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When did you begin writing? Why?

I had a childhood that made Mommie, Dearest look like a fairytale, and reading and writing helped me survive it. So I started writing when I was quite young—poetry and stories that I wanted to think of as novels—but I really bega

Studs Terkel, prize-winning author and radio broadcast personality was born Louis Terkel in New York on May 16, 1912. His father, Samuel, was a tailor and his mother, Anna (Finkel) was a seamstress. He had three brothers. The family moved to Chicago in 1922 and opened a rooming house at Ashland and Flournoy on the near West side {LISTEN}. From 1926 to 1936 they ran another rooming house, the Wells-Grand Hotel at Wells Street and Grand Avenue. Terkel credits his knowledge of the world to the tenants who gathered in the lobby of the hotel and the people who congregated in nearby Bughouse Square, a meeting place for workers, labor organizers, dissidents, the unemployed, and religious fanatics of many persuasions. In 1939 he married Ida Goldberg and had one son.

Terkel attended University of Chicago and received a law degree in 1934. He chose not to pursue a career in law. After a brief stint with the civil service in Washington D.C., he returned to Chicago and worked with the WPA Writers Project in the radio division. One day he was asked to read a script and soon found himself in radio soap operas, in other stage performances, and on a WAIT news show. After a year in the Air Force, he returned to writing radio shows and ads. He was on a sports show on WBBM and then, in 1944, he landed his own show on WENR. This was called the Wax Museum show that allowed him to express his own personality and play recordings he liked from folk music, opera, jazz, or blues. A year later he had his own television show called Stud's Place and started asking people the kind of questions that marked his later work as an interviewer.

In 1952 Terkel began working for WFMT, first with the "Studs Terkel Almanac" and the "Studs Terkel Show," primarily to play music. The interviewing came along by accident. This later became the award-winning, "The Studs Terkel Program." His first book, Giants of Jazz, was published in 1956. Ten years later his first book of oral history interviews, Division Street : America, came out. It was followed by a succession of oral history books on the 1930s Depression, World War Two, race relations, working, the American dream, and aging. His latest book, Will the Circle Be Unbroken : Reflections on Death, Rebirth, and Hunger for a Faith, was published in 2001. Terkel continued to interview people, work on his books, and made public appearances until his death. He was Distinguished Scholar-in-Residence at the Chicago Historical Society.

(Courtesy: http://studsturkel.org)

Today, La Bloga is happy to welcome Juanita Salazar Lamb sharing her experience reading and writing chicana mystery fiction. Great having you with us, Juanita!

One thing about me: I love reading mysteries, and as importantly, I form a bond with the main characters in the story. I’m in love—or maybe it’s just lust—with Jim Chee in Tony Hillerman’s books; I cast myself as the beautiful, rich, but oh-so-lonely female characters in the stories by Mary Higgins Clark. I’m as independent and resourceful as Sue Grafton’s Kinsey Milhone; and I dream of the day I can eat as many doughnuts and blow up as many cars as Janet Evanovich’s Stephanie Plum. Over the years I’ve read hundreds of mysteries featuring Native Americans, Polish American nurses-turned investigators, Hungarian-Italian bounty hunters, WASP girls whose only connection with ethnicity is belonging to a Greek sorority, and even the occasional Latino investigator. Kudos to Rick Riordan for bringing us Tres Navarre, and to Rudolfo Anaya for Sonny Baca.

Another thing about me: I’m a Tejana. I spoke Spanish before I spoke English. My family went to visit the shrine of La Virgen de San Juan del Valle to pay our respects, and marveled at the bright costumes and soul-stirring beat of the drums as los matachines danced in homage of La Virgen. We made tamales for Kreesmas and ate buñuelos as we sipped té de canela on new year’s. On Easter Sunday everybody went to the park for a picnic and broke cascarones on each other’s heads. At the end of the day everybody—even my grandmother—would have a chipote on our heads and our hair was full of confete, harina and bits of broken colored eggshell. Growing up Tejana, I also ate pan de dulce (not pan dulce), crossed the bridge to Mexico for a day of shopping, and still know that Mexican Cokes taste better than Cokes bottled in the US.

