The Latina
Book Club congratulates author Jon Marcantoni on his first Spanish-language
novel, TRISTIANA. We were happy to learn
all about the novel and what is happening with La Casita Grande.
Darío: When you look at my body, what do you see? You see muscles, chest, arms and legs, my sex? Or do you see skin that is destined to decay? Bones destined to be picked apart by insects until what remains is grinded into dirt. Do you see a walking death that fights to stay within this body? You see my inevitable end, and the hole it will create in the lives of those who love me? What you see if a passing thing, like a memory. And I am alive, I live within your mind, because my destiny is to be buried, and in truth the ground is where this body desires to be above anywhere else. When I look at my children sleeping under the mosquitero, I see a piece of my Isabella and I, a piece which will suffer when we die. The time is coming. Even though in the city everything is at peace, I know that our time is coming. I read the news. I read about La Sombra Negra, and Varela, and El Chapín. I know enough about history to see what will happen next. I am not naïve like my kids, who laugh and play, and kiss us sweetly every night with all the confidence in the world that in the morning, we will be around for them to kiss again. One day, closer than not, they will wake up, but they will not be able to find us. They will not be able to kiss us, or be held by us, or hear our voices. One day, closer than not, my wife and I will be nothing more than shadows in their memories.
----Excerpt
from TRISTIANA
LATINA BOOK
CLUB: Tell us about TRISTIANA. What is the story? who are the
protagonists?
JON
MARCANTONI: The story of TRISTIANA is
the story of Latin America, a land that is both sovereign and at the mercy of
foreign interests, where the gap between rich and poor is enormous, yet also
where the government is very much an active one, impressing itself on people in
a way that, even when they are right wing, is the antithesis of what we would
see as Republicanism in the United States. So, there is a lot of lip service to
serving the “people” in a very populist sense, even though in practice, the
rich are the only “people” being truly catered to. Tristiana is an island that
embodies a huge swath of Latin America, with a government who was “freed” from
Spanish rule by the United States yet is still beholden to the whims of that
country in a neo-colonial relationship. The story takes place during a time
when two groups of rebels, one led by a man named Varela and the other by a
foreign interloper, El Chapín, who join forces to bring about a Marxist state
that will overthrow the capitalist and colonialist government. While in the
capital city, we follow the lives of a group of artists and intellectuals,
Joaquín, Darío, Amelita, and her father Antonio, as they become increasingly
aware of and involved in the rebellion.
LBC: In
your novel, Tristiana is a beautiful corner of Latin America, but no stranger
to violence; a lot like Puerto Rico, our homeland. A big part of the
novel deals with the debate of justice vs politics; assimilation vs diversity;
conquistadores vs slaves. The novel seems very timely given the current
political climate on the island and across the USA. Are the debates in
the book a mirror of current political debates on prime time and/or are the
debates like carnival mirrors with distorted portraits of the hidden ugliness
of man?
JON: The book takes the ideas behind revolutionary
politics and either deals with them directly or deals with them through a
funhouse mirror, particularly in the portraits, where a couple of them show
scenes of the wealthy in all their decadence or as monstrous distortions of
their actual selves. The topics you mentioned and others are shown in a variety
of lights, some humorous, some allegorical, some in very barebones, logical
terms. We see multiple angles of how the events in the book are perceived, and
while the story has a distinct message, it allows room for those alternate
views. Ultimately, the story is a sort of Socratic dialogue that begins with
two revolutionaries discussing the potential futility of their actions, and
ends with a person ruminating on that futility, and all the things one must
lose in fighting for something that isn’t even guaranteed. Everything in
between those two scenes investigates all the factors that contribute to
societies being the way they are, and humans being the way we are, and asks the
reader if any other way of achieving a just society is even possible. I’ve done
my best to leave that question open ended, because I most certainly don’t have
the answer.
