{"id":35943,"date":"2006-02-03T11:54:00","date_gmt":"2006-02-03T19:54:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/?p=35943"},"modified":"2025-02-21T09:32:07","modified_gmt":"2025-02-21T17:32:07","slug":"online-exclusive-a-conversation-with-michael-jamie-becerra","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/online-exclusive-a-conversation-with-michael-jamie-becerra\/","title":{"rendered":"Online Exclusive: A Conversation with Michael Jamie-Becerra"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Online Exclusive<\/strong><\/p>\n\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n

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February 3, 2006<\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Thomas King, Paul Sebik, J.W. Yates<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

A CONVERSATION WITH MICHAEL JAMIE-BECERRA<\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/h2>\n\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n
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\"Michael<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Online Exclusive<\/strong><\/p>\n\n<\/div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

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MICHEAL JAYME IS A NATIVE OF EL MONTE. <\/strong>A graduate of the University of California, Riverside, his early work was collected in 1996 as Look Back and Laugh<\/em> for the Chicano Chapbook Series, edited by Gary Soto. The following year he began publishing under the surname \u201cJaime-Becerra\u201d and shortly thereafter a limited-edition collection of prose poems, entitled The Estrellitas O\ufb00 Peck Road<\/em>, was released by Temporary Vandalism. He earned an MFA in Fiction from the University of California, Irvine in 2001. His debut short story collection, Every Night Is Ladies\u2019 Night<\/em>, is an exploration of place, cultural identity, and ethics. Published in 2004 by Rayo, the Latino imprint of Harper Collins, it has gone on to garner praise for its intricate construction and emotional honesty.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We met with Michael at the Palm Court Grill in Spokane, where we discussed the conceptual di\ufb03culties of using bilingual dialogue in \ufb01ction, the intersection of art and commerce, and the in\ufb02uence of punk rock on his literary aesthetic. He responded to criticism about his manipulation of verb tense, and explained his latest attempt to incorporate non\ufb01ction into his upcoming novel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When asked about his characters and politics in \ufb01ction, he said: \u201cI go with the story that needs to be told. To me, politics are very personal, so I don\u2019t worry about my stories having to represent a certain viewpoint, a certain belief, a certain anything. My characters have to act the way they\u2019re going to.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

J. W. YATES<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Do you believe a California literature exists?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

MICHAEL JAMIE-BECERRA<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

People who aren\u2019t familiar with California have weird associations\u2014it\u2019s all palm trees and surfers and movie stars. A while back I was in Joliet, Illinois, on the 4th of July, talking to these high school kids. They said, \u201cOh, you live in Long Beach. You got to know Snoop Dogg.\u201d A few years later I did a book talk with a group from Ohio, and they didn\u2019t understand Mini\u2019s poverty in Every Night Is Ladies\u2019 Night<\/em>. Mini\u2019s a morning manager at McDonald\u2019s. And they\u2019re asking, \u201cWhat problems is she having making it? She\u2019s probably making a good living. She\u2019s making like sixteen, maybe eighteen-thousand dollars a year back then; that\u2019s good money.\u201d But that\u2019s not a lot in Southern California. I\u2019m happy I get to cast a di\ufb00erent light on Los Angeles.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

YATES<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Do you think growing up in California shaped the way you use language?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

