Dr. Norma Cantú will conduct the workshop Telling to Live: Writing Your Life Story on Saturday, Jan. 23, from 10 am – 1 pm. Dr. Cantú currently teaches at the University of Texas at San Antonio with teaching interests in Cultural Studies, Contemporary Literary Theory, Border Studies, Chicano/a and Latina/o Literature & Film, Folklore and Women’s Studies. Dr. Cantú has published articles on a number or academic subjects, as well as poetry and fiction. She has co-edited four books and edited a collection of testimonios by Chicana scientists, mathematicians and engineers. Her award winning Canícula: Snapshots of a Girlhood en la Frontera (University of New Mexico Press, 1997) chronicles her childhood experiences on the border.
Here’s an excerpt from Canícula: Snapshots of a Girlhood en la Frontera
“The Fire”
Of course there were other fires. We were still living on Santa María when the Chavira family lost everything, including the two-month-old baby, to a fire started by a lightning bolt. The flames reached to the sky. Bueli had covered all the mirrors with white sheets and had unplugged the radio, the iron, the lamps; as soon as she heard thunder, she checked every plug in the house that might draw the deadly bolts from the sky. The Chavira’s house. We can hear the fire, we can see the flames, could hear the crying and Locha’s screams. Neighbors rush over, try to help Tino and I remain safe with Bueli while Mami and Papi go see what can be done. I had nightmares, nightmares of fire, and of burning babies. In one, a rag doll – blonde on one side and black on the flipside – became my brother and had caught fire. I woke up screaming, next to Bueli, in her cot. She hushed me. Amid sobbing, I told her what I’d seen. She led me to the crib where my brother laid. “See, he’s okay, and here’s your doll, it’s okay too. You just had a pesadilla.” The next day she and Mami agreed I needed to be healed de susto.