LBC: You
mention in the book, and you have also stated it in some of your blog posts,
that the saving grace of mankind -- and art! -- will be women. However,
you also point out that for woman to get rid of man, she may have to become
just as cruel an animal as he or worse. Is this correct? But then we have
to wonder, what happen to past matriarchal civilizations and why did they not
survive? how did man conquer them? If woman is the savior, how and why
did she become victim? Can woman rise again?
JON: I think that, as much as we’d like to think
that putting a woman in power changes things, if they are operating within the
power structures as they already exist, then change, if any, will be minimal.
You have seen, also, with politicians like Margaret Thatcher, where a woman in
power can be used to further entrench patriarchal practices. With Obama, you
saw how difficult it is for even the most skilled and well-meaning politician
to change the structures they are working within. So changing gender or race
does very little to effect change. Perhaps I’m just cynical, but there are enough
examples of revolutions changing one level of bureaucracy while everything else
remains the same. Marx warned about it, hence his attacks on the
petit-bourgeoisie (the middle classes who seemingly support revolutionary
change but who inevitably fall back on the attitudes and structures that were
already in place. In other words, they become the new aristocracy, stifling any
long-lasting reforms), and Mao’s attempts to reinvent Chinese society every
five years. The thing about change is it must be ever changing, a status quo
cannot be settled on or else the revolution was meaningless. But because humans
prefer stability to chaos, even when a massive change occurs, like the
Bolshevik Revolution, society will settle back into the behaviors of its past,
much like the Soviets became the new tsars and the Soviet Union became little
more than the Russian Empire under a new name.
My cynicism,
then, is fairly justified, so while it would be great to change society into a
matriarchal one, I have difficulty believing it’ll mean anything other than
women will be the ones starting wars and implementing social policies that
oppress some group of people, much like men did before them. Even in a society
of supposed equals, someone will feel left out, or feel like equality is
restricting, and they will lead a new revolution to return to a more
hierarchical system. That appears, from countless historical examples, to be
the way humanity works. Otherwise we never would have started organized
societies. To have order requires there to be winners and losers, and so far,
no society has demonstrated that an alternative is possible. That is not inspiring, I know, and as full
disclosure, TRISTIANA is perhaps the
most depressing book about revolution imaginable.
LBC: What do you want readers to come away with
after reading TRISTIANA?
JON: On a story level, I’d want it to be a book
people will want to discuss with others. Discuss the various stances the
characters take, and discuss how activism and concepts like revolution are used
in the modern sense. I hope it forces readers to look hard and long at their
belief systems and question who they are as people, and what they would be
willing to sacrifice to make the world in their desired image.
On a
stylistic level, I hope the book is inspiring to people who want to tell
stories in a non-traditional sense. Tristiana is a hybrid novel, which is
beginning to pick up steam in the avant garde world, especially in regards to
mixing poetry and narrative. Here I use film, painting, theatre, and classical
narrative to create a story that is, in many ways, a dialogue with the reader,
a lived-in experience that can be consumed in a number of ways. I would hope
that readers finish the book and see how expansive the possibilities of
literature are, that you don’t have to write in any one way. That is a key
component to visualism, which is the movement I place Tristiana in, a story
that relies on visceral techniques to capture a reader’s attention. To practice
visualism, you very consciously reject the dominant models of literature as
archaic and outdated.
LBC: What is the meaning of the cover? Is
that a Taino warrior on the cover? Is that one of the murals in the
story? another mirror?
JON: The cover image was made courtesy of my good
friend Taylor Kelsaw, who shared it with me when I was looking for the right
cover to embody the conflict between man and nature that is the overarching
theme of the book. I responded to the way in which the human figure is prostrated
before the sky, and that the sky is foreboding yet beautiful, magnificent,
dominating the human. Throughout the book, the characters speak of how we are
really on Earth as guests, and that a time will come when we are no longer
welcome and there is no turning back the clock. The image embodied that
reverence and fear. It also captured the portrait sequences of the book, where
I create images using language designed to imitate specific artistic styles.
LBC: TRISTIANA is written in Spanish.
