Sergio Troncoso's Blog: Chico Lingo, by Sergio Troncoso - Posts Tagged "latinx"

In this interview, Erin Popelka of Must Read Fiction speaks with Sergio Troncoso, whose most recent book is A Peculiar Kind of Immigrant's Son . Our conversation followed as delightful a range as the stories in this collection: we spoke of questions of home and varied immigrant experiences to stories of his grandmother as she smoked cigarettes and described living through the Mexican Revolution to the challenges he poses to his readers through his writing.

A few delightful quotes from our conversation: "I'm a little bit of a rebel. I like to unmoor the reader."
From his grandfather: "Don't become a journalist. If you tell the truth, people will hate you forever."

Questions for his readers: "Who are you? Are you who you want to be? What do you keep? What do you discard? Why? How are we going to be a we?"

These questions and rebellions and stories make for a wonderful journey, both in this interview and in the short story collection, A Peculiar Kind of Immigrant's Son .

https://youtu.be/4VcKNdwfoPA

Review in Literal Magazine of A Peculiar Kind of Immigrant’s Son (Cinco Puntos Press):


“The short stories in A Peculiar Kind of Immigrant’s Son, his latest book, are all linked: many share the same characters, and some—in a neat narrative trick—even cause one to entirely reevaluate a previous story. Generally, they move from stark, spare realism in the first few stories, to lush dystopian surrealism in the last few. Although many stories take place far from the Rio Grande, this is a robust, proud exploration of what it is like to be (on what one character calls) “the edge of the edge of the United States”: to be the child of immigrants, to be straddling two worlds—lines between love and sex, past and future, civilization and brutality, life and death.”

http://literalmagazine.com/a-peculiar-kind-of-immigrants-son-review/

I am writing a series of essays about my experiences as a Mexican American student at Harvard. I found the letter below in my papers, a recommendation from the great Willie Velasquez of the Southwest Voters Registration Education Project, whom I met at the John F. Kennedy School's Institute of Politics while I was an undergraduate. He was an IOP Fellow and probably the most inspiring person I met up to that point. His commitment to the Mexican American community, his political intelligence and savvy, and his character, all were guides for me as I became a writer who also cared about our community, how it was represented, why our voices and stories mattered, why I wanted to focus on los de abajo.

Recently, the Texas Institute of Letters made me a Fellow of the TIL, one of only eighteen fellows chosen since 1936 and the first Mexican American to be selected for this distinction. I thought about Willie's commitment and drive, and how the awards are not really what matter. What matters is what you do, and what you continue to do, because you give a damn and you are not ever satisfied. I'm proud to be a Fellow of the TIL, but I also feel that I need to get to work to keep fighting for not just the political but also the cultural empowerment of Mexicans Americans and those who are underdogs. Stay tuned. Descanse en paz, Willie Velasquez. 


 

Please share this podcast interview, by Latino Book Chat, that was released today on NOBODY’S PILGRIMS. Thank you to Christianne Meneses Jacobs! 😀

"Troncoso delivers a surprisingly fast-paced, character-driven story....A sublime, diverse cast drives this tale of looking for a safe, welcoming home." —Kirkus Reviews

"The first time I finished Sergio Troncoso’s Nobody’s Pilgrims, I realized that I was absent-mindedly petting the cover. His characters had somehow taken up residence in my heart. It was love at first sight. A second reading, and a rereading of some of his earlier fiction, only confirmed the power of this odyssey of Turi, Arnulfo and Molly."—Bob Dunton, El Paso Matters

https://www.podpage.com/latino-book-chat/51-teenage-fugitives-deadly-cargo-sergio-troncoso/#play