INTERVIEW WITH MARY HELEN PONCE

Senator Alarón presents MHP with Senate Resolution to commemorate the Lifetime Commitment to Literacy Award from the Friends of the San Fernando Library


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Mary Helen Ponce was born in Pacoima, CA. She attended Pacoima Elementary, San Fernando High School, earned BA and MA degrees from California State University Northridge. She has studied history at UCLA on a Danforth Fellowship, was awarded a UCSB Dissertation Fellowship, and obtained her PhD from University of New Mexico.

Publications include Taking Control, 1987; The Wedding, 1980 & 2008; Hoyt Street: An Autobiography, 1993.

Ponce’s work has been translated into French, German, Spanish and Romanian. She has presented her work at UNAM, El Colegio de Mexico, and published in “Fem”, Mexico’s leading feminist magazine. She taught literature and creative writing at UCLA and UNM. She contributes to “Hispanic Magazine”, “Los Angeles Times”, and “Saludos Hispanos.”

She has raised three sons and a daughter and lives in Sunland, CA. She is currently working on a historical novel about 19th century Mexican-Spanish women.

I see Mary Helen at least once a month at the meetings of the Sunland/Tujunga Reading Group, also known as “One Book At A Time.” We often meet at Mi Casita in Sunland, eat, drink magaritas and get rowdy and discuss like our hair’s on fire. They love us there even though they usually have to kick us out.

So for this interview, I attempted to get professional and sent Mary Helen my questions by email. I believe she took time from her intense writing schedule to jot down some answers, which was more than gracious of her. I have put her thoughts into sentences and now she will undoubtedly send me an email with edits. That’s OK. We are also in a writing group together, so I can get her back.

KTW: You originally wrote and published The Wedding in 1989 and then revised it for the publication in 2008. Is there a story behind this? What changes did you make to the book after almost 20 years?

MHP: Arte Publico (the current publisher) asked to republish the book. I rewrote it because the first edition had many typos and the editing was sloppy. This was difficult because the original manuscript was on old floppy discs which I had to transfer to CD, so I also typed from the book. Ughhh. I cut repetitive words, but overall the story remained the same.

KTW: I was touched by the plight of Blanca, who seemed to have really no future happiness after the wedding, and this appeared typical for women in the barrio. Is this still the case or have Mexican/American women improved their chances of finding a good man and creating a stable family?

MHP: You misinterpret Blanca. She was happy (blind, but happy) as her life would now change, her mother could brag about the wedding and weddings were such fun! Her future was not unlike that of other women, say in Appalachia or the Deep South during the early/late 1940s.

I would argue that Mexican/American women today are a far cry from those of previous generations. Many graduate from highschool. If any one group is living Blanca’s experience, it is newly arrived immigrants from Central America and Mexico. The influence and dictates of the Catholic Church still predominates.

When I wrote Op-Eds for the “Los Angeles Times”, I wrote, “Go forth and multiply, Latina,” as a rebuttal to the pastor’s sermons at my church. I can zap.

KTW: I think your book would touch both Chicana women as well as women in general. When you wrote The Wedding, who did you expect your audience would be? What feedback did you get?

MHP: I got some positive reviews, but one USCB professor, who used it in her teaching, called in a Pachuco novel, as did her students. I saw it more as a love story. Once male critic didn’t like it and men in general thought I was too tough on them. Think I hit a raw nerve?

As to the new edition, there were lots of positive responses. A neighbor (male, 26) loves it. Students at Instituto Tecnologico de Monterrey, Mexico, invited me to lecture and read from it. They found it fascinating and relevant. Weddings are still FUN!

KTW: Tell us a good story about your adventures in getting published.

MPH: I published very early in my writing career. I was first published at CSUN (California State University Northridge) in “El Popo”, the student newspaper in about 1980. I submitted three items and all were published.

My biggest thrill was to publish in Mexico (about 10-15 works), Spain (Catalonia), France, Germany, and Romania. The Germans like my work. I learned a lot about Catalonia. Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness is popular there as they seek autonomy.

