UHwriting prof wins $625K ‘genius grant’
Cristina Rivera Garza — an award-winning novelist, poet, editor, translator and educator — has been named one of 21 recipients of a MacArthur Fellowship. Rivera Garza is a distinguished professor in Hispanic Studies and a director of the creative writing programat the University of Houston.
Rivera Garza didn’t take the MacArthur call at first Tuesday morning— she didn’t recognize the number. She received an email asking for information about another candidate. “So I finally answered, and they delivered the news. It was quite a shock,” she said. “But it was wonderful news to receive, especially during a time like this.”
Rivera Garza’s work is remarkable for its breadth. She has published several novels, poetry collections and short story collections. She also has written three books of nonfiction, translated poetry from Spanish to English, and edited multiple anthologies. Herwork has been translated into at least five languages, and she has earned literary awards in France and Germany.
This week she published an English-language edition of “Grieving: Dispatches From a Wounded Country,” a collection of reported pieces and essays about violence along the border between the United States and Mexico.
Established in 1981 by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the MacArthur Fellowship, often called a “genius grant,” bears a $625,000 prize paid quarterly over the span of five years. The program’s prize is presented with a “no strings attached” policy, allowing the fellows the freedom to follow their own creative and intellectual visions.
“What I’m most excited about with her receiving the MacArthur Fellowship is that now the Englishspeaking world sees what the Spanish-speaking world has seen all along,” said Raúl Ramos, a history professor at the University of Houston. “She has a sensitivity and insight into the border experience across all lines — gender, class and indigeneity. She understands the primal importance of language to identity and human experience.”
Beginnings
Rivera Garza, 56, was born in Matamoros in the Mexican state of Tamaulipas in 1964.
“Having grown up on the border elicits many questions about limits,” she said, “about where differences are established and why.”
She kne was a child “that Iwanted to write, that itwas a goal in life. But I also knew it would be a difficult road ahead.”
Rivera Garza moved to the United States in 1989, and between 1990 and 1995 she studied at the University of Houston, where she earned amaster’s degree and then a Ph.D. in Latin American history.
In 1999 she published her first novel, “Nadiemeverá llorar” (“No One Will See Me Cry”), which drew on her history and background to tell a story inspired by La Castañeda asylum about the treatment of mental illness in Mexico in the early 20th century.
“Her research was always heavy and deep,” said Nicolás Kanellos, a professor of Hispanic
studies at UH and director of Arte Público Press.
Her work probes deep questions about identity and race, about home and place.
“I knew I was trying to grapple with complex issues and huge questions,” Rivera Garza said. “And it’s hard to approach those questions using tools from just one discipline. So I tried working with inter-disciplinary queries, and trans-disciplinary, crossgenre writings. I was always interrogating my own tools hoping for an exploration of the world in which we live.”
Rivera Garza returned to Houston in 2016 when she was hired as
a distinguished professor in the Department of Hispanic Studies at the University of Houston. The following year she became the director of UH’s Ph.D. program in creative writing in Spanish.
‘Sees this as amission’
“Her creativewriting in Spanish program has revolutionized the Hispanic studies department,” Kanellos said. “It has grown quickly, and we’ve been able to recruit students from all over, coming to study here. It quickly became a competitive program to get into.”
Ramos was impressed with how Rivera Garza’s work extends fromher students at the university
to teaching creative writing to Spanish-speaking kids in primary school.
“She sees this as a mission,” he said. “And she brings this deep understanding of language and its social and political importance in our time. There couldn’t be a more important moment for this kind of recognition.”
The fellowship should drive a larger readership toward a writer that author Jonathan Lethem called “one of Mexico’s greatest.” Her two most recent novels — “The Iliac Crest” in 2017 and “The Taiga Syndrome” in 2018 — both drew strong notices for their lyrical language and innovative storytelling.
“This is not a fairy tale, detective,” a character says in “The Taiga Syndrome.” Rivera Garcia strikes an ominous tone that conveys an understanding of mystery and fairy tale forms, while using them as a starting point for a path all her own.
Ideally her translated work will find greater distribution in the States, as Lethem commented, “We are just barely beginning to catch up to what she has to offer.”
In addition to the recognition, the fellowship offers Rivera Garza opportunity to further her writing, research and outreach.
“All of this work requires travel and research of all kinds,” she said.
Houston has had only a handful of MacArthur Fellows over the years. Poet Edward Hirsch was years into a creative writing position at the University of Houston when he was named a MacArthur fellow in 1997, though he left Houston five years later. Houston native and jazz pianist Jason Moran was awarded a fellowship in 2010. Though hewas living in New York, Moran seeded a period of study into the history, and musical history, of his hometown during his fiveyears of MacArthur funding.
“It allowed me freedom to study more, to think more about art and music and history,” Moran told the Chronicle at the time.
Rick Lowe — who revitalized parts of Third Ward with his Project Row Houses— was selected as a MacArthur fellow in 2014 for his work that braided together art, history and community.
Thomas Wilson Mitchell, 55, a law scholar at Texas A&M, was also named a 2020 MacArthur fellow.
Rivera Garza hopes to further engage readers and students in an expansive dialog about the themes that have informed her work for years.
“This country is such a diverse place with manifold stories from all over the place,” she said. “To me, writing is just a way of connecting.”
And through that connection, Ramos says, she can strike on a theme of hope.
“She writes about resilience and about survival,” he said. “So she’s a beacon for the future.”