LatinaLista — It’s not often that an established Latino author interviews a rising Latina author before an appreciative audience but that’s what happened during the 2012 Chicago Humanities Festival.
2005 Pulitzer Prize finalist for nonfiction and member of the Latino Literature Hall of Fame, Luis Alberto Urrea, sat down with Cristina Henríquez, the author of the short story collection Come Together, Fall Apart, which was a New York Times Editors’ Choice selection.
After playfully proclaiming his envy of Henriquez for being featured in The New Yorker, a feat he has yet to accomplish, Urrea has Henriquez share her journey into writing.
For Henriquez, the Latina experience is one of dualism, rooted both in her father’s native Panama and in the United States. In both the novel The World in Half and the story collection Come Together, Fall Apart, she plumbs Panamanians and Panamanian-Americans’ perspectives with nuance and grace.
As the conversation continues, both authors treat the audience to a shared experience of what it’s like to write from the Latino experience and the inevitable responsibility of daring to do so.
