Home as Survival: A Conversation with Victoria Buitron
A memoir is interesting either because of the story or how it’s told—Victoria Buitron’s A Body Across Two Hemispheres is both. It’s little wonder this debut memoir-in-essays won the 2021 Fairfield Book Prize. While Buitron’s story about her migration to Ecuador when she was fifteen and her later return to the United States is compelling, it is her command of language (two of them) and willingness to take risks in her prose that make the book so absorbing and remarkable. The scope of this collection is impressive—from second person narratives like “How to Be an Ecuadorian Girl,” which tackles issues of race and privilege while exploring her assimilation in the country of her birth after living in the US for ten formative years, to collage documentary like “Chain Migration,” which juxtaposes her family’s history with American immigration laws and stories of discrimination against immigrants. This is a book that demands attention.
I spoke with Buitron over the phone about bodies, language, identity, and honesty in memoir. An edited transcript of our conversation follows.
Rachel León: Let’s start with form. You could’ve written a straight memoir or an essay collection, but A Body Across Two Hemispheres blends the two through essays that reveal the evolution of your experience. Why did you decide to share your personal history through essays?
Victoria Buitron: It’s funny that you mention that I could have written a chronological memoir or just an essay collection because for a long time that was my intent. There was a very early draft that started out with me arriving at JFK and seeing the skyline of New York City. But when I reread the draft, it didn’t feel right. It took time to understand that my life is too fragmented, and it seems like my family and I never did things in order. So instead of forcing this narrative in a chronological way, I decided I wanted it to be in essay form, and that I wanted to focus more on location instead of time. Once I let myself have the freedom of using various techniques and different types of essay forms, I just felt like this was it. This was what I wanted and what was working—this is how I feel comfortable telling my past.
RL: Yeah, it works really well. The opening essay is about how your body essentially broke down after you moved to Ecuador when you were fifteen. There’s a line that encompasses one of the themes of not only the essay, but the book: “Heartbreak should be called bodybreak.”
VB: I think that there are a lot of people that don’t like the word “body,” but it was very purposeful for that word to be in the title, and for me to focus on this bodybreak that I went through. If I discuss it outside of the context of the book today, I can put a word to what I was going through, which is depression, but in that moment because I did not have a therapist, because my parents didn’t think about someone to assist me with all these life changes, I had a shaman, my mother, and my immediate family to focus on this bodybreak. For a long time I kind of felt like my body wasn’t mine because of the backdrop of immigration. We moved to the United States when I was five years old, and that was a decision my parents made, as was the decision to move back. I very much felt like a body and not like a person. With that first essay, I wanted to start with a climax. I started at the point of my breakdown, when I didn’t know if I would be able to see the future beyond that moment.
RL: That move was a big cultural and linguistic shift. How are language and identity connected for you?
VB: I definitely wanted to show that I had a very elementary control of Spanish when I lived in the United States. It’s not the language that I would hear in school, or the language that I would speak with my friends. But when I was fifteen, being pulled into a different country, a different culture—and thus a different language—I had to force myself to learn Spanish, to not only be more fluent speaking it, but also when writing it. I also wanted to make that connection between when I moved not only did my body change, but also my identity; I had to primarily communicate in another language. And that does change you. I do believe that was a shift in me when I moved, and I really wanted to convey that shift between who I am as an English and Spanish speaker and the changes in my sense of self.
RL: You explore deficiencies in language in a few essays, like in “The First Test,” where you had to explain the lyrics of Avril Lavigne’s “Sk8er Boi” to your (Spanish speaking) class, and in “Heartbreak,” where you talk about English not having a word between “like” and “love.” It made me think about how language can fall short. I imagine as both a translator and a writer that’s something you’re acutely aware of.
VB: Oh, I definitely have that in mind. I didn’t think that I could write my own story when I was younger. I started studying translation and interpretation when I was eighteen in Ecuador, so I’d be the bridge between two different people or organizations that needed to communicate amongst themselves. At that time, I wasn’t thinking about my story; then, as the years passed, I thought: I have a story here, and I do want to write about my past. I asked myself, “What language do I write this in?” Eventually I decided to write it in English, but I needed to shroud it in Spanish somehow. I wanted to include some ideas, like the word “love” in Spanish, and how that differs from English. There are different connotations between “amar” and “querer,” and that’s something I wanted to include. Even in my day-to-day life, depending on what language I’m writing or talking in, I’d rather say X term because it feels more natural. Even when I have conversations with my husband, there are moments where I pick Spanish over English, or pick English over Spanish depending on what we’re talking about, and it’s something that I had to do within the book as well.
RL: I loved when you drop the verb from sentences in “Heartbreak.” This is just one of many narrative techniques that makes your work really dynamic, even electric. You really take risks in your writing, and I'd love to hear about how you experiment with form.
VB: I attended the Fairfield University MFA program, and one of the pros of this program is that you can be part of the literary magazine Brevity, which was founded by Dinty W. Moore. It’s considered to be one of the first magazines dedicated to flash nonfiction. For about a year I was one of the readers, and then I applied for a specific assistant editorial role. Throughout those two years as an editor and reading submissions, I saw so many different types of techniques—everything from listicles to puzzles to even images—all used to tell a story; and it was amazing. And then I thought, I want to try that too. Why not? Also, how can I play between these two languages that I have?