JAMIE-BECERRA<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The liquor store owners, a Vietnamese family near my junior high, spoke better Spanish than I did. You walk in and they say, \u201cComo estas?\u201d I say, \u201cGood.\u201d With the multicultural nature of L.A., it makes life much easier if you speak two languages. There are portions of the city you\u2019ll go through and it\u2019s all Spanish, all Mexican Spanish, or other places you go, it\u2019s all Central American Spanish. Di\ufb00erent accents, di\ufb00erent idioms, di\ufb00erent things going on. And then you\u2019ll go to Monterey Park and everything\u2019s in Mandarin. The street signs are Mandarin. Only the speed limit signs are in English. Everything else, you don\u2019t know what they\u2019re saying. Every culture has its space, its area, inundated with language. You can\u2019t help but pick up something.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Growing up in L.A., I saw people move through languages. My dad would get on the phone and negotiate in English with the guys to clean the air conditioning ducts. Then he\u2019d call my grandma and tell her about it in Spanish.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For me, it was important to have my Mexican characters\u2014not my Mexican-Americans\u2014speak in Spanish, because I\u2019ve always had a problem where I read something with characters from Mexico, or from wherever, speaking in English. My di\ufb03culty there is that we\u2019re seeing something in quotation marks, and the signal I\u2019m getting is that someone actually said this, but I\u2019m also somehow supposed to understand it\u2019s not really what he said. That\u2019s the narrator or the writer or someone else, taking what was said and putting it into another language for the reader. I wanted my characters to be able to speak for themselves and to be able to account for what they want to say on their terms rather than my terms as a writer, or the narrator\u2019s terms of the story.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I don\u2019t have to represent this dialogue in English; I can do it in Spanish. And I can do it in such a way that the non-Spanish speaker isn\u2019t lost. It was really important for me to try to convey a basic sentiment or basic emotion, just to keep them on track of what\u2019s happening through body language, sometimes through repetition if that\u2019s needed, or sometimes through reported dialogue, or have a character answer in English.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

YATES<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Was deciding what to translate, what to give context, a hard process?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

JAMIE-BECERRA<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I write it in English \ufb01rst. That\u2019s my \ufb01rst language. Spanish is the second one. So from that point I try to \ufb01gure out how I can say this in Spanish. And not the literal translation, but sometimes to convey the same sentiment or the same kind of emphasis. Or to switch idioms. I\u2019ll write it like it\u2019s in American English. I have to switch it around in Spanish and translate it that way, and that\u2019s like the second level. Then the third level is all the technical stu\ufb00 to make sure all my accent marks are in the right place and my spelling is correct.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

YATES<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

If Ladies\u2019 Night<\/em> were translated into Spanish, would you be part of the translation process?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

JAMIE-BECERRA<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I would like to be part of the process if that happened, but I\u2019d de\ufb01nitely defer to an expert translator. If they had a question, I would want them to consult me. There was talk of translation initially, but one of the things that\u2019s di\ufb03cult there is the expense. Right now, I\u2019m emerging, I\u2019m up-and-coming. There may not be much demand for me to be translated at this point. I think it will happen eventually. I know that the Spanish market\u2019s growing. I did a book event at a Latino bookstore in Long Beach, and this is the week Bill Clinton\u2019s My Life<\/em> came out, and they had M\u00ed Vida, by Bill Clinton, on the shelf, wall to wall.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

THOMAS KING<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The stories in Ladies\u2019 Night<\/em> work together to create a sort of airtight universe. Did you mean for these to be interrelated so tightly?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

