American Book Review, Volume 42, Number 4, May/June 2021, pp. 14-28.

An Interview with Sergio Troncoso INTERVENTIONS by Frederick Luis Aldama

Author, essayist, and curator of Latinx Sergio Troncoso: I’ve always wanted to show the fctional spaces, Sergio Troncoso adds to, extends, Mexican American writer as a thinker in the mode and complicates a long tradition south of the US/ of Franz Kafka, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Fyodor Mexico border creatives who’ve mixed fction Dostoevsky; to be taken seriously as minds that with philosophy, physics, biology, psychology, combine philosophy and literature. For instance, and journalism to wondrous alchemical effect. the frst story I wrote for The Last Tortilla & With Sergio, think Jorge Luis Borges, José Emilio Other Stories (1999) follows a Chicano from Yale Pacheco, José Donoso, and Julio Ramón Ribeyro who calls his Mexican abuelita and argues about — but always rooted in the particulars of the US Heidegger’s “being-toward-death.” Readers at the Latinx borderland experience. time didn’t understand why I combined serious Born and raised on the East Side of El philosophical discussion with issues of the border. Paso, Texas, pursing the life of a writer might have It’s not just about the Mexican American seemed an impossible dream. It wasn’t. A passion writer as thinker. It’s also as thinker about the for transformative wordsmithing seemed to pass working class and about poverty. That’s how I grew down from his abuelo — a journalist jailed dozens up. I’ve spent a lot of time at places like Harvard of times for calling out the Mexican government’s and Yale. They assume poor people don’t think. corruption. Sergio cut his teeth as newspaper They assume poor people don’t know, or don’t editor at Ysleta High, honed his craft on a Gannett have metaphysical thoughts and discussions: the Foundation scholarship at the Blair Summer School meaning of life and who are we. We do. That’s for Journalism, then studied Mexican history what I wanted to change. That’s where I wanted and politics at Harvard. He followed with MA to intervene and break open Mexican American and M.Phil degrees in international relations and literature — American literature. philosophy from Yale. White readers get excited about a Chicano From early fctional works such as The Last FLA: It sounds like you could have easily become on the border in El Paso carrying chickens, Tortilla and Other Stories (1999) and The Nature a philosopher? but they fail to see how that story is also a deep of Truth (2003) to more recent ones such as From psychological inquiry about perseverance and This Wicked Patch of Dust (2011), A Peculiar kind ST: Juan Felipe Herrera once said I was the change in character’s sense of self. These readers of Immigrant’s Son (2019), and Nobody’s Pilgrim Chicano/a community’s Wittgenstein. [Laughs.] might assume that I’m only writing about the (2021) Sergio masterfully builds storyworlds chock I did write a dissertation prospectus on Aristotle. community and myself. That is true, but it’s not full of a panoply of richly rendered folks of all I also learned German. However, the deeper I got the only truth I’m writing. I want readers to think. walks who push at and deeply probe those quotidian into philosophy, the further away I got away from All readers. They assume that a Chicano writer is and metaphysical conundrums that make up life. not going to understand German philosophy. This Sergio takes on journeys of self-discovery (and self- attitude stops people from encountering you deeply. duplicity), cultural, political, and religious clashes, Set your life up so that what matters is You need that empathy from the reader to give you multigenerational reconciliations, and pasts that your literary art. a chance as a writer. In fact, if I’m doing it right, haunt presents. I’m really writing in the same vein as somebody Maker of words and worlds, Sergio also like a Sartre: to use yourself as a vehicle to get at gravitates to the essay form — his own and the the community where I grew up in Ysleta — in questions that affect all of us. curating of others. I think here of those sixteen of El Paso, Texas. I wanted my work to become a his essays that make up Crossing Borders (2011) bridge between the world of serious intellectual, FLA: You also work in the essay form. that move between autobiography (borderland philosophical, psychological inquiry and life on the life), religion, and metaphysics (our mortality), border. ST: Inspired by Voltaire and many others, I love and so much more. I think, too, of his urgent and From The Last Tortilla to A Peculiar Kind the personal essay as an exploration of yourself. groundbreaking edited collection Our Lost Border: of Immigrant’s Son (2019), all my work is informed It’s a form that allows me to break away and also Essays on Life amid the Narco-Violence (2013). I philosophically. Just as Kafka and Dostoevsky used create myself. I can use the internal exploration (say think of his masterfully curated Nepantla Familias: literature to explore ideas, I’m doing something a fght I had with my father) to get into issues of An Anthology of Mexican American Literature