MELUS: An interview with Beatriz Rivera

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An interview with Beatriz Rivera - Interview

Frederick Luis Aldama

The increased presence of Latino/a writers of Cuban descent continues to reshape radically the landscape of contemporary American letters. Ruth Behar, Sandra Castillo, Rafael Campos, Cristina Garcia, Oscar Hijuelos, Gustavo Perez-Firmat, Virgil Suarez, Jose Yglesias, to name a few, have variously penned novels, short stories, poetry, and essays that map territories of identity and experience in the US. Novelist and short story writer Beatriz Rivera is one such Cuban American author who breathes life into the manifold everyday struggles of the Cuban emigre and exile living in a xenophobic and sexist US. As with many one-and-a-half generation Cuban writers (Rivera was born in Cuba but grew up in Miami where her family settled in the early 1960s), Rivera's fiction gravitates around Cuban-identified characters who grew up in either Miami or New York. As a response to their condition of political and/or self-imposed exile, however, Rivera's characters learn to survive not through isolation from the mainstream (the weaving of myths of a return to a prelapsarian homeland as with first generation Cuban American writers), but in creating a complex hybrid space where Cuban and American cultures, histories, and aesthetic practices fluidly mix to express new Latino/a experiences and in-flux identities.

In Rivera's debut collection of short stories, African Passions (1995), she plunged her readers into the deep end of contemporary Cuban Miami with its dynamic syncretic fusions of mainstream Anglo, Spanish, African, Chinese, and Taino cultures. When Rivera published her first novel, Midnight Sandwiches at the Mariposa Express (1997), she invented Cuban American characters who resisted assimilationist pressures by recycling, translating, and transforming their everyday US Cuban/Caribbean cultures to respond to their sense of an in-between identity.

In her novel Playing with Light (2000), Rivera invents a world where the lines between national histories, collective myths, and individual memories blur, foregrounding the dynamic interplay of time and geopolitical space as experienced by old and new generation Cuban American women. Rivera's women characters look to Cuba's past--when novels were read to tobacco factory workers in the nineteenth century--to form a Latina-based tertulia (get-together) for reading counter-resistant histories and stories. Under the stress of living in a patriarchal US mainstream and a macho Cuban culture, the characters learn to look to the past to assert their presence as Latinas in the present with the power to shape their own lives. Beatriz Rivera's work speaks to the Cuban American experience--especially those of the one-and-a-half generation who seek to inhabit those vital spaces where histories, myths, languages, and experiences rub together and make room for new hybrid Latina/o identities.

I interviewed Beatriz Rivera in Houston on December 1, 2000, during her book tour for Playing with Light.

FLA: You were born in Havana, grew up in Miami, and lived in Europe. Tell me a little about your life in these different places.

BR: Well, I was mostly lost all over the world. 1 finished high school in Switzerland, and then I wanted to stay in Europe forever, so I went to Paris where I studied philosophy. I got a Master's degree in Paris [at the Sorbonne], and then I hung out in Paris for another ten years. I got married there, taught English and Spanish, and wrote novels.

FLA: How was it living in Paris in the 1970s?

BR: Oh, it was great. They were my years of youth. It was fantastic. I was writing, but I wasn't publishing anything. I didn't have much of an identity, though. I wasn't an American in Paris. I didn't have that identity. I wasn't a Cuban in Paris either, like there were.

FLA: There were Cubans in Paris?

BR: Well, like Severo Sarduy and Eduardo Manetti, who were really Cubans--not that I'm not really Cuban--but who were totally culturally Cuban. I was a hybrid already since I went to Miami when I was three so I was already a Cuban American in Paris.

FLA: Did you try to find a sense of place within the Cuban emigre community in Paris?

BR: No. There wasn't a community like that; that's partly why I had no identity at all. As a writer, especially when you're first trying to publish, it's good to have some kind of identity that you can say "you're this," "you're that," even if everybody is more complex. It's a good way to introduce your voice. So I decided to return to the US to find an identity for myself.

FLA: As you've lived in many different places, what sort of impressions do you have of bilingualism and multiculturalism?

BR: I've noticed with my son when he was growing up in New Jersey, being bilingual--speaking Spanish and English--didn't mean a thing. It was normal. Afterwards in places like upstate New York, where nobody speaks Spanish, he would tell his teachers, "I speak Spanish!" and they would tell him, "Oh, no, you don't." It was like nobody was allowed to speak a second language. It's only recently that my son realized the value of speaking Spanish.

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.

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.

FLA: In the epigraphs to Playing with the Light you quote from Roland Barthes, Umberto Eco, and others. It seems your experiences in Paris during the poststructuralist era seep into your fiction?

BR: This comes out of my readings now, actually. Well, I mean I knew Barthes, Derrida, Kristeva--but it doesn't come from long memories. I really wanted to do something on reading in this novel. I was wondering actually what had happened to me in my reading. I longed for this period in my life when I would read just for sheer pleasure. When I was young I would buy books to read only for pleasure.

FLA: Reading is central to the plot of Playing with Light. Can you talk about the long tradition in Cuba of public reading that is revitalized in this novel?

