Translating a People

Translation is at best an echo.
George Borrow

A great age of literature is perhaps always a great age of translation.
Ezra Pound



One of the best things that happened to me upon my parents moving back to Nicaragua—when I was eleven years old—was that I ceased being the translator. My mother's English-language skills were limited. Because of this, whenever we'd brave the streets of Los Angeles without my bilingual father, the moment my mother encountered a linguistic puzzle beyond her capacity to solve, she'd gently nudge me before the interlocutor to act as her interpreter. Although I found the experience interesting at first, after a few years stuck at the job, translating became a chore.

Thus, once we moved to her homeland, where she didn't require my services any longer, the freedom was exhilarating.

Yet, ironically, today, as a novelist—and I suspect it's also the case with other Latino and Latina writers—I'm once again fully engaged in a variant of the act of translation.

From the moment I took my first trip to my parents' homeland—at the age of seven—I became acutely aware that Nicaragua and Nicaraguans were a land and a people vastly different from the United States and its populace. I found the landscape of Nicaragua—physical and human—mesmerizing. Nicaraguans were open to an extent I'd never experience, and their joy toward life was contagious. But at the same time there was an underlying sadness—manifested in an acceptance of their lot that to this day I find baffling—brought on by poverty and by centuries of never-ending political turmoil.

During my Nicaraguan adolescence, I grew to adore the country and its people. I gladly shed my American skin and embraced a new identity as a full-fledged Nicaraguan. I fit in perfectly, and loved almost every minute of the seven years I lived in my ancestral homeland.

When I returned to Los Angeles, at age eighteen, to attend college, I soon learned what I wanted to do, more than anything: it was to explain the sights, sounds, tastes, relationships, and experiences I had in Nicaragua to anyone who was willing to listen. Of course, conveying these things over lunch was impossible—I could only produce the distant echo George Borrow spoke of when referring to everything that is lost in translation.

Yet I always knew, instinctively, that the best way to inform Americans about their Nicaraguan brethren—we do share a continent, after all—would be through the written word. The problem was that I had no idea what I needed to do to become a writer. Blindly, I plunged into the study of literature—in Spanish—and eventually earned a doctorate. But that was of little help at the time in bringing the Nicaraguan experience to an American audience.

The turning point, though, was waiting for me right around the corner: I was introduced to US Latino and Latina literature—a literature written primarily in English by authors with backgrounds similar to mine. Their work struck me like a bolt of lightning, and I started to read their production voraciously.

The climax of this odyssey, the moment where a light descended upon my thirsty soul to reveal the key to rendering my love for Nicaragua onto the blank page, came after I read Julia Alvarez's In the Time of the Butterflies. Through that example, as well as others penned by equally talented Latino and Latina writers, I learned how to retrieve stories from my parents' homeland—originally experienced in Spanish—and reinterpret them for an English-language readership.

This is what I did in my first novel, Bernardo and the Virgin, and I've done it again in Meet Me under the Ceiba. I lifted events and wrote them in a manner that English-speaking readers can hopefully make their own.

Now the circle feels complete. I am back where I started: translating other people's experiences. Admittedly, it's a different type of translation than what I did for my mother. But it's a kind of interpreting I truly love.



This piece was originally posted in The National Examiner as part of the Meet Me under the Ceiba virtual book tour.

Pacifying the Gatekeepers: Or, as a Writer, Nothing Less than Your Best

That’s very nice if they want to publish you, but don’t pay too much attention to it. It will toss you away. Just continue to write.
Natalie Goldman


It takes a long time to publish a book.
Kenneth Koch



I am blessed that publishers in the United States are interested in my work.

And I am acutely aware of this blessing.

I add the qualifier “in the United States” because both in Panama and in Nicaragua—the countries where I’ve lived the past ten years—the overwhelming majority of writers are obliged to self-publish. Only a handful of novelists from the region manage to break out of the mold to secure a contract with a publisher—mostly Alfaguara, who seems to have a monopoly in this part of the world—that will finance the venture and help their authors gain an international audience. But these writers are the lucky exceptions and, in all honesty, they’ve toiled for decades to earn their success. The cruel reality is that for most Nicaraguan and Panamanian authors the road to publication is a solitary one.

The reason I mention the nature of publishing in Central America is that my observations of the scene taught me something that has helped me become a published novelist with Arte Público Press and Northwestern University Press: a writer should never submit his or her work until it is absolutely ready, until it is as interesting and flawless as humanly possible. The mistake most young writers in the isthmus commit is that the accomplishment of completing their manuscript so exhilarates them that, since they are virtually assured of self-publishing anyway, they rush their novel to the print shop. As a result of this impatience, every year the literary market of these nations—in the absence of publishing industry gatekeepers—is flooded with work that isn’t yet ready to see the light of print.