similar, but within the Chicano context. generational confict. To attract readers, to give them on Families in between Worlds (2021) that brings that tactile sense, I start the essay “I had a fght with together in one volume essays, poems, and short FLA: You weave joys, pains, and sorrows my father,” so everybody can relate. Once hooked, stories by Latinx luminaries to throw exquisite light into themes of self-discovery, ancestry, and I hope to bring the reader into philosophical and on what it means to exist in between languages, intergenerational confict. You make new our psychological discussions. For me it is an artifce cultures, geographies, and identities. encounter with the borderlands by infusing a to start personal then take it philosophical, going All this and more has led to Sergio’s metaphysical dimension. When writing, who do from simplicity to complexity. If that exploration is recognition with dozens of literary awards, you imagine as your ideal reader? honest, it reaches everyone, even though it’s really including the Premio Aztlan Lit Prize, Southwest about my self. I write about what matters to me. Book Award, and International Latino Book Award. ST: One of the things Nietzsche said is that if you He has been further recognized as an inductee dig deep enough into yourself, you will get into the FLA: I’m reminded of the famous essayist, into the Texas Institute of Letters (2012) and the main psychological and philosophical issues and Montaigne, and his statement, “I am myself the Hispanic Scholarship Fund’s Alumni Hall of Fame problems that everyone faces. You are your own matter of my work.” Sergio, until recently with (2013). The Ysleta public library was named in his best experiment. If you’re digging honestly into Cinco Puntos Press, you’ve chosen to publish honor (2014). Today, he serves as President of the yourself, you’re also looking at the problems and much of your work with academic presses. Texas Institute of Letters. issues that that make up the human condition. So I Recently, I had the great pleasure of think my ideal reader begins with someone on the ST: I started with academic presses like the conversing with and learning from the kind, border who loves to read. But I also think of readers University of Arizona Press mostly because I didn’t generous, and deeply learned Sergio Troncoso. beyond the border, those who have left and those know any better. I was not an MFA guy connected who have come back, because many do precisely to all the East Coast publishers, so I approached the that. press that had published other people who I liked. I Frederick Luis Aldama: Sergio, I am so honored One question that I do ask myself should add, too, that I will not compromise my work to be here talking with and learning from you constantly, however, is that when you see yourself for commercial success. I remember an interview today. You’ve had quite a remarkable journey, as a vehicle for literary exploration, when will white with an editor from one of the Big 5. They asked from El Paso to Harvard then Yale and now the audiences not from the border see you as relating to me: “Sergio, why don’t you write a novel about the President of the Texas Institute of Letters. How them? When will they see Chicano/a protagonists sexcapades of a Chicano arriving in the Ivy League might you see your work intervene intellectually, as stand-ins for every man or every woman? When creatively, politically in the world? will white readers give you a chance as a writer? Continued on next page

Page 14 American Book Review Continued from previous page and the series of sex adventures he’s going to have values that my parents showed me, the pride and to fnd who he is?” Of course, that went nowhere. accountability they instilled in me, and I took all of I’m a writer who loves philosophy and literature. that with me to the Ivy League and adapted these I want to write it the way I see the world, whether values far away from the border. that’s commercial or not. FLA: Do you write poetry? FLA: Let’s turn our conversation to your recently published, Nobody’s Pilgrims ST: I’ve never written a poem in my life, but I love (forthcoming in 2021) — a novel about three reading poetry. The next thing I read the most after teens; the undocumented Arnulfo, Chicano fction is poetry. I love studying people’s lines and Turi from El Paso, and white, working-class images and how an author plays with Spanish, Molly. What inspired you to write this dystopic English, and Spanglish. Poetry wakes me up to adventure novel? the possibilities of language and its aesthetics. I also love music, and I fnd that music and rhythm ST: My two sons (both in their early and in poetry. I am always trying to create a certain mid-twenties) and the country at large are my “song” in my head when I write my novels, short inspirations. Our country is flled with violence stories, even my essays. Sometimes this “song” is a toward immigrants and Latinos. Our country symphony in many parts. sometimes feels like it’s collapsing. And I think young people offer the best hope to creating a new FLA: In-betweenness informs your recently “we” in the future. published volume, Nepantla Familias (2021).