JAMIE-BECERRA<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I knew they were going to be interrelated, but the tightness of that weave came about through process. Before Ladies\u2019 Night<\/em>, I\u2019d written a collection of loosely interrelated prose poems. A character would pop up here or there, or a car would pop up. When I started writing Ladies\u2019 Night<\/em>, I\u2019d be working on one story, and a secondary character would emerge and then I\u2019d take that person and write about them. The second story I wrote was \u201cThe Corrido of Hector Cruz.\u201d I wrote a line about Georgie, about how Georgie and his wife got married on their second date. I wrote it, and I got some ideas out of my head. Then I was looking over some of the stu\ufb00 I had written, and I thought Well, let\u2019s earn this. If they get married on their second date, what was their \ufb01rst date like? And that\u2019s how \u201cGeorgie and Wanda\u201d came about. Things grew like that. My goal was to have ten stories. Once I had ten stories, I put them all out on my living room \ufb02oor, and said, \u201cOkay, who\u2019s what? What goes where?\u201d then I rewrote it, from page one all the way through and tightened everything up. I went through a couple drafts like that with Ladies\u2019 Night<\/em>. In the initial draft, Lencho sort of occurred in two different characters, and I realized, Hey, wait a minute. This is potentially him when he was sixteen, and this is him when he\u2019s twenty-two. I can actually work with this, and make them the same person. At that point, the focus really came together.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My next project is continuing like that. In the new book, there was a line in there about a character named Joyce, about how there are two photos on the co\ufb00ee table in her dad\u2019s house\u2014one of her deceased mom and one of her deceased brother who was in the army and disappeared in Vietnam. And I\u2019m thinking, Does she still goes to see him every year\u2014to his grave site, where\u2019s he\u2019s supposed to be buried, but there\u2019s no body? Or I wrote a detail for a room, and I thought, What\u2019s going on there? That evolved into the second section of the book. It\u2019s forty-six pages right now, so I\u2019m barely going. I\u2019m not really attached to anything at this point, because I just want to get it out of my head.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PAUL SEBIK<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Do you use any techniques in your new work that you don\u2019t use in the \ufb01rst book?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

JAMIE-BECERRA<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yes. I\u2019m excited about this second section because I\u2019m incorporating non\ufb01ction into it. Joyce\u2019s brother plays in a \ufb01ctional garage band, but they\u2019re trying to compete with real, in\ufb02uential garage bands from the 1960s era around Southern California\u2014bands like Cannibal and the Headhunters, the Premiers, the Midnighters, bands that were big in East L.A. I want to have non\ufb01ction bios about these real bands that add context to what the invented band is going through, and I want to do three or four of these through the course of this section so that by the end, there\u2019s something larger. It\u2019s a nice way of revealing character, especially since it\u2019s being told in \ufb01rst-person, present tense. My character doesn\u2019t have access to certain things: perspective, historical importance, inferiority; all that stu\ufb00\u2019s not really available to him because I\u2019m working in what is, to me, the most di\ufb03cult verb tense and point of view to write in. He\u2019s always thinking about what\u2019s happening now; he\u2019s not really concentrating on what happened in the past, or stopping to re\ufb02ect, because he\u2019s playing a song. And so, that\u2019s another way of getting information on the page.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

KING<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

How does the non\ufb01ction get onto the page?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

JAMIE-BECERRA<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Separate sections will be printed in italics, so people will see a visual di\ufb00erence in the text. And language-wise, my narrator\u2019s sixteen years old, not very educated\u2014he\u2019s speaking in that voice\u2014so as soon as you read the non\ufb01ction stu\ufb00, you\u2019ll recognize you\u2019re into a di\ufb00erent voice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

YATES<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

How do you achieve emotional distance in \ufb01rst person present tense, when the character is always in the moment?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

JAMIE-BECERRA<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Getting distance isn\u2019t a problem. It\u2019s overcoming distance that\u2019s a problem. I can have a character talking back and forth with another character, observing: he\u2019s cutting his lunch up, he\u2019s eating, he\u2019s chewing; that\u2019s \ufb01ne because I can have a lot of access to immediate detail. It\u2019s overcoming that, to get the character thinking about what happened, those places of interiority, that\u2019s more di\ufb03cult. I love backstory. Sometimes I dedicate entire sections to backstory, although my early teachers would tell me you don\u2019t want backstory in the middle of your scene. It slows you down or sends you backwards, and the reader thinks, Well, wait a minute. What happened to the present moment? One way I\u2019ve gotten around that with present tense narrators is to break it o\ufb00, end the section, and start a new section and have it be the \ufb02ashback. So the question isn\u2019t, Where is he telling this from? or Why is he telling this? It\u2019s just information the narrator\u2019s telling the reader, and that puts a lot less pressure on the speaker.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

KING<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

How much thought did you put into where those sections ended in terms of carrying the drama over, so that when the story returns to the present moment, the reader knows where he is?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

