By Melissa Nunez, written in March 2022
Victoria Buitron is an Ecuadorian writer and translator who resides in Connecticut. She is a graduate of the Fairfield University MFA program and writes in a range of styles from flash fiction pieces that can be found in Litro Magazine and Latinx Lit Audio Mag, to her debut book A Body Across Two Hemispheres: A Memoir in Essays, which came out in March 2022.
In this memoir, Victoria comes of age between Ecuador and the United States as she explores her ancestry, learns two languages, and searches for a place she can call home. It portrays not only the immigrant experience, but the often-overlooked repatriate experience while interweaving facets of depression, family history, and self-love.
On a Sunday of fresh fallen snow in Connecticut and uncomfortable cold in South Texas, Victoria and I met through Zoom to talk about writing life.
Melissa: I love learning what texts and authors other writers find inspiring. What are some of your favorite books? Who are some women writers who have inspired you?
Victoria: One of the people that has most inspired me is Colombian author Adriana Páramo. She was a professor in my MFA program and the first person who told me I should submit my work. I think that I really needed her presence throughout the MFA program to find confidence in myself. She writes about family, immigration, culture shock, and being a Latina—not just in the United States, but throughout the world. I strongly connect to all of that. I also think about Jaquira Díaz, who wrote the book Ordinary Girls. For a long time, I felt like my life was ordinary, and she helped me see that within everyone’s ordinary lives extraordinary things happen. That motivated me to continue writing about my life. I also want to mention Morgan Jerkins. Her memoir is composed of different styles of essay and goes back and forth in time. That inspired me to focus on location over chronological order in my own book. In reading these contemporary works by contemporary writers, I realized that I was capable of achieving my writing goals.
Melissa: I love that ordinary/extraordinary dichotomy and admire writing that can take something a general audience might find boring and make it just the opposite. Writers who, through voice and style, make so much more of a topic than what is on the surface.
What is your favorite part about being a writer?
Victoria: My favorite part is writing that first draft. I have so much fun with it. There’s a little phrase I use when I start writing. Sometimes, I even write it on a sticky note and put it next to me. It says: You are writing on paper, not on rock. It reminds me that on this paper I can do so many things. I can take that route; I can take this other path. Who knows where it is going to lead me today? The process of creation is so much fun. It’s always a surprise. The draft might not become anything substantial by the end of the day, but maybe I’ll go back to it in the future and find a little spark I can use to continue working. The possibilities are infinite.
Melissa: That is a great mindset to have. I’m trying to lean into that methodology. I’ve always been a first draft editor, constantly reviewing and revising, which makes it difficult to get very far. I like this focus of just getting it out on the page first. Definitely more productive.
Victoria: I think a lot of times when we first start writing we might already be thinking about submitting and achieving perfection from the get-go. But it’s so hard. Nothing is perfect in general, but it’s so hard to have something that you consider perfect in the first draft. So, I just let go of that. For me, the first draft equals fun. That’s it. I will worry about the rest later. Sometimes you don’t even know the purpose of the piece until after writing it. You start off writing about X and end up with D. Sometimes your subconscious has other ideas.
Melissa: Finding fun in the process is an excellent approach. I can see how you would get so much more out of the writing experience that way. I’m working on putting that positivity into practice, but still find it difficult at times. What do you find is the most difficult part of the writing process?
Victoria: The most difficult part is knowing when a piece is ready. I think that is what I struggle with the most. There are times when I finish something and feel it is ready, and then a few days later change my mind. I think that now, with a little more experience, with more writing, it’s become easier. But it still happens sometimes. I feel like there’s a fine line, but I have very good writer and nonwriter friends that review my work. They are very honest with me. And it’s not about what is good or bad. It’s about meeting your focus for the piece. If somebody I trust reads my work and my vision for the piece isn’t coming through, then I need to go back to the drawing board. Getting to that point can be difficult.
Melissa: It is so helpful when you have friends or a writing group to be those sounding boards for you. A very beneficial resource. Is there anything else you find especially helpful, specifics you need to have a productive writing session?
Victoria: In the beginning I would say that I could not write unless it was with pen and paper, and I think that really limited me. I work a 9–5 job, so I mostly write evenings or on the weekends. If I was on my break and had an idea, I’d tell myself to remember that starting point for my evening writing session, but by then it would be gone. Now when the muse strikes, I can write something on my phone really quick. I would not have thought this was possible a few years ago. I had to train myself to write anywhere. If I limited myself to a specific environment, I wouldn’t be able to write as much. There are writers who have specific rituals, and I understand that need to help the transition into a writing atmosphere. But you should try to save that closed-off environment for editing. I believe this has allowed me to be more creative.
Melissa: I have had to learn that as well. To take notes on my phone and sometimes even actual drafting, because if not the writing won’t happen. I’ve found this flexibility has helped me get more writing done.
Victoria: I think it has been a process to learn that. You don’t learn that from the get-go. It’s tough.
Melissa: Have you experimented with literary translation, or is it mostly business/professional?
Victoria: Mostly professional, business translation. That’s what I do with my 9–5. I have done some literary translations for fun in the past, but never something that has been published. I do want to venture into that, though. The last four years I have been focused on finishing my memoir and working to get exposure for the book. But I want to dabble with literary translation in the future.
Melissa: Is there a genre you prefer? A writer you feel you’d really want to translate yourself?
