My Fan Club

I have a mind to join a club and beat you over the head with it.
Groucho Marx


I never dreamed that someday I’d have my own fan club.

To my amazement, I have one on Facebook. (Actually, I have two; but more on the second one later.)

And now that I have a fan club of my own, I find the experience a little bewildering. Two questions, in particular, plague me: What expectations do my “fans” have of me? And, will I be able to live up to these?

Yet I can deal with these concerns because any person who says that he or she wouldn’t love to have a fan club is more than likely lying.

Still, now that I have one, I feel undeserving. If I were a writer who has touched the hearts of thousands of readers I’d understand. But I haven’t done this—at least not yet.

The question then becomes, if I’m not exactly a well-recognized writer, how did the Silvio Sirias Fan Club get started?

A couple of years ago, my wife, Erinn, thought it would be a quaint idea to start a Bernardo and the Virgin Fan Club. She created a page on Facebook and invited our friends to join. Before long, close to forty—all of them friends of ours—had signed up.

I thought the Bernardo and the Virgin Fan Club was a cute idea, and since the club was devoted to the book, the attention wasn’t on me; or so I convinced myself. (This is the second fan club I referred to earlier.)

Lamentably, the Bernardo and the Virgin Fan Club has just sat there, static after the initial reactions, and waiting for someone (Is it supposed to be me?), to breathe life into it.

A year passed since the club’s creation when I received an email from our “foster” daughter, Isabel Montoya. (For more about Erinn's and my relationship with Isabel read "A Blessing for Isabel.") In the message, she wrote that she had created the Silvio Sirias Fan Club, also on Facebook. Isabel said that she believed that such a club would be more appropriate than the one devoted to my first novel because she knew the publication Meet Me Under the Ceiba was right around the corner. She added that she hoped I enjoyed the gift and that she had named me the administrator so I could manage the group myself.

I thanked Isabel, not really comfortable with the idea of managing my own Fan Club, and thought: Oh, well, it was a nice gesture. My plan became to let the group sit for a while—at least until Isabel had forgotten she had created it—and allow it then to die a natural death; at that point I’d delete it from Facebook. On the first day two persons joined: Isabel’s mother and my wife. That should be about all the members, I concluded; and I placed the Silvio Sirias Fan Club out of my mind.

That was about three months ago. Last week, a ninth-grader said to me, “I saw your Fan Club on Facebook, Dr. Sirias, and I joined.”

I smiled and thanked him. The following day, another student said the same thing, almost word for word.

That evening, while at home, I checked my Fan Club site. To my astonishment, fifty-seven fans had joined. (And as I write this there are now seventy-four fans, including a few persons I don’t know. I realize this is nothing compared to the 300,000 fans the Victoria’s Secret Fan Club has, but I’m happy.)

The club I had never suspected would take off has suddenly come to life. Gamuts of emotions are running through me because of the Silvio Sirias Fan Club—mostly confusion and apprehension—but also joy at being recognized as a . . . as a . . . as a what?

As a writer?

As a teacher? (Are the students who signed up trying to curry favor?)

As both?

The writer in me asks, “Have most of the Fan Club members read Bernardo and the Virgin?”

Will they rush out and purchase a copy of Meet Me Under the Ceiba the very day it’s released (September 30).

And, what am I going to do for my Fan Club?

To this last question, the teacher in me answers: “We will soon have a quiz on Bernardo and the Virgin. It will be in the form of a contest. The first person to answer the question correctly will win a prize.”

Stay tuned, details will be forthcoming within the next week for members of the Bernardo and the Virgin (click on name to visit site) and the Silvio Sirias Fan Clubs on Facebook.

The Pleasure of Guiding Blossoming Writers

I learned that you should feel when writing, not like Lord Byron on a mountain top, but like child stringing beads in kindergarten—happy, absorbed and quietly putting one bead on after another.
Brenda Ueland


I don't know much about creative writing programs. But they're not telling the truth if they don't teach, one, that writing is hard work, and, two, that you have to give up a great deal of life, your personal life, to be a writer.
Doris Lessing



For the second consecutive year I’ve taught a course titled Introduction to College Writing, here at Balboa Academy, under the auspices of the University of San Diego. The students—mostly seniors, along with a handful of juniors—who successfully complete the class will receive three units of college credits that they can transfer to their university of choice.

