The University of Wisconsin Press
Press kit for Killer Chrónicas
Chávez-Silverman press kit home | Author's bio | Author's extended bio | Author's bio - Español | Author's photo | Cover image for Web sites | Cover image for print publications, higher resolution | Reviews
|
Killer
Crónicas An inventive, powerful, and funny memoir
written in Spanglish A woman living and communicating in multiple
lands, Susana Chávez-Silverman conveys her cultural and
linguistic displacement in a humorous, bittersweet, and even
tangible way in this truly bilingual literary work. These meditative
and lyrical pieces combine poignant personal confession, detailed
daily observation, and a memorializing drive that shifts across
time and among geocultural spaces. The author's inventive and
flamboyant use of Spanglish, a hybrid English-Spanish idiom,
and her adaptation of the confessional "crónica"
make this memoir compelling and powerful. Killer Crónicas
confirms that there is no Latina voice quite like that of Susana
Chávez-Silverman. Susana Chávez-Silverman is professor of Romance Languages and Literatures at Pomona College in California. She is coeditor of Tropicalizations: Transcultural Representations of Latinidad and Reading and Writing the Ambiente: Queer Sexualities in Latino, Latin American, and Spanish Culture.
|
Cover image
Please direct any inquiries for further publicity materials to our publicity manager, phone: (608) 263-0734, email: publicity@uwpress.wisc.edu |
|
|
Susana Chávez-Silverman, A.M. Harvard University (Romance Languages), Ph.D. UC Davis (Spanish) has taught at UCSC, UC Berkeley, UC Irvine and UC Davis, as well as the University of South Africa before coming to Pomona College. Chávez-Silverman grew up (at least) bilingually and biculturally between Los Angeles, Madrid and Guadalajara, México, the daughter of a Jewish Hispanist and a Chicana teacher. After a peripatetic university and post-graduate career, and years spent living in Boston, Berkeley, Los Angeles, Spain and South Africa, she is currently professor of Spanish, Latino/a and Latin American Studies in the Department of Romance Languages and Literature at Pomona College in Claremont, California. She specializes in gender and sexuality studies, autobiography/memoir, Latin American and U.S. Latina/Chicana literature, poetry, and feminist pedagogy. She has published numerous essays on these topics and co-edited the books Tropicalizations: Transcultural Representations of Latinidad (1997) with Frances R. Aparicio, and Reading and Writing the Ambiente: Queer Sexualities in Latino, Latin American and Spanish Culture (2000) with Librada Hernández. Her book, Killer Crónicas:Bilingual Memories, was published by the University of Wisconsin Press in 2004. This collection of chronicles began in 2001, after Susana was awarded a fellowship by the US National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) for a project on contemporary Argentine women's poetry. She spent thirteen months in Buenos Aires where, in addition to research and writing on her official (academic) book, she began to send bilingual, punning "letters from the southern [cone] front" to colleagues and friends by email. Susana says: "Living in Buenos Aires, that gorgeous, turn of the century city in a country on the brink of (economic) collapse-home to many of the authors and artists I had long admired (Borges, Cortázar, Alfonsina Storni, Alejandra Pizarnik, and before them the foundational Romantics, Sarmiento and Echeverría)-brought out a sense of self, dis/placed yet oddly at home, in a cultural, linguistic and even tangible way. In Buenos Aires, the fragmented parts of me, the voices, cultures, and places inside of me, rubbed up against each other and struck fire. I called my email missives "Crónicas," inspired by the somewhat rough-hewn, journalistic, often fantastic first-hand accounts sent "home" by the early conquistadores, and refashioned by modern-day counterparts such as Carlos Monsiváis, Elena Poniatowska, and Cristina Pacheco." One of Susana's crónicas, "Anniversary Crónica," inspired by the June 16th anniversary of both Susana's parents' wedding and that of the so-called "Soweto Riots" in South Africa, was recently awarded First prize in Personal Memoir in the "Chicano Literary Excellence Contest" sponsored by the U.S. national literary magazine el Andar. Susana Chávez Silverman --Maestría de Harvard University
(Lenguas Románicas) Ha enseñado en la Univ. de California
Santa Cruz, Berkeley, Irvine y Davis. También en UNISA
(la Univ. de Sudáfrica). Ha publicado ensayos y capítulos sobre estos temas y co-editado los libros Tropicalizations: Transcultural Representations of Latinidad (Dartmouth 1997) con Frances R. Aparicio y Reading & Writing the Ambiente: Queer Sexualities in Latino, Latin American and Spanish Culture (Wisconsin 2000) con Librada Hernández. Su libro, Killer Crónicas: Bilingual Memories, se publicará por la University of Wisconsin press en Sept. 2004. Esta colección de crónicas comenzó en el 2001, después de que Susana fue becada por la NEH (National Endowment for the Humanities) para un proyecto sobre la poesía argentina contemporánea de mujeres. Pasó 13 meses en Buenos Aires donde, además de la inverstigación para su libro "oficial" (académico), ella comenzó a mandar cartas a amigos y colegas por Email. La autora dice: "Vivir en Buenos Aires, esa hermosa ciudad de fin de siglo(s), al borde del colapse (económico)-país y ciudad de tantos de los autores que yo había admirado desde mi adolescencia (Borges, Cortázar, Storni, Pizarnik, y los románticos fundacionales: Sarmiento y Echeverría)-provocó en mí un sentido de mi ser, de mi yo des/plazado pero de alguna forma también extrañamente heimlich, "at home," un sentirse en casa cultural, lingüístico y hasta tangible. Bauticé "crónicas" estas misivas electrónicas, inspirada en las llamadas Crónicas de Indias de los conquistadores, y también en las crónicas contemporáneas de Carlos Monsiváis, Elena Poniatowska y Cristina Pacheco, entre otros." Una de los textos de Susana, "Anniversary
Crónica," inspirada en el aniversario de boda de
sus padres (fecha que coincide con los llamados motines estudiantiles
en Soweto, el 16 de junio), ganó el Primer Premio en el
"Concurso de Excelencia Literaria Chicana" (2002),
patrocinado por la revista literaria "el andar" (USA). |
||
|
If you have trouble accessing
any page in this web site, contact our Web manager. Updated April 18, 2012 © 2012, The Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System |