I could’ve made the same mistake, but the gatekeepers in the U.S. prevented it, fortunately. At the age of thirty-four, I completed a first novel titled Seeds by the Wayside. In this work I sought to tell the story of Nicaragua through the game of baseball. I sent the manuscript off to publishers, ready for the acclaim and fortune that was sure to follow. But after the third rejection letter, I started to look closely at what they were saying between the lines: that as a writer I wasn’t yet at the point where they’d want to publish my work. I was discouraged, but I continued writing for a couple of years, producing two more manuscripts before I decided to devote myself again to writing literary criticism, exclusively.

The years passed, and the thought of ever becoming a novelist was discarded. But then events in my life aligned themselves where I had found a terrific story based on actual incidents, I had plenty of time to write, and I had matured in the craft to the extent where I knew when something was off and, perhaps of greater significance, how to fix the problem.

When I finished Bernardo and the Virgin I sent the manuscript off to Northwestern University Press and my “first” novel was published in 2005, when I was fifty-one. By then I had learned most of what I needed to know about crafting a novel, and the experience paid off again with the recent publication of Meet Me under the Ceiba, with Arte Público Press.

More importantly, though, I was far more mature, no longer enamored with acclaim and fortune, but more interested in leaving a legacy, in trying to write novels that stand the test of time.

What have I learned about the road to publication through the years?

Two things: one, a writer takes the first step when he or she commits to the hard yet rewarding work of learning the craft and, two, a writer is ready for publication when he or she can identify what is wrong with any passage and how to fix it.

In the interim, a writer should continue writing—and reading, absolutely—until he or she is ready to step into the literary world with work they are sure to be proud of in years to come.

Although the picture I have painted might seem daunting, let me assure everyone that I’d do it all over again, for every step has enriched my life.*


* This essay was written at the request of Carolina, at Book-lover Carol, as part of the recent virtual book tour for Meet Me under the Ceiba. The piece has been slightly revised for preservation in this blog. To read the original, click here.

Meet Me under the Ceiba: The Virtual Book Tour

"When are you going on a book tour?" is a question authors are frequently asked. But the sad truth is that the glamour--although I've heard a few writers say that it's really drudgery--of a tour is only reserved for the stars of large publishing houses. The rest of us have to pay tour expenses out of our pocket. Thus, as much as I love meeting anyone that has read one of my novels, economics forces me to remain home-bound.

But in today's world, thanks to the internet, there are Virtual Book Tours.

Please join me as we parade Meet Me under the Ceiba through the blogsphere over the next two weeks.

Here are the dates and the locations, and please leave a comment so that that blog host will know that you were there.

Monday, January 11 @ Book-Lover Carol
Tuesday, January 12 @ Brown Girl Speaks
Wednesday, January 13 @ Regular Ruminations
Thursday, January 14 with my good friend and fellow Nicaphile, Joshua Berman @ The Tranquilo Traveler
Friday, January 15 @ Pisti Totol
Monday, January 18 @ Mama XXI
Tuesday, January 19 @ Farm Lane Books
Wednesday, January 20 @ Sandra's Book Club
Thursday, January 21, with an internet acquaintance I'm very fond of, Mayra Calvani @ Latino Books Examiner
Friday, January 22 @ Una in a Million

What's wonderful about this is that everyone can join me for every stop of the tour. Hope to see you there.

Taking the Walk

It is no use walking anywhere to preach unless our walking is our preaching.
St. Francis of Assis


For the past four years, my wife and I have traveled to the United States during the Christmas holidays to visit our families. We spend about a week in Nashville, North Carolina, and the same amount of time in Fresno, California. These gatherings are a time of reaffirmation, of reestablishing ties that acknowledge and nourish our roots.

During these visits, I try to walk an hour a day—the goal being to cover four miles. As anyone can guess, a writer’s life is sedentary—long stretches of time spent before a computer screen, hunched over notebooks, notepads, books, or stacks of papers that make up a draft in progress. Getting exercise, then, becomes imperative, especially if a writer wishes to live a long, healthy life. When I am in the States, walking is, by far, my favorite form of exercise. (In Panama, where sidewalks as they are known in the United States don’t exist, I exercise on my beloved elliptical trainer.)

Although I love walking through the well-tended US neighborhoods, I must confess that to overcome the boredom I associate with trying to be fit, I always take headphones and music along. Their company helps me look forward to the brisk walks.

