Neither Cider Nor Lemonade
by Abel Salas
I tried chicha for the first time in Peru. It’s made from corn,”
says writer and translator Liliana Valenzuela. The chicha in question
appears in the title for an afterword essay she’s penned for her Spanish
translation of an important short story collection by Sandra Cisneros. “Ni
chicha ni limonada,” by rough-stab translation, can be vaguely
communicated in English as “Neither cider nor lemonade.” The gist
of the expression is there, but readers, in either English or Spanish, ought
to know that equating chicha and cider is kind of like comparing
bagels to stir fry. Granted, both are home-brew beverages, more often than
not aged and fermented for the appropriate alcoholic content. But that’s
about as close as they come in similarity. For our purposes here, “ni
chicha ni limonada” can also be taken to mean “neither here
nor there.”
Her toddler son sleeping, finally, Liliana Valenzuela has an hour to
spare. In the Clarksville home she shares with husband George Eckrich, her
seven-year-old daughter, and said baby boy, the Mexico City native is on
the cusp. Her translation of the Cisneros book called Woman Hollering
Creek is being shipped as we speak, and before her son wakes she can
share a few of her thoughts on writing, motherhood, life in Austin, and
the translation process that has brought her to this unequivocal milestone.
Titled El arroyo de la llorona, the book is being issued in paperback
under the newly created Knopf Vintage Espa�ol imprint. Valenzuela’s
afterword is what has us enthralled. In it, she describes her role as a
translator… the nuts and bolts of adapting a singular and lyrical voice,
the deftly glittering prose from one of the strongest writers in an explosive
U.S.-bred Latino literary boom.
How does one translate language already weighted with Tex-Mex idiom and
Spanglish slang? And more importantly, why has Chicano literature and art
become so important to the Mexican cultural elite, the intelligentsia who,
a scant ten years ago, once frowned on Mexican-Americans as the bastard
cousins to the north, peasants who spoke anemic Spanish or caricatures epitomized
by a sinister pachuco (zootsuiter) figure.
“In Mexico, there’s an attitude that Chicanos choose not to speak
Spanish because they want to be better, that they’ve abandoned their language
and culture,” Valenzuela explains. “When I was growing up that’s
what we thought, that Mexican Americans were pochos who couldn’t
or didn’t want to speak correct Spanish.”
A 15-year Austin resident, Valenzuela now holds a master’s degree in
anthropology from U.T. and works out of her house as a professional translator,
billing her one-woman agency La Malinche Translations.
“My husband and I came here, took one look at Barton Springs and
decided to stay,” she says. About her work as a translator, she ascribes
motherhood as a primary factor: “When my daughter was born, I wanted
to work at home, so I could be near her.”
It was a natural choice, particularly in consideration of her own literary
bent. For the first several years her professional work consisted of reports
and technical matter. All the while, her poetry and fiction were gathering
form.
Telling is the fact that her translation service is named for the indigenous
mistress and translator taken by Spanish explorer and seafarer Hernan Cortes
in a union that begot Mexico as a miscegenated nation. La Malinche has since
born the brunt of the blame for assisting the fair-skinned European in his
capture of the Aztec capital Tenochtitlan, now Mexico City.
Throughout Mexico, La Malinche is largely condemned for her part in the
drama that led to the fall of a highly developed Aztec nation-state. She
is generally painted as the traitor, the harlot who sold indigenous Mexico
into slavery and misery.
Ironically, Valenzuela is herself extremely European in physical appearance,
a sharp contrast to the author-as-Frida-Khalo photo of Cisneros that graces
the back cover of El arroyo de la llorona.
The collaboration with Cisneros, says Valenzuela, began with a workshop
presented by the Chicana writer at the Austin Women’s Peace House on what
was East First Street and is now, proudly, East Cesar Chavez Street.
“Sandra was in Austin. I think she wanted to be away from San Antonio
for a while. She was working on the stories that eventually became Woman
Hollering Creek. There were other women there as well… Maria Limon,
Marion Winik. Through the workshop, I learned that Sandra was living right
here in the neighborhood,” she recalls.
