On Mirrors

by Kathleen Alcala

@2012

A reflection on my one encounter with Carlos Fuentes This is a small story, but I wanted to get it right. In 1997, shortly after the publication of my first novel, Spirits of the Ordinar y, I was invited to read at Bumbershoot, an arts festival in Seattle that used t o include literary events. Carlos Fuentes, it turned out, was the star feature, and I was to read with him . I have no idea why he agreed to read at Bumbershoot. Maybe they offered him a nice honorarium, or maybe he had friends in the area he wanted to visit. A scant fifteen years ago, literature was not yet dead, and the book was still a viable vehicle for story and ideas. Luisa Valenzuela, an Argentine novelist and journalist, was in the Green Room, h er arm in a splint from a recent auto accident. I think Valenzuela was there to hang out with Fuentes, since she had read the evening before. I don t remember seein g Fuentes in the Green Room. Looking in the archives, I see that this was part o f a Four Before series that preceded Bumbershoot, and was made possible by a Lila Wall ace Foundation grant. Other writers, spread over four evenings, included short-s tory writer Grace Paley; novelist and nonfiction writer Michael Dorris; award-wi nning poet Juan Felipe Herrera; and Quincy Troupe, the African-American poet and biographer of Miles Davis. "The series is intended to be an exploration, through our literary artists, of h ow we shape and form culture, and of the diverse voices that make up whatever cu lture we are becoming," according to Judith Roche, the Seattle poet who was dire ctor of Bumbershoot's literary program for many years. This is according to the Seattle Times archives. http://community.seattletimes.nwsource.com/archive/?date =19920712&slug=1501803 We read in the Bagley Wright Theatre. The Yaqui poet and artist Anita Endrezze preceded me. We were among local and regional writers included in this series. I remember being introduced by Shawn Wong from the University of Washington, and getting up to speak. I made the mistake of looking out across the audience just once. A spot nearly blinded me, and their was not an empty seat to be seen. If I looked up again, it was not to see the audience, but to pretend to see the audi ence. Rather than return to the Green Room, I sat in the lobby and listened to Fuentes read through the loudspeakers. I don t know why. It seemed like a turning point of some kind, and often I do turning points better alone than with other people. I have no idea, now, what he read. That reading, before a too-large crowd, was one of the most terrifying moments o f my life. Years later, it is still difficult for me to read in public. After, p eople stood in line for over an hour. They brought Fuentes stacks of books and p oured out their own stories to him in English and in Spanish, how much he had me ant to them through the years. Fuentes was unfailingly polite and patient, taking time in between signings to m ake small-talk with me as a trickle of readers brought me books to sign. I told him about my next book, based on my great-grandmother, an Opata Indian, and Fuen tes shared that one of his grandmothers had been Yaqui. We laughed at our mixed up but typically Mexican backgrounds. A woman came up to accuse me of being anti-Semitic, because one of my character s is Jewish and seeks gold in the desert. He is based on my great-grandfather, I said lamely, thinking that would explain everything. It did not. Here was a wom an who had a mono-cultural, European-based relationship with her Judaism, and I could not begin to share my background with her if she was not open to it. Peopl e have objected to a lot of things in my books, but that was the only time I was accused of being anti-Semitic. Yesterday, I looked in my bookcases until I found the book I purchased that even ing, The Buried Mirror. It is a series of essays on history and culture, written to accompany a BBC series, printed on heavy paper with illustrations. It seemed

expensive at the time. Fuentes was kind enough to sign it and for Kathleen, with a dmiration. On the back of the book is a quote from inside. It says, People and their cultures perish in isolation, but they are born or reborn in conta ct with other men and women, with men and women of another culture, another cree d, another race. If we do not recognize our humanity in others, we shall not rec ognize it in ourselves.