JAMIE-BECERRA<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

At \ufb01rst I didn\u2019t give it much thought. I just ended instinctually. I did that because I started as a prose poet. I have a sense of when small arcs end, with natural breaks and stops, which gives me a sense of how to \ufb01nish a scene.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A lot of it is related to details, to description, to things outside the character\u2019s head, so that the character can describe something that happened. And it takes on meaning as the scene unfolds, as the story unfolds. I like to work with what I call positive tension rather than negative tension. Positive tension is when the reader knows what\u2019s at stake and how it\u2019s going to happen. Negative tension is when the writer keeps something from the reader and the only tension for the reader is wanting to see: What is this thing being kept from me? Positive tension, for me, is more truthful. And working with positive tension makes it easier to end scenes, because the reader trusts you and you\u2019re able to \ufb01nd those natural places to stop.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Another thing I like to do is overwrite a scene. I go as far as I can with a scene, especially with endings\u2014I like to overwrite endings\u2014and once I get everything out of my system, I go back and start chipping away, and I think, Can I stop here? Or what about here? Or here? And it\u2019s easier to \ufb01nd the ending this way, when you\u2019re cutting down, than it is to reach out and think, Is that the right ending? It\u2019s easier when you\u2019ve got everything out of your system and you\u2019re working backwards, trying to understand where the character needs to come to rest.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

KING<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

A critic in USA Today<\/em> wrote that, \u201cThe stories from Every Night is Ladies\u2019 Night<\/em> are mostly told in the present tense, which is a trendy tactic. Sometimes it gives immediacy to the narration, but more often it\u2019s a sign of laziness from writers who like to describe their stories rather than tell them. I don\u2019t know why Jaime-Becerra joined the crowd, but he shouldn\u2019t have. He\u2019s good enough to do it the hard way.\u201d How do you respond to that criticism?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

JAMIE-BECERRA<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

First person present tense is much more di\ufb03cult to write, and I don\u2019t think of it as a fad. In \ufb01rst person present tense, your narrator has to remain in motion, like a shark has to keep swimming or else it will die. With past tense, you have a lot more recourse, you can take your time. You have the bene\ufb01t of hindsight; \u201cI walked into a room,\u201d and yet that walking might have happened \ufb01ve hours ago, \ufb01ve minutes ago, \ufb01ve years ago. First person present tense is happening in front of the character and the character often doesn\u2019t have the mobility to re\ufb02ect on what\u2019s happening in front of him or her. You can pull it o\ufb00, but that\u2019s one of the challenges. I respond to that criticism by saying, I wasn\u2019t trying to be trendy. I wrote in that tense because it seemed natural to me and it seemed natural to the story. But in Ladies\u2019 Night<\/em>, six stories are told in \ufb01rst person and four in third person, so the book has a pretty good sense of balance, and that\u2019s one thing the quote doesn\u2019t take into account.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

SEBIK<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Do you map out what characters will do or wait to see how they respond?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

JAMIE-BECERRA<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019m always willing to take a left turn with a character, but in general, it\u2019s easier for me to write when I know where I\u2019m headed. The stories easiest for me to write are the stories where I know the end moment. The more di\ufb03cult stories are the ones where I don\u2019t have an end moment but I know I have a character and I have a con\ufb02ict and I know he or she is going to go through with it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

An example of a character surprising me occurred in this new project, when one of my main characters, Gaeta, is reacting to his wife leaving him. His daughter gets upset about why the wife has left and she doesn\u2019t understand because he\u2019s not explaining it to her, and every night she cries in her room. He\u2019s upset, he\u2019s ashamed, he feels horrible that he\u2019s been left. And he says, You know what, let her cry. She\u2019ll \ufb01gure it out. And that\u2019s what he does. Now that was a surprise to me when that came out. That wasn\u2019t Gaeta speaking to me, saying, This is what needs to happen. But what happened was a convergence of characteristics and that moment was me coming to an understanding about that person.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

