Susana Chavez-Silverman - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Susana Chávez-Silverman, born in Los Angeles, California

Los Angeles, California

Los Angeles , with a population at the 2010 United States Census of 3,792,621, is the most populous city in California, USA and the second most populous in the United States, after New York City. It has an area of , and is located in Southern California...

, is a U.S. Latina

Latina

Latina is the feminine form of the term Latino.Latina may also refer to:*Province of Latina, a province in Latium , Italy**Latina, Lazio, the capital of the province of Latina**Latina Nuclear Power Plant*Latina , a district of Madrid...

writer

Writer

A writer is a person who produces literature, such as novels, short stories, plays, screenplays, poetry, or other literary art. Skilled writers are able to use language to portray ideas and images....

and professor

Professor

A professor is a scholarly teacher; the precise meaning of the term varies by country. Literally, professor derives from Latin as a "person who professes" being usually an expert in arts or sciences; a teacher of high rank...

of Romance Languages

Romance languages

The Romance languages are a branch of the Indo-European language family, more precisely of the Italic languages subfamily, comprising all the languages that descend from Vulgar Latin, the language of ancient Rome...

and Literature at Pomona College

Pomona College

Pomona College is a private, residential, liberal arts college in Claremont, California. Founded in 1887 in Pomona, California by a group of Congregationalists, the college moved to Claremont in 1889 to the site of a hotel, retaining its name. The school enrolls 1,548 students.The founding member...

in Claremont, California

Claremont, California

Claremont is a small affluent college town in eastern Los Angeles County, California, United States, about east of downtown Los Angeles at the base of the San Gabriel Mountains. The population as of the 2010 census is 34,926. Claremont is known for its seven higher-education institutions, its...

Education

Susana received her undergraduate degree in Spanish from University of California, Irvine

University of California, Irvine

The University of California, Irvine , founded in 1965, is one of the ten campuses of the University of California, located in Irvine, California, USA...

in 1977 where she graduated magna cum laude. She continued her education at Harvard University

Harvard University

Harvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...

where, in 1979, she received her Masters degree in Romance Languages. In 1991, Susana received her Ph.D. in Spanish from the University of California, Davis

University of California, Davis

The University of California, Davis is a public teaching and research university established in 1905 and located in Davis, California, USA. Spanning over , the campus is the largest within the University of California system and third largest by enrollment...

. Her dissertation was titled: The Ex-Centric Self: The Poetry of Alejandra Pizarnik. Susana has taught at University of California, Santa Cruz

University of California, Santa Cruz

The University of California, Santa Cruz, also known as UC Santa Cruz or UCSC, is a public, collegiate university; one of ten campuses in the University of California...

, University of California, Berkeley

University of California, Berkeley

The University of California, Berkeley , is a teaching and research university established in 1868 and located in Berkeley, California, USA...

, University of California, Irvine

University of California, Irvine

The University of California, Irvine , founded in 1965, is one of the ten campuses of the University of California, located in Irvine, California, USA...

, University of California, Davis

University of California, Davis

, and the University of South Africa

University of South Africa

The University of South Africa is a distance education university, with headquarters in Pretoria, South Africa. With approximately 300 000 enrolled students, it qualifies as one of the world's mega universities.-History:...

before coming to Pomona College

Pomona College

Early life

Chávez-Silverman, born to a Jewish Hispanist father and a Chicana teacher mother, was raised in a bilingual and bicultural atmosphere between Los Angeles

Los Ángeles

Los Ángeles is the capital of the province of Biobío, in the commune of the same name, in Region VIII , in the center-south of Chile. It is located between the Laja and Biobío rivers. The population is 123,445 inhabitants...

, Madrid

Madrid

Madrid is the capital and largest city of Spain. The population of the city is roughly 3.3 million and the entire population of the Madrid metropolitan area is calculated to be 6.271 million. It is the third largest city in the European Union, after London and Berlin, and its metropolitan...

and Guadalajara, Mexico

Guadalajara, Jalisco

Guadalajara is the capital of the Mexican state of Jalisco, and the seat of the municipality of Guadalajara. The city is located in the central region of Jalisco in the western-pacific area of Mexico. With a population of 1,564,514 it is Mexico's second most populous municipality...

. After completing her education, traveling a great deal, and living in Boston, Berkeley, Los Angeles, Spain and South Africa, she now resides in Claremont, California, where she is professor of Spanish, Latino/a and Latin American Studies in the Department of Romance Languages and Literature at Pomona College

Pomona College

. Susana specializes in gender and sexuality studies, autobiography/memoir, Latin American and U.S. Latina

Latina

/Chicana literature, poetry, and feminist pedagogy

Pedagogy

Pedagogy is the study of being a teacher or the process of teaching. The term generally refers to strategies of instruction, or a style of instruction....

