Voices en Español

Today’s Voices en Español podcast is with Eduardo González Viaña. He’s the author of “El corrido de Dante,” a novel which takes a look at the immigrant experience in the United States through the eyes of Dante Celestino.

In the book, Emmita, Dante’s 15-year-old daughter, runs away from home with her tattoo-covered, non-Spanish speaking boyfriend. Complicating matters is the fact that Dante, a Mexican, is living illegally in the U.S. so he can’t go to the police to report his daughter missing.

So Dante decides to find her himself. Accompanied by a donkey named Virgilio and the voice of his dead wife, Beatriz, Dante heads to Las Vegas where Emmita’s boyfriend lives.

In addition to the interview, Eduardo also reads a passage from the book. You can listen to the interview here and find out how to get a copy of the book here.

Also, the book is now available in English and Italian, in addition to Spanish. Here is the publisher info:

El corrido de Dante,  Arte Público, Houston, 2006

Dante’s Ballad, Arte Público, Houston 2007

La Ballata di Dante, Gorée Edizioni, Siena, Italia, 2007

El corrido de Dante, Alfaqueque Ediciones, Murcia, Spain, 2008.

You can read more about Eduardo by clicking on “more.”

Eduardo González Viaña was born in Chepén, La Libertad, Peru. He spent his childhood and adolescence in the region, and nostalgia for northern Peru and the influence of the neighboring port city, Pacasmayo, suffuse his first collection of short stories, Los peces muertos [The Dead Fish]. Perhaps the most pervasive memory that imbues his earlier works is the city of Trujillo and its university, Universidad Nacional de Trujillo, where he would graduate with a law degree in 1967 and a doctorate in Spanish languages and literatures in 1973.

Very early, at the age of 26, his story collection Batalla de Felipe en la casa de palomas [Felipe’s Battle in the House of the Pigeons] received Peru’s National Literary Prize, the Premio Nacional de Fomento a la Cultura Ricardo Palma. His novel, Identificación de David [Identification of David], won the Premio Nacional de Novela Universo.

González Viaña later obtained a degree in journalism from the Colegio de Periodistas del Perú, and his interest in journalism would take him to numerous war-torn countries in Africa and to Iran, where he observed the fall of the Shah and the beginning of the fundamentalist revolution.

In the 80s, his work would focus on anthropological themes. His novel, Habla, Sampedro [Talk, Sampedro] would become a bestseller in Spanish, and Sarita Colonia viene volando [Sarita Colonia Comes Flying], the imagined biography of a saint created by the people, would be his homage to the sanctity of the poor and would be considered one of the best Peruvian novels of the 20^th century.

González Viaña came to the U.S. in 1990 as Visiting Professor at the University of California at Berkeley, and joined the faculty at Western Oregon University in 1993. His writing from this time period focuses on the immigration of Hispanics to the United States, and he pens bold and powerful depictions of those who face fierce challenges adapting to life on this side of the border. Los sueños de América (Alfaguara, 2000) received critical acclaim; Mario Vargas Llosa called it “A magnificent testimony of the Latin American presence in the United States.” The English-language translation, American Dreams, was published in 2005 by Arte Público Press.

In addition to receiving Peru’s National Prize for Literature, he is the recipient of the 1999 Juan Rulfo Award for his story “Siete noches en California” [“Seven Nights in California”], an international prize for short stories and novels published in Spanish, and the 2001 Latino Literature Prize awarded by the Latin American Writers Institute of New York. In 2004 he was elected a member of the Royal Academy of Spanish Language, a lifelong appointment.

He is the author of numerous short story collections and novels, among them, Las sombras y las mujeres [Shadows and Women], Frontier Woman [La mujer de la frontera] , El amor se va volando [Love is Flying Away] and El corrido de Dante (Arte Público Press 2006). An English-language edition will follow. González Viaña also writes the Correo de Salem, a web-based collection of journalistic commentaries.

Eduardo’s web page: http://www.geocities.com/egonzalezviana