KING<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

What about a story like \u201cLa Fiesta Brava,\u201d where that surprising event is action-based rather than character-based. Did you know that ending before you started writing?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

JAMIE-BECERRA<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I knew Benny\u2019s ending. Benny pops up in di\ufb00erent ways throughout the book and he\u2019s sort of the bad guy. I knew I really wanted Benny to get his. I just didn\u2019t know how that was going to happen. I wanted the kid in the story to have to live with what he\u2019d done, for however long it was, long enough to where he knew things were di\ufb00erent. That story ends with him dancing with his aunt at the church, that moment where he has to live with the knowledge of what\u2019s happened to Benny, and he can\u2019t talk to his aunt until the song is over. That\u2019s the character confronting what I\u2019ve put in front of him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

YATES<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

How can you surprise us with an ending that\u2019s so inevitable?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

JAMIE-BECERRA<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I wish I had the answer to that. But I know the outcome begins with character. Flannery O\u2019Connor is the master of that. All her great stories, the endings are like, Duh, that\u2019s what\u2019s supposed to happen. But you\u2019re completely moved. Like \u201cGreenleaf.\u201d Mrs. May has a \ufb02aw, and because of that \ufb02aw she is going to get it in the end. The end emerges surprisingly because you\u2019re so focused on character that you\u2019re not really noticing the machinations going around that character. Because you\u2019re concentrating on this fascinating person. And \u201cfascinating\u201d is an appropriate word, because Mrs. May is not a likeable character, but she\u2019s certainly capturing your attention.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

YATES<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

John Keeble suggests that one way to study writing is to \ufb01nd an author you admire and read everything he or she has written. Who is that writer for you?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

JAMIE-BECERRA<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Initially, it was Raymond Carver. And then, after Carver, I think Stuart Dybek. When it comes to form, Dybek is all over the place. He has these really long, crazy stories like \u201cBreasts.\u201d It just keeps going and going and going. Then he has a story like \u201cPet Milk\u201d which is \ufb01ve pages and it\u2019s brilliant. And the other thing with Dybek is that he loves Chicago, and if you didn\u2019t know anything about him, if you just read two of his stories, you would pick that up immediately. And, for someone who\u2019s really attached to the place where he grew up, like myself, Dybek is a great model. Reading him was like, This is how you can write about place and not have the place overwhelm.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I just read the big orange John Cheever book last summer, cover to cover and it was an amazing experience. Cheever was my coach. I was writing that Gaeta section, and as I said, I didn\u2019t know where it was going to end. I was really struggling to access the character, actually wrote about twenty-\ufb01ve pages and I went back and scrapped them all, wrote them all again, because I \ufb01gured I needed to streamline things dramatically. I rewrote the whole thing, and throughout that process, I was reading Cheever. It wasn\u2019t as if I copied things from Cheever or took structural things, it was just a matter of reading great writing and \ufb01nding that writing was like unlocking a door. I would say, I\u2019m stuck here, and I would go to Cheever and read for an hour, and I would get an answer. Something would emerge. A word he used, the way it triggered something, was really useful.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

KING<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Have you ever kept anything out of a story because of political concerns or because you didn\u2019t want to upset someone?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