As a teacher, last year was a rewarding experience, and based on what I learned I was able to, from the onset of the school year, develop a writing curriculum that challenges the students, encouraging them to venture forth into the world as writers who seek to have readers see the world as they do. I’ve been blessed with a group of talented, hard-working youngsters that has accepted every writing challenge I’ve set before them.

Because the results have been so enjoyable for me to read—not to mention enlightening—I feel the need to share these with a larger audience. I want to thank Eric Jackson, publisher of The Panama News, for making this possible. The students’ essays, which have been appearing regularly in the Opinion section since the September 22, 2008 issue, have been well received. I’d now like to take this opportunity to invite readers to revisit the notable writings these young authors have produced.

The first class assignment was to write a piece that would give readers insight into the type of person the author is. Alexandra Kula shared with us the essay “I’m Peter Pan,” in which she, as a youth who has already experienced life in several countries, describes how Panama has become home, and that she wishes she didn’t have to grow up so she could stay here a little longer.

Dominique Wiese, who has Zonian roots, writes about awakening to her mother’s heritage and coming to fully appreciate this part of herself in the piece “The Colombian in Me.”

When asked to write about something that would give readers insight into the type of person she is, Katalina Durbin responded with “The Eyes of a True Angel”—a moving piece about her summer volunteer experience at Panama’s Children’s Hospital.

Another student of Zonian stock, Andrew Bivin, wrote about how a close friend, by way of example, has taught him to seize the moment as opposed to planning every detail of his life in “Yes, No, Maybe So.”

In “What Made the Difference,” Erica Mutoh shares the vital lesson she learned about the importance of having an accepting attitude when she was confronted with a major change in her life.

The second class assignment was for students to narrate a personal experience. Spencer Jackson, in “A Walk in the Dark,” tells us about the terrifying experience of being stranded one night in the Netherlands.

In the piece, “My Pet Rock,” David Madinger, with considerable humor, shares his experience of being a rare item: a teenager afflicted with a kidney stone.

Ashley Kula, when asked to write about a personal experience, composed “Moving On,” a tale about her highly successful transition into life in Panama.

“California, Here We Come” tells of Michelle Klimasch’s discovery of and newfound passion for the great state.

Juan Diego de Obarrio narrates a harrowing tragedy he witnessed, years ago, at Panama’s Avalon Water Park in the piece “Slide #9.”

Students were also asked to write an essay about another person. Sarah Beck produced the touching piece “You Cook. I’ll be the Granny.”

And when asked to write an essay about culture, Eisha Abdel-Ghany opted to take her readers on a stroll through the streets of Cairo in “Walk this Way: or, Walk like an Egyptian.”

What has been most rewarding for me, as the instructor who has cheered them on through the act of writing, is that these essays are just a small sample of the excellent work every single student has produced. And, yes, there are many more student writings in the pipeline waiting their turn to appear in The Panama News.

Spanish or English: A Matter of Choice? (Conclusion)

When it comes to languages, a shift in preference has invariably meant a significant shift in my identity. And during this last stage of my journey, I’ve been blessed to have my wife, Erinn, at my side. She’s a fully bilingual person who’s acutely aware of the important role that Spanish and English play in my life.

In fact, it was Erinn who encouraged me to leave the United States for Central America. (Most of our friends thought it was sheer madness for me to give up a tenured teaching position at a university for the uncertainty of ever being able to earn a decent living again). But it is in this part of the world, first in Nicaragua, and now in Panama, that I’ve become one with the two beings—the English and Spanish-speaking ones—that dwell within me.

The ten years since we moved here have passed by swiftly. There have been many difficult moments—economically, at first, and, surprisingly, with my being able to readjust to a culture in which I once felt completely at home. But today I can honestly say that my life has never felt more balanced, more centered.

More importantly, thanks to this move I’ve fulfilled my dream of becoming a published novelist—in the United States and in English. The stories that I choose to write about are here for the taking: all I need to do is to keep my eyes and ears open. In fact, tales that touch my soul seem to be in infinite supply and I now lament, every day, not having enough years left on this earth to tell them all.

Living in Central America inspires the writer within me. Moreover, I get to retrieve these stores that were lived in Spanish and render them in English, just like Julia Alvarez, one of my literary heroes, does in In the Time of the Butterflies and in In the Name of Salomé. Thus, when I write a novel I work almost equally in both languages: I conduct the research—the most fun part of writing a book—in Spanish, and I write—the more technical aspect—in English.

