Writing Across Borders, Speaking Across Generations: A Conversation with Liliana Valenzuela

Liliana Valenzuela, who identifies as a reverse Chicana, has years of experience traversing languages, cultures, and literary genres. She’s been an important mentor for Latine and  multilingual writers over the years, forming part of such literary communities as the Macondo Writing Workshop and Canto Mundo and creating poetry, essays, fiction, articles, and translations that show the complexity of language and Latinidad.

García: You’ve been part of many writing communities for Latino writers in the Austin-San Antonio area. Can you speak to your experiences with these groups and with Macondo, the workshop established by Sandra Cisneros?

Valenzuela: I’ve been living in Austin since the 80s, when I moved here from Mexico City and started looking for like-minded writers. The Austin Writers’ League existed at the time, and that’s where I met Anjela Villarreal Ratliffe and other Latino writers. Anjela was very active in creating the Austin Hispanic Writers and hosting readings.  We met at different coffee houses, at a wine bar or other inviting places where we could freely discuss writing, issues and politics, challenges, and learn from writers working at an advanced level. Among the writers were ire’ne lara silva, Vicente Lozano, Gloria Amezcua, Celeste Mendoza, and others. We even created an anthology or two and had a couple of festivals.

I was also part of the inaugural groups of the Macondo Writer’s Workshop. I started joining Sandra Cisneros and other Latino writers around 2000, when my kids were a bit older. That workshop started around Sandra’s kitchen table. At first, she would travel around the country, meet people who would make a good fit for the group, writers who were crossing borders in some way, or many ways, and who had a commitment to social activism. Eventually, Macondo Writer’s Workshop was formed. Macondo was part of my philosophical, writing, and craft education. We’d have get togethers in the evening, seminars and special presentations after the workshops, then there were the after hours. We’d stay up talking into the wee hours, then be ready the next day to start again. I feel so supported by this nationwide group, which includes writers who are also community activists, anthropologists, and from a variety of backgrounds so that the workshops operate on a very high level. The way Macondo works is that once you are accepted, you can come back every year if you want. You’re not guaranteed space in the workshops, but can attend as a Chuparrosa, where you work on your own writing and still benefit from the discussions, evening events, and hanging out with people.

I was also part of the inaugural class of Canto Mundo, which was in response to the need to have a national workshop on Latinx poetry from all the different Latinidades. When we gathered everyone, we were exposed to different styles and ideas that were so much richer than any of us had access to just in Texas. It was a wonderful opportunity where I met several poets of different ages. Though it’s still a network of poets, it’s organized differently than Macondo because the workshops are mostly for new people who attend over 3 summers.

García: I’ve enjoyed attending the writing half-day retreats that you host at your Ranchito in Elgin, and being in community with Chicana writers has been so important to me over the years. I’ve enjoyed how we spend time sharing about our lives and then writing in community, sometimes leading each other in workshops. I always leave with ideas for new projects and pieces I can incorporate into what I’m working on. Can you tell me more about how this tradition started?

Valenzuela: With the Ranchito, I thought, this is something I can offer- a cottage surrounded by fields and a garden, somewhere peaceful where we can put some miles and psychological distance from our lives to see things a little differently, support each other and do some writing. We decided to do this for women writers, so that we could openly discuss feminist challenges we faced. The gatherings probably started around 2005, and we’ve been meeting ever since, after a break of a couple of years during the pandemic. Membership has fluctuated, but we always invited women we thought should be there. We start by tuning into ourselves and nature, taking walks and the time to see things in front of us, and the writing often reveals things that were under the surface but didn’t have a chance to pop up yet. At this point, we have an amazing level of trust and we can go straight to speaking the truth and feeling supported, encouraged to be our true selves.

García: Identity and language seem to be important for your writing experiences as a fiction and essay writer, poet, translator, journalist, and professor. Can you talk about your career and experiences as a multilingual writer in central Texas over the years?

