Letra Latinas, Part 2: A Conversation with Rigoberto González

Listen in on an oral history conversation with poet Rigoberto González, interviewed by Francisco Aragón, director of Letras Latinas, as part of the Letras Latinas Oral History Project. Discover González’s journey from his artistic beginnings as a child who read avidly in a home environment that did not prioritize books and his first encounter with Truman Capote’s work (as an actor) to the power of nonfiction writing as a gift to younger generations and why he believes the community of Latinx poets should have room for everyone.

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Transcript

Francisco Aragón: 0:06

Here we are at the Institute for Latino Studies at the University of Notre Dame. For the purposes of documentation, Rigoberto, please state your name, where you were born, and where you had your childhood, and then we'll launch into the first question.

Rigoberto González: 0:18

thank you for having me. My name is Rigoberto Gonzalez. I was born in Bakersfield, California in 1970, to a family of migrant farm workers. They were great pickers. So at the age of two, after my brother was born in 1972, my family decided to, return to their homeland, which became my homeland, and that's Pichuacan in southern Mexico. And we stayed there until 1980, and in 1980, we came back to Southern California to the small town of Thermal, in the Coachella Valley, which is also a farm working, landscape, and where I eventually joined my family as a farm worker,

Francisco Aragón: 0:53

So you were Approximately 10 years old when you came back. Yes. You recently published a really interesting article in the Los Angeles Times when you were talking about your childhood relationship with books. For our viewers, could you give us a succinct, tell us the role that books played in your childhood?

Rigoberto González: 1:11

besides being farm workers, my family, suffered from illiteracy. my grandparents did not read or write. My parents did not read or write or very limited. The only thing they knew how to write was their names because that's where you sign your paychecks. So they had these signatures, which I could actually forge. And I forged, most of my life, when I was a teenager. I thought of my brother because they were so easy to forge, these signatures. anyway, I learned very early on that my responsibility as the oldest in this little group, was to learn English as soon as possible, because I was going to be a translator. I was going to be the person that was going to bridge. My family's literacy to this world that we had entered, where sometimes we did get so many things in print that needed to be translated. and I took to it very quickly. there was always, something about the challenge of learning the language that I loved, but also the world of books that I appreciated because it was the only time that I was left alone. This was a household with 19 people. And I remember that, anytime I sat with the book, I was left alone.

Francisco Aragón: 2:11

Do you remember any particular title that stands out in your memory? Any particular novel, collection of stories?

Rigoberto González: 2:19

the only access I had to books that I could own was at the local Goodwill store, the second hand store. These were all mass paperbacks. So I would read, Robin Cook, Peter Benchley, not Stephen King yet, but, he eventually did. And murder mysteries.

Francisco Aragón: 2:34

you were reading genre fiction?

Rigoberto González: 2:35

genre fiction. And that was it. It wasn't until, the bookmobile guy introduced me to other kinds of literature. The first book that he, introduced me to was The Jungle by Upton Sinclair. And then eventually, Truman Capote.

Francisco Aragón: 2:49

Talk a little bit about what Truman Capote meant to you when you encountered him.

Rigoberto González: 2:51

Truman Capote, the first time I saw Truman Capote was actually in a film and I thought he was an actor and this was like, Murdered by Death, which is, the Neil Simon, play. it was this spoof of murder mystery characters, which is why I was drawn to it because I love murder mysteries I saw Truman Capote and immediately recognized this man is gay. I was struggling with my own sexuality. So I saw this character on screen and I'm like, okay, who is this Truman Capote? And, by coincidence, maybe it was within a couple of weeks of me seeing this film in late night television that he passed away. And the announcer, said, the famed, celebrated author, Truman Capote, and I go, wait, Truman Capote is an author? I remember the next time the bookmobile came, I asked the bookmobile librarian, do you have any books by that actor Truman Capote? He's he's not really an actor. Cause that was the only time that Truman Capote appeared in film. So we're talking year what? 1980. I can't remember when Truman Capote died. Is it 1980?

Francisco Aragón: 3:49

maybe?

Rigoberto González: 3:50

It was earlier. I think we did it in 1980 something. So it was like the year in adolescence

Francisco Aragón: 3:55

when you encountered

Rigoberto González: 3:56

yeah. and he introduced me to Breakfast at Tiffany's, which was the first book. I identified with Lula May from Tulip, Texas, because she was, she's, she redefined, she re imagined herself, right? Something that I yearned to do myself, even though, I always tell this joke that I never got the Tiffany's, I never saw Tiffany in the book. where's Tiffany? Who's Tiffany? I never understood until later when I saw the film. The Tiffany's was the jewelry store.

Francisco Aragón: 4:23

So it sounds like Truman Goodporty, was a seminal author in your adolescence. Oh yeah. So how do we transition to that? when did you become aware of Latino authors? And this might be a case for you to talk about, because I know that you've spoken about this in the past, so this is maybe my way of saying, I'm going to take a guess. Tomás Rivera. Oh yeah. Tell me about Tomás Rivera and if in fact he was maybe the first Latino author who opened another world.

Rigoberto González: 4:51

further on Triple Capote, the other book that was really important was A Christmas Memory. And with the, it was a autobiographical and it was a child character. The child character Who was an outsider among a group of outsiders. I identified with that. that's what carried me forward to college. When I began to encounter Latino writers, I went to UC Riverside. this is a 1988. Okay. And I remember walking, I was touring the campus and I saw the Tomás Rivera library. So I was like, who is this Tomás Rivera that he must be an important figure that warrants a building named after him. And I found out very quickly what his prominence was. He was the chancellor of the university and also the author of Y no se trago la tierra. So immediately I had to find this book because I was curious. And when I did, another door opened up because Unlike the literature I had been reading, I had never seen myself or even people of color in a lot of these books. There were peripheral characters, there were marginal characters, but here's Tomás Rivera writing about us as a center of a narrative. And from there I began to, go to the bookshelf in the Latino studies or Chicano studies courses, and I just began to consume. So after Tomas Rivera came Ron Arias, the Roger Tomazunchale, the, and, Rufanaya, of course, that's mi ultima, Sandra Cisneros, the House of Mango Street.

Francisco Aragón: 6:12

did that coincide with you taking your first creative writing workshop as an undergrad?

