Santiago Vaquera-Vásquez, Author, Academic and Unapologetic Border-Crosser, Shares How Reading Shapes a Writer's Life

Santiago Vaquera-Vásquez, author, academic, "unrepentant" border-crosser and ex-DJ, was "made in Mexico but born in the U.S," or so he tells his students. His varied identities -- Chicano, border-crosser and voracious reader -- has helped to shape his life as a writer.

Vaquera-Vásquez was born and raised in Northern California, although he spent summers traveling across the border to visit with family in Mexico. His binational experience interlaced with a bilingual one, whereby the future scholar conversationally blended English and Spanish. In good time, his command of language matured and grew to include a consciousness that aligned linguistics with cultural connectedness and the protection of the Chicano literary tradition.

"My scholarly work is about border-crossers and communities in contact, and how identities start being shaped by bicultural contact," Vaquera-Vásquez said to Latin Post. "So, I started off by looking at the U.S./Mexican border when I was living at the University of Iowa. I looked at the way migrant Mexican communities and small farming communities in the Midwest started being shaped and reshaped by the rural community. And it goes both ways. The farming community expected the migrant workers to assimilate, and they, themselves, started incorporating this community into part of their experience, which I thought was fascinating."

Vaquera-Vásquez, who also travels to Europe extensively, looks at the way Mexican-Americans and Chicano cultural expression is read outside of the United States, in Europe. Often, he asked himself, "What does it mean when a Spaniard starts studying reading Chicano literature? What can the Chicano experience say about their own lives as global citizens and a community in contact?" During travels between U.S. and Spain, the author became fascinated by the way immigrant communities in foreign cities and countries casted themselves and recasted themselves, depending on their environment. Yet, they stayed connected because of identities as immigrants and because of technology that keeps them in conversation with individuals from their home nation. According to Vaquera-Vásquez, cultures are shaped though dialogue and communication.

The appointments, positions, publications and distinctions that crowd Vaquera-Vásquez's absurdly impressive résumé exemplifies the author's ability to easily employ his knowledge about communication and social connectedness to fashion impressive pieces of writing that express the Chicano experience in way a that's true to the tradition.

"I've been publishing for about 16 years, but mostly in Spanish. But, it's very strange, right? Because as a Chicano, as a Mexican American who was born and raised in the United States, we, in the Chicano community, no longer have that tradition of writing in Spanish," said Vaquera-Vásquez. "When we think of contemporary Chicano literature and Chicano cultural expression, much of it is in English. We look at wonderful writers like Sandra Cisneros, Ana Castillo and Manuel Muñoz, and the experience is in English. But, there was an earlier generation of Chicano writers, like Alejandro Morales, Tomás Rivera, who wrote in Spanish. When I started writing in Spanish, it was a way of keeping that tradition alive. I think it's a really important step in recognizing how Spanish continues to exist in the United States, and Latinos should consider using it as a form for creating art."

"One Day I'll Tell You the Things I've Seen" is Vaquera-Vásquez's first book in English. The breathtaking collection of stories, which were originally penned in Spanish, documents the lives of men and women from Madrid to Mexico City, from California to Istanbul. It lists complex relationships with borders and the varied existences of those who cross them. In his "writer language," which is Spanish, and English, the author is able to breathe life into the powerful stories.

Vaquera-Vásquez reads "very widely," and enjoys Turkish authors as well as Manuel Muñoz's "What You See in the Dark," Luis Alberto Urrea's "The Water Museum" and ire'ne lara silva's "Flesh to Bone." Also, he's reading Cristina Henriquez's "The Book of Unknown Americans," which he believes has title that addresses the fact that "so often our lives are unknown and we are then forced to live under particular narratives that tell us what our lives our like. What Henriquez does is take back that narrative and tell stories as a response to those imposed narratives. For me, this is an important move, and one that I try to do in my own work: our lives must be told as a way to respond to narratives that say that we don't belong, or that we have no history."

"The most important thing is to read and to read as widely as possible, I grew up reading a lot reading a lot of comic books, and listening to a lot of music, and I grew up reading works that are part of the American canon, but I also have a strong foundation of Latin American and Spanish literature because of my graduate work. And all of that reading is important for anybody who wants to write," said Vaquera-Vásquez. "[Writing is] more than personal experiences, the reading in your background also shapes you as a writer. It's helpful for your understanding of story, and when we telling our stories, we are bringing our community together. It's an important function in our community, and it helps to bring the past into the present. It not only helps us to understand who we are, but who we could be, and how we can visualize ourselves in the future. So, go out and storify our existence."

The author's next project is a piece of writing that's set in Turkey, and it's to be completed over the coming summer. The work is a part of a larger project that about migration and the consequences of migration.

To learn more about Vaquera-Vásquez, find him on Facebook.