So it’s only natural that when I started to write my own mystery series my main character would be a Tejana: Sara Garcia. Unlike Kinsey Milhone who was orphaned as a child and is now a loner by choice, Sara has strong family ties and a strong need to stay connected to her Mamá, Ernesta; and with her friend since high school, Sofía. Though Sara’s family is small—her father died a few years ago, and her sister lives in San Antonio—her familial ties extend beyond blood, which is how familias expand in the Latino community. Sara’s extended family includes Sofía and her husband Frank, and their daughter Mia. Sara’s downstairs neighbor, Annie, fills the role of older sister. Sara’s boyfriend, Bill, a fourth-generation Irish-American whose family still speaks with a brogue, provides Ernesta with hope that Sara will get married and give her muchos nietos.

But other things besides a Spanish last name set Sara García apart from all the other sleuths in the mystery genre, and this is one that I have trouble explaining to non-Hispanic editors and agents. Sara’s motivation for solving murder mysteries is not based on financial compensation or job responsibilities; after all as she is quick to point out she’s “an auditor, not an investigator.” Her commitment comes from her deep Latina roots. We Latinos are raised to help our family—and extension—friends of family. This training starts when we are very small children and our mothers remind us take our younger brother’s hand as we cross the street: “Agárrense de la manita,” my mother would call out to us. We are urged to walk together, not leaving anyone behind, because our mamás know there is strength in unity. When we have a party or family gathering, everyone is invited, not only the little school friend of the birthday boy, but the school friend’s entire familia. As we grow older those lessons learned so many years ago are transferred, and now we are the ones taking the hands of our abuelitos and abuelitas as they struggle with canes and walkers.

I live in Arkansas now, and I recently witnessed something I will never forget: On my way home from work, I drive past the rodeo arena. On a hot Friday evening in July, the rodeo was due to begin within the hour and traffic was heavy on the east-bound street. People attending the rodeo had to park their cars blocks away, cross a busy intersection and walk to the arena. One woman was walking with her mother...and I use the term “with” loosely. The younger woman was in her fifties, and her mother was in her seventies and using a walker. The older lady was struggling to maneuver the rough, uneven sidewalk as her daughter walked five to ten feet ahead of her. The noise of traffic and music coming from the arena would have drowned out the older lady’s voice if she’d fallen and cried to her daughter for help. I probably don’t have to add that they were not Hispanic.

It is with this sense of family and a need to help those in the family that Sara pursues her murder mysteries to conclusion. In the first book, Death at the Rock, Sara’s best friend, Sofía, asks her to solve the murder of her cousin’s girlfriend. Sara has met the cousin before, but remembers him slightly. It is Sara’s sense of duty and responsibility to family that drive her to find the real killer. As Sara sees it, if she does nothing and an innocent man is convicted can she forgive herself?

The relationship between Sara and her mother is not unlike most mother/daughter relationships, but with a Latina twist. The twist being that no matter how old a Latina daughter is, how many children of her own she might have, or how many college degrees she are on her office wall, her mamá will always be her mamá. She is the one Sara goes to when she needs someone to pray for her; when she needs caldo on a cold winter day, and when she needs some té to ease what ails her. Sara will dance with her mamá at Mia’s quinceañera, and will give her a heart full of chocolates for Valentine’s day, knowing her mother will insist on sharing.