Rigoberto González: 6:18

Yes, it did. I was a part of the honors program, so I was in which select whatever certain courses had an honor component. And out of curiosity, I had never really thought about being a writer. that came later. in the beginning I had only written like one poem and all high school seniors were all forced to write a poem. And I wrote one poem and I won second or third prize. I thought, I can take this creative writing class. I'm an award winning poet. I took this class and. Immediately I recognized, even though I couldn't articulate it very clearly. that I had something different. I didn't know what that was yet. But it maybe was the fact that I was writing about different things, or that what I wrote had a different sensibility than what others were writing. So this was as an undergrad at UCSF? Undergrad, I was a freshman Do you remember who your instructor was? Yeah, Judy Kronerfeld, was my instructor. eventually, Ada Schmid, Susan Strait, all these

Francisco Aragón: 7:10

If you had to single out, a mentor during your undergraduate years at UC Riverside, who might that be?

Rigoberto González: 7:16

it's Susan Strait and Amore assignment, we're both great. Because I was writing both fiction and nonfiction. As an undergrad? Yes. Yes, that's what I thought a writer was. You wrote everything. And they gave me that opportunity. I didn't realize that you had to choose. it wasn't until I went to UC Davis that I got tracked. Because I got into both programs, but they said, your thesis has to be one or the other. Which is why I went to Arizona State to do a second MFA.

Francisco Aragón: 7:41

Backing up, but I want to ask you about that decision because it's a decision that a lot of writers today have to account. Do I do graduate work in creative writing or not? how did you come to the decision to pursue a graduate degree in creative writing, which resulted in UC Davis?

Rigoberto González: 7:54

as an undergraduate, my fantasy of being a writer just meant that I was going to write, not that I was going to have a profession. up until college, I thought that a writer was a person who was dead, because all the books that I read and the literature I was exposed to, the authors, in my textbooks, the authors had a birth date and a death date. So I thought, oh, that's what a book is, written by someone who's dead. I had no idea that they were alive. I had never researched them. No, internet, so don't judge. anyway, No Wikipedia. it wasn't until I actually saw a writer in front of me and her name was Yolanda Barnes.

Francisco Aragón: 8:26

And

Rigoberto González: 8:26

she read a story and I sat there floored. I was like, wait a minute, you wrote that story? So you can write the story and go up in front of people and read your story? It's a whole new world. I love UC Riverside for that. Even if I didn't intend to, it really was a place where so many doors and discoveries were made for me. I didn't even, major in, creative writing. I majored in humanities. then my teachers were like, you should really think about going to, Writing program. And I thought, what for? what are you going to do take more classes and then do what? He said, there's so many things you can do. I said, I want to be a teacher because that's the job that I understood. said, you could be a creative writing teacher. said, okay, great, fantastic, So that's why I took that leap And headed to UC Davis. it was still close to home. I didn't want to venture outside of California. that's why I chose Riverside. It was only 80 miles away from home, even though I didn't go back as often eventually. at the beginning I still needed that proximity because I was the first one to venture out of the house. Nobody had ever done that in my family. not by himself, usually we always go in a group. And I remember the few times that I would even go down to Mexico by myself, I would arrive and people were like, what's happened? Are you angry? nobody could understand why traveling by yourself was just not, without a concept like that. I applied to UC Irvine and they didn't accept me. but UC Davis turned out to be a gift because Sandra McPherson, that's the person. I remember I visited UC Davis. I visited class and I realized, I have to be here, I have to come here. she made an impact on you the first time you encountered her? Oh yeah, I just love the way she talked about writing. she was actually talking about one of her own poems. and I was blown away by how much she cared about writing and how easy she was to understand. I'd encountered that at Eastern Riverside as well, but I wanted more of that. That's the kind of teaching that I wanted. she made me feel really comfortable.

Francisco Aragón: 10:14

It wasn't a case of you having researched her. You encountered her.

Rigoberto González: 10:18

Yeah.

Francisco Aragón: 10:19

Okay.

Rigoberto González: 10:20

Maria Steinem gave me a book by Sandy Streamers. Okay. So you had read some of her work. Yeah. But when she found out I got into UC Davis, she says, Oh, you didn't encounter Reans and Streamers. And, I thought that's it. I made the right decision. I need to go to

Francisco Aragón: 10:31

UC Davis. the happy coincidence of having Francisco Alarcón there was just bonus.

Rigoberto González: 10:36

I remember on a bench with a couple of friends of mine, outside of Spra Hall, all of a sudden Francisco comes by. I'd never seen Francisco, never met him, but the person I was with recognized him and says, You know who that is? That's Francisco Alarcón. he's a Chicano writer. And he's gay. immediately. I'm like, I got to find out who Francisco Alarcón is.

Francisco Aragón: 10:54

And,

Rigoberto González: 10:54

He had just been hired. in 1992, the year that I also started the program. from the minute, I began reading his work, I went to one of his readings and took a couple of classes. I said, you know what? he's got to be on my thesis. when I introduced Francisco to the creative writing program and they just loved him, immediately they're like invited him to go to the art of the wild. Francisco was really grateful. since then, we stayed in touch off and on until his death.

Francisco Aragón: 11:17

So it sounds like UC Davis was a good choice because of Sonja McPherson Francisco Alarco. And Clarence Major. I want to use Francisco because I know that you've written elsewhere that he, became a model on what mentoring can look like. I know, mentoring is something you take very seriously. So I'd like to ask you to speak a little bit about, how mentoring has played a role in your life, and how it's evolved through your trajectory. First, you being mentored, and then you getting to a stage where you give back and mentor. Just talk a little bit about it.

