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Following My
Bliss
Growing up in Mexico and El Salvador, my
Puerto Rican mother and Missouri-born father
frequently had books in their laps. I
watched them, and as they read they seemed
to leave the room and travel to another
world. Their rapt absorption intrigued me,
and I envied them for it. I thought, What is
it that's so engrossing?
Later, when I learned to read myself, I
answered my own question. Stories. It is
stories that transfix and transport.
So it was my parents, I believe, who started
me on the writing path, though way back then
I didn't understand that the first step
toward writing is loving to read.
When I was 10 and 11, accompanied by Meches,
my nursemaid, I often rode the bus into
downtown San Salvador to visit the Libreria
Ibérica where I'd buy the latest magazine
with the newest love story by Corin Tellado.
Home again, the servants gathered around the
kitchen table while I read the story to
them. Over the years, I continued to read
for these women. Las nanas, I called them;
they were like second mothers to me. |
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I'd read letters sent to
them by their families, letters coming from the
villages they'd left behind when they moved to the
capital to work for families like ours. And I wrote
their letters in reply. Every missive brimmed with
stories, their own true stories. By writing them
down, I saved them in my heart.
I was 39 when I first had the impulse to write for
myself. I enrolled in an evening writing class and
wrote from that place inside me where las nanas'
stories had collected. Day by day, connecting in
this way to the memory of those dear women, I began
to "follow my bliss," much like Joseph Campbell, the
mythologist, had entreated his students to do. I had
not fully realized that within me lay this passion.
A passion for words. A passion for stories, for
something important happening to someone somewhere.
This is why I write — to discover the mystery in the
lives of everyday people.
Though I began at 39, 13 years passed before I was
published. In the late ’80s and ’90s, stories of "la
otra América" were frequently passed over. I had to
be patient. I had to write and write some more. I
had to wait for writers like Isabel Allende and
Sandra Cisneros and Cristina García to open up the
publishing doors to stories such as mine.
My first novel, “A Place Where the Sea Remembers,”
was turned down a dozen times before it was
published in 1993. When the book came out,
everything changed. The novel won awards. It was
translated into four languages. It was optioned for
the movies. This good fortune spurred me on to write
four more books.
Remedios, la curandera, a character in my first
novel, believes "it is stories that save us." And so
it is that every day I pursue a trail of stories
that ultimately save me from leading a purposeless
life.
To the edge of my computer screen, I've taped a
quote from Goethe, the German writer and
philosopher. "Whatever you can do, or dream you can,
begin it." The saying gives me courage. Because over
the years, I've learned that it's never too late to
do what you burn to do.
And so, at 63, I'm in the summer of my career.
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