JAMIE-BECERRA<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

To me, politics are personal, so I don\u2019t worry about my stories having to represent a certain viewpoint, a certain belief, a certain anything. My characters have to act the way they\u2019re going to act. A good example is in Hector\u2019s story. Hector\u2019s mom is racist toward her own people. Hector\u2019s brother is dating this woman who\u2019s an illegal immigrant, and his mom\u2019s freaking out about it. Hector\u2019s getting ready for his prom, and his mom is bitching at him, saying, \u201cShe\u2019s just using you, she\u2019s just trying to get pregnant.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I read in El Monte a couple years ago, right when the book came out, and I was excited about it because this guy I played basketball within junior high had contacted me. I wanted to read \u201cPractice Tattoos,\u201d which is a story set in the 1980s, when we were growing up, so I thought that would be funny. But I arrive at this reading and the mayor is there, the guy from the local community college is there, trustees are there, so I\u2019m thinking, I\u2019ve got to switch gears, because they\u2019re not going to get half of that story probably. So, I started reading Hector\u2019s story, not having scanned through it beforehand, and I started reading that scene. I\u2019m reading and I know it\u2019s coming, and there\u2019s that line where Hector\u2019s mother says, \u201cShe\u2019s just a wetback.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And I read that and the older people were aghast. My girlfriend says I perceived it worse than it really was, but I felt like the air had gone out of the room. I mean, I could see the word coming, and I was reading and reading, and I could see it there on the page, and the word was getting closer, and there was no way to edit or skip it, so I just went through with it. Afterward, people around my age, in their early thirties, came up to me and said, \u201cThat was really cool.\u201d They understood that people are sometimes racist against their own people. Older people had di\ufb03culty with that. I think it\u2019s a generational thing. If I were concerned about making everybody happy, I wouldn\u2019t have put that in there, but those were Hector\u2019s circumstances.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My obligation is to be true to my characters. Those are the people I\u2019m writing about, and I don\u2019t think of them as substitutes for an idea, substitutes for a theory or anything like that. They\u2019re people, so I have to represent their lives as well as I can.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

YATES<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Do you think punk rock energy has informed your work? Your language?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

JAMIE-BECERRA<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

If you look at writing, at language, it\u2019s so often about restrictions. Spelling, punctuation, grammar. You have to work within that framework. But once you know the framework, the possibilities are endless.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Punk, for me, is more an ideology, a perspective; it\u2019s not necessarily having a mohawk and wearing plaid pants. It\u2019s looking at music without boundaries, looking at clothing without boundaries, hairstyle without boundaries. Having bright red hair is not revolutionary now, but twenty years ago it was. And, if you look at things that way, a short story can become forty pages. For a long time, many people thought a short story shouldn\u2019t be longer than \ufb01fteen pages. Well, I\u2019m writing one that\u2019s thirty-\ufb01ve right now, and I don\u2019t feel worried about it. I feel I can do other things with the length of a story\u2014as long as the character and the con\ufb02ict dictate that the length is necessary. I don\u2019t have to worry about cutting my thirty-\ufb01ve page story down to \ufb01fteen, because then I\u2019m leaving something out. The con\ufb01dence and willingness I have to do that is a result of growing up listening to punk music.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

KING<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Can you tell us a little about your early publishing history? You worked with a group called \u201cTemporary Vandalism\u201d that seemed to emerge from the same Do It Yourself ethic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

JAMIE-BECERRA<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Temporary Vandalism is an imprint started by a college friend. He and his partner were really into punk rock, indie rock, goth rock\u2014all that marginal stu\ufb00\u2014and Estrellitas and those prose poems\u2014stu\ufb00 like \u201cKing Taco,\u201d \u201cEl Mero Mero,\u201d \u201cAugie\u201d\u2014were my undergraduate thesis. I was sending it out to di\ufb00erent poetry publishers and getting rejections, and my friend Barton said, \u201cIf you give us the poems, we can do something with them.\u201d They were starting a magazine called Freedom Isn\u2019t Free, making them at Kinko\u2019s, developing a mailing list. It didn\u2019t even occur to me to keep sending to those same poetry magazines; I just said, \u201cLet\u2019s do it.\u201d I think they made 500 copies of that book, maybe less, maybe more, but nevertheless it was a great experience. I didn\u2019t have any qualms about doing it because I was excited to work with them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