Rigoberto González: 11:49

a couple of things that Francisco did that were beyond the classroom, that's What I understood mentoring was. Mentoring was not only when you stand up in front of the classroom and deliver any kind of wisdom or knowledge to students, but what you do beyond that, which is, you don't get compensated for it, you have the goodness of your heart or a sense of responsibility. Francisco would do so much. He would have, a couple of us literature class. He asked, does anybody here write poetry? people raised their hands. so we're going to have a little workshop, and once every other week or so, we get together and share our poems and talk about them. He, took us to the radio station to read our poetry. I've read about that story, how we had to stop, and he's you guys are on radio, not television. And we had to stop laughing. But anyway, we had a great time there. And he took us to the young, museum to see the huge Aztec, exhibit. It's a field trip. Yeah. And he was one of the, I think he was an advisor in that project. And I remember that he said, he ran a bus and said, just give me 10 I accept checks, for the rental of the bus. I think I was the only one that showed up at 10, but he took it like, wow, somebody actually paid attention, give me 10 bucks. And he took the check. I don't even know if he cashed it, that was the things that he did. I always felt that. This is part of the nurturing, later on, I realized how much of a gift that was because it takes time. You have to compromise and sacrifice your own energies elsewhere. so then I began to appreciate even more, in that way. he was the more active, I think, of my professors there.

Francisco Aragón: 13:13

the other thing I was recently reading a draft of your essay on Francisco that's forthcoming in your book. I was struck by how. You mentioned, the other gift he gave you was by being a role model and embodying these two identities, being Chicano and being gay. Absolutely. Unpack that

Rigoberto González: 13:30

Yeah, because as an undergraduate, there was a Chicano identity thriving in that group, but I never felt that I belong. One, because I felt very Mexican. A lot of the Chicanos came from urban spaces. And there was also an element of homophobia, that was there and people would whisper, Oh, I saw some gay and I'm like, what gay? So I was very closeted, when I was an undergraduate. And so there was all these reasons why I didn't really embrace being a Chicano. it wasn't until I took Alarcon's class. he was very patient with me because I said a couple of things that I didn't think were necessarily adding to the, conversation I was just being very closed minded and rejecting. I said, I can't be a Chicano. But then when I learned more about Francisco's, trajectory, his life, he also was raised in, Mexico, and he was able to embrace Chicano and he was gay. So I began to say, how does that work? And then I recognized that's where everything was. There was no demarcation. Everything was layered woven into, and that's who Francisco was. He was a gay man. He was a Chicano. He was a Mexican. You can be all these things. he, was an example of that. he was really the first one that I encountered in that way, even though I had read a couple of other, gay Chicano writers, but they were fiction writers. Francisco showed me that it was possible. And then I very slowly, embraced being a Chicano.

Francisco Aragón: 14:42

And so then when your time at Davis was winding down. I imagine you had to decide, now what? how did the decision come about to do the DMFA?

Rigoberto González: 14:53

because I had been tracking the poetry and I did a poetry thesis because of Francisco and I wanted him to be part of that. I thought, I still feel like I need to develop my fiction skills. And so I decided, I'm going to do another project. but I got in as a poet and then I switched over and that was always a strategy. So that was, cause I know, Alberto Rios was down there. I thought, maybe he'll help me out And he didn't, and yet it worked out. I went, cause Davis was an MA and then I'm not, this is different anymore, but I didn't understand it.

Francisco Aragón: 15:20

Yeah.

Rigoberto González: 15:21

There was an MA and then an MFA. So I did my MFA. as soon as I got Arizona I said, I want to do fiction. They were okay with that. They just said, give some examples of your work and we'll have, Ron Carlson and Melissa Prichard. Look it over

Francisco Aragón: 15:33

That's

Rigoberto González: 15:33

it.

Francisco Aragón: 15:34

was your publication in the Chicano check series, while you were at a SU after you were at a SU?

Rigoberto González: 15:39

Yeah, that came out right after. Even my first book of, Gary Soto had already accepted the chapbook and he was working on it when the book got accepted, but the book came out first, but he accepted the poems before that.

Francisco Aragón: 15:52

We'll postpone. I just wanted to frame where that was. We're going to come back to that in a moment, but I want to stick to ASU because I think ASU is a good way to talk about one of the topics that I want to talk about. And that is, let me just preface this by saying that I sometimes get a sense that, the history of the arts and the history of literature is also, in some regards, history of friendships, history of collaborations. And I know that at ASU, if I remember correctly, you encountered Richard Yanez. Tell me about your take on this whole phenomenon, literary friendships, as a way of talking about meeting those two writers and the role they've played in your life.

Rigoberto González: 16:30

we're always looking for community. when I was at Davis, I gravitated toward the LGBT groups. When I was in Arizona, they use the term Hispanic, even though I prefer Chicano or Latino, but I needed community. I believe I was the only Latino writer. And the joke was that they would bring somebody else to replace them when I was going to leave. So Richard was that person. I met Richard when he was actually coming to check out the program. I was already in my last year, so we were not going to cross over. he came to my apartment. A friend of mine who was hosting him all over La Paz was Filipino. Brought him down and said, you gotta meet Rico. he came over to my apartment and I was blown away that we had read all the same authors. it was immediate friendship because we had read the same books, we were passionate both very feminists. we were both very, Much invested in community. And I just thought, okay, this is like my, kindred spirit here.

Francisco Aragón: 17:16

yeah.

Rigoberto González: 17:16

we stayed in touch the whole time. Through his whole education in Arizona and while I was traveling around, moving to other places, we stayed in touch. I also met, I didn't meet him actually, or no, I didn't meet him. It was the last year I was at Arizona, because Eduardo was an undergraduate and Alberto Rios was like, Oh, you gotta meet, Rigoberto. And Eduardo resisted it for a long time. then finally he calls me, but he calls me the week I'm moving out, but we managed to get together. I met his sister, and we had a wonderful conversation. It was very similar. these are people that had read the same book, were passionate about the same things, and immediately, he became almost like my little brother, and we've maintained those friendships, I think it's the fact that you want somebody, like you, I've always yearned for somebody in my family to acknowledge My complete identity, not only as a person, but as a professional, and it's hard to pull off with family because they don't understand. so meeting Richard and meeting, Francisco were ways to, Eduardo and you eventually, of course, were ways to feel like these are members of my family besides being members of my tribe,

Francisco Aragón: 18:19

I do know, I'm going to insist a little bit about color. I read somewhere recently and I was very touched by it. those of us who know you assume that Eduardo is probably your closest friend but I read it in print recently. I forget what interview it was. You said, Oh, Eduardo Corral is my best friend. I thought that was a very interesting little pivot by taking something that some people can consider, private. more than anything, I'm curious about the fact that you, in an interview, got into print. Talk a little bit about that. no, not by, the step of actually saying, oh yeah, I want the world to know that Eduardo Corral is my best friend.