KTW: What are you working on now?

MHP: Ay! You would ask. In 1984, while a Danforth Fellow at UCLA in history, I was assigned to research early Mexican/Spanish women in New Spain, as Mexico was called before 1848. The group I studied about was part of the first overland expedition to Alta California, as it was then known. I was intrigued by women who, although pregnant, would contemplate an 800 mile trek to Monterrey to establish a pueblo near the fledgling mission there. I conceived the novel then and wrote the first chapter.

I write in my head, so it has been festering for ages. Once could say it has had a long gestation. I began seriously putting it together about three years ago, then took three or four months to rewrite The Wedding, and in between wrote other stuff. The novel has been in my head for eons.

One problem is I like long, developed chapters (like The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova), so my first chapters were long. Then I saw other authors were into minimalism; even Tolstoy wrote uneven chapters and here I was trying for parallelism. So I cut up chapters, made a mess, recapitulated, and am finally finished with Part One. Now I am tired.

KTW: Is there anything else you would like to say to the readers here?

MHP: I like literary works. Hoyt Street, I’ve been told is very literary, but not The Wedding. Much of what is out there today is trite and not developed. I don’t use a lot of metaphors and similes, as they interrupt narrative flow. Lyricism is one thing but some authors overuse metaphor. Still, it takes time and craft to infuse a story with so much baggage. I prefer to try for lyricism (which is harder), than metaphors, etc.

I once read what I think was the epitome of similes: “Her voice on the phone was like crushed violets.” WOW!

KTW: Thank you so much, Mary Helen. I eagerly await your next novel and wish you luck in getting it finished.

THE WEDDING

The Wedding, Mary Helen Ponce, Arte Publico Press, 2008, 195 pp


A couple years ago I read Hoyt Street, Mary Helen Ponce's memoir of growing up as a Chicana in Los Angeles. As things go in the world of books, I later met Mary Helen through a mutual friend and we are now in a reading group together.

The Wedding also takes place in a Chicano community located on the edge of Los Angeles. It is early 1950s, a time of zoot suits, big hair and big cars. Life in the barrio is grim, jobs are hard to find and about all a girl can hope for is a big wedding which will impress the neighborhood.

The story follows Blanca Munoz, high school dropout, who finally gets a job cleaning turkeys, as well as a boyfriend named Cricket. The boyfriend, whom Blanca has known all her life, is a gang member and lives to rumble. In fact, The Wedding is the Mexican version of S E Hinton's The Outsiders, told from a female point of view.

We follow Blanca's trials and troubles as she prepares for the wedding: choosing the wedding party, the dress, the flowers, etc. Then comes the ceremony and a full day of festivities including a breakfast, pictures, a reception and a dance. The specter of a possible rumble haunts the day but most heartbreaking of all is that Blanca's prospects with her future husband are dim: just children, lack of money, lack of love; really no security or happiness is in store for this couple.

The title says it all. The wedding is going to be Blanca's one big day of happiness. She worked hard to get it and by the end of the day, she has even begun paying for it.

I have not had a Mexican friend until I met Mary Helen. She is highly educated, has taught literature at university level and is a published author, but she came from the barrio, she knows this world and her books put me in it. The writing is simple yet highly evocative of place, people and customs. Quite an accomplishment.

(Both The Wedding and The Outsiders are available on the shelf in the Young Adult section at Once Upon A Time Bookstore. However, both books make excellent reading for adults.)

HAPPY ANNIVERSARY

Today is the 4th anniversary of Keep the Wisdom. It has been fun for me and I hope for you, my readers.

My first post got the most comments ever--6!! Want to beat that?

Right now I am reading Claire Messud's first novel: When the World Was Steady. I sense an Iris Murdoch influence.

Next I will read The Fall by Albert Camus, as part of My Big Fat Reading Project.

What are you reading today?

