F212. Latina Memoir: Writing a New Chapter of the American Experience

Liberty Salon M, Marriott Marquis, Meeting Level Four
Friday, February 10, 2017
1:30 pm to 2:45 pm

 

Memoir begins with memory but is more than a collection of memories. Since memoir captures just a slice of the writer’s life, where to start and where to end, what to put in and what to leave out are crucial elements in its crafting. This panel of Latina memoirists discuss their unique approaches to writing, their fears of exposing themselves on the page, and their sense of responsibility to gender, family, community, and culture. What power does memoir have to transform the writer, the reader?


Participants

Moderator:

Reyna Grande is the author of the novels Across a Hundred Mountains and Dancing with Butterflies, which received several awards including an American Book Award. Her memoir, The Distance Between Us, is about her life before and after illegally immigrating from Mexico to the US at nine.

Daisy Hernández is the author of A Cup of Water Under My Bed: A Memoir and coeditor of the feminist anthology Colonize This! Her work has been published in the AtlanticDogwood, Gulf Coast, and Guernica. She’s an assistant professor at Miami University in Ohio.

Joy Castro is the author of the literary thrillers Hell or High Water and Nearer Home, the memoirs The Truth Book and Island of Bones, and the short fiction collection How Winter Began. Editor of the collection Family Trouble, she teaches at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

Norma E. Cantú, currently serves as the Murchison Professor of the Humanities at Trinity University. An award-winning novelist and poet, her work centers on the border and social justice issues. She is cofounder of CantoMundo, and a member of the Macondo Writers Workshop.

#AWP24

February 7–10, 2024
Kansas City, Missouri

Kansas City Convention Center