. Chávez-Silverman has written and coauthored several books on the above-mentioned topics.

Writing career

The bilingual creative nonfiction work by Chávez-Silverman is published by the University of Wisconsin Press

University of Wisconsin Press

The University of Wisconsin Press is a non-profit university press publishing peer-reviewed books and journals. It primarily publishes work by scholars from the global academic community but also serves the citizens of Wisconsin by publishing important books about Wisconsin, the Upper Midwest, and...

. Her book, Killer Crónicas: Bilingual Memories, was published by the University of Wisconsin Press

University of Wisconsin Press

in 2004. This collection of chronicle

Chronicle

Generally a chronicle is a historical account of facts and events ranged in chronological order, as in a time line. Typically, equal weight is given for historically important events and local events, the purpose being the recording of events that occurred, seen from the perspective of the...

s began in 2001, after the US National Endowment for the Humanities

National Endowment for the Humanities

The National Endowment for the Humanities is an independent federal agency of the United States established by the National Foundation on the Arts and the Humanities Act of 1965 dedicated to supporting research, education, preservation, and public programs in the humanities. The NEH is located at...

(NEH) awarded Susana a fellowship for a project on contemporary Argentine women's poetry. She spent thirteen months in Buenos Aires

Buenos Aires

Buenos Aires is the capital and largest city of Argentina, and the second-largest metropolitan area in South America, after São Paulo. It is located on the western shore of the estuary of the Río de la Plata, on the southeastern coast of the South American continent...

where, in addition to research and writing on her official (academic) book, she began to send bilingual, punning "letters from the southern [cone] front" to colleagues and friends by email. Susana says: "Living in Buenos Aires, that gorgeous, turn of the century city in a country on the brink of (economic) collapse-home to many of the authors and artists I had long admired (Jorge Luis Borges

Jorge Luis Borges

Jorge Francisco Isidoro Luis Borges Acevedo , known as Jorge Luis Borges , was an Argentine writer, essayist, poet and translator born in Buenos Aires. In 1914 his family moved to Switzerland where he attended school, receiving his baccalauréat from the Collège de Genève in 1918. The family...

, Julio Cortázar

Julio Cortázar

Julio Cortázar, born Jules Florencio Cortázar, was an Argentine writer. Cortázar, known as one of the founders of the Latin American Boom, influenced an entire generation of Spanish speaking readers and writers in the Americas and Europe.-Early life:Cortázar's parents, Julio José Cortázar and...

, Alfonsina Storni

Alfonsina Storni

Alfonsina Storni was one of the most important Latin-American poets of the modernist period.-Life:Storni was born in Sala Capriasca, Switzerland to an Argentine beer industrialist living in Switzerland for a few years. There, Storni learned to speak Italian...

, Alejandra Pizarnik

Alejandra Pizarnik

Alejandra Pizarnik was an Argentine poet.-Life and work:She was born on April 29, 1936 to Russian Jewish immigrant parents in Avellaneda, a suburb of Buenos Aires, Argentina. A year after entering the department of Philosophy and Letters at the Universidad de Buenos Aires, Pizarnik published her...

, and before them the foundational Romantics, Domingo Faustino Sarmiento

Domingo Faustino Sarmiento

Domingo Faustino Sarmiento was an Argentine activist, intellectual, writer, statesman and the seventh President of Argentina. His writing spanned a wide range of genres and topics, from journalism to autobiography, to political philosophy and history...

and Echeverría)-brought out a sense of self, displaced yet oddly at home, in a cultural, linguistic and even tangible way. In Buenos Aires, the fragmented parts of me, the voices, cultures, and places inside of me rubbed up against each other and struck fire. I called my email missives "Crónicas," inspired by the somewhat rough-hewn, journalistic, often fantastic first-hand accounts sent "home" by the early conquistadores, and refashioned by modern-day counterparts such as Carlos Monsiváis

Carlos Monsiváis

Carlos Monsiváis Aceves was a Mexican writer, critic, political activist, and journalist. of French decent He also wrote political opinion columns in leading newspapers and was considered to be an opinion leader within the country's progressive sectors. His generation of writers includes Elena...

, Elena Poniatowska

Elena Poniatowska

Elena Poniatowska is a Mexican journalist and author. Her generation of writers include Carlos Fuentes‎, José Emilio Pacheco and Carlos Monsiváis.-Life:Poniatowska was born in Paris to Prince Jean Joseph Evremont Sperry Poniatowski and Paula Amor Yturbe...

