Interview with Chuy Ramirez~Latino Books Examiner~

Interview with Chuy Ramirez

Chuy Ramirez is an attorney who practices law in McAllen, Texas and is a partner in the firm Ramirez & Guerrero, LLP. He was also a partner for twenty five years in the McAllen firm, Montalvo & Ramirez. Ramirez is a graduate of the University of Texas School of Law. At law school, he served as Articles Editor for the International Law Journal and published a note entitled, “Altering the Policy of Neglect of Undocumented Immigration from South of the Border," Vol. 18 in 1983. He lives in San Juan, Texas. Strawberry Fields is his first fictional work.

Welcome to Latino Books Examiner. Why don’t you start by telling us a bit about your latest book, and what inspired you to write it?

Two things motivated me. With the exception of Gloria Anzaldua (Frontera/The Borderlands) and Richard Rodriguez (to some extent) few works with Chicano characters truly capture those precious moments in a human being’s life that are universal. Quite the contrary, too many works are more like Diego Rivera’s Mexican art, overly political, or mythical. Second, the universe is filled with non-fictional writings about migrants and immigrants. But there is no emotion there.

How could I create something different? How could I capture and convey in a fictional work to any reader (regardless of race or ethnicity) in entertaining fashion that border life, that migrant life of the first generation Chicanos in South Texas.

How would you describe your creative process while writing this book? Was it stream-of-consciousness writing, or did you first write an outline?

I would say both. I write or type whenever I can and I write whatever comes through. Then, I outline, redraft, re-outline and redraft.

How long did it take you to write the book?

It took about 10 years (which left over voluminous materials for other works), but the bulk of the drafting about 2 -3 years.

Have you ever suffered from writer’s block?

Yes. Of course.

What seems to work for unleashing your creativity?

Several things work for me: being at home, at leisure, being alone, reading, listening to music, sitting in my yard. Travel of any kind seems to allow me to separate myself from my daily work and move into a creative state.

How was your experience in looking for a publisher? What words of advice would you offer those novice authors who are in search of one?

We created a publishing house to publish this work.

What type of book promotion seems to work the best for you? Share with us some writing tips!

I do not have the experience to provide much. The publicist contacts libraries, bookstores, reading groups, book enthusiast, organizations, universities, and the use of the media via the Internet has thus far been a way to market the book.

I enjoy small groups of all types, interests and interacting. Writing tips? How about read! Read! Read! & Write!.

What authors or type of books do you read for fun?

I read mostly fiction-primarily novels: Bible, short stories, poetry, travelogues and photography. In the past year: Hemingway, King, Faulkner, Carlos Fuentes, James, Marquez, Borges, Dickens, Frost, Graham Green and Poe

Do you think a critique group is essential for a writer?

Yes, essential for a new writer.

Do you have a website/blog where readers may learn more about you and your work?
www.firsttexaspublishers.com

strawberryfieldsramirez.blogspot.com

Do you have another novel on the works? Would you like to tell readers about your current or future projects?

I have material collected for a novella set in current time involving a dying woman who spent 4 years as child in the Tulelake Concentration Camp in northern California during World War II. Like other Japanese of that era, she disappeared into another community, leaving behind her culture, language and memories. Now, she has developed a mother-son relationship with the attorney who is preparing her will and trusts and she desperately wants to revisit that time of childhood which she recalls as an idyllic setting. The attorney will eventually fulfill her dream by traveling to Tulelake during a Japanese pilgrimage carrying her wishes.

Is there anything else you’d like to tell my readers?

Keep reading.

Thank you Mayra Calani a multi-genre author and book reviewer hails from San Juan, Puerto Rico. She’s a member of NuncaSola, a group of dedicated Latina writers, agents and editors. Visit Mayra at www.MayraCalvani.com. Email her at mayra.calvani@gmail.com.

Valley Town Crier-Literacy Event Pharr, Texas

http://www.valleytowncrier.com/articles/2010/05/18/news/doc4bf2c0df75a7c168155020.txt



Book available for purchase on Amazon.

Immediate release in San Antonio at TWIG Book Shop

First Texas Publishers
Immediate Release

April 8th, 2010


Texas fiction writer, Chuy Ramirez, will be featured at the Twig Bookshop, 200 E. Grayson Suite 124 in San Antonio on Friday, May 7th from 5pm to 7pm.The public is invited. Ramirez, who is from South Texas, has a home in north San Antonio and is General Counsel to Lone Star National Bank, which is opening several branch banks in San Antonio. His book of short stories, Strawberry Fields, published in February, is a collection of stories and vignettes of three generations of a South Texas family beginning at the turn of the century and ending around the year 2000. The stories include the coming of the railroad and irrigation systems to the Valley and the people who labored to slash and burn thousands of South Texas acres to convert prickly desert to productive farm land.
As a boy in the early 1960s, Ramirez had chopped cotton just south of Lamesa around a community called Sparenberg. Forty years later, in “Strawberry Fields, A Book of Short Stories”, a character much like Ramirez recalls Lamesa:
“In the 1950s, on Saturdays, the family would drive in for groceries from the cotton fields around Sparenberg and Klondike—not quite towns on the Texas mesa, but rather zip codes denoting farm-to-market road intersections. Welcoming them as the road curved north into the town square of Lamesa, Texas,was the Negro shanty town. A segregated clay-red flatland devoid of flora or fauna (save for the sturdy tumbleweeds, which grew in abundance), was reserved for the small huts with the tar and asphalt siding. The only integrated venue in town was the long line at the rear of Murphy’s slaughterhouse, where the Mexicans and the Negros would line up at dawn on Saturdays with their galvanized washtubs to receive the calf bowels that Murphy disposed of.”
For more information about Strawberry Fields, visit the Web site at www.iberoaztlan.com .