A childhood full of stories in the Mission
The child of Nicaraguan immigrants, Norman Zelaya was born in San Francisco in 1972 and grew up in the Mission District, the setting for his new debut book, “Orlando and Other Stories” (Pochino Press).
Zelaya’s family lived at the corner of Valencia and 19th streets. “At one point, it was my parents, myself, my brothers — that’s six of us right there — my grandmother, my uncle, and then like six cousins, all living in this one bedroom,” he said by phone. “At night we’d all be in bed, and it was just talking, with my grandmother talking all the time, just telling stories, and my uncle telling stories, and that’s how I went to sleep — just listening to stories.
“A lot of what I do begins with an oral history; it begins with me going up to the microphone and talking, or among friends, talking, and telling a story. Which is different than writing it, but the voices and the conversations and the exchanges are important for me to hear out loud, and that’s what I try to translate into the story; I try to reproduce those cadences, those particular things that identify people when they speak.”
Zelaya spent much of his youth playing games with other kids in the empty lot across the street (now a condominium) and in the park. “Walking down the street gives me all kinds of ideas for what I want to say,” he said. “Recently, it’s been about the homeless, and it’s been about immigrant communities, and it’s been about the struggles as a teacher in San Francisco who’s been here all his life, doing a job that isn’t supported by this new tech economy. It’s about people trying to do right, who are just trying to be happy, just trying to get along.”
A special education teacher in the San Francisco Unified School District for more than 20 years, Zelaya graduated from UC Berkeley and received his MFA from San Francisco State, where he met Darren de Léon and Paul S. Flores; the three founded the poetry performance troupe Los Delicados, which in 2000 released the album “Word Descarga.”
“When I got into college and was still writing,” Zelaya said, “and learning a little more about myself and about my place, at that point it became about documenting what we live through; it became about validating those experiences in San Francisco, that were just as important as the Beats, or any other literary movement, or anybody else. The Mission is just as important as Sea Cliff, or Pacific Heights or City Hall; these are real people living real lives, and I wanted to tell the story so folks could understand our world.”
Zelaya’s high school English teacher, Maryanne S. Berry, will introduce her former student. He’ll be joined by Flores, Arisa White and Arlene Biala.