Victoria: I would love to focus on Ecuadorian writers because I feel like that is missing, especially the poetry. There is so much beautiful Spanish poetry from my country.
Melissa: That would be wonderful. I have always been intrigued by the craft of translation, especially in poetry, because there is such an art to preserving the rhythm and sound of the language. Not that those qualities are not present in prose, but they can be more amplified in poetry, especially the shorter pieces.
I loved the concept of memoir in essays and found myself really taken by the titles in your book. How do you decide on titles for your works? Is it something you find difficult, or does it fall naturally into place for you?
Victoria: I love that question because I feel that one of my weaknesses is titles. The first piece that I ever published was accepted on the condition that I change the title. It’s a skill I’ve had to work on. What I learned from one of my MFA professors was to work on the title last. Don’t let a title mold the essay. Write the essay first. Even my book went through many different titles. I always feel like my pieces are prone to changing as I’m writing, and a title I started out with might not make it to the end. It is hard for me. I don’t think about it as I’m writing. Or editing. I still think titles are so much fun because you have to be creative. The title is the first thing that people read, and you want to grab a potential reader’s attention.
Melissa: Yes. And it’s also a balance between grabbing that attention and then living up to the promise. I think you do that very well in your memoir. Is there an essay title that is your favorite from the collection?
Victoria: I really like “Let It Burn.” It doesn’t give too much away, but it is powerful. The essay is about something very cultural. When I was growing up, I thought that on all South American countries celebrated New Year’s Eve with a monigote, placing it in the middle of the street and burning it to ash at midnight. With a flash piece like this, where the content can be 300 words or 100 words, the title has to be very strong.
Melissa: There is a theme of otherness in your writing. Not only in your book, but in pieces like “Thin Ice.” How has it felt to reflect upon this in your writing?
Victoria: Otherness was one of the driving factors for writing this book. When I was growing up, it was very hard for me to find books about Ecuadorian American writers, specifically memoirs. I felt othered in general because I came to the U.S. when I was five and had to learn English. Then I moved back to Ecuador when I was 15 and had to learn Spanish, formal Spanish. I never felt like I fit in. In this world where people can move around a lot, at least within borders, it happens a lot. You feel othered because of the language, or the culture, because of the people around you. I wanted to write a book about how I felt othered throughout the entirety of my life. It was one of the core themes. Beyond that, it is also a focus on family. How you deal with your family and construct an identity when you feel othered. That is also why the book is focused on the southern and northern hemispheres.
Melissa: What would you like those who this experience resonates with to draw from your words?
Victoria: I want people to read this book and understand that immigrants are not monoliths. Some people view immigrants as a category where everything these individuals have gone through is the same. That’s not true. I want people to read this book and understand that everyone has an extraordinary life within their ordinary life. There are all these little things or major things that happen to us, which can include moving from one place to another, and they affect our identity individually. I hope that when people read immigrant stories, they understand that there are so many layers to a person, what they have gone through, and that these past experiences mold them.
Melissa: Do you have any upcoming projects, big or small, you’d like to share?
Victoria: I have so many projects in mind, but the one that is most advanced is a poetry collection with a feminist focus on missing and murdered women. Over the last few years, I started following stories of missing and murdered Indigenous women. It was such a shock to me how there is continued bias in the coverage of these events today. I started thinking about the type of woman that the media would consider the perfect missing/murdered woman. And I think that if you’re not that perfect woman, then it’s very hard for the world or the United States to find out that you are missing. This has stayed with me, subconsciously, and I started writing these poems about women, murdered women, missing women. I know it’s a very heavy topic, one that I’m still working on that includes many intersections of feminism. It’s still very much in the early stages, but I have had a few poems published. It’s a project that I want to continue because it is very important to me.
Melissa: I read one of your published pieces on this topic, “Mainstream Outlets.” It was very powerful. It is a heavy topic, but one that deserves the attention.
What advice would you give to someone working on their first book or just starting out with writing in general?
Victoria: When we first start out, we tend to focus on an outside audience, on whether other people will like and want to publish our work. Getting published is the goal. I don’t think we should start out focused on the publishing or marketing aspect. I always ask myself why my writing is this important to me, because first and foremost, I write for myself. Why do I need to write this? Why does past me need this? Why do I need this today? Why does future me need to read about this? The person we must respect the most as writers is ourselves. Once you have a draft, focus on your craft. Try to make it the best possible. After that you can think about how to get it out there. I didn’t publish my first piece until 2018, when I was 28. A lot of people might say that’s late, but I think that everything continued at the pace it needed to. All those years of translation and reading books and not publishing allowed me to get the foundation for craft I needed in order to get my work out there.
Victoria’s debut memoir A Body Across Two Hemispheres is now available from Woodhall Press at woodhallpress.com/product-page/a-body-across-two-hemispheres-a-memoir-in-essays. You can find more of her writing at victoriabuitron.com and stay informed on her upcoming events on Twitter @vic_toriawrites.
Melissa Nunez is a Latin@ writer and homeschooling mother of three from the Rio Grande Valley. Her essays have appeared in magazines like Sledgehammer Lit and Latinx Lit Audio Mag. She has work forthcoming in Acropolis Journal, Minerva Rising, and Re-Side. She is also a staff writer for Alebrijes Review. You can follow her on Twitter @MelissaKNunez.
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