THE STORY OF THE AMULET

The Story of the Amulet, E Nesbit, T Fisher Unwin, 1906 (currently, Puffin, 1996) 281 pp


This was one of my favorite books when I was growing up. I decided to re-read it as part of my research for the memoir I am writing. I have a tattered copy of the 1965 Puffin paperback edition, which came free with any purchase at a used bookstore. The pages are yellowed but they are all there as well as the perfect illustrations by H R Miller.

The Story of the Amulet is a sequel to The Five Children and It, which I also read long ago. But the Amulet always stands out in my memory because I "discovered" it on the shelves of our local library in Princeton, NJ, where our mom took us every two weeks. Upon reading it, I had my mind blown for perhaps the first time in my life. I wanted to see if I could figure out why and I did.

There are four English children in this story who find themselves spending their summer holidays in a dreary old house on Fitzroy Street, London (near the British Museum) in the care of their old Nurse. Father has gone to Manchuria to report on the war and Mother plus The Lamb (the new baby in the family) is in Madeira recovering from an illness. When I first read this book, probably at the age of nine, I had no idea about any of these places. But the writing is like a spell that just pulled me in to these children's lives, their relationships with each other and of course, their adventures. I am sure I had already read The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe at least once, so I was in a sense primed but Nesbit is a magician whereas C S Lewis only wished he was.

Because what entranced me back then and again now, was the magic. It is magic the way children do magic, fully ensconced in their imaginations. In fact, most grownups are at least annoyed by such a degree of imagination and some are truly alarmed. I recall being told as a child that something I said was "all in my imagination" and thinking, "Where else would it be?" Children know full well what is imagination and what is reality plus are able to move freely between the two. Such is the case with Anthea, Cyril, Robert and Jane, though Jane being the youngest, is the most easily frightened and sometimes protests when the magic gets to be too much. Yes! That is just the way it was in my life.

So there is an amulet, but the children only have half of it. The Psammead, a sand fairy who helplessly grants wishes and was the "It" of Five Children and It, reappears and though the children had promised the Psammead at the end of the previous summer not to ask for another wish as long as they lived, he does inform them that should they find the other half of the amulet, they can realize their hearts' desire.

After learning to use the amulet's magic they are off: to ancient Egypt, Babylon, Atlantis, etc. All these places are dangerous in the extreme but full of wondrous delights as well. Again, as a child, I knew virtually nothing about these places, yet they were so real to me back then as I read. I grew up to love books about Atlantis and Egypt and with a hunger to know the history of such ancient times. That is truly magic on many levels.

Since I began working at Once Upon A Time Bookstore, which serves a whole community of children, young mothers, teachers and grandparents, I have rediscovered children's literature and much of it is still great reading, but Nesbit is the inventor of the children's adventure story. She influenced C S Lewis, P L Travers (Mary Poppins), Diana Wynne Jones and J K Rowling, but being the originator, she is still the best.

(All of the books mentioned in this review are available at Once Upon A Time Bookstore.)

THE BRIEF WONDROUS LIFE OF OSCAR WAO

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, Junot Diaz, Riverhead Books, 2007, 335 pp


Junot Diaz's Pulitzer Prize winning first novel sat in one of my many TBR piles for almost two years. I was tantalized by the white cover with the red woodblock image dripping and spattering its color across the title. I had read reviews and interviews with the author about his eleven years of writer's block following the wild reception of his first book, a collection of short stories entitled Drown. The first issue of "Poets & Writers" I ever read had his picture on the cover. None of this prepared me for the impact the novel would have on me.

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao is one of the best novels I have read in a long time. The fresh unique voice, the huge characters, the horrific details of life under the dictator Trujillo in the Dominican Republic, juxtaposed with the humor and street smart dialogue; all these factors, layered into a plot that is really the history of a family, blew my mind.

Oscar himself, grandson of a famous wealthy Dominican doctor who fell out of favor (a very dangerous thing in Trujillo's day), is an obese nerd in the Dominican ghetto of Paterson, NJ. He is obsessed with food, girls, sci fi, cartoons and fantasy. As a teenager his greatest fear is that he will die a virgin, something no self-respecting Dominican man should be after the age of fourteen or so. Not that Oscar has any self respect.