BR: Well, I saw a photo of a reader in a tobacco factory, and that too reminded me of those times when I would read just for this pleasure. I wondered actually if the workers would sit there and listen. A lot of the cigars actually were named, like "Monte Christo" and "Romeo y Julieta" were named after famous works from the reading. I thought it was just wonderful that somebody came and read. Afterwards it became very political ...

FLA: After the Castro revolution?

BR: No, way before; in Cuba there have always been revolutions. In Playing with Light, I talk about the 1868 revolution, which was independence from Spain that ended up being a ten-year war. So it's always been very revolutionary. I mean there's always been some kind of war and conflict. As they say in Cuba, "We belonged to Spain for 400 years, to Russia for 60, and this is the first time we're alone." I don't know if they've done a good job of it.

FLA: Do you still have family there?

BR: Mm hmm. Almost all my mother's family is there. A lot of family actually. Not my father's family, but almost all my mother's family is there. I haven't gone back. I haven't returned. Also, you can't have a credit card there, so there's always this fear that I'll run out of money because everybody from the family wants money there, so you start giving out money.

FLA: Why did your parents leave?

BR: Well, they left for political reasons. First, my father left, and then my mother left with me six months later. I remember all that. It was very troubled. Those were very troubled times.

FLA: What year was that?

BR: 1960. May, 1960 ... Castro came to power that New Year's 1958-1959. But it was transitional. And nobody really knew what was going to happen. And then, at a given moment, people decided it's time to leave. It's time to go.

FLA: What happened to your family in terms of what they were doing in Cuba and what they ended up doing in Miami?

BR: My father had an insurance company in Cuba, and he started doing the same thing in Miami. I mean it took a while to get established, but it wasn't awful. You have some really awful stories. He was educated in Canada, so he spoke English. It wasn't that bad for him. My mother never really learned English. I shouldn't say that; if it comes out in print she'll kill me.

FLA: Tell me about your trips from New York back to Miami.

BR: I was in Miami two weeks ago. I feel that it's Miami, that that's where my writing roots are, that it's south Florida. It's not even Cuba. According to my sense of an internal geography, it really is Cuban south Florida: Miami, Tampa, Key West, that area. I feel that's the place of my writing, and the next novel will be there. So that's where my roots are. When I look for my roots, they're Cuban, but what I remember is there in south Florida.

FLA: Do you distinguish between, say, your physical home today and a nostalgic or maybe imaginary home in south Florida?

BR: Well, I mean I have a home in upstate New York that's a refuge. The place itself is not home. I mean culturally it's not home. I've been told that I'm not from there and that you have to be there for 300 years to be from there. I'm well aware that the place is not mine, that I cannot lay claim to it. But I can lay claim to Miami. I can claim it as mine. Maybe some people would object: "Well, you've only been there since you were six." But it's not like that. I think Miami can belong to me.

FLA: If your imagination and feeling lead you back to Miami, where do you write?

BR: Well, I haven't written anything creative in two years because I've been doing a lot of academic work.

FLA: Some writers talk about the academic writing as stifling, or being at odds with their creative writing?

BR: It is at odds. When I first started writing academically, I thought that what I wrote was much more interesting; it was funnier and had a different twist. Now I find it serious and boring. When we moved to upstate New York two years ago, there were no teaching jobs, so I started working for a newspaper. In the beginning I was more creative with it. I'd cover a planning board meeting, for example, and I'd write about a leak in the ceiling and the blue bucket. I'd write about the people present like the chairman as if they were characters. The articles were scandalous. I annoyed a lot of people. But I thought journalism was like that. I had to tone it down with the first newspaper.

FLA: Actually, that reminds me of some of Gabriel Garcia Marquez's early journalism where he would mix fact with fiction in his column "La Jirafa" that appeared in El Heraldo.

BR: People really get awfully offended. It's incredible.

FLA: How about the other writers who've influenced your writing?

BR: I think that there's a Spanish side that has influenced me, even without my knowing it. So much of the Spanish literature--Miguel de Cervantes and Francisco de Quevedo y Villegas--has this side that's serious and another that's comic. I think that's the Spanish spirit in me where I don't separate the tragic from the comic. Publishers say that my novels are too comical and that's what turns them off. They say, "Well, we just want drama. We want something serious." I think what I do is really serious, but there's always this twist. I don't know, it just happens. It's not something I say, "Well, I'm gonna be funny here." I think that's the Spanish spirit that somehow flows through me. There's also a strong presence of French writers like Balzac who was read to me when I was a girl.

FLA: I noticed you mentioned Katherine Mansfield in Playing with Light. Has British literature had an influence on your writing?

BR: I mean I have the three: the Spanish, the English, and the French. I have those three literatures that I have in my heart and my mind.

FLA: When did you begin to use the three languages in your writing?

BR: Well, I started writing in French when I was in Paris. And then I ended up writing in English. I find that speaking other languages does make whatever language you have a little bit imperfect. It gives it some kind of little flaw. With prepositions there's always going to be a little mistake that you won't have if you only have one language from the beginning. I was born into Spanish, I learned English when I was four, then I learned French. So there's always a little flaw in all three. But I opted for English.

