April 2019 /
Author of Sabrina & Corina Visits South Texas
Kali Fajardo-Anstine, who cites Sandra Cisneros as inspiration, appearing at four events in and around San Antonio
Interview By Kathleen Petty
Coloradan Kali Fajardo-Anstine has dreamed of visiting San Antonio and its tree-lined River Walk ever since reading about the city in Sandra Cisneros' writing. And while she didn't get to make the trip before publishing her first book, Sabrina & Corina, which came out this month, she hopes its stories of Latina women of Indigenous descent connect with South Texans. "It was important to me that I visited San Antonio because of the demographics," she says, adding that it has many similarities with the places she knows and writes about. In a review touted on Fajardo-Anstine's book cover, the author she's long admired, Cisneros says the short stories "blaze like wildflowers with characters who made me laugh and broke my heart." Fajardo-Anstine will discuss the book during visits this week at three area colleges. She'll also host a writer's workshop at Gemini Ink on Saturday.
Your mom was a storyteller. Did that influence your desire to write?
My mother—she's an activist and an artist and a storyteller in Denver. She's a big part of the Chicana community. She was an oral storyteller and would perform folktales. It's an ancient art and the way she collected stories taught me a lot.
I think I always intuitively felt it. I've been a reader my whole life—I was obsessed with the Little House on the Prairie Books—I was reading about the West, but I didn't see any characters like me. There was a moment in high school when we read The House on Mango Street for the first time. That was an unlocking moment for me—it was the first time I could see myself in a book. I wanted something where I could see myself more fully. I studied Chicana Studies at Metro State (in Denver) and that was really the first time I started seeing my people talked about in textbooks. That's when I really felt I wanted to lean into this fully. After that it just kept going.
Did you set out to write about women in your book, or did that come about in the writing process?
It came about naturally. I come from a matriarchal family where the women were the keepers of the history. My mother's family was the only family that was here in Colorado. I have five sisters so it wasn't something that I ever consciously set out to do, but I was writing realism and the reality is (that I was surrounded by strong women).
You'll be teaching about place at Gemini Ink. Why is that important in writing?
I really like to focus on place because I think it's something that gets left out of a lot of literature. What are the stories of your place? How do people talk about your place? How is that layered into the narrative? Even if it's fiction, authors should know how their place came to be. Research is a huge part of my writing process, even in my contemporary fiction. I collect histories and oral histories. I like to access archives and historical documents and photos and letters. Recently I've been interested in historical objects since I'm working on a novel set between 1875 and 1934. (With writers), one of the exercises I do is asking you to come up with an origin myth about your place.
You've talked about the gentrification you've seen in your own city, Denver. Can you talk about that and share any advice for a city, like San Antonio?
I'd say it started in my late teens. Back then Denver was a place people wanted to escape. They'd say it was a cow town and nothing was going on. In my early 20s and during college I noticed that people were moving in and taking over neighborhoods my family had been in for generations. I left for several years to study creative writing. When I came back to Colorado in 2016 and Denver in 2017 it was overwhelming what had happened. My family lost several homes due to property taxes and reverse mortgages. It's really altered these historic neighborhoods and I think the biggest tragedy about it is that people are coming into these neighborhoods and they're not bothering to learn about the history of the people who have been there for years. My aunt was the first in our entire line of people to ever own property and because of a reverse mortgage the house went to the bank when she died. It's been a grieving process. In one of my stories I call this the green rush, with the tech jobs and all of that.
(For another city earlier in that process), I would definitely suggest talking to the elders in your neighborhood and making sure you're documenting with photographs and recording stories. In our official archives, a lot of these stories were not important until recently and when those people are moved out of their neighborhoods it's almost like they never existed. If you're not comfortable donating your photographs or family papers, document history in your own home. Record the stories of your (grandparents and other family).
4 Chances to Meet Kali Fajardo-Anstine
Literature as Free Speech
Tuesday, 7 p.m., Lofton Student Center San Antonio College, alamo.edu
A Reading at Texas State University
Thursday, 6 p.m. Brazos Hall, txstate.edu
An Evening with Kali Fajardo-Anstine
Friday, 6:30-8:30 p.m., Sister Ann Sueltenfuss Library at Our Lady of the Lake University, geminiink.org
Writing Place: Homelands in Literature
Saturday, 10 a.m.-3 p.m., Gemini Ink, 1111 Navarro St., geminiink.org
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