, and Cristina Pacheco." One of Susana's crónicas, "Anniversary Crónica," inspired by the June 16th anniversary of both Susana's parents' wedding and that of the so-called "Soweto Riots

Soweto riots

The Soweto Uprising, also known as June 16, was a series of high school student-led protests in South Africa that began on the morning of June 16, 1976. Students from numerous Sowetan schools began to protest in the streets of Soweto, in response to the introduction of Afrikaans as the medium of...

" in South Africa

South Africa

The Republic of South Africa is a country in southern Africa. Located at the southern tip of Africa, it is divided into nine provinces, with of coastline on the Atlantic and Indian oceans...

, was recently awarded First prize in Personal Memoir in the 2002 "Chicano Literary Excellence Contest" sponsored by the U.S. national literary magazine el Andar.

Killer Cronicas: Bilingual Memories is written in an unorthodox style in that it code-switches seamlessly between English and Spanish, without translation of either language. For instance, Killer Cronicas is “teeming with such bits of clever bilingual wordplay, such as ‘feliz’ (happy) to refer to homosexuals, and ‘anyguey’ for ‘anyway.’ Mixed in are countless Latin American regionalisms, joking phonetic spellings and faux translations, such as ‘ternura’ for ‘tenure.’ ‘I know, ya se, mama,’ she writes.”

David Newman from the New Delta Review asks: What exactly is a crónica, and why do you choose to write in this style?

Susana Chávez-Silverman: “Let’s just say, it chose me. Crónica translates as ‘chronicle.’ When I began writing in this style, in a terribly hot, humid Buenos Aires summer (February 2001), I was trying to capture some of the local flavor, the barrios and smells and sounds, the ways of being of the highly idiosyncratic, porteño cityscape that I had begun to love—to feel, even, more of a sense of belonging in than I’d felt in almost any other place in the world—but also found mysterious, frustrating, and sometimes hilarious, often all at once. I was writing as a kind of reminder to my close friend Pablo ‘Hugo’ Zambrano, who is from Spain, and had come to spend several weeks with us in Buenos Aires. Somehow, having a partner-in-crime, someone bilingual, yet foreign, decidedly non-Argentine spurred me to create an experimental text, kind of an amalgam, or mestizaje, a blend of short story, reportage, and a bit of prose poetry, in the form of an e-mail letter, to remind Hugo of some of our adventures, on the eve of his return to Spain.

Killer Cronicas: Bilingual Memories, which I wrote for Hugo, was one of the first pieces I wrote in this style. I decided to title it—and subsequent e-mail missives—a crónica, inspired by the somewhat rough-hewn, journalistic, often fantastic first-hand accounts of the so-called New World sent “home” by the early Spanish conquistadores, and refashioned by modern-day counterparts such as the Mexicans Carlos Monsiváis, Elena Poniatowska, Cristina Pacheco, and the Chilean Pedro Lemebel

Pedro Lemebel

Pedro Lemebel is an openly gay Chilean essayist, chronicler, and novelist. He is known for his cutting critique of authoritarianism and for his humorous depiction of Chilean popular culture, from a queer perspective.-List of works:...

, whose writing I admire.

This is a form that works for me. It gives me a sense of both containment (due to its relatively short length) and freedom, flexibility. Like Saturn and Jupiter, both of which are prominent in my natal chart! The crónica can vary widely in subject matter and style, but central to its project is a keenly observing eye/I; close attention to detail; a sense of humor (I almost always relieve some of my more emo-moments with laughter, often at my own expense); a sense of the fantastic or uncanny, even in the most everyday; and a desire to connect with an often explicitly-acknowledged interlocutor.”

Books

‘Scenes from la Cuenca de L.A. y otros Natural Disasters.’ (University of

Wisconsin Press, 2010).

‘Killer Crónicas: Bilingual Memories.’ University of Wisconsin Press, 2004

(paperback January 2011). includes a chapter that was awarded the el Andar Prize for Literary Excellence in the category of personal memoir.

‘Reading and Writing the Ambiente: Queer Sexualities in Latino, Latin American and Spanish Culture. Eds. Susana Chávez-Silverman and Librada Hernández. University of Wisconsin Press, 2000.
Tropicalizations: Transcultural Representations of Latinidad. Eds. Frances R. Aparicio and Susana Chávez- Silverman. New Hampshire: Dartmouth/University Press of New England, 1997.

Articles/Crónicas (select list)

“Magnetic Island Sueño Crónica.” Reprinted by permission in Ambientes: New Queer Latino Writing. Lázaro Lima and Felice Picano, Eds. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press (forthcoming).
“Essays in Containment: Another Look at Madness and its Displacements Chez Pizarnik.” “Alejandra”, ed. Ivonne Bordelois and Pedro Cuperman

(New York/Buenos Aires: Syracuse University Press/Editorial Paidós, 2010), pp. 58–77. The volume is a special issue of “Point of Contact” 10:1-2.