Valenzuela: The writing communities I belonged to were spaces for people who wrote in English and Spanish, and though some were not fully bilingual they knew enough of the languages to participate. Macondo and the other workshops I participated in were a crucial part of my education because I didn’t have an MFA. I got a Master’s of Anthropology & Culture instead. At the time, I felt that pursuing an MFA would mean hours of extra work translating my writing, which was primarily in Spanish at the time. When I took fiction workshops, for example, I had to translate my work into English and present it that way. I got a Master’s of Anthropology & Culture instead, which has informed much of my work.

I was part of the American Translator’s Association as well, where I gained experience translating my own poems and those of others. I started by doing commercial translation for things like employee manuals, business letters, and websites. It’s all good work, and I enjoyed it, but I most enjoyed the literary translations because they taught me so much about how fiction works. In the many organizations I was a part of, I met authors whose works I translated, such as Sandra Cisneros, Julia Alvarez, and others.

As I worked on different projects, I also worked in different genres. Literary translation was very intense, mentally demanding work. When I was working on those projects I could write poetry and essays of my own and it didn’t seem to interfere with the book-length translations, but I found it difficult to explore my own fiction concurrently.

My career has been very eclectic, I’ve worked on anthropology, translation, literary translation, journalism, but the common thread in all of that has been writing. After translating over 30 books, business started drying up because of a recession in 2008 so I started looking for other work. That’s when I found the opportunity with ¡Ahora Sí!, the Spanish supplement fo the Austin American Statesman where I wrote for 8 years. Even though I didn’t have training in journalism, I did have a portfolio of publications that included book reviews, interviews, short stories, and poetry, so on that basis they gave me the opportunity to learn on the job. Josefina Casati was my editor, and she really taught me the ropes. It was exciting because you’re at the center of things- at concerts and events, and you had to pay attention to what was useful to the community. Among other things, journalism taught me to write on deadline, to not say, Oh, I’ll write this sometime, but to have a firm due date. It’s quite an adjustment and makes you very efficient. Deadlines are sacred, and you learn to collaborate and accept feedback.

García: Can you tell us about your experiences working across languages?

I speak four languages: English, Spanish, Danish, and French, which I started learning during the pandemic. My fluency in these has shifted over the years. When I first came to the Texas after marriage, I had to get used to the accent, its special cadence. That took me a while, and I also had to start writing papers and reading more books in English. But it’s always been important to me to not lose that fluency and richness of the Spanish language. Many people start to lose their native language, if they don’t actively maintain it. I’ve had the privileges of traveling, experiencing movies and literature and events in different languages, which has all helped. It was important to me that my children were fluent in English and Spanish and had to be very intentional about how to instill this and reinforce it. Maintaining your first language is like swimming against the current sometimes. When my kids were little, I’d sing to them and read to them in Spanish, translating books that were in English. In a way it was like training for my literary translations. It was important for me that they see other people speaking in Spanish, so we spent at least two weeks when we visited my family in Mexico. That was key for them to feel the love and warmth of their languages and cultures and know that they are a part of them.

I see translation as a collaboration, but it’s looked different for each project. Some writers don’t know Spanish and are not very involved, but I may have questions for them about parts I need clarification on. Others want to participate, and I’ve had rewarding work sessions where we come up for solutions and challenges and find better alternartives. That happened a lot with Sandra Cisneros, where we would think through something until we figured it out. With Caramelo, we needed to find the right voice for the mother, who was a second generation Mexican-American living in Chicago. Sandra said, “She wouldn’t say that.” In those conversations we were able to refine the characters’ voices so that they were more nuanced and textured. There were also lots of translations from Spain where all the characters sounded like someone from Madrid. In this case, we were aiming for the different flavors of Mexican Spanish, which vary by region, age, gender. There are so many ways of speaking and code switching to explore.

It’s a rich practice to work across languages and cultures that involves all your tentacles, this culture and that culture, this language and that language, that creates complex, multilayered work.