That’s why in the book, you’ll see a list—one of them, for example, is “Teeth Fragments.” There’s also a 100-word essay, and that was very purposeful as well. I wanted to write something about my life in a hundred words. I’ve also seen essays where people use symbols to represent a name or a word, such as David Wade’s Known Killers in Issue 62 of Brevity. By reading that piece, I came up with the idea of leaving blank spaces throughout the book. In “Heartbreak,” for example, I used blank spaces so the English reader could see something that is lacking in the English language, which is the different types of love we have in Spanish. In another essay, I leave blank spaces so the reader can include their own words. I think it’s a way to bring the reader closer to not just what was happening to me, but how they can relate to it as well.
RL: Yes, the range of the essays is so impressive. How do you settle on what form an essay will take? Is it a lot of trial and error?
VB: I do think that it’s trial and error. There have been times where I start writing in paragraph form, then I usually let my work sleep, even if it’s just for a few days, and then I go back to it. Sometimes I feel like it’s working, and sometimes there needs to be a change. Sometimes the form molds itself in a way. You can tell when it’s not working, but I think that just trying different things is fun when writing. I try not to put pressure on myself when I’m writing that first draft. I’ve also taken different workshops that focus on weird forms. I love focusing on unusual forms because they challenge the reader and the writer at the same time.
RL: I think the most difficult aspect of memoir is complete honesty because it requires such vulnerability, yet that’s also what makes a memoir compelling and worth reading. How do you balance telling the truth and protecting yourself?
VB: That’s still something I’m parsing through right now. Once I found out that the book was going to be published, I had a small heart attack because it was like, oh my goodness, people are going to know about my sex life, my family, and about things that I did when I was younger that not everyone will approve of. People are going to find out I’m a translator and that I didn’t sign my husband’s paperwork correctly, and that’s one of the most embarrassing things for me. I’ve come to see the person on the page, not just as a past self, but also kind of like a character. It is who I am or who I was, but I’ve tried to accept the only person who can judge me is myself. But it is hard at times when the realization hits you about what memoir entails, and how other people are going to be seen as well.
I did sit down with my immediate family members and tell them: This is going to be out in the world. Not everyone looks good all the time because life is life, but they all seem okay with it. Nobody said that they were going to cut me out from their life. Once I heard that I felt like everything would be fine. Still, it’s very hard to think about how your past actions will be viewed, and I would rather people focus on craft instead of what I did when I was a teenager and a young adult.
RL: The last essay, “(Un)Documented,” gave me chills. It looks at immigration, both from a personal and political standpoint through twenty-six words, all corresponding to a letter from the English alphabet. It’s extremely artful and incredibly powerful. I’d love to hear about your writing process with that essay.
VB: That was the hardest essay of the collection. First, I do have to mention Adriana Páramo because my essay is written after her essay, “The ABCs.” It’s published in her book, Looking for Esperanza, and the essay focuses on her trying to find a woman who lost a child while crossing the border from Mexico into the United States. When I read that essay, I was blown away because usually abecedarians are written in poetry form, but not necessarily in an essay form because it’s very hard to maintain the focus and interest of the reader throughout twenty-six words. But I wanted to do my own version of what it means to be married to someone who used to be undocumented, to be the daughter of parents who used to give a home to many undocumented people, and what it means to grow up with friends and family members who are undocumented. I chose the abecedarian because immigration is so vast and complex. It has so many layers to it, and I felt like the only way I could write this essay was if I also used layers through a particular list. I could focus on different aspects of immigration in a personal, micro context because of my relationship, but also within a macro context because of what happens in the United States and how it affects all of us who reside here.
RL: I went back to the epigraph after finishing the book and was struck by how perfectly this one sentence by Homi K. Bhabha encompasses the themes you explore: “Home may be a mode of living made into a metaphor of survival.” I thought we could end our conversation with how you start the book.
VB: I think all of us, regardless of whether we’re immigrants or not, get asked where our home is, or what our home is. I feel like home is not stagnant; home can be a place. When I read that sentence by Bhabha, that home is a metaphor for survival, I knew it encompassed the essays I wrote. It doesn’t evoke that cliché idea that home is a place or a person, or wherever you feel good. What if home is survival? And beyond that, how do we go from surviving to thriving? Maybe home is wherever we thrive. I know that not everyone has that privilege to thrive, and not everyone has the privilege to survive either, especially in terms of migration. If you read the book, you know that I survived, and you also know that I was able to pick my home because I decided to come back to the United States when I was twenty-two, but I still think often about how that sentence kind of frames my life and how it frames the lives of so many migrants throughout the world.
Victoria Buitron (@vic_toriawrites) is a writer and translator who hails from Ecuador and resides in Connecticut. She received an MFA in Creative Writing from Fairfield University. She writes about the intersection of identity and place, family history, and the moments her hippocampus refuses to forget. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Lost Balloon, JMWW, Bending Genres, and other literary magazines. Her debut memoir-in-essays, A Body Across Two Hemispheres, is the 2021 Fairfield Book Prize winner and will be available in Spring 2022 by Woodhall Press.
Rachel León (@rachellayown) is a writer and social worker. She is Fiction Editor at Arcturus and Reviews Editor at West Trade Review. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Fiction Writers Review, Chicago Review of Books, (mac)ro(mic), Nurture, Necessary Fiction, The Rupture, and elsewhere.