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.