FLA: Nobody’s Pilgrims is prescient. ST: The title is in Nahuatl and Spanish, and the subtitle is in English: An Anthology of Mexican and genders. The best writers, period. As President, ST: I fnished the last draft a year before American Literature on Families in between Worlds. I appoint all twelve judging committees for our COVID-19 hit. The novel has a more vicious virus, It is literally the borders that we’re all crossing annual awards, and I appoint the chairs of each Marburg B, that’s transmissible through bodily every day. Nepantla is living in between languages, committee, from best fction book, best frst fction fuids. It has an 80 percent kill rate. So this society between cultures, between geographies. It’s being book, best poetry book, best short story, best young- is collapsing around them, and Marburg B has at Yale one day and then visiting my mother in the adult book, best picture book, best short nonfction, exacerbated that collapse. The teens face trial after and so on. I make sure each committee refects a trial traveling across the country to Connecticut diverse balance of gender, geography, ethnicity, and while evil people chase the teens. These three teens You get respect by pushing back and race. We are on a mission to have the TIL always represent all of Texas. are resilient in a rapidly changing world, and they pushing back in the right way, with rely on each other to survive. intelligence and focus and hard work. FLA: You mentioned earlier being an outsider to FLA: Was there ever a moment, Sergio, when MFA programs. I think of the racism that Juan the narrative took a surprising turn for you? Felipe Herrera experienced as a Chicano at the adobe house we built in Ysleta the next day. It’s Iowa Workshop. However, it seems like writing ST: Oh, yes, all the time. I dream about my constantly crossing economic, geographic, cultural, programs can be useful. You teach future gens characters. When I’m deep into a novel, I begin even class borders. It’s embracing an expansive, of writers at Yale. What’s your sense of writing dreaming about things that are happening to them. malleable identity that often leaves you struggling programs — MFA or otherwise? Some people think that as an author you’re some to bring your disparate self together, but when sort of puppeteer controlling what the characters you do, then that’s the miracle of the Nepantla ST: There are great MFA programs like Iowa. We do. It’s actually the opposite. When my characters experience. A unique self that accepts and nurtures also have some great ones in Texas right now. come alive in your head, they’re taking me where these crossings of many borders over the years. When I was younger, if I had known what an MFA they want to go and where the story demands. I am With the volume, I wanted to really delve program was, I probably would have done an MFA. more like a vehicle serving the story and serving the deep into this idea of Nepantla, of living in between If younger Latino writers want to write, they can characters in the story. psychological and cultural identities. So I sent out fnd great MFA programs like the bilingual program invitations to writers who I love, to show others, to at UTEP. At the University of Houston you can FLA: Taking a step back from your work, how show ourselves, the great literary talents we have even get an MFA in writing in Spanish. It’s also would you characterize it? in the Mexican American community, too often important for MFA programs like Iowa, UT Austin, overlooked by mainstream publishing. My agenda and USC to go after Latino talent — this is the talent ST: I would say that I was born an outsider in was simple, but uncompromising: to publish great that represents the future. If you stay too white — this country — and even an outsider within my work on the page. This could be traditional or too cerrado, too closed — you’re going to be losing community. In El Paso, the poor people and the rich experimental work, but the work had to explore new to great programs who are opening their doors to people and everything in between are all mexicano. ground and focus on Nepantla. I received excellent, this talent. The rich Mexicans made fun of us poor mexicanos; original contributions. The risk of the MFA program is that we literally had an outhouse in the backyard. When you’ll learn a cookie-cutter approach to writing, a I went to Harvard then Yale, I was also an outsider. FLA: You are President of Texas Institute of somewhat homogenized approach. Or that you’ll Living in New York City and Boston, I was always Letters. What’s your vision for this institution? have