After all these reminiscences, I now find myself back to the starting point of this piece, the question a ninth-grade student asked me: “Dr. Sirias, which language do you prefer, English or Spanish?”

Well, to that student I’d now simply answer: "It depends on what leg of the journey I was on, but in the present stage, I prefer to live in Spanish, and write in English."

Spanish or English: A Matter of Choice? (Part IX)

In the classroom, my enthusiasm for teaching literature, in Spanish, remained unabated, for I had never really stopped loving the language and the culture. But outside of the classroom I had become a US Latino and Latina literature fiend. I read voraciously these writers that were, culturally-speaking, like me—that is, they also lived on the hyphen of split identity, such as being Mexican-American, Cuban-American, Puerto Rican-American, and so forth—and were writing in English.

Learning about these authors and their works was akin getting a second doctorate. But I didn’t mind the hard labor in the least because I was studying writers who told stories that closely resembled those I had unsuccessfully tried to tell years earlier. Yet, at the time, I didn’t consider them as models: I had given the dream of being a novelist my best shot, and I was now happy to try to become a scholar whose critical writings were respected within the academic community.

After I had become familiar with the existing studies in the field, I noticed a void: the need to prepare a volume of interviews with notable novelists. I convinced a colleague from the English Department at Appalachian State, Bruce Dick, to join me on the project. Together we spoke to Cuban-Americans writers such as Virgil Suárez, Roberto Fernández, Gustavo Pérez-Firmat, Achy Obejas, and Cristina García; the Mexican-Americans Rudolfo Anaya (Bruce and I would go on to compile and edit Conversations with Rudolfo Anaya—the first collection of interviews ever published that were focused on a single US Latino author), Benjamín Alire-Sáenz, Demetria Martínez, Carla Trujillo, and Kathleen Alcalá; the Dominican-American Julia Alvarez; and the Salvadoran-American Marcos Villatoro.

Although the project was producing wondrous results, I burned out along the way. (The interviews, however, provided me with an excellent education regarding how these writers approach the craft. Also, Bruce took the idea in another direction and published an excellent collection of interviews: A Poet’s Truth: Conversations with Latino/Latina Poets.) Something inside of me—having nothing to do with the work at hand—snapped. To put it simply: I had become terribly unhappy living in North Carolina.

The first couple of years I resided in the heart of the Blue Ridge Mountains were blissful. I fell in love with the region, the people, and the university. I found many similarities between the local culture and those of Latin America: devotion to family, community, religion, and an openness and friendliness toward outsiders, like me. But with the passage of time, as the newness wore off, I started to feel isolated, utterly alone.

Among the 500 full-time professors at Appalachian State University, I was one of only two faculty members of Latin American descent. And my colleague taught in the sciences. Thus, it felt as if I alone was shouldering the burden of representing an entire culture on a campus of 13,000 students. I was, by default, the expert on “being” Latin American. As such, I was constantly invited to chat with classes and groups—something I truly enjoyed—and over the course of four years I made well over one hundred public presentations.

The problem was that people seemed to only want to hear about the left side of my mixed-heritage, the Nicaraguan side, and few appeared to care what I had to say about the entire hyphenated—Nicaraguan-American—equation. And I, for the first time in my life, fully appreciated the hyphen: it was the point where my two heritages, the Nicaraguan and the American, connected and interacted with one another to produce the identity with which I finally felt comfortable. I was completely at home straddling my cultures and their languages; and this posture, creatively-speaking, was bringing forth the best in me. And I, as a teacher, wanted to share this new understanding with my students. But getting the university to approve my teaching courses on US Latino and Latina literature became a bureaucratic maze that would take years to unravel. And impatience started to get the best of me.

The low point of my isolation came during a meeting of the Appalachian Humanities Council, of which I was the director. In that capacity I had brought several of the writers Bruce and I had interviewed to give talks on campus. While the Council members discussed which speakers we would invite the following year, a professor who was well-regarded on campus said, “I don’t think we need to invite any more Latino writers; they’ve already been well represented in our program.”

It was at that precise moment—after I had done all that I could to bring what I thought was the best of the Hispanic-American hyphenated experiences to the Blue Ridge Mountains—that I started to think about leaving.