The Heritage Month Project: "Night at the Fiestas: Stories" by Kirstin Valdez Quade

Last week I discussed Junot Diaz's The Brief Wonderous Life of Oscar Wao as part of my Spanish Heritage Month observance. I feel I should point out that I am aware that seven years ago he was the focus of claims regarding inappropriate behavior toward several women writers. As a result of that issue at that time, writer and critic Monica Castillo tweeted "Because I need/want to deal with this Junot Diaz news in another way, can we signal boost some Latina authors out there?" And that led PBS to run the article Sexual misconduct claims against Junot Diaz have sparked support for Latina writers. Here’s who you should be reading now. 

That is how I came to find Night at the Fiestas: Stories by Kirstin Valdez Quade, a book of very fine short stories. They are all set in the southwest, many around Santa Fe, with Hispanic families/culture often part of that setting. This raises a question for a lifelong New Englander: Am I being exposed to a world I know nothing about? Or do I know so little I can't recognize whether or not I'm being exposed to a world I know nothing about?

But I obsess.

I will admit that though I found these stories highly readable, I often wasn't clear about the endings. Now this is an issue for me when reading short stories, anyway. Endings are a factor for me when writing short stories, too. Could my lack of ending knowledge be keeping me from finding publication homes for more of my short stories?

I continue to obsess.

Let's Talk About Some of These Stories

When I looked over these stories a second time in preparation for writing this post, I noticed a couple  things that I wasn't aware of during the first read.

• Religion plays a part in a number of them. In Nemecia, the main character has an opportunity to lead the procession at the annual Corpus Christi festival, an opportunity her creepy cousin Nemecia snatches from her. In The Five Wounds a pretty poor excuse for a father is playing Christ in a local Passion Play. In Family Reunion, an atheist child wants to convert to the Mormon faith. In Ordinary Sins, a young, single woman pregnant with twins works at a local Catholic church office.
• Family trauma turns up in many of them. In Nemecia, Nemecia is living with the main character's family because of something that happened in Nemecia's past, something the narrator only knows about through what creepy Nemecia tells her. In that one, childhood trauma spreads. In The Five Wounds the poor excuse for a father is seeking redemption for forsaking his child, realizing that the child his daughter is carrying is going to suffer pain from that, too. The Guesthouse is your classic family trauma instigated by a death. And in Family Reunion that atheist child I mentioned is the daughter of an alcoholic father and thus recognizes that something is wrong with the Mormon family she has become attached to.

Family trauma isn't something I'm usually a fan of in my reading, but, as I said, I did like these stories.

Other Favorites

• Mojave Rats. A woman is trapped in trailer park with her children while the furnace is broken. She insists to herself that they aren't like the other people there. They will be leaving. Readers may have their doubts.
• Night at the Fiestas. This story is clearly set in the fifties or sixties, which I found novel. I also liked it because I found the main character unlikable. Writing workshops/how-tos often insist that main characters must be likable, because readers won't relate to them otherwise. I've never agreed with that, and I found this story particularly memorable because of this main character who wants to escape her world and doesn't mind a little theft to help her do it.
• Jubilee. The daughter of a Hispanic man wants to hate his Anglo employers, the Lowells, which is an old New England upper class family name, in case I am the only person who noticed.  Do they deserve it? Another main character who's not all that likable. 
• Canute Commands the Tides. A New England artist moves to Santa Fe, with little understanding of what's there or what she's doing there. Her move has a bad impact on the painting she's working on "Canute Commands the Tides." Should we stay in the culture that made us? I particularly liked this story because the artist moving west is from my part of the world. I can see this woman. Also, I was familiar with the Canute Commands the Tides story, though with a different spin than the narrator of the story gives it. Canute was not a foolish old man. He was making a point to his followers who had been sucking up to him. No, he could not command the tides. If I had all the time in the world, I would read this story again to work out Canute's place in it. Also, there are two women here with adult children, something I should probably think about more. 

Another Interesting Work from Quade

The Five Wounds is Kirstin Valdez Quade's first novel and picks up on the characters and world she introduced in her short story The Five Wounds. I love when this kind of thing happens.

Friday Done List September 19

I was so overwhelmed with family events last Friday that I forgot to post this. Here it goes.

We have a family event this weekend--the bulk celebration of 9 birthdays--preparation for which cut into my work week. Yeah, I have trouble with priorities. What I did do was try to concentrate on small things that I could do here and there and that might put me into a good position to get back to work next week. It's been a struggle.

Goal 1. Write and Publish Adult Short Stories, Essays, and Humor

• Reread that flash draft I finished recently. You know, if you spend time reading and studying flash, you start seeing all kinds of words and phrases that seem superfluous. In fact, they seem a burden.
• I made a chart to keep track of the short form market research I'm supposed to be doing. I discovered that I hadn't submitted a humor piece that I thought I had submitted. This could inspire another blog post.
• Submitted the humor piece I'd forgotten about. (See above.)
• Started reading another lit journal for the market research project.