You did that purposely. Why was that important to you? Is
there a Spanish reading market? How is that Latino Spanish reading market
different from the Latino English reading market? Will there be an
English translation?
JON: It has been my dream, since I was a teenager,
to tell stories in Spanish. I didn’t become fluent until I was in my early
twenties, and my love of the language only heightened the desire to do so. This
particular story felt like it couldn’t be in English. I was taking a point of
view and attitude that is very Latin American. The book is unapologetically
Marxist and militant, which is frowned upon in the U.S. Even so-called
progressive literature in the U.S. is very tame and adheres to the U.S.
structure of government and what is acceptably leftist, which is very passive
and more about being morally superior than it is about changing society in a
more inclusive manner. In Latin America, leftist politics is much more
aggressive and chaotic, as well as more educated. Latin Americans are more
sophisticated politically, if you read the literature and the news and speak
with people there, they have a real understanding of, say, the differences
between socialism and Marxism and capitalism, whereas in the United States,
politics are very much simplified and generalized. I knew that to tell a story
as complex and as dense as this one, a Latin American audience would appreciate
it the most. And this was confirmed for me when my first few readers were Latin
Americans, and every single one felt that it wasn’t a story that would appeal
to Americans because of how deeply it invests in the Latin American worldview.
As for the
market in Latin America, all I’ll say to that is that the city with the most
bookstores in the world is Buenos Aires, and Mexico City has a larger
publishing industry than New York. We are not an illiterate people.
Latino
readers in the U.S. I think would have mixed feelings about the book. The more
educated they are in Latin American history and U.S.-Latino relations, the more
they would appreciate it, but the Latino community is also largely pro-United
States, and this book is decidedly anti-American. There is even the line, said
by a military commander in battle: “We fight for the highest honor, and the
highest honor is not to kill a Yankee, but to kill a piti-Yankee (Latino who
supports the U.S.), for they are the true traitors of Latin America.” That
character is not a villain, by the way. I have a hard time imagining these
Latinos who push so hard to be accepted by U.S. culture enjoying a book that
decries the very thing they want to be a part of.
The only way
an English translation will happen is if there is enough demand for one, and/or
somebody else does the translation.
LBC:
Aside from being a writer, you are also editor of La Casita Grande
publishing. How is LCG doing? what new authors have you discovered?
JON: LCG is doing very well. Our second book, Spanish Coffee: Black, No Sugar, had
its book launch at Word Up! Community Bookshop in NYC, and they not only sold
out of copies, people had to order copies online when they ran out. Our Lounge
blog has run two successful series this summer, thanks to our wonderful intern
Sydney Joy Boryga. Our blog has attracted enough material that we are
publishing new pieces four to five times a week, with the weekends being used
to highlight recent posts. We also are consistently receiving book submissions from
all over Latin America and the U.S. Our other fabulous intern, Heather
Gutekunst, has been a major help to me this summer in picking out new and
exciting books.
We have
discovered some really phenomenal talents. Most recently, a trifecta of writers
from Cuba, Elaine Vilar Madruga, Laura Domingo Agüero, and Eric Taylor Flores,
have been published in the Lounge. And Elaine and Laura both will be doing
books with us as well. In October, Puerto Rican author Carlos II Ocasio Díaz
will premiere his supernatural thriller Mateo,
and 2018 and 2019 will offer books set in Japan and Australia, a story
collection about mental illnesses, a feminist magic realist book, a YA fantasy
novel, and an experimental novel that captures life in 1980s Chicago through
different musical styles. We have been running a series called Meet the Author
where readers are introduced to each of our writers and learn more about their
books. You can check out a few here, here, and here.
LBC:
Please share your website and social media addresses with your fans.
JON: Visit LCG Press here
Visit the
LCG Lounge here
Follow LCG
on Twitter @lcgeditores and on Facebook here
TRISTIANA
was launched on August 5 at the National Hispanic Cultural Center in
Albuquerque, New Mexico. ###
READ LATINO!