mentors who don’t have a clue about your an outsider again. I never drank the blindly patriotic community, the language of your community, its Kool-Aid, yet I was an American outsider. ST: It’s a great organization that’s been around stories. So while not being in an MFA program So, if I were to characterize my own work since 1936; it was formed by Texas luminaries like might handicap early-stage Chicano authors in terms and self, I would say that I was born an outsider, J. Frank Dobie, William Vann, and Carr Collins. For of not being introduced to New York publishers, but at a certain point even when I could have been too many years, however, the TIL was traditionally being on your own and teaching yourself the craft an insider, I continued to question my place and to too white and too male. Kip Stratton, Steve Davis, of writing can preserve an authenticity in your voice challenge society, so I always stayed an outsider. I Carmen Tafolla and others on the board really that’s never stamped out. would say that I was an outsider not by choice frst, changed the organization to refect all of Texas, but then I saw the value, the importance, of being to be more inclusive. I am continuing the work FLA: Any advice for future gen writers? an outsider, of never become comfortable with your they started. For the lifetime achievement award, place and even your self. we’ve now honored Pat Mora, Sandra Cisneros, ST: If I have any advice for future writers, I would Sarah Bird, Naomi Shihab Nye, John Rechy, and say to set your life up so that what matters is FLA: You’re a fghter. Benjamin Saenz. We’ve inducted writers like your literary art. This way you will never have to Cristina Rivera Garza, Allison Hedge Coke, Sasha compromise your art and work. I’ve set up my life ST: You mess with me, I’m gonna mess with you. Pimentel, Rosa Alcala, and Xavier Garza. We’ve so that I can do exactly that. So if a commercial [Laughs.] I learned that in Ysleta as much as I also inducted more African American writers publisher wants to do it my way, wonderful. I can learned that at Yale. You don’t get respect by being such as Bryan Washington, Michael Hurd, Celeste do that, and I’ve done that. And if a commercial a wallfower. You get respect by pushing back and Bedford Walker, and Cary Clack. Of course, this publisher doesn’t want to publish this more edgy pushing back in the right way, with intelligence work is never done, but I want the TIL to represent and focus and hard work. These are the immigrant all of Texas, all communities, ethnicities, races, Continued on page 28

May-June 2021 Page 15 Continued from page 15 work, I walk, and I publish somewhere else. Nepantla Familias are testaments to this fact — Nobody’s Pilgrims. And, I’m writing a series of The strongest position to be in, always, in any and a forceful reminder that we should not take essays at the moment that I haven’t really shown negotiation, is to be able to walk away, if you’re not second place to anybody. We not only have a huge, anybody. In the end, it’s about never repeating happy with the terms. rich vein of American literature within the Latinx what I have done. To keep myself alive as an artist, community; we should be front and center in as a writer, I’m always trying something new. I never FLA: Are there Latinx authors that you return American literature, because we have great writers want to fnd myself too comfortable. I always want to again and again? in our communities. But also, American readers to push the envelope forward in how to construct a who are not Latinx must give us a chance, must pick novel, or what topic to tackle, or how to create even ST: Benjamin Alire Sáenz, Rigoberto González, up our books. It’s about empathy, of course. And a new form of storytelling. That’s what I love to do. Vanessa Villarreal, Rosa Alcalá, and Lupe Mendez, Latinx authors should always be reaching out to the among so many others — are all writers who open next generation of readers within our communities, FLA: Thank you, Sergio for gifting your minds to what Latinx can be. They are pointing us in to write for them, to show their concerns in our knowledge and your experience with me. the direction of where we’re going. We’re traveling stories, to give voice to the readers who too often into experimentation, variety, and challenging the have been excluded by mainstream publishing. So ST: Mil Gracias! mainstream and Latinx norms. it’s about having empathy and care and pride in the communities we came from. FLA: The great US fction today and tomorrow is being created in our communities. FLA: What’s next then for you, Sergio?