In The Corpse Wore Red Lipstick, her second foray into solving murders, it is once again Sara’s sense of family responsibility and devotion to her mother that outweigh her arguments for not getting involved in another murder. When the granddaughter of her mother’s best friend is found murdered and the police have decided it’s the work of a serial killer, Sara’s mother Ernesta brings her in to find the real killer. To the non-Hispanic reader, Sara has no stake in this case. She met the granddaughter at a girls’ night out a few months earlier, but there had been no time to bond with the much-younger woman. But viewing the situation through the lens of Latino family relationships, Sara has a very high stake: her mother’s sense of duty to her friend; her mother’s pride in her daughter’s ability; and the family’s reputation that is firmly established in the barrio: if Sara refuses to help her mother’s friend, word will get around that Sara thinks she is too good for the old neighborhood.

In the third book of the series, Twisted Sister, Sara’s motivation is as old as humans themselves: self-preservation. When Sara is accused of being an accomplice in the armed robbery of a convenience store in her neighborhood, she must go underground until she can find the real perpetrator. In this story of twisted family relationships that reach back into Sara’s family’s past, she also confronts the discrimination and stereotyping that many Latinas face even today. Would Sara even be suspected of holding up a convenience store if she was blond, blue-eyed and her name was Tiffany or Barbie? Would the only eye-witness be so quick to claim that “you all look alike” if Sara were not Latina?

Through my writing, as well as through my own life, I confront the trials and tribulations of a successful, educated Latina living and working in a white, male-dominated world. But take some time out from your world and join Sara Garcia in hers, where it isn’t the guys with the white hats who win, but los nuestros.


Biographical information:
Juanita Salazar Lamb lives in Northwest Arkansas, where she still works as an auditor by day, and writes the Sara Garcia Mystery Series at every other time. She writes under the pen name Teresa Avila.

Click here to read Chapters 1, 2, 3 of Teresa Avila’s Sara Garcia mystery novel, Death at the Rock.


Blogmeister's Note: La Bloga welcomes your own contributions. Please click here, or leave a comment when the inspiration strikes, you catch fire, or something one of us writes moves you to seek an invitation to be our guest. La Bloga welcomes guests, as you note today.

Good Morning:

Well...today is the day after Labor Day, the official end of the summer season. All of the local kids have started their new school year by now and we will be busy celebrating our traditionl "Not Back To School" week!! For any of you that learn at home, you probably know what I'm talking about. For those of you that don't... lots of Home Learners use this week to take advantage of the lack of crowds at places like the beach and Disneyland. We'll head to the beach on Friday!!

We had a very nice BBQ yesterday, just the 5 of us. The usual food was served and I made homemade Boysenberry pie. I used up the last gallon bag I had in the freezer from this years berries. Everyone said it was good, but I just can't bring myself to eat anything with seeds in it. To me, they're like "fruit bones". I do like to have a taste of the juicy crust though, and it was, indeed, very good!!



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I have a few things to do today. I need to call my mom's hospice nurse to refresh some of her prescriptions and I think I'll skip cooking dinner and opt for Subway sandwiches tonight. It's been so hot here lately that I just don't want to turn on the oven tonight. Here in the California desert, we don't have much humidity, but the last couple of weeks has brought temps of 112 with high humidity. Unfortunately, there was only a simple hint of rain and a few claps of thunder in the distance. Just enough to make my whole family grasp at the hope of a good thunderstorm. But alas...nothing more than a poor spit of warm mist for a total of 10 seconds, and it was gone with the wind.

There are times when I long to stand outside in the middle of a good thunderstorm. The static in the air, the smell of rain and dust and electricity... Gosh, I miss that. Having lived in Northwest Arkansas, we were only a few miles away from "Tornado Alley" and we had intense Spring and Summer storms each year. Sometimes I get so tired of the nothingness in the air here at our home in California. But...we do have a roof over our heads and food in the refrigerator, so all is well today.

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For any of you that may be makers and/or collectors of ACEOs, have a look at this awesome frame I found at my local Target ~



It holds five 2-1/2" x 3-1/2" art cards. I haven't been back since I found the frame, and I am hoping that they will have a few more on my next visit.

Until Next Time:
Kim
Garden Painter Art
gnarly-dolls