when addressing the daily commitment writing demands, wrote, “I do not have anything profound to offer mother-writers or worker-writers.” You’re both a mother and a worker. How do you manage to pull it off?
G: Mostly, I don’t. I’m racked with guilt daily about either or. Either I’m a terrible mom because I want time to myself to write, or when I’m with my kids, I’m guilty because I’m not doing what I love to do. It’s insane or maybe I’m just insane. I do manage to write something every day, be it part of a short story, a feature article I’m working on, an idea, a column, essay, etc. I don’t have a set schedule like some writers do, where I get up at 4 a.m. and write for three hours before everyone gets up. I do my writing piecemeal when I can, and it shows. (At least I think so.) Here’s a real sexy writerly thing I used to do. I’d go to McDonald’s when my kids were toddlers, and I’d let ’em loose on the playscape. Then I’d sit on those uncomfortable little lily pad looking seats they have attached to the tables that only fit one of my butt cheeks. It was uncomfortable as hell, but at least, I was productive. Maybe some day I’ll have the means to hire a nanny, so I can do my writing all proper like. Then, I can feel guilty about neglecting my kids and letting them be raised by someone else.
H: Do you have you any advice for those who take writing seriously and want to achieve something with it? G: Those people who are serious about writing are serious about reading. I have never met a “good” writer who wasn’t also a good reader. As for writing advice, I’ll tell you what Dagoberto Gilb told me once. He said, “Christine, you’ve got a lot of great material but your writing is getting in the way of you telling the story and what this tells me is that you haven’t read enough. You need to read.” So I did. It took me an entire year, but I read everyone he suggested: Juan Rolfo, Franz Kafka, Anton Chekhov, Joan Dideon, and Jane Anne Phillips. And (now), I am a better writer for it.