Goal 2. Build Community/Market Work/Brand Myself and My Work

• Picked up on The Heritage Month Project again after a month and half when there were no Heritage Months formerly recognized by the U.S. We're talking a Hispanic American Heritage Month post.
• Brought my Goodreads reading challenge up to date. I've met my goal!
• Updated my Goodreads blog with a repost of my first Hispanic American Month post.
• Skeeted a link to the Hispanic American Month post.
• Just barely began two blog posts.

The Heritage Month Project: "The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao" by Junot Diaz

Hispanic Heritage Month, one of the heritage months recognized by the U.S. State Department prior to 2025, runs from September 15 to October 15. For those of us very focused on traditional classifications/designations of time, mid-month to mid-month seems...wrong. However, a number of Latin American countries observe their independence days on September 15 or soon thereafter, so think outside the box, Gail.

I must admit upfront that in the past I associated Hispanic American literature with my back-in-the-day book discussion group. The books by Hispanic authors I read for book group I found difficult. Deep. Maybe stylistically outside my experience. Very literary? The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love by Oscar Hijuelos--There were only a couple of sentences in that book that registered with me, and they both dealt with Desi Arnez, who I had some previous knowledge of. Even the movie was lost on me. In the Time of the Butterflies by Julia Alvarez--that's pretty dramatic original material and all I could tell you about it is that everyone...... Well, that would be telling you the ending, so I won't. I think we read some magical realism, which is a big deal in Latin American literature and after that I avoided that genre. Even if you take the attitude that magical realism can exist in writing from nonLatin American writers, and I've heard that some people don't, I tend to avoid it now. Be magic...be real...be one or the other. 

In short, I wasn't looking forward to my Hispanic Heritage Month reading. But things have gone really well.

I Found Oscar

I cannot recall what led me to look into author Junot Diaz's work, other than I'd heard his name. I often say I can't recall why I read this or that, and it isn't because of some kind of mental lapse. Though would I recall it, if it were? No, it's because I juggle reading a great many things, as well as thinking about them. 

Pardon me for obsessing.

I became aware that Diaz has published in The New Yorker, and flash fiction, too! I could get a short sample, and I did with the lovely The Books of Losing You.

And so I went on to The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, which I think I chose because it was available at a library I was in. Yes, I have crap reasons for reading the things I read. I shouldn't even mention them.

This is not one of the Hispanic-related books I was used to, even though it has markers of what some people would think of as a "literary" book. The story moves around a number of twentieth century periods, and a number of points of view. Much of the book has a narrator who remains unknown for a while. (He's Oscar's college roommate and his sister's sometime boyfriend.) There are footnotes. There's a lot of Spanish. There's what might be a curse.

On the other hand, though, there is Oscar, a sad, Dominican-American nerd who might be living under that family curse and who wants love so badly. His story is extremely engaging. Of course, everyone who has watched an episode of The Big Bang Theory thinks they know nerd culture. Oscar Wao reads as if author Junot Diaz really knew it back in 2007 when his book was published. Or I should say, knew it in the '90s, the period when Oscar was living. Who doesn't love a nerd, wherever he comes from?

A Little Bit of What We're Dealing With Here

A lot of footnotes. Footnotes were a thing in fiction for a while. I have a family member who intensely dislikes them used that way, but I enjoy them. I liked what Diaz did with them here. He uses them to explain the Dominican Republic world that earlier generations of Oscar's family lived in under the Trujillo regime there. I had actually heard of Trujillo, probably because I'd read In the Time of the Butterflies, which Diaz mentions. Meaning I got something out of that book. I realized he was bad news, but I couldn't have told you what country in which he was bad news. Meaning I didn't get very much out of that book. Diaz places the bulk of his Trujillo history in footnotes, but he handles that history with wit. Could readers skip the footnotes, which is probably what many readers of nonfiction do with footnotes there, and still get a story in Oscar Wao? Probably, but the footnotes are fantastic. It's hard not to compare our own times to the Trujillo era, which most readers probably weren't doing in 2007 when this book was published. As grim as things are now, they are not Trujillo grim.

A lot of Spanish. I've read that there are some objections to the amount of Spanish in this book. I don't feel you had to understand it to follow the story. What's more, this is a story about Spanish speaking people. Wouldn't a book about Spanish-speaking people with little or no Spanish be a book about Spanish-speaking people for nonSpanish people? What am I trying to say here? Would it be a book about Spanish-speaking people that English-speaking people would be comfortable with? I read a book about Spanish-speaking people but they weren't Spanish enough to speak Spanish? 

