Words from a Chicana

Chicana writer Bárbara Renaud González delighted the audience with her readings last Friday afternoon in the library instruction room on the Brownsville campus to conclude the National Library Week celebration.

The same event took place last Thursday in Shary Room 1.206 on the Edinburg campus.

González grew up in the Texas Panhandle but has been living in San Antonio for 20 years. She is the eldest of eight siblings and a daughter of a Texan father and a Mexican mother. She worked as an independent columnist for the San Antonio Express-News.

She is the author of “Las Nalgas de JLo” (Aztlan Libre Press, 2017), which is a collection of columns, articles, reviews and poems, as well as the novel, “Golondrina, why did you leave me?” (University of Texas Press, 2010). The subjects she writes about in her works include racism, sexism, homophobia, immigration and more. She graduated with a bachelor’s in social work at legacy institution University of Texas-Pan American and a master’s in social work from the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor.

The University Library, the Center for Mexican American Studies and Gallery magazine organized the event.

To start the reading event, González showed an old photo of her little brother Esteban and her when they were children. She said she wanted to show where she comes from.

“This is where I come from,” González said. “I have learned that if you know where you come from, there is your power. It can’t be taken away from you. It is what you draw from when you write, when you speak. This is where I come from.”

During the event, González shared an excerpt from the award-winning novel “Golondrina, why did you leave me?” which is the first Chicana novel to be published by the University of Texas Press.

She explained that the part she presented was inspired by the stories her mother would tell her about how she crossed the U.S.-Mexican border.

“That is the wonderful thing about fiction,” González said. “Fiction, which is many times derided by political people or people who live in a very rational world, is the greatest truth. Sometimes, what you don’t know or if the secret is so big, you can tell it in fiction. So, I did that.”

She also shared some columns from her collection and read some letters from William C. Velásquez, who was a voting rights activist and the founder of the Southwest Voter Registration Education Project in 1974.

González also talked about the importance of books.

“Books have saved me,” the writer said. “I had brain surgery five years ago and I can guarantee you, I learned to love myself and love all that I am from books. Books are that bridge that we are seeking. Books don’t need a passport. Books don’t need for you to be a billionaire. Books are your power.”

She also talked about the importance of spreading the knowledge about Mexican-American history.

To conclude the event, González read from“Las Nalgas de JLo.”

In an interview with The Rider after the reading, González said she is working on a new feminist Tex-Mex fairy tale titled “Yeshita, The Rain,” which tells the story of a young girl who is the moon’s daughter.

“I like Tejano tales because I am from here,” she said. “I think that there is a lack of these tales of this land and of everything that is happening.”

She said she chose to read the pieces because she wanted to show how one subject can be written in different ways.

Asked why she chose to get her college degree in the Rio Grande Valley, González replied, “I’ve always wanted to come to the Valley. … My father was from Raymondville. My mom was Mexican. So, they met on the border and that amazed me a lot. That is why I came to Pan Am and … it was the right decision.”

Christopher Carmona, an assistant professor in the UTRGV Creative Writing Program and coordinator of the Center for Mexican American Studies on the Brownsville campus, told The Rider that students can learn from the author’s experience.

“They get to see an author,” Carmona said. “They get to hear someone who has been writing for 30 years and talk about their experiences. They can really understand how someone like that works and how they could possibly be that in a few years.”

He said they plan to keep working on creating more events like this one.

Jesus Amaya, a graduate student in Latin American literature, said he likes the subjects González writes about.

He said he enjoyed how the writer gave her perspective on the issues we have today.

“I would say [I like] the focus the writer gave to her work regarding the Chicano, Mexican-American community, especially in Texas,” Amaya said in Spanish.