But, in addition to the health benefits, I’ve also discovered that a short walk, in silence, can be a writer’s best friend. Whenever I am stuck, when my thoughts become logged-jammed to the point that words cease to flow harmoniously, or when a poorly-written sentence becomes unyielding, as if etched in granite, and I can’t find the right combination to free the flow, a short walk—even if it’s only to the refrigerator to pour myself a glass of water—allows me, as if by magic, to solve the quagmire.

Because of these almost miraculous properties of a stroll, I always encourage students in my writing class to “Take the Walk”—particularly when they are having trouble coming up with the concluding statement to an essay they have spent considerable time crafting.

Yet only a few days ago, I realized that I was guilty of not practicing what I preach. Over the past few months, I've been experiencing bouts of what is commonly known as “writer’s block.” I do not, however, find this a terrifying condition. I consider this phenomenon to be little more than the inability of unearth new ideas, a condition stemming primarily from a lack of quiet and solitary reflection.

The mental block had, nevertheless, reached a critical point, and I began to believe that my well of creativity was running dry—at least when it came to writing brief essays, such as this one. To try to summon the muses, over the holidays I sat in silence in my in-law’s living-room, devoted to becoming a vessel for new ideas. Still, after nearly an hour dedicated to this task, I had failed to conceive of a single idea. Frustrated, and at the verge of surrendering, it occurred to me, as a last, desperate measure, to “Take the Walk.”

I had already taken my daily stroll that morning, but it had been for exercise, not for the purpose of replenishing my dwindling supply of ideas. On that afternoon, I grabbed my coat, gloves, and hat, informed my father-in-law that I’d be stepping out for a while, picked up a notebook, rolled it up, and stuffed it in my pocket. I did, though, make the painful decision to leave my music behind, needing to be absolutely alone with my thoughts.

Shortly after leaving the house, as the wind that swept through the tree-lined streets bit my face, I almost turned back, nostalgic for the warmth of the fireplace. But I decided to brave the unusually cold North Carolina winter until I had at least tried to conjure up a few topics.

I admit that at the onset my choice to take a walk on that icy afternoon seemed foolish, but after that first mile subjects to write about started descending upon me in swift flurries, and I hurriedly jotted them down in the notebook as I continued walking.

By the time I returned to the comfort of my in-laws’ home, I had a healthy list of future writings. After several months distressed over the thought of being unable to continue producing these essays, I learned that all I needed to do, all along, was to take the walk.

A Loss among the Blessings: On the Death of a Great Teacher

Without passion man is a mere latent force of possibility, like the flint which awaits the shock of the iron before it can give forth its spark.
Henry Frederic Amiel

When the student is ready, the teacher will appear.
Buddhist proverb


I intended to return to this blog after a long hiatus—much needed to restore my energies and to replenish my supply of ideas—with a piece that explores the blessings I’ve received the past couple of months. But on the eve of composing that entry, an email from my sister Sandy—who is news director for the Fresno Univisiόn station—caught my full attention. In the inbox’s subject column, it stated, simply: “José Elgorriaga.” I didn’t need to read my sister’s message to know that it contained news of the death of a gifted teacher.

The article "Ex-'Dogs soccer coach, 82, dies: Elgorriaga a beloved, accomplished mentor" tells Dr. Elgorriaga’s life story more completely than I could in this posting. A couple of years ago, in the essay, “Crόnica de una muerte anunciada and a Debt to a Great Teacher,” I attempted, in the best words and images I could summon at the time, to pay homage to a person for whom I felt the highest admiration and respect possible—for Dr. José Elgorriaga, as only the best teachers can, changed my life, without question, for the better.

When I met Dr. Elgorriaga I was an aimless twenty-eight year old college graduate, toiling at a desk-job that had scant room for creativity. Feeling restless and desperately in search of new horizons, at the moment of our first encounter, as the Buddhist proverb states, I was the student who was ready, and he was the teacher that appeared. After a brief conversation about Latin American literature, Dr. Elgorriaga suggested that I enroll in the masters program in Spanish at California State University, in Fresno, where he was the chair of the Foreign Languages Department as well as the coach of the men’s soccer team. I soon learned to take his every word to heart, and thanks to his influence I started treading the road where my life would eventually find its true purpose.

José Elgorriaga was the best teacher I’ve ever had. He pushed me, a student hungry for knowledge, to my limits, and then a little beyond, always obligating me to reach for the best within me. And I, seeking to impress this teacher who so inspired me, learned to live a life passionately devoted to literature.