I have to admit, though, that I did wish the Spanish was French. Because I study French, de temp en temp, and I would have looked up what I didn't know, and my French would have improved so much! So I was patient with the Spanish. Someone's Spanish probably improved as a result of reading this book.

The curse. I am not a fan of curses, but this one provided a connection between characters. It was a sort of storyline. A recurring theme, perhaps.

In short, there is a great deal to like about this book.

Has Oscar Influenced Another Book?

Earlier this year, I read The Savage, Noble Death of Babs Dionne by Ron Currie. The Brief Wonderous Life of Oscar Wao brought it back to mind. The books' titles are similar, both in terms of how they're structured and in terms of them tipping readers off to the fates of the main characters. Both books deal with an ethnic group in America, Dominican Americans in one case, Franco-Americans in the other. Both make use of a language other than English in the text, Spanish for Oscar Wao and French for Babs Dionne. (There's far more Spanish in Oscar Wao than there is French in Babs Dionne. I'm going to make a wild guess here that Diaz is more fluent in Spanish than Currie is in French, but that may just be me overidentifying with another Franco-American author.) In Oscar Wao we have the nightmarish Trujillo back in the Dominican Republic. In Babs Dionne we have a pretty terrifying criminal back in Canada. Both books also have a touch of the supernatural. In Oscar Wao there is that curse. In Babs Dionne there is a character who suffers from hallucinations in which she communicates with the dead.

I should be writing an undergraduate paper, shouldn't I? 

Yes, my Hispanic Heritage Month reading is off to a good start.

Friday Done List September 12

Goal 1. Write and Publish Adult Short Stories, Essays, and Humor

• Received a rejection for an essay, found another publication for it, and resubmitted. 
• Writers' Workshops Aren't Just For Those With Time and Money published at New Writers Welcome! This is another compilation and revision of material originally used here.
• Finished a draft of a short story. It's a second draft, actually. I did the first one maybe a year or two back.
• Worked on a second short story.
• Attended a flash writing workshop.
• Changed that draft as a result of the writing workshop.
• Just barely began some humor thoughts.

Goal 2. Build Community/Market Work/Brand Myself and My Work

• A blog post last weekend.
• Worked on the next Heritage Month post
• Finished some reading for Hispanic American Heritage Month.
• Picked up some books from the library for other months coming up.
• Promoted new essay publication at Facebook and BlueSky.

Goal 3. Submit book-length Work to Agents and Editors 

• Went over a list of four agents I was thinking of submitting to. One had little web presence. A couple I didn't feel right about, and they were closed to submissions. I submitted nothing.
• Read To Go Big or Come Home by Tom McAllister about his experience publishing with traditional publishers and then trying to find an agent post publishing. It sounded very familiar to me. Confirms my feeling that I want to go short-form writing now. Though, like McAllister, I wouldn't walk away from a book offer.

Goal 4. Play with the 19th Century Novel Idea, Which Does Have a Name Now, But is Mainly a Fun Think Piece

• Made some notes

The Weekend Writer: Some Query Letter Critiques

I just stumbled upon author Mindy McGinniss' blog in which she critiques query letters. This is interesting stuff, at least as far as I've read.

McGinness is the author of The Female of the Species, which I liked. A lot.

Friday Done List September 5

Goal 1. Write and Publish Adult Short Stories, Essays, and Humor  

• Worked on a flash fiction piece I started quite some time ago and began revising last week.
  
• Watched Creative Academy's interview with Mary Robinette Kowal about writing short stories, as part of my short story study. This was so good.
• Submitted a short story to a lit journal.
• Rewrote some blog material into a piece to submit to a Medium publication.
• Submitted to Medium publication.

Goal 2. Build Community/Market Work/Brand Myself and My Work

•  Weekend Writer post. Promoted on Facebook and BlueSky
• National Book Festival post. Promoted on Facebook, BlueSky, and Goodreads.
• Watched Authors' Guild Foundation's How and Where to Find Your Readers with Andrea Guevera, who really did offer a different spin on branding/marketing, which is why I'm trying to get active on my Goodreads blog again.
• Continued reading for Heritage Month Project.

National Book Festival Is This Saturday, September 6

During the height of the pandemic, the National Book Festival was fully on-line, and I "attended" a few events. This was one of the pandemic activities that opened me up to the incredible possibilities for readers and writers on-line. Yes, I know I was just writing about this yesterday. It was life changing, okay?

This year's festival  is this Saturday, one day instead of three, as it was in 2020. During that one day you can still do some live streaming, and videos of all the speakers are supposed to be available after the festival is over. 

Oh, look! The videos from last year! If I had all the time in the world, I'd watch the one on the history of community cookbooks. Yes, seriously, I would.

Here is the list of authors' presenting. Children's writers are well represented. My favorite historian will be there. It appears that all authors have a resent book that is being featured, in case you see some favorite writers there and want to see what they're up to.