Where is Monserrat Fontes?

                                                                       

Books and Moths

     I’ve been weeding my library of books I’ll probably never read again, even some special ones, kind of like clothes in a closet, some really cool clothes in there that haven’t been worn in years, and, I know I never will wear again—moth food.

     I see James Michner’s “Iberia” up there. It’s been with me since 1976, my Bible as I travelled through central and southern Spain as a student in 1977-’78. There’s a row of books my professors assigned me while I studied at the University of Granada, in the old university downtown, where students crowded into the cafes and plazas and discussed every topic imaginable.
     I see two Ramon Sender classics, “requiem por un campesino espanol,” and “La Tesis de Nancy”, a really charming read about a chatty American student in Spain trying to learn Castellano, even asking common working people the rules of grammar, as if thinking every Spaniard was a grammarian.
                                                                                   

Ramon Sender to Lazarillo de Tormes

     There is a row of books by Chicano writers, poets, essayists, and novelists, some going back to the mid-to-late 1960s, the Chicano Enlightenment. When I retired, I passed off most of my classic Chicano literature books to a friend, Professor Jaime Cruz, who was working with at risk kids at a new library in Santa Monica. Sometimes, I think, I want some of them back. Then I remember the moths and the old shirts.
     I also notice my favorites scattered haphazardly about, books I pull out to skim every so often, like Hesse’s “Steppenwolf”, the short stories of Paul Bowles , Kafka, Chekov, and Hemingway, novels by the Bronte sisters, Rudy Acuna’s “Occupied America,” Thomas Merton’s “Seven Story Mountain,” Paz’s biography of Juana de La Cruz, and a smattering of books on religion-spirituality, peace, war, politics, sociology, education, and writing.
     At the top, in the highest row, are the autographed books, mostly Chicano and Chicana writers, friends I’ve met over the years at conferences, book signings, or award ceremonies where we shared the stage. Many haven’t published in a long time. I hesitate to say “have stopped writing,” because I know that even though I haven’t published a novel since 2009, I write four or five times a week.
     My excuse for not publishing more…. Well, I love the process, writing, revising, editing, publishing, and, of course, seeing the first copy arrive in the mail, but I don’t like the business aspect, and believe me, publishing is a business. When a writer or artist finishes a “piece,” like it or not, whoever produced it, sees a product, and like all products, they are produced to be sold.
     At this point, the artist becomes a salesperson. The more units sold, the better chance of having the next piece produced. For writers who publish with small presses, there is no powerful promotion machine, so the writer becomes the advertiser and bookstore.
     The reading circuit for writers is still the traditional way of selling books, but that ain’t an easy gig, the travel, the expense, showing up for an audience of five (if you’re lucky), and with the disappearance of so many bookstores, today, there are fewer and fewer venues to read. Even university publishers want writers who will hit the road and sell their books.
     On the shelf of autographed books, I spot Victor Villasenor’s “Rain of Gold”. I remember hanging out with Victor for an evening after he read and signed his book at Dutton’s Books (now deceased), in Brentwood.
                                                                             

The autographed copies

     After publishing “Rain of Gold,” Victor was a hot item, covered by major news-outlets around the country. Writing books was his thing, no teaching job on the side or any other work, so he had to sell his books if he wanted to eat.
     As we walked along San Vicente boulevard, Victor carried a satchel filled with flyers advertising his book. To my surprise, he stopped anyone passing us, introduced himself, handed them a flyer, and told them where to buy his book. Victor is gregarious and engaged many people in conversations. Some said they'd definitely stop by Dutton's and pick up his book. "That's how you do it," he said, or something to that effect.
     We went into a restaurant for coffee. He said, “Come with me.” We went into the men’s restroom. and he taped his flyers on the wall just above the urinals. He said, “A good place to advertise; it’s a captured audience.”
     We were both younger at the time, with a lot more energy and ganas. I’d just published my first book. He’d been at it for years and was giving me a lesson in marketing. He was hundred percent correct. What good is a product, even art, if it doesn’t sell, or put another way, if nobody reads, sees, or hears it?
     I once heard the writer Carolyn See tell an audience of writers, “If you already have a book published, forget about writing your next book. Work on selling the one you have.” She wasn't talking about selling for the sake of making money, necessarily, but for the purpose of expanding your "base" as one might say today.
     Beside Victor’s book is Monserrat Fontes’ “Dreams of the Centaur,” published by Norton, and winner of the 1997 American Book Award. Now, to win the American Book Award, your book has to be pretty damn good. I don't remember what Monserrat published after "Dreams," so I picked up my old I-phone and googled her name. It seemed like "Dreams" was her last book. How can that be, after winning such a prestigious literary prize?
                                                                                   