ST: The incredible literary talents that are in ST: I’ve already started sketching a sequel to

Di Leo Continued from page 2 other competing ones such as social justice and societies. style destructions, ways of conserving. democratic values. And when these children grow Nevertheless, for Gilles Deleuze, the How is it that the celebrated neutrality, and up to fnd out that their favorite author drew hurtful disciplinary societies identifed by Foucault peaked what psychoanalysis calls — dares to call images of many of them, the market that hid these in the beginning of the twentieth century and were — the disappearance or the dissolution of images from them will not be there to comfort them. replaced by societies of control. the Oedipus complex, do not make us burst One place to view this hateful logic is in And arguably, the society in which we now into laughter? the GRINCH Act proposed by Representative John live still bears a striking resemblance to the control Joyce of Pennsylvania. An acronym for “Guarding society that frst took root nearly a century ago. For Deleuze and Guattari, Readers’ Independence and Choice,” the GRINCH Moreover, and more importantly for our Act proposes that government funding for agencies purposes, the control society of Deleuze is perhaps we have been triangulated in Oedipus, that censor books such as Dr. Seuss be cut off. the most fertile ground in the political tradition from and we will triangulate in it in turn. From “I’m alarmed at the left’s attempt to cancel which to examine the government of children’s the family to the couple, from the couple historic book’s characters,” said Congressman books taken Out of Print. to the family. In actuality, the benevolent Joyce. neutrality of the analyst is very limited: “If you fnd that these books are offensive it ceased the instant one stops responding to your children, then the parents should be the daddy-mommy. It ceases the instant one ones who make that decision,” he continued. In Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and introduces a little desiring-machine — the “Government should not be making that [decision].” Schizophrenia (1972), Deleuze, and his frequent tape recorder — into the analyst’s offce; Lost on Joyce was that the decision to collaborator, Félix Guattari, offer an account of the it ceases as soon as a fow is made to not publish these books was a corporate decision, relationship between psychoanalysis and capitalism, circulate that does not let itself be stopped not a governmental one. Or was it? In the world which they call “schizoanalysis.” by Oedipus, the mark of the triangle. of neoliberal America are not corporate decisions “The schizoanalytic argument is simple,” always already governmental ones? And vice versa? claim Deleuze and Guattari, Thus, the connection between psychoanalysis and “We have to understand,” said Joyce, “that capitalism for Deleuze and Guattari is not merely we cannot turn back and ban great historic people, desire is a machine, a synthesis of an ideological one. Rather, great historic images that are part of our childhood.” machines, a machinic arrangement — What like Geisel’s “Chinaman” and the desiring machines. The order of desire is it is infnitely closer, infnitely tighter; and characters from “the African island of Yerka”? the order of production; all production that psychoanalysis depends directly on an “There are import lessons in these books,” is at once desiring-production and social economic mechanism (whence its relations said Joyce. production. We therefore reproach with money) through which the decoded One of them apparently is how to present psychoanalysis for having stifed this fows of desire, as taken up in the axiomatic “hurtful and wrong” images of people to our order of production, for having shunted it of capitalism, must necessarily be reduced children. into representation. Far from showing the to a familial feld where the application of boldness of psychoanalysis, this idea of the axiomatic is carried out: Oedipus as the unconscious representation marks from the last word of capitalist consumption sucking outset its bankruptcy or its abnegation: an away at daddy-mommy, being blocked and Politicians like the congressman who unconscious that no longer produces, but is triangulated on the couch; “So it’s … ” proposed the GRINCH Act remind us that one content to believe. The unconscious believes of the oldest dimensions of political theory is the in Oedipus, it believes in castration, in the While the extent that Deleuze and Guattari are relationship between the government of state and law. anti-Freud and anti-Oedipus is debatable, what the government of children. is important for us here is that the government of The tendency in ancient theory was to So, what then becomes of Oedipus under children under psychoanalysis is rendered vapid view the needs of the state as taking priority over schizoanalysis? Here Deleuze and Guattari are very from the position of control society. Why? Because the family regarding the governance of children, clear: control society views the family as an “interior,” whereas in the modern tradition, particularly in which is always already a relic from disciplinary the Christian traditions say of Thomas Hobbes and Destroy, destroy. The task of schizoanalysis societies. Immanuel Kant, the governance of family tends to goes by way of destruction — a whole Deleuze argues the disciplinary societies take on a greater role relative to the needs of the scouring of the unconscious, a complete of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries that state. curettage. Destroy Oedipus, the illusion of Foucault “brilliantly analyzed” were “vast spaces Michel Foucault though turned these the ego, the puppet of the superego, guilt, of enclosure.” “The individual never ceases traditions inside out when he observed that political the law, castration. It is not a matter of passing from one closed environment to another,” theory made a radical shift in the eighteenth and pious destructions, such as those performed comments Deleuze of these enclosures, “each has nineteenth centuries. Namely, it involved a shift by psychoanalysis under the benevolent from societies of sovereignty to disciplinary eye of the analysis. For these are Hegel- Di Leo continued on next page

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