I can’t fully credit Dr. Elgorriaga with making me a writer, but he certainly taught me that teachers need to be devoted their calling, giving students their top effort every day. And he did indeed share his knowledge and passion for literature to the fullest measure in every class session. I recall that on one occasion I was the only student who showed up for class, and I assumed that without an audience, he would cancel for the day. But he went on to give one of the more commanding lectures I’ve ever witnessed, communicating his love for Octavio Paz’s El laberinto de la soledad as if the classroom were full of attentive students. To this day, that incident exemplifies, in my mind, unbridled devotion to teaching.

Although I came across Dr. Elgorriaga a few years before I started to dream about becoming a novelist, he did play a pivotal role in the success I’ve enjoyed in this venture so far: he taught me how to read with every single one of my senses engaged, and as I have learned since, good writers must first become great readers—for this is the fountain that nourishes our proficiency in the craft.

Ultimately, then, Dr. Elgorriaga deserves significant credit for helping me become a fulfilled person and a contented professional—both as a teacher and as a writer.

His death, in my universe, is a daunting loss. As long as he was alive I was certain there was someone still on this earth capable of touching lives and of inspiring students to search without fear for their true calling. Now that he has gone, the torch he handed me—among many other pupils—remains lit, but to pass it on has, in Professor Elgorriaga's absence, become an intimidating task.

Ghost in the Maze: On Werner Herzog’s "Grizzly Man."

An idea, like a ghost, must be spoken to a little before it will explain itself.
Charles Dickens

Knowledge is awareness, and to it are many paths, not all of them paved with logic. But sometimes one is guided through the maze by intuition. One is led by something felt on the wind, something seen in the stars, something that calls from the wastelands to the spirit.
Louis L'Amour


On October 5, 2003, the self-proclaimed “eco-warrior” and filmmaker Timothy Treadwell and his girlfriend Amie Huguenard were mauled to death and then devoured by a grizzly bear near Hallo Bay, in Katmai National Park, Alaska.

Treadwell devoted the last thirteen summers of his life to communing with grizzlies in the Alaskan wilderness. In addition to educating the public about the challenges bears face with regard to human encroachment upon their habitat, the filmmaker also claimed that he protected them from poachers. (After Treadwell’s death, however, a spokesperson for the National Park Service stated that bear-poaching is a negligible problem.)

During his last five Alaskan summers, Treadwell filmed the grizzlies of Katmai National Park, and in doing so he left behind more than a hundred hours of footage as his most impacting legacy.

Treadwell’s life—and the circumstances surrounding his death—caught the attention of German filmmaker Werner Herzog, whose early works, such as Aguirre, the Wrath of God and Fitzcarraldo, earned him the reputation of being a maverick director whose work is chaotic, daring, and frequently over-the-top. With full access to Treadwell’s film archives, Herzog created Grizzly Man—a thoughtful, mesmerizing, and often poetic account of Treadwell’s existence and demise among these majestic, formidable, and extremely dangerous bears.

The first time I viewed Grizzly Man—the dvd a gift from my good friend, Dr. Benjamin Murphy—I cringed at times, feeling that I was on the verge of witnessing a gruesome mauling scene. But viewers are spared of any sights and sounds of violence against humans; and although an audio recording of Treadwell and Huguenard’s final moments does exist, Herzog does not include this in the documentary, and wisely so.

Instead, in addition to expertly weaving together breathtaking shots of grizzlies and foxes—another animal for which Treadwell exhibited a unique affinity—the German director focuses on painting the portrait of a man who through his obsessive relationship with bears struggles to keep his powerful personal demons at bay.

Treadwell’s detractors, who are numerous, are quick to point out that he was far from being a naturalist in the great American tradition of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, and John Muir—all men who devoted their lives to a particular geography, and not only to one species. What Timothy Treadwell was, some argue, was an opportunist who used the grizzlies to further his quest for fame and fortune. (Although one can counter that after thirteen summers in the wild, Treadwell’s bank account had little to show for his considerable sacrifices). And yet others claim that Treadwell used the grizzlies as therapy to soothe his severely fractured psyche.

It is precisely this aspect of Treadwell’s life that Grizzly Man explores best—and stunningly so. As Herzog develops the story of the self-proclaimed “eco-warrior,” through the subject’s own footage, as well as through interviews with those close to Treadwell’s work, the viewer observes—in addition to a handful of hair-raising scenes of the ultimately self-destructive manner in which Treadwell approached the bears—moments that would have been best left to the confines of a Catholic confessional.

A recovering alcoholic, who in addition once had a serious problem with substance abuse—the turning point in Treadwell’s life, after which he took to the Alaskan wild, occurred when he nearly died from a heroin overdose—the “bear whisperer,” as he sometimes also referred to himself, found his life’s meaning in the grizzly community of Katmai National Park. These creatures helped him expel the tormenting spirits that had been after him most of his life. The grizzlies’ inscrutable gazes and impenetrable ways, plus the constant threat of death, kept Treadwell supplied with sufficient stimulation to live the remainder of his days without the need to turn again to alcohol or drugs.

