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An interview with Beatriz Rivera - Interview
MELUS, Summer, 2003 by Frederick Luis Aldama
FLA: Its value?
BR: Yes, its value. I notice while teaching Spanish in college, that a lot of kids don't realize--or they weren't told--how valuable it is.
FLA: So when did you start to get into writing?
BR: Well, since I finished my Master's in philosophy, I started writing right away and wrote three novels. And then nothing happened. So I came to the US after ten years in Paris, and started teaching French. I kept on writing all the time. Finally, Arte Publico published some short stories.
FLA: The African Passions collection?
BR: Yes, the stories in African Passions--first published in different magazines--were finally published as a whole by Arte Publico.
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FLA: When did you first begin to think of yourself as a writer? As a young girl were you into writing?
BR: Oh, yeah. I was always into writing. Reading and writing. See, I would always write in class when I was bored. I would write in the margins of books. I don't like to say that in public schools because you're not supposed to write in your books. I still like to write in books. I found then that it was a way of making the book yours. And if the book was boring, like Latin books, it was good to write something else in it.
FLA: Did you know you were going to be a writer as a young girl?
BR: It wasn't like at eleven I said, "I am going to be a writer." I was very shy, and I wasn't very happy. I didn't have very good self-esteem. Writing was a way of validating myself and of being with myself. It was certainly something that made me understand myself. I kept a journal for such a long time. I don't do it anymore. I don't know why. Actually there was a time in my twenties when I would keep several journals. One filled with emotions that I wanted to discard. Another one filled with what I'd read--an intellectual journal. And then I had another one filled with what 1 wanted to write.
FLA: How do you manage your time? You're a part-time journalist, a fiction writer, and now you're finishing graduate school in Spanish literature at CUNY. What's the secret?
BR: I mean I don't work full-time. I think that's the secret. I don't have a real job. That must be the secret. If I start a full-time journalism job in January, I really wonder if I'll be able to write a thesis and take care of my children.
FLA: You're married and have children?
BR: I met my husband, the father of my two children, even though they're ten years apart, after my first husband who was French.
FLA: Is your husband also a writer?
BR: No, he's a business man. The first one was a writer.
FLA: So you were writing together.
BR: That's right. When I think of it now, it kind of fit that dream of you're writing together and you don't have that many responsibilities 'cause you're studying philosophy together, and you have these plans ...
FLA: What period was that?
BR: This was the 1970s. May '68 was over. That time was over. It was an in-between period actually, because it wasn't the 1960s, so there was no armed struggle. Actually in Paris those were very quiet times, still longing for May 1968, but the battles had been won. It was an in-between time. Before the Socialists came to power, too. So there was still this dream of socialism in Paris.
