Pacific Lutheran University
Wednesday, February 22, 2012
The Writer’s Story: 3:30PM,
The Garfield Book Company
Reading: 7PM,
The Regency Room
Wendy Call is a recent writer in residence at Cornell College, Harborview Medical Center, New College of Florida, and Seattle University. She is co-editor of Telling True Stories: A Nonfiction Writers’ Guide, author of No Word for Welcome: The Mexican Village Faces the Global Economy, and a translator of Mexican poetry and short fiction. Before becoming a full-time writer and editor in 2000, she devoted a decade to grassroots organizing in Seattle and Boston. She taught writing at Pacific Lutheran University in 2008-2009.
On No Word for Welcome
Locals know the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, the 120-mile-wide strip of land that connects the Yucatan Peninsula to Oaxaca and Veracruz, as "Mexico's little waist." The region is a hotbed of environmental and economic issues, such as the industrial shrimp farming that threatens to leave behind "the coastal equivalent of a desert." Drawing on research, extensive interviews, and firsthand experiences living there in the early 2000s, Call, a translator of Mexican poetry and fiction, portrays villagers' traditional ways of life in the throes of massive change. (A Wal-Mart has already set up shop.) She cites Huatulco, a former fishing village, as foreshadowing what may lie in store for the isthmus: "more than 51,000 acres of beach, field, and forest became federal government property, controlled by FONATUR, the national tourism development agency." Villagers were expropriated, and two residents who refused to leave their homes wound up murdered. Call is never dry or academic; rather, she writes lively narrative, detailed description, and engaging scenes that render her subjects--a schoolteacher, fishermen, activists--three-dimensional. By relating the lives and concerns of isthmus dwellers and the struggles they face, the author raises awareness of globalization's effects on the village economy.
Praise for Wendy Call
“Call is never dry or academic; rather, she writes lively narrative, detailed description, and engaging scenes that render her subjects--a schoolteacher, fishermen, activists--three-dimensional. By relating the lives and concerns of isthmus dwellers and the struggles they face, the author raises awareness of globalization's effects on the village economy.”
-Publishers Weekly
“Fascinating. Beautifully written. Deeply researched. With sensitivity and respect, Wendy Call has written about the modernization of a centuries-old community. It’s a story happening everywhere, including our own backyard. This is a book written with humility, bravery, and wisdom, and honors those who trusted the writer with their incredible stories.”
-Sandra Cisneros, author of House of Mango Street
“A terrific read. Wendy Call has reported passionately and written sensitively about the people of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec one of Mexico s great cultural repositories at a crossroads in their history. That there are no easy answers to the dilemmas of modernity and cultural authenticity is the painful conclusion she draws us to, in one engaging episode after another.”
-Alma Guillermoprieto, author of The Heart that Bleeds
“Wendy Call has a big, pertinent story to tell globalization and she does a marvelous job of bringing it to life. On every level, the work succeeds. She has merged an enormous amount of investigation with a graceful belletristic tone, ferreting out the subject's contradictions and complexities. It’s a beautiful job.”
-Phillip Lopate, editor of The Art of the Personal Essay
“Wendy Call's book offers us much more than a personal view of the people in the Isthmus of Tehuantepec. She challenges mythologies about this region of Mexico and provides a vital assessment of the current state and collective concerns of indigenous people who are resisting globalization. Her work is illuminating.”
--Elena Poniatowska, author of Here’s to You, Jesusa!
“No Word for Welcome maps the complexities of Mexican lives, and also of the human heart. Wendy Call s narrative gorgeously tells the stories of people who have held on to their families, cultures, and identities despite the encroachment of our global world.”
--Loung Ung, author of First They Killed My Father