Rigoberto González: 18:52

I think, the reason that I say he's my best friend is because I talk to him on the phone almost every day. I talk to my brother once a week. But I talk to Eduardo once, sometimes twice a day. we communicate constantly phone, text message and Twitter. he's the only one that knows everything. Absolutely. And this always has to be one person. he was very helpful. Like when I was, sick, when I was suffering from the, MS. And, he was very helpful to me. he'd go to a DAP, and, He was there for me when I sometimes had to go to the doctor, He's the only one. It's like his family. and I always tell him that I adopted his family because I know his parents and I speak to his mother on the phone every once in a while. there's ways in which, and the reason I came out with that was the vein of that conversation I was having with his interviewer was about, the misperceptions that people have about writers and personas that we create, and I think with me, I don't know how people see me, but I get these sort of conflicting reports. And I think people sometimes don't understand the long, arduous, laborious journey that it took for me to get to where I am now. And this is not only including my healthcare, but also the, times where I didn't have money or, couldn't get published,

Francisco Aragón: 20:03

you just reminded me of something. I'm going to ask you to see if you can talk. I know at one point you had mentioned, this is a little bit, for the archive. Talk a little bit about, there was a moment where you actually enrolled to do a PhD program in New Mexico. Oh yeah, tell us about that and what happened there.

Rigoberto González: 20:20

my family, all returned back to me going 1992 when I was at Davis. So another reason why I went to the MFA program in Arizona was to stay here. I had no idea what I was going to do. after finishing the Arizona state program, I had. met Rudolfo Anaya, but he had already retired. when I visited Albuquerque, I just thought, Oh my God, it's a beautiful place. It's a beautiful landscape, a beautiful city. I would love to come here, but I needed some kind of a way to get there, right? And so I thought, why don't I just do a PhD program and see what happens. This So I applied for it. I got in and I was excited about it. But, I knew very quickly that I had made a mistake not moving there, but doing a PhD program because Yeah. What did you discover about yourself? when I spent five days out of the week writing poetry and two days Doing research. Very clear that I was in there for. So I dropped out, I felt really bad cause I took out a loan and I dropped out that's when I worked, as a, I had a background in dance, so I worked, at a couple of dance studios. I worked at a Folklorico dance studio.

Francisco Aragón: 21:21

It sounds like what you're saying is that the experience of being in a PhD program, you discovered that perhaps you weren't drawn to a certain kind of academic writing and research, and yet you've gone on to be a very prolific book reviewer and critic. So what was it about that kind of writing that just didn't engage?

Rigoberto González: 21:40

I don't think it was the writing. I think it was the community itself, I felt enriched and stimulated intellectually. when I talked to writers, As opposed to scholars. No offense to scholars, but they just were not doing it for me. our interests are very different. Our vocabulary is very different. I thought, we don't want to hang out with these folks. they're good people but they're not doing anything, for me as a writer. I just didn't feel, as an artist.

Francisco Aragón: 22:05

Let's pivot now to the inevitable topic of publishing and publications. I alluded a little bit earlier to your Chicano Chatbook series, Contribution to Gary Soto. Tell that story, your relationship with Gary Soto, how that came to be. And also looking back on your publishing trajectory, what that publication meant or means to you, being in that series.

Rigoberto González: 22:28

the Chicano Chatbook series circulated among, many of us who are in the know about that particular, project Gary Soto had, he had done one early manifestation that he resurrected with these new voices. many of these people went on to have careers, So he really did have a kind of sense of talent, Gary He was my teacher at UC Riverside for one semester. He was a guest. we didn't really have a good relationship, I'll say that His teaching wasn't what I needed. He was important to me, right? they were important to me on the page, but as teachers, not really. so I decided, one way to find, cause I was not getting published in magazines. I was getting turned down. Nobody would publish my work. I knew it wasn't because it wasn't any good. I knew that. I had that kind of confidence. I knew that I was just, too foreign in some ways. And I thought, it's okay. I'll find my way elsewhere. So one opportunity with a Chicano Chatbook series, I thought, that's going to be cool so I sent it to him and he didn't remember me at all. He said, I remember you as my student. For me, that's a good thing. So we'll just leave has a really strange sense of humor, right? And then, all of a sudden, I got the book picked up because I submitted the manuscript to a contest at the National Border Series. And I told Gary Soto, I said, Hey, listen, my book is actually coming out. And he says, Oh, great. Do you still want to do the chapbook? And I said, Yeah. Because that'll be a nice feather on my cap. that'll be one more person that I know, he invited me to read with him at the University of Arizona in Tucson. Wait, after your book came out? After the book came out. I remember, that was one of the questions that somebody in the audience posed, because, It was a established writer had to choose an up and coming, right? And he chose me. and somebody asked him, what did you choose Rigoberto? He says, Oh, because he's a new book coming out and I read his work for the Chicago Chat Book Series and I loved the book. and so I thought, why not? I wanted to meet him. I want to hang out with him a little bit. And I did. every once in a blue moon, he would come to New York and I would meet up for him for a beer. And he always sends me, every time he publishes a little postcard. I dunno if he's ever communicated with you. No, but he types everything in a typewriter.

Francisco Aragón: 24:20

written

Rigoberto González: 24:20

That's what he does. Yeah. That's the only way he does it. He types in and he'll send it to me and he'll say something very self-effacing Hey, RI, Roberto, how are you? my new book came out. If you read it, you'll be maybe the third person. Nobody reads my books anymore. that kind of stuff.

Francisco Aragón: 24:34

So you made your debut. With a national poetry series, talk a little bit about, because I think the dilemma that some writers face is, do I try and win a book contest, a national book contest, or do I try to find a press, a micropress that I feel an affinity with and publish in that way? looking back at the span of your career and at publishing in general, what are your views about this question of when it comes time to get your work out in the world? National book contest? Or Go with the micropress who you think is cool and start there. What do you think about that?

Rigoberto González: 25:15

I give very different advice to my students now that I took myself when I was very young. Part of the reason is I had no idea. When I was starting out, I tried the small book contests or even small presses. Got no bites. I tried for a couple of years. I finished the manuscript in 1994. That was my thesis from UC Davis. every year after that, I tried to send it out. For five years, I tried to send it out to small contests I never heard of, to big contests. I thought, try to be ambitious. I cast a net, nothing until the National Poetry Series. now I tell my students there's advantages and disadvantages. if it's small press, the disadvantage is distribution. sometimes people have prejudices against small presses. With larger presses, it's a bigger door, but you still have to do a lot of the work. It's not, they're not the answer to your prayers.