1997 American Book Award Winner

I don't remember much about the story. I mean, it was 1996. I also can’t remember where I met Monserrat, a conference, I think, but she’d read my first book “Pepe Rios”, about a teenage boy who, after his father's mysterious death, leaves his family’s ranch in Mexico during the early days of the 1910 Revolution and, after being kidnapped by the rebels and facing many harrowing  experiences, finds his way to the banks of the Rio Bravo.

     Writing historical novels is exhausting, years of work. I reach up for Monserrat’s book. open it, and read the inscription to me. It’s inspiring, and she encourages me to keep writing. So many years ago. The reason historical fiction takes so much work is the inordinate amount of research necessary before and during the writing.
     I find a comfortable chair, open to Chapter I, and I begin reading. The pages turn, some quicker than others. To read it right, one can’t rush through historical fiction. That’s why it took me six months to read “War and Peace”, one copy in my car and one at home. I finished it while on vacation in Puerto Rico, and I was coming down with the flu. Funny the things books help us remember about out own lives.
     I wrote my first novel rushing home from my day job, eating dinner, saying hi to the family, then dashing to local libraries (no Google back then) to research. I’d return home by 7:30 or 8:00 PM. I tried spending quality time with the kids, at least an hour. By 9:00 PM, after the family was in bed, I’d head to the kitchen and write until 11 or 11:30, go to bed, wake up the next morning and do it all again. I saved Saturday for research and rested Sunday.
     As I read through Monserrat’s book, I am mesmerized by the story and the historical detail. My book paled by comparison. Monserrat had to have done an extraordinary amount of research to pull together her story. I peruse her "Acknowledgement" page. It's vast, with sources from University of Mississippi to Mexico and many places in between. She wrote this while teaching at University High School, a feat in itself. That's what, five classes a day, five days a week?
     She describes a beautiful scene of the protagonist Alejo breaking a wild horse, three-four pages of exquisite writing, heart-breaking emotion, and attention to detail, point by point.
     “Dreams of the Centaur” is filled with wonderful scenes and engaging storylines, the most moving, a mother’s love for her son, and finally, having to let go.
     Monserrat’s book is timeless. Her narrative regarding Mexico’s brutal system of incarceration under Porfirio Diaz shows human beings treated worse than animals, kept, not even in cells or cages, but, literally, in narrow, dirt pits and caves.
     Under his regime, Diaz's government tortured and kidnapped Yaquis from their ranchitos in Sonora and sent them to work on the henequin plantations in the Yucatan where many died, facing an entirely different Mexico, or as an overseer tells Alejo, an army deserter working on a plantation and claiming he is a free man and not a slave. “You’re not free. And you’re not in Mexico. You belong to the king.”
     The kings are those aristocrats who own the plantations, not unlike those plantation owners in the American South during slavery and Jim Crow. They answer to no government. In the late 1800s, using slave labor, the kings produced henequen to sell around the world and wealth to match.
     They created the laws, and even though Mexico outlawed slavery in its Constitution, it never stopped the practice of slavery, not in the past, and not even today. Consider southern Mexico, Chiapas, Campeche, and the Yucatan, as far as Central and South America, where the Maya, Inca, and other indigenous groups continue to be brutalized on plantations and in mines, under antiquated political systems.
     As I read “Dreams”, I realized Fontes' novel is a book about Latin America today, from the burning of the Amazon to the murders of nuns and priests in El Salvador to the drug fueled atrocities, all vile, legal crimes, perpetrated upon the most vulnerable Latin Americans.
     Whether the perpetrators are governments, corporations, or gangs, often one and the same, or go by such names as Nueva Generacion, Los Zetas, Chiquita, United Fruit, Dole, or Shell, they wreak havoc on the environment and on people’s lives and send caravans of migrants north, in a flight for safety, and for no other reason than to keep the flow of cheap labor moving, as well satisfying the unsatiated need of Americans to “get high.” It is the writer's responsibility to tell these stories, sometimes sacrificing their own well-being in process.