Topic: A Bullhorn for First Nations: The Artist as Messenger of a Fragile World’s Survival
Abstract:
My fiction is inspired by the Concáac-Seri people of Northern Mexico and the Mapuche of Southern Chile, whose struggles for sea turtle conservation and water rights, respectively, require more serious international attention. I will discuss how by following and not leading, by listening deeply and writing respectfully, the artist can help magnify voices whose reach has been thwarted by many layers of oppression, and whose struggles affect us all.
Biography:
Professor Gloria Estela González Zenteno was born and raised in Guadalajara, Mexico. She has a Licenciatura in Hispanic literatures from the Universidad Autónoma de Guadalajara, an M.A. and a Master’s degree in Latin American literature from the Stony Brook University, and an M.F.A. in creative writing from the Solstice program. An avid slow traveler (not a tourist!), she has lived in Frankfurt (Germany), New York City, La Paz (Mexico) and Cagliari (Italy). She looks forward to moving to Puerto Vallarta, Barcelona, and / or Amsterdam for her next sabbatical.
Professor González has published extensively on the function of animal imagery and the figures of the reader, the writer and the sweep of literary traditions in Augusto Monterroso (Guatemala) and Juan José Arreola (Mexico).
But her passion is in creative writing. She writes in English and Spanish about characters that stand in the intersections of diverse sexualities and natural environments. Her creative work is featured in the Barcelona Review, Cronopio, Flyway, The Fem, the Revista Mexicana de Literatura Contemporánea, Salon, and Solstice Literary Magazine. Her current project, The Age of Aquarius, is a memoir about being gay in conservative Mexican and American societies. At Middlebury, Professor González teaches fiction and nonfiction, Latin American and Latino narrative, and all levels of Spanish language. She lives with her wife, her children, their dog and two cats.
On her free time she likes bailar, pasear, conversar y bien comer.