Francisco Aragón: 26:05

Yeah.

Rigoberto González: 26:06

a beginning. And sometimes the big presses, don't give you a say about certain things. Like they won't give you a say, not that it matters, but a book cover, for example. They won't give you a say of Maybe the font, or they have a certain way negotiating publicity and things like that. and you're not part of the community in that way, which sometimes may be something you want,

Francisco Aragón: 26:28

Depends on your aims. Whereas with the small press. They're part of the whole process. It's more of a collaborative experience. Which may be part of the enjoyment of publishing. Exactly.

Rigoberto González: 26:38

you learn a lot.

Francisco Aragón: 26:39

You learn a lot from that. there's another chat book that we haven't spoken about. it's called Skins Preserve

Rigoberto González: 26:44

Us. How did that one

Francisco Aragón: 26:45

come about?

Rigoberto González: 26:46

that one came out from one of my old chums from D. C. Davis, Charlie McDonald. he started a journal there called, The Mockingbird Review. and it published one of my poems so I think it was one of my first publications he had a reading at one of the bars and then he eventually said, Hey, Rigo, listen, once in a while, we have these small presses have these chapbooks and I thought it'd be cool if I did one of yours. And then I was working, it was like, 2000, 2001. Because I remember the guy that did the cover image was one of my colleagues I was working at an after school program as a literacy teacher and the art teacher. And I said, hey, listen, what if I pay you to do a little thing, here's what I envision, some bones and then he did the lettering and bones and it was beautiful. It was so talented. And he was all happy, that he had gotten this opportunity. So that worked out.

Francisco Aragón: 27:32

so you actually had the experience of what you were talking about earlier. being part of the process. And it wasn't satisfying.

Rigoberto González: 27:37

So it's not a mystery anymore. when I learn about the process and the stages. and the patience that it takes to be part of that, nothing is rushed and you understand why, when things go slowly, there's a number of reasons why that's happening, so you don't have to, make things up,

Francisco Aragón: 27:53

You have been successful in multiple genres. Could you talk a little bit about how your process is, compare and contrast, for example, writing a memoir versus writing a collection of poems, writing a collection of critical prose versus writing a novel, collection of short fiction. Talk a little bit about that.

Rigoberto González: 28:12

I think in the beginning I was a little more strategic and a little more deliberate. And what I set out to do, I'm now 19 books in. So now it's very much internalized. Now from the get go, when I'm imagining a project, I understand, okay, that's a memoir. That's a book of poetry. That's a book of fiction or nonfiction. But in the beginning, I was a very few times that I start something and say, Oh wait, that's not a poem. That's actually an essay. Or that's not a story. developing, this skill, meant a lot of sitting down, imagining the journey of the process and sometimes failing, in fact, most times failing, it didn't work and that's fine, for everything that I do right, there's so much that gets thrown away.

Francisco Aragón: 28:50

Yeah.

Rigoberto González: 28:51

people think I publish everything I write and that's not right.

Francisco Aragón: 28:53

Yeah.

Rigoberto González: 28:53

No, I write plenty, but plenty gets out in print, but plenty does not. now I'm a lot better.

Francisco Aragón: 28:57

talk a little bit about the process, the germination of, say, Butterfly Boy.

Rigoberto González: 29:03

Butterfly Boy was a, I think that's a very different journey because there was no nonfiction classes being taught anywhere. I knew there was one in Davis. There was one young woman doing nonfiction, but everybody scoffed at it, because they thought she's 22, the reason I wanted to write nonfiction was because I felt my family was deliberately forgetting some things and also thought that, and they wanted to forget, cause there was a lot of pain and a lot of hurt. coming over as undocumented, these are not good memories. Why do you want to hold on to them? there was a new generation of children being born that didn't know that. And I wanted them to understand that our family went through a lot to get to the moment of privilege that they had. I didn't want it to be like, Oh yeah, we're born here in the United States and we always had a home and we also have food on the table. I thought there's a danger in not knowing that your family sacrificed so much and that food on the table took a lot of work, that it wasn't just there it is, there's magic, No, they weren't. I felt, I needed to write the reality of their experiences. Not that this was going to be a definitive, biography of my family, but I felt, I just want them to be documented so I don't forget them.

Francisco Aragón: 30:13

you started, so it sounds like it came from a very personal reason, and then eventually it found its way into a publisher. what about the projects, Crossing Vines and Men Without Bliss, which are your two projects?

Rigoberto González: 30:24

crossing vines was my thesis Arizona state. So I developed that. And of course, what was I going to write about? I was going to write about the migrant farm workers. which is interesting because a couple of my uncles read that book. I remember one of my uncles telling me, I liked it, but there's too much sex.

Francisco Aragón: 30:38

I'm like,

Rigoberto González: 30:41

they're in the fields most of the time. and my brother read it and he had a fun time with that because he recognized some of the figures in there these are composites of people we encounter in shared fields. or, little anecdotes and little stories that I wove into the narrative. But, and Crossing Vines, I wanted to continue writing nonfiction.

Francisco Aragón: 30:59

Advisor, Men Without Bliss.

Rigoberto González: 31:00

Men Without Bliss, because at Arizona State I wrote stories. I worked on stories, and so I thought, let me just go ahead and continue building these stories. and Oklahoma, was a great place to do that because they had this series. I love the lineage of that series same thing with, Butterfly Boy. When I look for a publisher, I knew that Jaime Labriquette published a book, Eminem Maricones, I loved. And he was very happy with them. So I said, you know what, I'm going to go ahead. And people ask me sometimes why I continue to go with small presses or university presses and why I don't make the leap to the big presses. I get that a lot. At this point, my answer is very cynical and almost a little bit clapback y, What are they going to do, make my name more famous, give me more money, what do I need? At this point it's what for? I really don't understand what for, even though I've had people knocking on my door, but I'm like, I'm very happy with the university prices. In the beginning though, I feel like it's too late for me. I'm sure it's not, but I feel like, I tried to do that for years when I first got to New York. I tried to knock on the door of all these big presses. Nobody opened the door. So now I'm like, now they're showing up after I did all the labor. You know what? Thank you. Go ahead and find somebody else. I'll do my thing. So even agents, they tell me I'm crazy and I'm like, I'm making good money, who's not making good money out of me? You are.