With \ufb01ction, it\u2019s more di\ufb03cult. If I\u2019ve written a book, I want people to read it, so I have to work within that larger framework. But I\u2019m still writing about things that interest me. I want people to read Ladies\u2019 Night<\/em>. Even though the imprint publishing my work, Rayo, is part of a larger company, which is part of a multinational corporation\u2014they\u2019re still doing things to change publishing. Books weren\u2019t always published simultaneously in English and Spanish. Books weren\u2019t published by an English publisher in Spanish. That\u2019s a di\ufb00erent movement within the publishing industry. And that\u2019s something exciting to be a part of, too.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

YATES<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

At the summer writing program in Squaw Valley, you told a story about a time when some one responded to your work by saying,\u201cYour characters are brown, but they\u2019re not brown enough.\u201d What does that statement mean?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

JAMIE-BECERRA<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

That was implied in a rejection letter to the manuscript for Every Night Is Ladies\u2019 Night<\/em>. We\u2019re talking about the point where art intersects with commerce. First, an agent has to love what you\u2019re doing on an artistic level, otherwise he or she will not represent the work, but I also think they have to recognize something that lets them know they can sell it. Part of what was being communicated to me was that they thought they couldn\u2019t sell the book because it doesn\u2019t easily \ufb01t into the categories that exist.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On the other hand, my agent could see where I was coming from, she could see that something could be done with the manuscript, and something was done with it. But these changes are still happening. Every year we see more books by Chicano writers, like The People of Paper<\/em>, which is stylistically a much di\ufb00erent book from Ladies\u2019 Night<\/em>, but it\u2019s still breaking with the traditional ideas and stereotypes that people might have with Chicano literature.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

SEBIK<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

You said in an interview that setting is central to some writers\u2019 aesthetic. Why is setting so important to you?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

JAMIE-BECERRA<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s easiest for me to write when I can see what I\u2019m writing about. El Monte has always been my home and I\u2019ve always been happy with it as my home; it\u2019s where I was raised\u2014the only reason I wasn\u2019t born there is because there wasn\u2019t a hospital at the time. When it came time to write, at \ufb01rst I was writing things and I wasn\u2019t even thinking about where they were set. And the stories were horrible stabs at wannabe Carver. But at some point, I wrote a poem about getting my dad a beer, and I worked through that, then I started to work out from my house. I wanted to write about my junior high, so I worked my way through that, and I worked on all the streets over there, and what developed was an exploration of my memory. Everything I wrote in Ladies\u2019 Night<\/em> is pretty much set between 1982 and 1989, my adolescence. A lot of what happens with El Monte in the book is exploration, me indirectly being able to revisit these places. I write about the go-cart track, which is my \ufb01rst memory\u2014being at the go-cart track when I was four. I write about things that are gone, incidental things to a lot of people that have meaning for me. I can capture them, use them as a setting, as backdrop, and that\u2019s fun but it\u2019s also important to keep my memory accurate in some way. I\u2019m not writing non\ufb01ction\u2014those stories aren\u2019t by any means non\ufb01ction\u2014but the places in there are de\ufb01nitely real in my memory, real in my imagination, and using them is a way to keep them fresh.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

SEBIK<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Did using where you grew up help you start stories?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

JAMIE-BECERRA<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

It allowed me to be honest more immediately. One of the writing clich\u00e9s I have di\ufb03culty with is the sense of voice. Some writers say, \u201cI have to \ufb01nd my voice. I can\u2019t write because I can\u2019t \ufb01nd my voice yet. I don\u2019t know what my voice is.\u201d I feel that it\u2019s not that one has to discover a voice, it\u2019s that one has to be honest and let the true voice emerge. It\u2019s not something you have to work and work on; it\u2019s not something you have to put coats of paint on and then you \ufb01nally have it; it\u2019s more a matter of stripping something away and writing honestly and directly. Once I was able to get a setting down, some silly backdrop, like a basketball court from my old junior high that I could see clearly, I could write more directly about that place because I understood it better.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

YATES<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Do you fear a sophomore slump going into your latest book?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

