2.6 Dreaming or Thinking: Cristina Rivera Garza with Kate Marshall and Dominique Vargas (AV)

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ND stages a trialogue this week with MacArthur “Genius” Cristina Rivera Garza and Notre Dame critics Kate Marshall and Dominique Vargas.  Professor Rivera Garza recalls roadtripping through Mexico in a bochito (a Volkswagen). For her, such drives became the mother of literary invention: there was no car radio and when family conversations died down, the window (and not an iPhone) became the screen that occupied her. In a more serious vein, CRG, Kate, and Dominique also discuss the role of linguistic mobility and translation in bringing Rivera Garza’s novels and essays to English-speaking audiences. CRG reflects on how books change when they cross languages and reminds us that the United States is the second largest Spanish-speaking country in the world. This episode productively estranges us from a number of received narratives about national monolingualism and experimental writing.  Professor Rivera Garza rejects the notion of aesthetic individualism and the idealized image of the solitary writer. She declares that language always has plural roots and her work is underpinned by the belief that we only become individuals when community fails.

Mentioned in the Episode

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Audio: Dreaming or Thinking: Cristina Rivera Garza with Kate Marshall and Dominique Vargas

Transcript: ND 2.6 Dreaming or Thinking

7.2 You Write Because You Want to Feel Free: Katie Kitamura and Alexander Manshel (SW) – Novel Dialogue

Although Katie Kitamura feels free when she writes—free from the “soup of everyday life,” from the political realities that weigh upon her, and even at times from the limits of her own thinking—she is keenly aware of the unfreedoms her novels explore. Katie, author of the award-winning Intimacies (2021), talks with critic Alexander Manshel about the darker corners of the human psyche and the inescapable contours of history that shape her fiction. Alexander and Katie explore how she brings these tensions to “the space of interpretation, where the book exists” and places trust in her readers to dwell there thoughtfully. They also discuss the influence of absent men (including Henry James), love triangles, love stories, long books, and titles (hint: someone close to Katie says all her novels could be called Complicity). Stay tuned for Katie’s answer to the signature question, which takes listeners from to the farmlands of Avonlea to the mean streets of Chicago. Mentioned in this episode By Katie Kitamura: Intimacies A Separation Gone to the Forest Japanese for Travelers The Longshot Also mentioned: Flannery O’Connor, “Revelation” Henry James, Portrait of a Lady Garth Greenwell, What Belongs to You Elena Ferrante, The Neapolitan Novels Elsa Morante, Lies and Sorcery Lucy Maud Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables John Steinbeck, East of Eden Theodore Dreiser, An American Tragedy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
  1. 7.2 You Write Because You Want to Feel Free: Katie Kitamura and Alexander Manshel (SW)
  2. 7.1 Etherized: Anne Enright in Conversation with Paige Reynolds (JP)
  3. 6.6 Overtaken by Awe: Sheila Heti speaks with Sunny Yudkoff
  4. 6.5 Attention is Love: A Discussion with Lauren Groff and Laura McGrath (SW)
  5. 6.4 “We All Relate to Each Other’s Dystopias”
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Associate Professor of English - Duke University

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