He has a missing father; a demented, terminally ill but beautiful mother; a doting protective sister and a great aunt back in Santo Domingo. He reads sci fi and fantasy books incessantly, when he is not holed up playing Dungeons & Dragons or engaged in marathon sessions of writing his four-book space opera opus. Running like a virulent virus through his life is the fuku, the ancient curse (first named by African slaves brought to Dominican shores), that has doomed Oscar's family to all manner of violent tragedy. But the audacity of Oscar's hope is that someday one of the thousands of females he has fallen in love with will love him back (and have sex with him.)

As Oscar's life careens toward what you know from the title can only be his doom, in spite of the best efforts of least three people to protect him, you also get a brief wondrous history of the Dominican Republic, a history that is virtually unknown to the average American. Diaz throws in plenty of Dominican Spanish, both formal and slang, which I confess that, not knowing Spanish, I skipped over while feeling slightly annoyed that I was missing part of the story. I could have used my Spanish/English dictionary but I did not. One reason is that Diaz's prose is propelled by an energy that made me long for the next page, but another is my American arrogance when confronted with a foreign language.

In an interview with Junot Diaz by NPR's Terry Gross, he explains that he put the Spanish in there, not so much to criticize American insularity, but to create for the reader some of the experience of the immigrant who comes to the United States not knowing English and has to go around not understanding huge chunks of what he hears and reads. I get it.

I can't find anything significant to criticize. Diaz probably breaks all kinds of rules and personally I am in favor of that sort of daring, especially when it pays off so brilliantly. Reading the book was like hearing Bob Dylan for the first time. I want more: more novels by Junot Diaz and more novels like The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao.

(This book is available in hardcover or paperback by special order from Once Upon A Time Bookstore.)

A JAR OF DREAMS

A Jar of Dreams, Yoshiko Uchida, Aladdin Paperbacks, 1981, 131 pp


Approximately once a month, I send books to my three grandchildren in Ohio. I have been doing this for almost three years and they are now so grooved in that they have their requests ready for the next books whenever I ask. My ten-year-old granddaughter requested A Jar of Dreams because her fifth grade teacher was reading the book aloud to her Montessori language arts class. How cool is that?

Eleven-year-old Rinko is growing up on the outskirts of Berkeley, CA during the depression. She clearly loves her Japanese-American family who are struggling to make ends meet under the double burden of the depressed economy and virulent prejudice against the Japanese.

For Rinko, this means a conflict between home and school life which has made her feel shy and unsure of herself. Then her Aunt Waka, her mother's sister, comes to visit, twenty years after Rinko's mother emigrated to the United States as a bride for Rinko's father.

As Aunt Waka lives with the family through a summer of disturbing events, she brings an outsider's traditional Japanese wisdom but more importantly, her own strong sense of self to the family's situation. Rinko discovers the value of her heritage and her own strengths.

If that sounds a bit preachy, it is. But Uchida's writing is lovely and fluid with the ease of a practiced storyteller. Through the compelling story and Rinko's authentic first person voice, the ideas are relayed with just the right light touch.

(This book is available in paperback on the shelves in the fiction section for 8-12 year old readers at Once Upon A Time Bookstore.)

THE MEMORIAL

Dear Readers,

I will be gone for a week. The memorial for my mother is this coming Saturday and I am hosting it at what was her home. Then we have to clear out the house because it is being sold. So it will be what one of my friends used to call a "family rebellion" including all my mom's wonderful neighbors. She lived on 5 acres in the country with a pond, a huge garden and all kinds of trees. We are sad about the whole thing.

While there, I will also pay homage to Shaman Drum Bookstore, which is closing its doors on June 30. Another sad thing. It is one of the coolest bookstores in the world but has fallen prey to all the woes of independent bookstores: the internet, the economy, the chains, etc. At least we still have Nicola's, which will now become the coolest bookstore in Ann Arbor.

If you miss me, check out some of the other blogs listed on the sidebar. Keep reading. Keep the wisdom.