Francisco Aragón: 32:19

big

Rigoberto González: 32:19

publishers, who's not making money out of me? You are. so I'm going to do this to make money for them. I'm not interested.

Francisco Aragón: 32:24

one area we haven't touched on is. your children's books and your YA novels. Can you talk a little bit about those two strands of your work?

Rigoberto González: 32:35

The children's book was actually Francisco who encouraged me. He said, try it, children's book press, they do good work. You've got some stories in there. we used to do little exercises for him and write an exercise for his classes. he sat down with me one time and he said he had just published a couple of books, with children's book press. his. Journey was so easy because his verse really led us off to, voice it's accessibility, but also the curiosity in his work, he said, try it. everybody's in there, Juan Felipe Reina is in there, Clarence Aldua. why not? we need Chicano writers. he was telling me that we need the next generation, Chicano writers to be in there, right? Cause he's wrong. Establish veteran writers. So I did. and I thought, what can be my contribution, to this? Cause I can't just be a story. It has to be something. Their books are speaking to a certain issue Soledad César was the first one. I was working as a literacy specialist. and this is something that I experienced as a kid, being an Alaskan kid. So the story is about being an Alaskan kid, and I sent it to Jones Book Press. They immediately said, yes, we're going to work on it, but it needs a lot of work. And that's when I really learned how hard it was. To write a children's book. I did two and I don't think I'm ever gonna do another one. I've tried many times unsuccessfully. those are the hardest books to write. They really are. They seem simple. Yeah. Which is what people think, oh, I can do that. It's not that simple. What about the y novel? the Y novel, you got three of'em now, right? Yeah, I got three That also came from somebody a publisher I met. At the time he was working for Allison Publications, and he said, we are just starving for YA literature with people of color. we would love if you would even try, or we could help you, if you ever wanted to do the YA market, if we could even write about young, gay, Latino characters, a story. And I was like, okay, thank you. But I thought it'd be a market that I read some YA stuff. I wasn't interested too much in it. so I left it alone, but it wasn't until the murder of Lawrence King, who had revealed his crush on another young man in Oxnard, California, and then the young man came and shot him and killed him. And this was, 2008. Because I remember thinking, that 20 years after I graduated from high school, we're still afraid of the gay kid, right? And that inspired me to do something. I said, you want to go write YA books with these young gay Latino characters, but my angle is going to be a different complexity of experiences because I didn't want to write just tragic stories. even though there's a tragedy in that book, in Mariposa Club, the other four characters have, very different relationships with their parents. Some of the parents are really supportive of their kids. Others are not. They're very afraid for their kids. That's why the four kids are important to their age. even when I was writing that, my editor was telling me, Think of it in a series, don't just resolve everything in the first book.

Francisco Aragón: 35:26

Yeah.

Rigoberto González: 35:26

And the first book is still the most successful one. I did the sequel, because they were graduating from high school. So the plot is they're going to crash the prom. one of them is going to cross dress to the prom. The third one bombed It's called Mariposa U, and I thought, they did not go to the same college, so I gotta follow the one character. young adult readers were mad. Because he thought, where are the other characters, the we love them because it's the four of them and their banter and the way they talk and it has to be the four of them. the other reason they didn't like it, the criticism for my first two YA books was that they were not having sex. I don't want to write, I feel creepy. I'm a grown man. I don't want to write high school students having sex. It's not going to happen. But now that this kid in the third book, was of age, he was 18. He's gonna have his first sexual experience and it wasn't very good kids don't like it they're like, I can't believe you. He finally has sex and he hates it it's a part of his journey So this feedback you're describing

Francisco Aragón: 36:20

letters you get

Rigoberto González: 36:21

There's a whole network out there. They have blogs and they have tumblers and it's these are young people that consume YA literature. they're teenagers, and they interact. I did so many interviews with them. They were the most probing fascinating and learned interviews I've ever done. About the Mariposa Club, they're really serious about this they called me out on the first cover, which I also didn't like, I complained too, because the four people on the cover did not reflect the identities of my young people. First of all, they didn't look Latino, and I said, can't you darken them a little, because they're very white. that's not who they are. And I describe a couple of those being very dark, and one of them was overweight and all these four young kids were really thin.

Francisco Aragón: 36:59

Yeah.

Rigoberto González: 36:59

So they're like, who are these? These are not the characters in the book. And I say, you know what? That's not, wasn't my choice. Later when I reprinted this through tincture books, Steve Berman said to me, now that Alison, went under, can I republish your books? I love your books. And I said, yes, and he did a couple of covers and they were better.

Francisco Aragón: 37:17

from all the different genres that you've published in, the YA genre has been the one that you've been most engaged with your audience.

Rigoberto González: 37:23

Yeah, very much. Butterfly Boy, for years after Butterfly Boy, and now once in a while, because it's continued to be, I'm surprised it's 10 years. And I just went to, Delaware community college where it was like the one book, one campus. So everybody had a copy of Butterfly Boy. So I'm surprised that it's still relevant and making waves and is very important to, groups that are discussing so many different topics about that particular book. But the first years after Butterfly Boy was published, I received at least one email a week. By somebody telling me, that's my story, that's my brother, that's my cousin, that's my friend, that's my uncle. And that was, pretty good. Including a woman who was from the White House.

Francisco Aragón: 38:03

Really?

Rigoberto González: 38:03

Yeah, I can't remember what her position was. some agriculture or something like that. And she said, that's my father, that's my father. okay, interesting, yeah.

Francisco Aragón: 38:13

A book like Red Ink Retablos and the one that's forthcoming with Michigan is a very different process.

Rigoberto González: 38:20

those are nonfiction and collections of my speeches, book reviews. And critical essays that I do once in a while, I'm already envisioning the next book of speeches because since the Trump win, I've become a motivational speaker. So now I'm like, because people are in this state of distress. about their role as writers and artists. there's always this question of what do we do? How do we move through this? How do we navigate this era where so much of our energies are being consumed by rage.