The proximity was conducive to a friendship and the workshop was extended.
Valenzuela, Winik and some of the other women who had taken part in the
workshop began meeting on a regular basis to share their writing with one
another.
One of Valenzuela’s stories, a gripping tale set on the Ivory Coast of
Africa and titled “Tiger Sandwich,” was eventually published in
Saguaro, a Southwestern literary journal. In 1989, Valenzuela was honored
with the prize for fiction from the University of California at Irvine,
which recognizes outstanding proponents of Chicano literature from time
to time through national literary competitions.
As author of the Women Hollering Creek translation, Valenzuela
joins Elena Poniatowska, who translated the acclaimed The House on Mango
Street for Cisneros, excellent company and no small feat. Poniatowska
is easily in league with Carlos Fuentes and Carlos Monsivais in terms of
stature within the tradition of Mexican letters.
And having already worked with Cisneros to produce a bilingual children’s
book, Hairs/Pelitos, a riveting picture book brightly illustrated
by San Antonio artist Terry Iba�ez, Valenzuela is in a postion to
become the definitive Cisneros tranlator.
“We worked very well together. I was really impressed with her,”
Valenzuela says in reference to the author of Woman Hollering Creek.
Using the mail, fax machines and communicating, often for hours at a time,
by phone, the two hammered out a translation that is impeccably and touchingly
true to a masterfully delivered original.
“There were things that only she as the author could clarify whenever
I had a question about a certain sentence or a phrase,” she adds.
In her afterword to the translation, Valenzuela approaches the primary
issue of usage: “…to use standard Spanish, that is the `generic’
or Castillian, or to use Mexican Spanish and, more specifically, Texas Mexican
Spanish, or `Tex-Mex’ as it is affectionately know along the border.”
According to Valenzuela’s afterword, “It wasn’t difficult to opt
for the latter, as a personal preference, but more importantly, because
these stories take place in Mexican and U.S. territory and because it was
the explicit intention of the author to give voice to the people of Mexican
origin, now from this side, now from the other side of that river some call
Grande, others Bravo, and still others, Colorado [translation by Abel Salas].”
They are the humble folks, colorful and bravely human characters who
populate the “Cisnerian” universe, the people from “neither
here nor there.”
Pointing to the interest in Chicano culture that has taken a firm foothold
in Mexican literary circles, Valenzuela is excited about her own role as
a bridge between a people who have been separated for so long by a border.
“I think because of the Chicano movement, the art and the literature…
people in Mexico are beginning to see that there is so much more to understand.
It’s like looking at ourselves in a mirror. And the [Chicana] women even
more so, because they’re talking about issues, things that Mexican women
are still not willing to write about. So, in some ways, they’re more daring.
They’re taking more chances.”
One of the women she could easily be referring to is Tammy Gomez, a young
Austin writer and spoken word performer (voted Austin Chronicle‘s
“Best in Your Face Poet”) who has been invited to read the Woman
Hollering Creek stories in English while Valenzuela reads her own Spanish-language
translations at a Book People book signing November 9.
As a writer, Valenzuela mentions her inclusion in the upcoming anthology
to be edited by Ana Castillo, author of Lovers Boys and Massacre
of Dreamers. Her son Diallo, a beautiful boy named for a late friend
from Africa, is suddenly awake and in the arms of his father. They wander
outside into the Clarksville neigborhood to watch a butterfly take wing.
“Popota,” says the fair-haired child who gazes with distant,
sleep-laced wonder while pointing to the bright, black-and-yellow creature
making its way around a hedge. “Popota” is his very own adaptation
of the Spanish word for butterfly, “mariposa.” n Still pining
for Austin, “(M)exiled” writer Abel Salas has given up restless
midnight dancing on the banks of the Rio Grande to flack as a publicist
for Houston’s La Mafia.
This article appears in November 8 • 1996 and November 8 • 1996 (Cover).