Susana Chavez-Silverman

Chávez-Silverman received her undergraduate degree in Spanish from University of California, Irvine in 1977, graduating magna cum laude. She continued her education at Harvard University where, in 1979, she received her master's degree in Romance Languages. In 1991, Chávez-Silverman received her PhD in Spanish from the University of California, Davis. Her dissertation was titled The Ex-Centric Self: The Poetry of Alejandra Pizarnik.[1] Chávez-Silverman previously taught at University of California, Santa Cruz, University of California, Berkeley, University of California, Irvine, University of California, Davis, and the University of South Africa.[1]

Chávez-Silverman, born to a Jewish Hispanist father, Joseph H. Silverman, and language teacher June Chávez, was raised in a bilingual and bicultural atmosphere between Los Angeles, Madrid and Guadalajara, Mexico. After completing her education, traveling a great deal, and living in Boston, Berkeley, Los Angeles, Spain and South Africa, she now resides in Claremont, California, where she is professor of Spanish, Latino/a and Latin American Studies in the Department of Romance Languages and Literature at Pomona College.[2] Chávez-Silverman specializes in gender and sexuality studies, autobiography/memoir, Latin American and U.S. Latina/Chicana literature, poetry, and feminist pedagogy. She has written and coauthored several books on these topics.

Chávez-Silverman writes in a style in that code-switches seamlessly between English and Spanish, without translation of either language. The style includes, for instance, “clever bilingual wordplay, such as ‘feliz’ (happy) to refer to homosexuals, and ‘anygüey’ for ‘anyway.’ Mixed in are countless Latin-American regionalisms, joking phonetic spellings and faux translations, such as ‘ternura’ for ‘tenure.’ ‘I know, ya se, mama,’ she writes.”[3]

David Newman of the New Delta Review asks: What exactly is a crónica, and why do you choose to write in this style?

Susana Chávez-Silverman: “Let’s just say, it chose me. Crónica translates as ‘chronicle.’ When I began writing in this style, in a terribly hot, humid Buenos Aires summer (February 2001), I was trying to capture some of the local flavor, the barrios and smells and sounds, the ways of being of the highly idiosyncratic, porteño cityscape that I had begun to love—to feel, even, more of a sense of belonging in than I’d felt in almost any other place in the world—but also found mysterious, frustrating, and sometimes hilarious, often all at once. I was writing as a kind of reminder to my close friend Pablo ‘Hugo’ Zambrano, who is from Spain, and had come to spend several weeks with us in Buenos Aires. Somehow, having a partner-in-crime, someone bilingual, yet foreign, decidedly non-Argentine spurred me to create an experimental text, kind of an amalgam, or mestizaje, a blend of short story, reportage, and a bit of prose poetry, in the form of an e-mail letter, to remind Hugo of some of our adventures, on the eve of his return to Spain.

Killer Cronicas: Bilingual Memories, which I wrote for Hugo, was one of the first pieces I wrote in this style. I decided to title it—and subsequent e-mail missives—a crónica, inspired by the somewhat rough-hewn, journalistic, often fantastic first-hand accounts of the so-called New World sent “home” by the early Spanish conquistadores, and refashioned by modern-day counterparts such as the Mexicans Carlos Monsiváis, Elena Poniatowska, Cristina Pacheco, and the Chilean Pedro Lemebel, whose writing I admire.

This is a form that works for me. It gives me a sense of both containment (due to its relatively short length) and freedom, flexibility. Like Saturn and Jupiter, both of which are prominent in my natal chart! The crónica can vary widely in subject matter and style, but central to its project is a keenly observing eye/I; close attention to detail; a sense of humor (I almost always relieve some of my more emo-moments with laughter, often at my own expense); a sense of the fantastic or uncanny, even in the most everyday; and a desire to connect with an often explicitly-acknowledged interlocutor."[4]

Chávez-Silverman's first bilingual creative nonfiction work, Killer Crónicas: Bilingual Memories, was published by the University of Wisconsin Press in 2004.[5] This collection of chronicles began in 2001, after the US National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) awarded Chávez-Silverman a fellowship for a project on contemporary Argentine women's poetry. She spent thirteen months in Buenos Aires where, in addition to research and writing on her official (academic) book, she began to send bilingual, punning "letters from the southern [cone] front" to colleagues and friends by email. For an interview with the Pomona College Magazine, Chávez-Silverman said, "Living in Buenos Aires, that gorgeous, turn of the century city in a country on the brink of (economic) collapse—home to many of the authors and artists I had long admired (Jorge Luis Borges, Julio Cortázar, Alfonsina Storni, Alejandra Pizarnik, and before them the foundational Romantics, Domingo Faustino Sarmiento and Echeverría)—brought out a sense of self, displaced yet oddly at home, in a cultural, linguistic and even tangible way. In Buenos Aires, the fragmented parts of me, the voices, cultures, and places inside of me rubbed up against each other and struck fire. I called my email missives "Crónicas," inspired by the somewhat rough-hewn, journalistic, often fantastic first-hand accounts sent "home" by the early conquistadores, and refashioned by modern-day counterparts such as Carlos Monsiváis, Elena Poniatowska, and Cristina Pacheco."[6] One of Chávez-Silverman's crónicas, "Anniversary Crónica," inspired by the June 16 anniversary of both her parents' wedding and that of the so-called "Soweto Riots" in South Africa, was awarded First prize in Personal Memoir in the 2002 "Chicano Literary Excellence Contest" sponsored by the literary magazine El Andar.

In 2010, Chávez-Silverman published her second collection of "crónicas." Scenes from la Cuenca de Los Angeles y otros Natural Disasters "follow[s] Chávez-Silverman’s personal history, from California to South Africa and Australia and back, from unfathomable loss to deeply felt joy."[7]

Chávez-Silverman's most recent publication, Heartthrob: Del Balboa Cafe al Apartheid and Back, 2019, "weaves together English and Spanish to lay bare the raw intensity and true fragility of love."[8] The book is a "love story for the ages" in Silverman's typical "crónica" format, "based on detailed diary entries and confessional letters to family and friends," and deals with themes of belonging, migration, and South Africa under apartheid.[9]

• Interview with Daniel Olivas on ”La Bloga”, April 19, 2010
• When Pressed, May 2009
• Podcast from the Central Library panel discussion, w/Ilan Stavans et al, from 21 Oct, 2010
• Audio Recordings from “Killer Crónicas,” read by the author (October 2010)
• Audio recordings from “Killer Crónicas” and “Scenes from la Cuenca de Los Angeles y otros Natural Disasters,” read by the author (June 2010)
• RALPH Review of Killer Crónicas
• RALPH Best of the best 2010 (Scenes)
• Life in Spanglish review by Christina Burgos
• Mention of KC and links to KC audiofiles in Francois Grosjean’s BLOG (13-I-11)

• Huffington Post
• Los Angeles Public Library Podcast
• Here On Earth Radio Without Borders Interview
• The University of Wisconsin Press
• La Bloga: Interview with Susana Chavez-Silverman
• When Pressed
• PORTAL Journal of Multidisciplinary International Studies, Vol 3, No 2 (2006): Oda a la ambigüedad Crónica
• SLAB Issue 3 Archives
• Killer Cronicas: Bilingual Memories
• The Best Books of 2010
• Life in Spanglish
• Psychology Today: Life as a Bilingual
• Pomona College
• Bookshelf: Voices de Amor