University of Texas at El Paso DigitalCommons@UTEP Open Access Theses & Dissertations 2013-01-01 Por Un Amor Yasmin Ramirez University of Texas at El Paso, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.utep.edu/open_etd Part of the Latin American Literature Commons Recommended Citation Ramirez, Yasmin, "Por Un Amor" (2013). Open Access Theses & Dissertations. 1912. https://digitalcommons.utep.edu/open_etd/1912 This is brought to you for free and open access by DigitalCommons@UTEP. It has been accepted for inclusion in Open Access Theses & Dissertations by an authorized administrator of DigitalCommons@UTEP. For more information, please contact [email protected]. POR UN AMOR YASMIN RAMIREZ Department of Creative Writing Approved: _____________________________________ Lex Williford, Chair _____________________________________ José de Piérola, Ph.D. _____________________________________ Meredith E. Abarca, Ph.D. ____________________________________ Benjamin C. Flores, Ph.D. Dean of the Graduate School Copyright © by Yasmin Ramirez 2013 Dedication This is dedicated to my Ita and my family who gave me the stories to write. POR UN AMOR by YASMIN RAMIREZ, B.A. Psychology THESIS Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of The University of Texas at El Paso in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of MASTER OF FINE ARTS Department of Creative Writing THE UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT EL PASO May 2013 Acknowledgements An anecdote is not a story until it begins to take shape. The right words help to shape it past the stories told over the family dinner table. There are many people who helped me find the shape of this memoir and whose guidance, advice, support and eyes have proved invaluable along the way. In particular I would like to thank my thesis director, Lex Williford, who helped me find the shape when I wasn’t sure what I was creating; I am also grateful to Dr. Meredith Abarca and Dr. José de Piérola, who served on my thesis committee, for their help and patience with the writing process. Last, I would like to thank the Creative Writing Department, for without each of the professor’s support in this three-year process I would not have heard the voice of this memoir, who spoke louder than anything else I’ve written in the program. v Table of Contents Dedication ...................................................................................................................................... iii Acknowledgements ......................................................................................................................... v Table of Contents ........................................................................................................................... vi Spaces of the Page .......................................................................................................................... 1 I ..................................................................................................................................................... 18 Like the Tapes ............................................................................................................................... 19 Cold Cream ................................................................................................................................... 21 The Pink Shoes ............................................................................................................................. 23 Customs......................................................................................................................................... 27 La Trenza ...................................................................................................................................... 34 Sagrado Corazón ........................................................................................................................... 40 Concrete ........................................................................................................................................ 49 Cuatro Copas ................................................................................................................................. 63 II .................................................................................................................................................... 73 Dimming Lights ............................................................................................................................ 74 Mom and Ita .................................................................................................................................. 75 Hiding Places ................................................................................................................................ 78 Things Which Float to the Top ..................................................................................................... 83 Los Maridos .................................................................................................................................. 85 III................................................................................................................................................... 91 Planes of Her Face ........................................................................................................................ 92 Seven ............................................................................................................................................. 95 vi Caldio de Ita ................................................................................................................................ 100 Tastes Like God .......................................................................................................................... 102 IV ................................................................................................................................................ 107 At The End .................................................................................................................................. 108 Communion................................................................................................................................. 110 Remember That Time? ............................................................................................................... 112 Dreaming Ita ............................................................................................................................... 119 Make-Up Stained ........................................................................................................................ 123 Works Cited ................................................................................................................................ 131 Curriculum Vita .......................................................................................................................... 133 vii The Spaces of the Page “...A person who is headstrong enough to open their eyes and their heart to the full depth and weight of the world is inviting in everything out there—both evil and good, both dark and light, and the sheer bravery of that openness enables them to gain profound insight into the human condition. It also fucks them up. It may even make them more prone to stick their head in an oven than to engage in self- promotional chitchat on Jay Leno.” —Patricia Pearson Intro Creative nonfiction, often referred to as the fourth genre, uses literary styles and techniques to create narratives from factual events. The genre is considered young in age, although authors have used personal experiences in their work for years. Creative nonfiction gives an author a voice in a text, and allows a small amount of distance from the topic. Narrative developed using creative nonfiction can create an intimacy between the author and the reader. They are held privy to the author’s experiences whether it be the death of a father as in Paul Auster’s The Invention of Solitude, or a collection of short stories highlighting bi-culturalism, as in Sandra Cisneros’s Woman Hollering Creek and Other Stories. Readers are drawn into the author’s stories based on true events, like a talk over a cup of politely shared coffee, then sent into the dark little corners they can admit only in the spaces of the page. In speaking of the process of writing this memoir, I encountered many questions. “What is creative nonfiction? So it’s a memoir? It’s not fiction, but still has some fiction, how does that 1 work? You’re still young. How much do you have to write about?” Each time I explained what I was working on—a story about my childhood in El Paso with my grandmother, Ita—I received puzzled looks. Explaining the genre alone was a challenge; explaining why I chose to write about myself without sounding egotistical was another. In truth, writing about the images which continue to linger in our minds, memories which replay themselves like a video on repeat, beg to be put on the page. For me, writing this memoir was a way to capture memories which continually surfaced, fragmented, in my other writings. By writing these stories about my childhood with my grandmother, and later about her death, I’ve created a world out of fragmented memories to share with readers, in hopes that they’ll experience a small bit of the life of a woman who had an immeasurable influence on my life. Finally, the stories in Por Un Amor also employ techniques seen in poetry, flash fiction, and fiction to complement