Francisco Aragón: 38:53

So what you've given some speeches since this election, since November, you've been contacted by people saying, come speak to our group.

Rigoberto González: 38:59

Yeah. Come speak to our group. But then they tell me, can you. Motivate us because we're depressed, that kind of thing. And so I began to do that and even the conference I just did in Albany was about that. they told me, could you say something? Cause everybody's devastated. Everybody's dejected. So give us your message In one way, I feel that I need to remind people that we come from a very long line of activists and literary activists, and clearly people who were writing during even more troubled times. So imagine if those folks, a couple of generations ago, Had frozen up the way that some of us want to freeze up now, what would we have denied ourselves? And what would they have denied that community? So there really isn't an excuse. We should learn from that strength that this is a time to really write. This is a time to create. This is a time to push back. without having what we create be defined by the administration that we're in. There's ways to do that. So in your particular case, are you doing anything differently since this election? My next book of poetry is definitely, speaking to something wider but now nothing can be seen outside of the political lens.

Francisco Aragón: 40:03

Yeah.

Rigoberto González: 40:03

Which frankly Many of us who are women writers, who are writers of color, who are LGBT writers, have always experienced. Artwork can never be seen outside of a political lens, right? it's not seen as inferior, right? the notion of political poetry, which was always scoffed at for many times, right? Because they thought political poetry is inferior. It's marginal. it's very, regional. It's only speaking to a certain kind of audience or an occasion. Now it's like, how can anything be seen outside of the political lens? So in many ways, the field has caught up to what

Francisco Aragón: 40:31

many of us have been doing. what would be your contribution to the debate? Maybe debate's not the right word. I'm thinking about the anthology that came out a couple of years ago, co edited by Carmen Jiménez Smith and John Chavez called Angels of the Ameri clipse, multi genre, which seems to be making the case that, Latino letters, aesthetically, is becoming more diverse. it's being nourished by the more innovative experimental strands of poetry. I think I've heard you say that we've had writers in that strand all along, like Juan Felipe Herrera, what's your take on that tendency of people who maybe don't feel like they want to write, political poetry for lack of a better term or community or identity.

Rigoberto González: 41:13

You know what the thing is that there's not just four chairs in the room. We have plenty of space, right? So as long as the conversation is about the making rule for everybody, that everybody is part of the movement. That's fine. What I push back on is when people tell me that identity politics is yesterday or right about community is passe, that I really take issue with that kind of argument, because that doesn't necessarily mean a welcoming community building language. I don't understand a lot of the avant garde. In experimental language poetry, but I don't think of it as lesser. I don't think of it as inferior. if anything, I challenge myself to try to learn. So I expect the same from that community

Francisco Aragón: 41:59

with,

Rigoberto González: 41:59

and even this conversation makes sound like it's a binary, right? And it's but it should not be because there are people that are clearly moving in both spaces like Carmen Jiménez Smith her work, You can't separate identity from language. it's very much embedded, or even Juan Felipe Herrera right? they've been doing this work all along. as long as the conversation is not Dismissing certain aesthetics, that's fine. if we all come together collectively and we're like, you know what? We are all Latino, but not all of us are necessarily engaging these topics and that's fine.

Francisco Aragón: 42:27

Yeah.

Rigoberto González: 42:28

should be helping each other out.

Francisco Aragón: 42:31

You may have noticed recently, the Pulitzer Prizes seem to be a bonanza for African American artists. Tohimbajess, poetry, Gregory Partlow, poetry, Colson Whitehead, fiction, Hilton Ailes, criticism, Lynn Nottage, theater, It's nice. What's it going to take, for there to be some future when our community does that?

Rigoberto González: 42:51

I know. You have to tread very carefully, right? Because in many ways I feel that the Pilsner Committee is finally catching up to the importance of African American writers, right? African American writers, there's such an important group. They've taught many of us, they've mentored us on the page. but it still keeps the race conversation to black and white. they're writing from their perspective, but the establishment, when they look at race and when they see my race and when they think, oh, we got to address racial flaws, they look at African Americans it's not that it's easy, but it's the quickest solution, in some ways without diminishing the importance, because I read Olio, there's a brilliant book and Lynn Nottage is a brilliant, dramaturg and Colson Whitehead, that guy's brilliant. so these are deserved, awards, but at the same time, I feel like, wow, that's it, they've done their job. can we talk about how even the National Book Award rarely looks at Asian American writers? you go through the list of finalists in the last couple years, where are the Asian American writers? you'll see a Latino writer in there, Or even Native American writers, So other groups also have been excluded, The Poet Laureate of the United States, you finally had a Latino, But it was established by an Asian American diplomat, but we never had an Asian American.

Francisco Aragón: 44:04

Poet laureate.

Rigoberto González: 44:04

Poet laureate. So there's ways in which, there's arenas that really need attention. But in terms of when the appeals committee is going to recognize, the Latino community, one way is we have to get judges in there.

Francisco Aragón: 44:16

Yeah.

Rigoberto González: 44:17

The judges are important gatekeepers they help curate the finalists. that's it. there's one reason that I have always, accepted being a judge in the jury for many different awards. I never say no because I'm afraid that if I say no, they're going to be like, we tried inviting the Latinos and they said no, it's just me. I represent the entire community. So it's important for us to be in there, which is why I joined the National Book Creek Circle for many years. Eight years, which is why I'm now on the board of trustees of AWP, so we can help guide the decision making process from the inside. And it's something that I learned very early on that I come from a family of activists. And their activism had to be on the outside because they were not on the inside. So my family, they went on marches, they did strikes, and always from the outside, get the signs, get the flags, and you yell, and that from the outside. but the solution really had to come from the inside somehow. But they had to do that to demonstrate publicly, right? Sometimes I see, people trying to call out the Pilsner committee, the National Book Award Foundation or AWP from the outside. And I think, we're not in an era and we're not in a moment where we don't have access to the inside if you work, if you get in there. So that's why I don't necessarily join those kinds of fights. Cause I think, you know screaming and yelling and shaking her fist at the wall is only going to get us to a certain moment.