JAMIE-BECERRA<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I felt that sophomore slump with the \ufb01rst book! [Laughs.] When I started working on the new book, I had to start over because similar territory was already in Ladies\u2019 Night<\/em>. I think my response to that was to write through to the ones waiting for me, to the characters that were new. The \ufb01rst section in the new book is structurally the most complicated thing I\u2019ve done because the con\ufb02ict occurs in a triangulation rather than between two people. The result of my di\ufb03culty with understanding the dynamic for that con\ufb02ict was that it took me a year to write those seventy-some pages. I got twenty-four, twenty-\ufb01ve pages in and stopped because I was like, Where am I? I realized I\u2019d have to strip everything back and start from scratch. Then I reached a point, about \ufb01fty pages in, where I was like, God, I\u2019m just completely lost and confused. I worked on it for the next two months, pounded my way through those last twenty-\ufb01ve pages or so, \ufb01fteen pages of which I ended up cutting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So I know what you\u2019re talking about with that slump, but a lot of that slump is other people forcing the work to grow too fast when it isn\u2019t fully mature. I\u2019m writing diligently, and I can feel myself growing. Whether or not people will like it and embrace it the way I was fortunate enough to have happen with Ladies\u2019 Night, that\u2019s out of my control.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

YATES<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

How do you decide on an acceptable level of pop culture references in your stories?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

JAMIE-BECERRA<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

There\u2019s a lot of pop culture in Ladies\u2019 Night, and a lot of pop culture in what I write about. As long as nothing depends on the reference, it\u2019s \ufb01ne. When a reader can understand the essential piece of information outside of the reference, then go ahead and use the reference. The one example that springs to mind is in \u201cLa Fiesta Brava,\u201d the guy who\u2019s \u201cthe worst DJ ever\u201d because he plays the same songs over and over, \u201cBrass Monkey\u201d and \u201cJungle Love,\u201d which are pop culture references. In the context of that passage, you can understand he\u2019s a bad DJ without those two songs because he keeps playing the same ones. Those two references are just icing on the cake, not the cake itself. That\u2019s what I mean: the passage doesn\u2019t depend on the reference.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On the other hand, there\u2019s the example: \u201cShe looked like Joey Ramone when he was on stage.\u201d Unless you know who Joey Ramone is, you\u2019re out of the loop, right? If I said, \u201cHe was tall. He was gangly. He was skinny. He looked uncomfortable at the microphone. He reminded me of Joey Ramone,\u201d that\u2019s di\ufb00erent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

YATES<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Supposedly Kerouac said he wanted to someday be known as an American writer, like Steinbeck, somebody everybody reads, rather than just a Beat writer. Do you feel like you\u2019re being classi\ufb01ed as a Latino writer?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

JAMIE-BECERRA<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019d be happy to be classi\ufb01ed as a writer, period. I think a lot of those terms are subjective and more re\ufb02ective of the person assigning them. If someone wants to call me a Latino writer, for whatever reason, they need me to be one. That\u2019s the fact of the matter: I\u2019m Latino. If you want to specify it further: I\u2019m Chicano. If you want to take the Nth political version of it, then I\u2019m Mexican-American. If you want to look at it from a global perspective, then I\u2019m an American writer. I\u2019m happy with whatever term, as long as people think of me as a writer.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

MICHEAL JAYME IS A NATIVE OF EL MONTE. A graduate of the University of California, Riverside, his early work was collected in 1996 as Look Back and Laugh for the Chicano Chapbook Series, edited by Gary Soto. The following year he began publishing under the surname \u201cJaime-Becerra\u201d and shortly thereafter a limited-edition collection of prose poems, entitled The Estrellitas O\ufb00 … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9086,"featured_media":2533,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"wpo365_audiences":[],"wpo365_private":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-35943","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-interviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35943"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9086"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35943"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35943\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":36848,"href":"https:\/\/inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35943\/revisions\/36848"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2533"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35943"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35943"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35943"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}