FLA: In Playing with Light and your other fictions you translate certain Spanish words and phrases into English?

BR: Well, I decided to translate because if somebody doesn't speak Spanish, it doesn't mean a thing. When I felt the need to say something in Spanish, I translated so it wouldn't be a private joke just for people who speak Spanish. Also, I think it's important to think of being bicultural in the United States. At a given moment as an emigre you either blend in or you become a new kind of person.

FLA: What's your everyday process for writing?

BR: For the short stories, they came all in one moment. The first writing is fast like one breath. Then I work on it. Writing a novel like Playing With Light is different. I wanted to write a historical novel about a family that had a textile business in nineteenth-century Cuba because of these photos of nineteenth-century Cuba I had seen. I wanted to jump into the photos, so I started writing. Then I said I need something with a present. I need some kind of contact with the present. And that's how the idea of having this book club and these people reading came alive. So I started out with one idea and then it ended up being quasi-historical novel. So with the novel, there's always an idea and an image in the beginning--and then it changes a lot.

FLA: You also write for newspapers; can you speak about this?

BR: Once in a while I do an article. I did one on Hispanics getting their bodies pierced. Right now, I'm writing a piece on Dominican and Puerto Rican cigar making in the Hudson Valley. Actually I began to get close to uncovering something they didn't like and they started to get angry. I'm not sure what I started to uncover.

FLA: Have any US Latina writers influenced your fiction?

BR: I don't know if there's influence, but there's Isabel Allende. And I like Julia Alvarez's How the Garcia Girls Lost their Accent. Actually the one I really liked of hers was In the Time of the Butterflies. That was very beautiful. I think that was her best. And Sandra Cisneros I think is very good and sensitive, but she hasn't written much since Woman Hollering Creek. I don't know what happened.

FLA: When you write, do you think of yourself as a Latina fiction writer?

BR: Yes. Yes. I don't mind the word "Latina," I don't mind the word "Hispanic," because a lot of people I was reading with in Miami were Cuban, they really minded. They would say, "If they ask me if I'm Hispanic, I cross that out and I say I'm Cuban." No, I really don't mind. I don't mind calling myself Latina or Hispanic. Maybe somebody who feels they're Mayan or Aztec doesn't want to be called Hispanic or Latino. And there's that other side, the marketing side of it.

FLA: What would you advise to the new generation of authors in terms of writing fiction?

BR: Well, first of all, to keep on writing. To start and to keep writing because I think there are a lot of people who want to get into writing and who don't write very much. You have to write a lot--and for many years: "Not a day without a line," whether or not you have genius. Also I think what's important about writing is the discouragements. Try not to get discouraged. It happens. It's a very hard route. There's nothing sure in it. So it's tiring. You get disheartened. I think that's the worst part, becoming disheartened and discouraged, but you just have to keep going.

Selected Bibliography

1. Works by Beatriz Rivera

African Passions and Other Stories. Houston: Arte Publico P, 1995.

"Chromatic scales" (poem). The Americas Review 24.1-2 (1997): 158-60.

"Confidentials" (poem). The Americas Review 24.1-2 (1997): 157.

"Did he throw her out the window?" (poem). The Americas Review 24.1-2 (1997): 160-62.

Midnight Sandwiches at the Mariposa Express. Houston: Arte Publico P, 1997.

Playing in Light. Houston: Arte Publico P, 2000.

"Shango's rest" (story). The Americas Review 24.1-2 (1997): 11.

"Virtual boy" (poem). The Americas Review 24.1-2 (1997): 155-57.

2. Biographical Information:

Contemporary Authors Online. The Gale Group, 2001.

3. Reviews of Major Works:

African Passions: Bendel, Adrienne A. "Humor infuses stories of Cuban-Americans." Denver Post 19 March 1995:E10

Benson, Mary Margaret. Library Journal 1 March 1995:102.

Ekstrom, M.V. CHOICE: Current Reviews for Academic Libraries 33.2 (1995): 295-96.

Omang, Joanne. The Washington Post. 14 May 1995:WBK4

Midnight Sandwiches at the Mariposa Express: Publishers Weekly 1 Sept. 1997: 97.

Playing in Light: Blodgett, Jan. Library Journal 125 (August 2000): 161.

Leber, Michele. Booklist. 1 Sept. 2000: 67.

Publishers Weekly. 4 September 2000: 85.

"Trick of Light." Hispania News 8 Dec. 2000. <http://www.hispanianews.com/ archive/2000/December08/02.htm>

Frederick Luis Aldama teaches Latino/a literature and film at University of Colorado, Boulder. His interviews have appeared in Poets & Writers, El Andar, Frontera Magazine, World Literature Today, and Cross Cultural Poetics. He is the author of the forthcoming Dancing With Ghosts: A Critical Biography of Arturo Islas (U of California P) and Hybridity and Mimesis: Magicorealism and the Postethnic Novel and Film (U of Texas P).