Ruth Behar read for the
Michigan Writers Series on Friday, February 15, 2002. There was no time to do a live interview that evening, so she responded
to Stephanie Mathson’s questions via email on Thursday, April 4, 2002.
For more information on Dr. Behar’s latest projects, please check out
her website http://www.ruthbehar.com.
Q: Having grown up in the U.S., how did you first learn of Ediciones Vigía, the Cuban book-publishing cooperative that was the subject of the recent "Wrapped Words" exhibit at MSU's Kresge Art Museum?
A: I first learned of Ediciones Vigía during a trip to Cuba in 1992. I went to Matanzas with a Cuban-American friend and saw the Ediciones for the first time. Later, in 1994, I met Rolando Estevez, the artistic designer and artistic founder of Ediciones Vigía. I had been invited to the Havana Book Fair to present TRANSLATED WOMAN and met Estevez there while he was working the booth for Ediciones Vigía. He had made some
beautiful art-text pieces
that incorporated his watercolor drawings and poems by Dulce Maria Loynaz. That was my first introduction both to
Estevez as an artist and to Loynaz's poetry. Afterwards, I began to travel
regularly to Matanzas to keep up with Ediciones Vigía and with Estevez's development as an artist. Over time, a friendship developed between
myself and Ediciones Vigía, a friendship that has
nourished me deeply as a writer.
Q: I'm so happy that you read “Obedient Student" one of the
prose poems in your recently published collection, Everything I Kept. When were you told that you "wouldn't
make a good poet," and how long was it before you started writing poetry
again?
A: I was never told in so many words that "I wouldn't make a good poet," but I wasn't encouraged in my earlier, vulnerable years as an undergraduate student at Wesleyan University. I put away my poetry and didn't come back to it again until the early 1990s when I began to travel regularly to Cuba. In Cuba, returning to my place of birth and childhood home, I found my voice again as a poet, as well as my confidence.
Q: Besides Dulce Maria Loynaz, the so-called "Cuban Emily Dickinson," who are your other literary influences?
A: Many
writers have had a deep impact on me. I
love the work of Marguerite Duras, Jean Rhys, and the Catalan writer Merce
Rodoreda. Among Latina writers, I love
the poetry and prose of Sandra Cisneros and Marjorie Agosin.
Q: In 1995, you edited the anthology Bridges to Cuba, which
includes poetry, essays, drama, and fiction written by Cuban and Cuban-American
writers. The book was inspired, in
part, by the Michigan Quarterly Review’s 1994 double issue also entitled
“Bridges to Cuba.” What events led up
to the publication of that special journal issue and, consequently, the book?
then took the best pieces
from those volumes to create the anthology BRIDGES TO CUBA. This project
emerged from my trips to Cuba in the early 1990s and my desire to create a
forum where the voices and visions of Cubans on the island and in the diaspora
could be united. I needed to find my intellectual and artistic community and
this project gave me that community I'd been searching for during my years
growing up in the States.
Q: I noticed that when you mention Michigan in your work, the context is most often something about academia or the climate (notably the cold). What would you say living in the Great Lakes State has contributed to your writing over all?
A: Michigan is the place where I write about other places I've
traveled to, including Spain, Mexico, and Cuba. It is where I reside, but my heart and soul are elsewhere. I am an immigrant in Michigan, but I've
tried to think of it as one of my homes, especially because my son Gabriel was
born in Michigan. I always say I live
in Michigan, but it's not where I'm from.
I recognize my otherness here.
Yet increasingly there is a Latino
presence in Michigan, which
makes me think that we carry our homelands with us, in our imaginations and
memories and in the remaking of our cultures wherever we go.
Q: Your first documentary Adio Kerida, was screened recently
the Michigan Theater and you are now showing it at film festivals around the
country. What led you to make to make
this film, which is “a search for memory among (your) fellow Sephardic Jews in
Cuba and (the US)?” Do you hope to make
more films in the future?
A: ADIO
KERIDA was for me a very important intellectual, spiritual, and artistic
journey. I wanted to use the medium of
video to show the diversity and richness of the Sephardic tradition in Cuba and
among Sephardic Cubans in the United States.
I wanted the faces to be seen, the voices to be heard, and I wanted the
music of the Sephardic tradition to serve as the backdrop to the exploration of
identity. I hope to make more films in
the future, including one which will focus on the life of Miguelito, one of the
protagonists of the film, who is of mixed Afro-Cuban and Jewish-Cuban heritage.
Q: Besides your novel-in-progress (Nightgowns from Cuba) and
a new edition of Translated Woman: Crossing the Border with Esperanza's
Story that will be published later this year, what other writing
projects are you currently working on--if any?
A: The novel is going to be my next big project and that is going to
take most of my energy. I'm also planning a book of photographs and texts about
the Jews of Cuba that will allow me to continue working with images and stories
in creative ways. Then there's a memoir I wrote and put away, called DEAR
GABRIEL, which I want to return to, a book I dedicate to my son, who is now
fifteen.
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