Francisco Aragón: 45:39

Getting a seat at the table and trying to affect change

Rigoberto González: 45:42

And that comes with compromises too. so many times I've been called a sellout, even though my politics is my part, I'm very open and transparent about what I believe in. But even then, because I'm in the inside, I'm a vendido, I'm a sellout. And I've been called that, by people and I'm like, whatever, I can't do anything about that.

Francisco Aragón: 45:57

when you look at What you've accomplished up until now, I know you got the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Publishing Triangle and you look at, say, the next, 10 years, what's the big picture for you in terms of the next thing you want to accomplish,

Rigoberto González: 46:11

the next thing I want to do is make sure that there are young people, that continue this fight and this fire to participate, to get inside these organizations, to be mentors to be book reviewers, to be book critics. Once I burn out, once I retire or something happens to me, somebody needs to fill that void. And I would like to stop doing that. Cause I'm getting very tired. I'm very exhausted. I've been there for a long time now. And now I understand my mentors before will be like, why are they doing anything? they did it for 30, 40 years. So I feel the same way now I'm reaching that stage and I want to see. Young people step in and take over some of these things that I'm doing, because if not, then that's the end. We're going to start from scratch.

Francisco Aragón: 46:59

So do you envision some kind of initiative or mechanism by which we try to help

Rigoberto González: 47:04

Absolutely. I'm going to be, at the Canto Mundo retreat, and I've already talked to the folks there, I said, one thing I want to talk about is, I would be more than willing to mentor some young writers. opening up some avenues for them to publish their work, book reviews to understand, I'm not going to help them get poster poems. Other people can do that for me look, we need book critics. We need those people that are going to join the conversation and, book reviewing is tough. writers, feel they're compromising their time, shining the light on someone else. Nobody seems to understand that when you shine the light on another writer, you also shine the light on yourself and that you're not doing this for yourself, you're doing this for the community. But I want to tap into those that have that passion. That's something you can't just give to somebody, you awaken it that's what I want to tap into. I want to speak to each of you. And if nobody does it, you know what? I did my part. I tried. That's all I know. But I think they're out there.

Francisco Aragón: 47:53

on that note in surveying the landscape, who are some of the people that you've noticed in the last, 10 years, five years, who you think are doing that good work? the generation behind us, who's working on behalf of others beginning to take their cue from people like yourself.

Rigoberto González: 48:11

to think, maybe, this young man from Florida, Mario Arisa, who's actually very learned and I'm trying to get him in there to write book reviews. I met him when I was down in Florida and I think he's a CantoMundo fellow.

Francisco Aragón: 48:23

What's his name

Rigoberto González: 48:24

Mario Alejandro Ariza, I think. And then there's, even the Antioquia poets. Adios Amora, Christopher Soto and Marcelo Lómez Castillo. that surprised me. that was amazing. this is something that I hadn't even thought about because it wasn't affecting me. they identified the issue, the problem, and the complication, and they found a solution. It was amazing what they did. That I'm very excited about. young women, I'm trying to think of a couple that I've run into. can't think of any off the top of my head. there's a couple of young women that are doing this project down in, Texas.

Francisco Aragón: 48:56

Spanish.

Rigoberto González: 48:57

it's like but it's bilingual. Yeah. Because they invited me to be there. They're one of their keynotes. Okay. And last year's keynote with Juan Felipe.

Francisco Aragón: 49:03

Oh, okay.

Rigoberto González: 49:04

they also invite Latin American writers. That's exciting to see these things are happening.

Francisco Aragón: 49:08

One thing we haven't touched upon, and we've talked about it in the past, and I know it's on the horizon for Letras Latinas. We want to do the Adreso Symposium. you were slated to be A participant in the launch for In the Grove a few years ago in Fresno. Talk a little bit about Andres Montoya.

Rigoberto González: 49:26

Oh, Andres Montoya was one of the first writers that I felt, a kinship. Yeah. Because the book, his book came out a few seconds before mine. And Francisco was the one who chose, I didn't know that, I kept hearing a little buzz about the book and I got the book and I had no idea that he had passed away, cause I was like excited to go, I gotta write this guy and everything that I found out he had passed away. the book was published posthumously and blew me away. it has so many of the elements that I knew were important to somebody. who was in a moment of a spiritual, exploration crisis and, healing. I thought, this is exactly the kind of journey I'm on through very different, elements. But so I, and just linguistically quite beautiful and quite beautiful. So I thought, this book needs to be celebrated. It needs to be written, needs to be read about, needs to be, discussed. So I know that he's got a huge sort of following and community that still keeps his work alive.

Francisco Aragón: 50:18

Yeah. I know that when Francisco Alarcón passed away, and then thinking more recently about Andres Montoya and his new book, Jerry of Trees, I view them as, that are accessible and does deserve a much wider audience outside our community than they have. They're really well known within the Chicano Latina community. Pro Francisco and Andres, but not outside of it. that profile that was written in the New Yorker about that young, poet who died and then John shared a little supplement of his poetry and poetry magazine. I feel like, Andreas Montoya is in that category. I think that. We have poets who could easily have much wider audiences and are accessible, but don't.

Rigoberto González: 50:54

I don't want to speak ill of the dead. I don't want to say anything about that particular author, but I will say that, when you're connected to certain resources, you can do things like that. this is not the first time it's happened. we had, some young, white, promising poets that die tragically or commit suicide and then their book is being celebrated all over the place. we have that too in our communities, but we don't have the platforms to do that with, it's a weird kind of fetishizing of the tragic. I know this is going to get me in trouble, I just don't like it. I don't like it because then you read the work and I'm like, are we allowed to say that it's terrible because this person has just died? you're not allowed to do that, right? and the thing is that we understand that we have, and, but also acknowledging too that some of those poets that did die young were very good. Yeah. I'm going to say that. But there's this weird sense of Oh my God, this person just died. They didn't have a chance. And they're mediocre. I don't think they would have had a chance anyways, but we identify, we also celebrate our dead. We also mourn our dead, but we don't have those kinds of platforms to get on the New Yorker or Poetry Magazine. I haven't read that young man, it's not about that young man because I haven't read his work, so I don't know, but, but again, it left a little bitter taste in my mouth where I thought, if we had access to him, we could have done this with him. I think we still could. who knows? We'll see.

Francisco Aragón: 52:07

Okay. this has been a great conversation. thank you for your time. Thank you very much.