Calapiz Stela. Peninsula 360 Press.
More than ten years ago, Casa Círculo Cultural emerged, a space made to bring Latin American culture to this part of the Bay Area. The sense of this project was -and still is- that our families have a place to belong and that their children and the new generations do not forget their mother tongue through art, theater, music, creative writing workshops, craft workshops, community living such as clubs, film debate, book club and radio programs.
Community work is done through volunteerism. At first, as you can see, this goal seemed distant and ambitious, but it was achieved with the effort of many people and with the tenacity of its director who has not given up, to date, to achieve the initial task.
This time I'll talk about how it started "The Creative Writing Workshop" and the benefits it has provided to the migrant family community living in this part of California. I will tell you how the idea of involving these women in writing came about: it came from the need to create a space for free expression by observing mothers waiting for their children to leave the workshops offered at The Cultural Circle HouseThe women began to form a group in which they talked spontaneously, a situation that led us to think that this socialization could be channeled into some benefit for this group. It was then that the project to start learning to write arose.
The origin of these women was varied: one or two came from El Salvador, Guatemala, Peru, different states of the Mexican Republic; as well as their schooling: there were women who barely counted elementary school, others had reached high school and one or two had a profession. It was a somewhat uneven group, but each one, at her own level, was able to start writing short stories, other texts, such as poetic prose, some verses, some songs. The compendium of the small writings was the publication of a book. Some even wrote their own book.
The work that was done did not try to teach everything that they needed, but how to achieve enthusiasm and create in these women: love and esteem for knowledge, reading and self-criticism, and also to work with their self-esteem when seeing their writings published. For some, this workshop was basically about learning new words and getting them to start reading.
Readers will wonder why write? I will tell them that writing is a craft that can be learned - although being a writer is another matter - but from there you can discover a writer, a woman who would never have realized it if she had not tried.
If you want to write, you can, but first you must know the techniques of a trade as old as man, for example, that of storyteller, and all these women had much to tell; because a story can take many forms: that of a letter, a story or a novel, that of a song, or a biography. Writing also is a cultural tool that facilitates cognitive development, rescues memory and privileges power. According to the cognitive conception, writing is a process that requires the active participation of the writer who must apply very complex mental operations: planning, writing and reviewing.
In conclusion, I will say that the purpose of this writing workshop was not to be a school for training writers, but rather a laboratory for literary creation. Spaces of relationship between people of the community, of dialogue, of help to the people who have just arrived to the United States, place of exchange where doubts are solved, insecurities are filed and one learns to move in this culture and to learn a new language.
I would like to tell you that during this time of confinement, in order to continue with the Project, the Book Club has been created virtually, a space where we have begun to read famous writers, of course little by little, and we have also read our own writings. "The Writing Workshop" or now "The Book Club" where more people of either sex are already attending, is the place where you finally meet people with common interests, with whom you can give your opinion, share your tastes and inclinations, but also your anxieties and obsessions, those of each and every one.
In this space you can not only share with people of sexual diversity, but also with people of different ages, older or younger than you, more or less wise, more or less capable, better or worse; just as it happens in your daily life. With these workshop partners, you will achieve belonging and closeness with like-minded people whom you will end up knowing very well. In this way we will learn to respect different opinions: they will not necessarily be complacent and flattering, but they will be critical and sometimes merciless when it comes to making judgments on the topics that are written or read.
To Finish: Here is this text by Gilles Deleuze:
"Literature is beside the formless, the unfinished... Writing is a matter with becoming, always unfinished, always in progress, and overflowing with any living or experienced matter."
