PORT ANGELES ¬– Her story is about compassion, not politics, writer Ana Castillo told a packed room at Peninsula College on Monday.
Castillo, author of the novels Peel My Love Like an Onion and most recently The Guardians, is giving public readings of her acclaimed works this week in Port Angeles.
On Monday in the college’s Pirate Union Building, Peninsula College’s 2009 writer-in-residence spoke about a topic that inflames people on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border: illegal immigration.
The Guardians is inspired by her ancestors, immigrants who came across the frontier to start a new life and who saw their U.S.-born children deported to Mexico in cattle cars.
The country had hit hard times, and Latinos were believed to be taking too many jobs away from their Caucasian counterparts.
Fast-forward to 2009, and “there has been a lot of scapegoating” of immigrants who enter the United States without legal-residency papers, Castillo said.
“If you’re misinformed or uninformed, it is understandable that that would be a facile conclusion” that today’s migrant workers are a drain on jobs and social services, she said.
Castillo emphasized that she’s a writer of literature, not a journalist.
“All I can give you,” she said, “is my opinion.”
Lately that has caused people to get up and walk out of her readings of The Guardians, the story of Mexicans who’ve crossed over illegally to work in the United States.
There’s 50-something Regina, a poorly paid aide in a public school, and young Gabo, the son of Ximena, who was murdered by “coyotes” ¬¬– smugglers of immigrants — during a crossing.
“It has been very difficult to see,” Castillo said, “that there is still this kind of antagonism when people hear these stories.”
Castillo said she will not be silenced — and she urged the people in her audience to tell their stories.
Elena Velasquez, a teacher at Forks High School, asked Castillo for advice to pass on to her Latino students.
“They’re growing up in a bicultural environment . . . I have some very gifted writers,” Velasquez said.
“We happen to be living in an unprecedented time in history,” an era of global mixing and migration, Castillo replied.
“If you’re gifted enough to come from a bicultural or tricultural background,” she said, then use the languages and insights it gives you. Share them with this new world.
Reader compassion
And “read everything you can get your hands on, without prejudice. If you don’t like it, move on to something else.”
To write a brilliant story, you need no master of fine arts degree, Castillo added.
“[Miguel de] Cervantes, one of the greatest writers in history, obviously didn’t go through an MFA program,” before dreaming up Don Quixote.
What writers will benefit from is a group of feedback-givers, Castillo said.
“If you don’t know any local writers, go online and get a group . . . this also helps give you some discipline,” she said, if you vow to once a month read one another’s work and offer a constructive response.
Stories have the power to elicit compassion in the reader, regardless of the teller’s background, she added.
Castillo is a born-and-bred Chicagoan who studied there and at the University of Bremen in Germany.
She now lives in New Mexico, close to Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, were she said fighting among drug cartels has brought on martial law.
“The drug industry [is] mixed up with the people who are trying to cross over,” to work in the States, she said.
“The people who are looking for landscaping jobs to survive are not the ones we need to worry about.”
Castillo added that just days ago she heard on National Public Radio an acknowledgement of something she’s written about: that the United States plays a key role in Mexico’s drug-trafficking problems.
U.S. residents have long provided a market for illegal drugs while the States has sold weapons to Mexico, she said.
Castillo sees a shift happening in events such as Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s trip to Mexico and President Barack Obama’s meeting with Mexican President Felipe Calderon.
“There’s a sense of ‘Let’s stop ignoring the severity of the situation,'” she said.
At the same time, Castillo said that when she wants to challenge those in power, she turns to poetry and essays ¬– while her novels are not about politics.
She believes a story, told from the heart, can help people understand one another.
“It might not reach everybody, but it might reach a few people. Or you might not know who it will reach.”
At the end of Castillo’s Monday talk, a woman held up another of her novels, The Mixquiahuala Letters, winner of the Before Columbus Foundation’s American Book Award.
“This is fiction, but I felt so connected to it,” said Manuela Velasquez of Forks. “Thank you for that.”
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Sequim-Dungeness Valley reporter Diane Urbani de la Paz can be reached at 360-681-2391 or at diane.urbani@peninsuladaily news.com.