“Gender, Sexuality and Silence(s) in the Writing of Alejandra Pizarnik.” “Arbol de Alejandra: Pizarnik Reassessed.” Ed. Fiona Mackintosh with

Karl Posso. England: Tamesis, 2007 (13-35).

“Trac(k)ing Gender and Sexuality in the Writing of Alejandra Pizarnik.” Chasqui 35.2 (November 2006), 89-108.
Entry on Alicia Gaspar de Alba in “Encyclopedia of Latinos and Latinas in the United States.” Eds. Deena J González and Suzanne Oboler. (Oxford University Press, 2005), 185-187
“Latina Desire: Textualizar lo imposible.” Letras Femeninas XXX:1 (June 2004): 15-25.
“Gendered Bodies and Borders in Contemporary Chican@ Performance and Literature.” “Velvet Barrios: Popular Culture & Chicana/o Sexualities.” Ed. Alicia Gaspar de Alba. (New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2003), 215-227.
“La función de lo erótico en la poesía de Marjorie Agosín y Alicia Gaspar de Alba.” “La Poesía Hispánica de los Estados Unidos: aproximaciones críticas.” Eds. Lilianet Brintrup, Juan Armando Epple, and Carmen de Mora. (Seville, Spain: Universidad de Sevilla Press, 2001), 89-104.
Entry on Alejandra Pizarnik. “Who’s Who in Gay and Lesbian History.” Eds. Robert Aldrich and Garry Wotherspoon. (London: Routledge, 2001). 331-333.
"The Poetry of Octavio Paz and Alejandra Pizarnik." “Jewish Culture and the Hispanic World: Essays in Memory of Joseph H. Silverman.” Eds. S.G.Armistead and Mishael Caspi. (Newark, DE: Juan de la Cuesta,

2001), 129-143.

“Tropicalizing the Liberal Arts College Classroom.” “Power, Race, and Gender in Academe: Strangers in the Tower?” Eds. María Herrera-Sobek and Shirley Geok-lin Lim. (New York: MLA, 2000), 132-153.
“The Autobiographical as Horror in the Poetry of Alejandra Pizarnik.” “Critical Studies on the Feminist Subject in the Americas.” Ed. Giovanna

Covi. (Trento, Italy: Universitá degli Studi di Trento,1997), 265-277.

"The Look that Kills: The 'Unacceptable Beauty' of Alejandra Pizarnik's La condesa sangrienta ." “¿Entiendes? Queer Readings, Hispanic Writings.” Eds. Emilie L. Bergmann & Paul Julian Smith. (Duke University Press, 1995), 281-305.
"Signos de lo femenino en la poesía de Alejandra Pizarnik." El puente de las palabras. Ed. Inés Azar. (Washington DC: O.A.S., 1994), 155-172.
"The Discourse of Madness in the Poetry of Alejandra Pizarnik," Monographic Review/Revista Monográfica VI (April 1991): 274-281.

Review Articles

Review of “Easy Women: Sex and Gender in Modern Mexican Fiction” by Debra A. Castillo and “The Shattered Mirror: Representations of Women in Mexican Literature” by María Elena Valdés. “Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society.” 27 I : 1 I (Autumn 2001): 275-279.
Review of “Poesía y experiencia del límite: Leer a Alejandra Pizarnik” by

Cristina Piña . “Letras Femenina”s XXVII: 1 (May 2001): 249-251.

Review of “Chicana Adolescents: Bitches, ‘Ho’s, and Schoolgirls.” Lisa C. Dietrich. and Pierre T. Rainville. “Letras femeninas” XXV: 1-2 (October 1999): 236-237.
“La otra voz.” Review of “El testimonio femenino como escritura contestataria.” Emma Sepúlveda and Joy Logan, Eds. “Letras femeninas” XXIV: 1-2 (1998): 194-196.
Review of Alejandra Pizarnik. Cristina Piña. “Inter-American Review of Bibliography.” Washington DC: O.A.S. 1 (Fall 1992): n.p.

Fellowships/Grants

2006: Lucas Artist Program Fellowship at the Montalvo Arts Center, Saratoga, CA
2000-01: NEH Fellowship for College Teachers

Honors/Awards

2002: First Prize (for “Anniversary Crónica”) in “el Andar” magazine’s “Chicano Literary Excellence Contest”
1988-89: Dissertation Fellowship, UC Davis
1986-87: Regents Fellowship, UC Davis
1985-06: Graduate Opportunity Fellowship, UC Davis
1978-79: Graduate Fellowship, Harvard University

Online Recordings

External links

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