Opacity as Creative Freedom: Writers on Latinidad

Moderator: Karen Christian This writers’ roundtable will engage a group of Latin@ authors who defy easy classification and whose work pushes the limits of latinidad. In effect, they are models of opacity, a concept... [ view full abstract ]

Moderator: Karen Christian

This writers’ roundtable will engage a group of Latin@ authors who defy easy classification and whose work pushes the limits of latinidad. In effect, they are models of opacity, a concept associated with queer theory that offers an alternative to confessional declarations of fixed identity. Yet Silvia Bovenschen asserts that those who refuse to make themselves universally accessible and classifiable are suspect. In Opacity and the Closet, Nicholas de Villiers proposes that we take such “suspect” behaviors seriously and consider them “distinctly queer strategies, strategies of opacity, not necessarily of silence or invisibility” (3). The following writers will read from their works and reflect on the creative freedom offered by maintaining a degree of opacity in their writing:

Cecile Pineda's novels have been critically acclaimed, with Face winning the Commonwealth Club of California Gold Medal, the Sue Kaufman Prize, and a National Book Award Nomination. Her picaresque novel, The Love Queen of the Amazon, was named a Notable Book of the Year by The New York Times. Other novels include Frieze, Fishlight, Bardo99, Devil's Tango: How I Learned the Fukushima Step By Step, and Apology to a Whale: Words to Mend a World. Her forthcoming book is Three Tides: Writing at the Edge of Being (Wings Press).

Elías Miguel Muñoz: author of novels Los viajes de Orlando Cachumbambé, Crazy Love, The Greatest Performance, Brand New Memory, and Vida mía; poetry collections En estas tierras/In This Land and No fue posible el sol; and a play, The LA Scene, which premiered and ran off Broadway in 1990. Essays, poems, and excerpts from his novels have been published in numerous collections, including Muy Macho: Latino Men Confront Their Manhood, ReMembering Cuba, and Best Gay Stories. His sixth fiction project, Diary of Fire, is forthcoming from Lethe Press.

Helena María Viramontes: author of The Moths and Other Stories and two novels Under the Feet of Jesus and Their Dogs Came With Them. She has also co-edited two collections: Chicana (W) rites: On Word and Film and Chicana Creativity and Criticism. A recipient of the John Dos Passos Award for Literature, a U.S. Artist Fellowship, and numerous other prizes, she is a community organizer and former coordinator of the Los Angeles Latino Writers Association. Currently she is completing a draft of her third novel, The Cemetery Boys.

Discussant: Achy Obejas
Author of the critically acclaimed novels Ruins, Days of Awe, and three other books of fiction. She edited and translated, into English, Havana Noir, a collection of crime stories by Cuban writers on and off the island. Her translation into Spanish of Junot Díaz’s The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao / La Breve y Maravillosa Vida de Óscar Wao was a finalist for Spain’s Esther Benítez Translation Prize. Her most recent translation, Papi by Rita Indiana, is forthcoming in 2016. In 2014, she was awarded a USA Ford Fellowship for her writing and translation. She currently serves as the Distinguished Visiting Writer at Mills College in Oakland, California.