Trujillo, Carla (Mari)

views updated

TRUJILLO, Carla (Mari)

PERSONAL:

Born in NM. Education: University of California, Davis, B.S. (human development); University of Wisconsin, Madison, M.S., Ph.D. (educational psychology).

ADDRESSES:

Home—Berkeley, CA. Office—Graduate Opportunity Program, Graduate Division, University of California, 316 Sproul Hall No. 5900, Berkeley, CA 94720-5900. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER:

Writer, editor, and administrator. University of California, Berkeley, Graduate Division, director of Graduate Opportunity Program. Lecturer at University of California at Berkeley, Mills College, and San Francisco State University. Women in Engineering Programs and Advocates Network, member of board of directors.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Lambda Book Award for best lesbian anthology, and Out/Write Vanguard Award for best pioneering contribution to the field of gay/lesbian lifestyle literature, both 1995, both for ChicanaLesbians: The Girls Our Mothers Warned Us About; Miguel Marmol Prize for first book of fiction written by a Latina/o writer, 2003, for What Night Brings.

WRITINGS:

(Editor) Chicana Lesbians: The Girls Our Mothers Warned Us About (fiction, poetry, essays, and interviews), Third Woman Press (Berkeley, CA), 1991.

(Editor and author of introduction) Living Chicana Theory (essays), Third Woman Press (Berkeley, CA), 1998.

What Night Brings (novel), Curbstone Press (Willimantic, CT), 2003.

Also author of short stories and articles.

WORK IN PROGRESS:

Another novel.

SIDELIGHTS:

"I grew up surrounded by injustice on every level: in my own home, at school, my neighborhood, my country," recalled writer Carla Trujillo in an interview with Jordan Messier on the Curbstone Press Web site. "I noticed this, and it intrigued me. Being a very curious child, I began wondering how this worked. Perhaps on some level, in my adult life and in my art, I'm trying to figure out and undo some of the injustice I witnessed as a child." To this end, Trujillo has edited two volumes devoted to Chicana writers, Chicana Lesbians: The Girls Our Mothers Warned Us About and Living Chicana Theory, and has also written the 2003 coming-of-age novel What Night Brings.

In Chicana Lesbians Trujillo, who is herself a Chicana lesbian, attempts to discover the situation of lesbians in U.S. culture. Reviewing the work in Signs, Alicia Gaspar de Alba felt that this "first such anthology … is not a solitary spiderweb suspended in a literary void." In sections such as "The Life," "The Desire," "The Struggle," and "The Color," contributors investigate various aspects of the Chicana lesbian experience.

Living Chicana Theory, again edited by Trujillo, features authors such as historian Deena J. Gonzalez, who writes about the experiences of Chicana lesbians and feminists at conferences where they face "invisibility," as Marie-Elise Wheatwind described it in the Women's Review of Books. Gaspar de Alba also contributes a fictionalized interview with Sor Juana Inez de la Cruz, a seventeenth-century Mexican cultural icon, and speculates that Sor Juana may have been a lesbian. Other writers featured in the anthology include Gloria Anzaldua and Cherrie Moraga. Reviewing the volume in the Women's Review of Books, Wheatwind praised its voices that "speak to Chicanas both inside and outside the academy." Wheatwind further noted that the book "offers living testimony that Chicana feminists have made significant gains but also have different needs and paths." Writing in Lambda Book Report, Terri de la Peña called Living Chicana Theory a "landmark" work.

With the 2003 title What Night Brings, Trujillo ventures into fiction for the first time. Writing in the Lambda Book Report, Trujillo explained the genesis of her fiction writing: "I had an idea for the start of a novel, but not much else. My fiction writing skills were so poor that I felt I was in first grade learning to write again. I sat down and started writing, and though I knew my work was rough, I still wrote. At first I felt I could only write what was autobiographical. It was easier for me. I gave myself permission to write only what I knew. What I saw later, was that I was giving myself my first lesson." Trujillo continued to grow in her writing, influenced by authors such as Toni Morrison and William Faulkner, and she also took some writing workshops and classes. Soon she was allowing herself to invent on the page, moving away from pure autobiography.

The result is What Night Brings, "a lively, picaresque tale, told in the world-weary but ever hopeful voice of twelve-year-old Marci Cruz," as a contributor to Publishers Weekly observed. Marci is the daughter of a passive-aggressive father, who alternately beats and embraces his children, and manages to fool his wife, Delia, about his drinking and womanizing. Marci learns how to outwit her father, even attempting to take photos of him with his girlfriends. She also is coming into her own sexually, finding herself attracted to other girls.

A reviewer for Publishers Weekly felt that in Trujillo's debut novel "the lesbian undercurrents are subtle and touching, by no means doctrinaire." In Kirkus Reviews a critic found What Night Brings more polemical, concluding that it is "decently told and fairly engaging, but suffused with a hatred of men so palpable that it might have been written by Andrea Dworkin." Wheatwind, reviewing the novel in the Women's Review of Books, called it "the most forthright coming-of-age story that I've read from the Chicana/Latina lesbian literary community." Fernando Ortiz, Jr., writing in Hispanic, felt that "endurance, bravery, compassion, and intelligence are the best traits of any protagonist, and Trujillo's Marci Cruz is a perfect combination of those and many more." Ortiz concluded, "This novel is an admirable introduction to Carla Trujillo, a writer to watch."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Hispanic, May, 2003, Fernando Ortiz, Jr., review of What Night Brings, p. 66.

Kirkus Reviews, February 15, 2003, review of What Night Brings, p. 267.

Lambda Book Report, December, 1998, Terri de la Peña, review of Living Chicana Theory, p. 22; June, 1999, Carla Trujillo, "The Writing Life: No Excuses," p. 18; April-July, 2003, Terri de la Peña, review of What Night Brings, p. 22; December, 2003-January, 2004, Lisa C. Moore, "Carla Trujillo Is Funny, Feisty, and Smart" (interview), p. 13.

Library Journal, March 15, 2003, Mary Margaret Benson, review of What Night Brings, p. 117.

Publishers Weekly, April 14, 2003, review of What Night Brings, p. 51.

Signs, summer, 1993, Alicia Gaspar de Alba, "Tortillerismo: Work by Chicana Lesbians," pp. 956-963.

Women's Review of Books, September, 1998, Marie-Elise Wheatwind, review of Living Chicana Theory, p. 18; May, 2003, Wheatwind, review of What Night Brings, p. 18.