The documentary Grizzly Man contains one episode where a bear stands with his back to a tree, rubbing against it to scratch. Treadwell approaches the creature and the animal moves aggressively toward the eco-warrior. Although it is obvious that Treadwell is terrified, he holds his ground and scolds the bear. The grizzly stops in his tracks, stares at the human for a moment, and then turns and leaves. Treadwell walks to the spot where the bear was scratching himself and realizes that the imposing being must have been at least ten feet tall. When he fully realizes the mortal danger he had been in, a rush of adrenaline, its effects plain to observe, makes him speak louder and faster than usual, in a forceful rush of words directed to the camera to which he repeats, over and over, his amazement at the grizzly’s size.

What remains certain after watching Grizzly Man is that Timothy Treadwell needed the bears far more than they needed him. Throughout the documentary he keeps referring to the maze—a terrain where several streams converge and as a result it constitutes an important ground for grizzlies to catch salmon. Several times Treadwell states that the maze is a dangerous place, and it was here where he and Amie Huguenard encounter their deaths. But Herzog’s documentary, in capturing Treadwell’s spirit—with its severe flaws—eerily renders him immortal. And although from the onset the viewer knows that the eco-warrior will be killed and devoured by the very beings he loved so profoundly, in the final scene of the German filmmaker’s visual narrative the tall grasses move untouched, as if stirred by the continued wanderings of a ghost caught in the maze.

A Slight Delay and the First Review

Grant us a brief delay; impulse in everything is but a worthless servant.
Caecilius Statius

Critics are sentinels in the grand army of letters, stationed at the corners of newspapers and reviews, to challenge every new author.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow


Publishers, like the rest of us, are subject to timetable shifts due to circumstances beyond their control. Meet Me Under the Ceiba was scheduled for release on September 30, but for various reasons—none of which are really important—the printer will deliver the copies of the book in mid-October. From that point it will take a couple of weeks for Arte Público Press to enter the book into inventory and then mail out review copies and back orders. As a result, Meet Me Under the Ceiba will become available to the reading public at the beginning of November.

Is such a delay frustrating for an author? In this case, not at all. The manuscript of Meet Me Under the Ceiba has undergone a seven-year odyssey that perhaps someday will be worth of a long essay. During that journey, the novel took a side-trip, entering the University of California, Irvine’s Chicano/Latino Literary Contest and winning First Place. More importantly, I’m very proud of the result, and I’m confident that this work will garner a nice measure of positive attention.

The first review that confirms my faith in the quality of Meet Me Under the Ceiba recently appeared in Booklist. The New York Times calls Booklist "an acquisitions bible for public and school librarians nationwide." Booklist is the review journal of the American Library Association. It recommends works of fiction, nonfiction, children's books, reference books, and media to its 30,000 institutional and personal subscribers. In-house editors and contributing reviewers from around the country review more than 7,500 books each year, most before publication.

And the review reads as follows:

BOOKLIST
Advanced Review – Uncorrected Proof
Issue: September 1, 2009

Meet Me under the Ceiba.
Sirias, Silvio (Author)
Sep 2009. 232 p. Arte Publico, paperback, $15.95. (9781558855922).

Sirias brings to life a small Nicaraguan town as it reacts to the brutal murder of Adela, a beautiful young lesbian who made the mistake of challenging a wealthy landowner by luring away his mistress. The novel is based on a true story, which Sirias researched while visiting Nicaragua. He is personified as a professor spending the summer near his parents’ birthplace, where he hears the story of the lesbian lovers, and attempts to reconstruct the days before and after Adela’s demise. By means of his interviews, the reader comes to know Adela’s family, her former lover (who feared for Adela’s safety), Adela’s former husband (who never dreamed that being a lesbian would get her killed), and Adela’s magnetic and stunningly beautiful lover Ixelia, who was prostituted by her mother at age 11. The problems faced by homosexuals in Nicaragua are encapsulated in this one case: Adela’s murder is deemed a minor offense because she was a lesbian. A provocative novel that opens up a little-known world to its readers.
— Deborah Donovan

Of course, the final sentence of the review is what tugs at the heart of this proud novelist. The first sentinel—to borrow Longfellow’s term—has approved of the work.

A delay of a month, then, for something worthwhile, means little. Still, in the meantime Amazon is offering a 22% discount for anyone pre-ordering Meet Me Under the Ceiba. Be the first on your block to own a copy.