[INTRO MUSIC PLAYS]
ELENA: Hello and welcome back to Hoo’s at the Writing Center! I’m Elena
KARISSA: I’m Karissa
SARAH: I’m Sarah
KIMBERLY: And I’m Kimberly! So, from September 15th to October 15th is National Hispanic Heritage Month! Woo! Uh, as the writing center podcast, we wanted to dedicate an episode celebrating Hispanic authors that you should add to your reading list. Today, we have a short story by Gabriel Garcia Marquez and a discussion about his short story An Old Man with Enormous Wings along with other recommendations because there were so many authors to choose from but only so little time! So, we'll be attaching the other authors you should check out in the description box.
So to begin, we want to talk about the author’s background.
KARISSA: Gabriel Garcia Marquez was born March 6th in 1927 in Aracataca, Columbia and died April 17th 2014 in Mexico City, Mexico. He was a renowned Columbian novelist and was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1982 for his piece Cien años de soledad, or in English 100 Years of Solitude. So, in addition to that novel he’s written many other novels, short stories, and he was a journalist for sometime. He generally writes in the genre of magical realism, and some of his other famous works include: El otoño del patriarca, which in English is The Autumn of the Patriarch, El amor en los tiempos del cólera, in English Love in the Time of Cholera, El general en su laberinto, in English The General in His Labyrinth, and so many more!
SARAH: The story starts with the family of Pelayo and Elisenda, who are tending to their ill child while fighting against the rampage of crabs that have appeared in their home from the neighboring sea and a downpour that has lasted three days. Pelayo is startled to find an old man in the courtyard of the house, face down in the mud, but possessed with enormous wings.
KIMBERLY: He was believed to be a Norwegian, a stowaway from a foreign ship wrecked by the storm. He was bald and had no teeth, his wings were plucked and entangled in the mud. But the neighboring woman to the family said that he was an angel who was coming for the child but eventually knocked down by the heavy rain.
KARISSA: The unnamed angel was held captive under the watchful eye of Pelayo and was eventually locked in the chicken coop that was owned by the family. The morning that the married couple decided to put the angel on a raft with food and leave him out at sea, they were greeted by the whole neighborhood surrounding the chicken coop. They tossed the angel things to eat, as if he were a circus animal.
ELENA: The town's priest, Father Gonzaga, arrived and was unimpressed by the supposed angel. He warned the people of the devil's doing and their capability of deceit and confusing the crowd. Father Gonzaga went to his superiors to decide the next steps for the angel's fate.
SARAH: From then on, Pelayo and Elisenda took advantage of the neighborhood's interest in the angel and began charging a fee for those that wished to see or interact with the old man in the coop. The angel, on the other hand, rarely roused any sort of interaction with the people and mostly kept to himself. The people tried to feed him mothballs, threw stones at him, and even burned him with iron branding steers.
KIMBERLY: Soon a traveling show arrived and had a woman cursed with the body of the spider as their main spectacle. The neighborhood became deeply invested with this traveling show, and soon the spider woman outranked the angel and Pelayo’s courtyard attraction was forgotten.
KARISSA: Pelayo and Elisenda, having used their funds to improve their house, continued to keep the angel captive and grew increasingly exasperated with the individual. But once they allowed him to sleep in the shed, his health improved and he had returned to his normal state. One morning, Elisenda caught the angel beginning to fly with his newly replenished wings. The angel left the family, who were relieved to be rid of him.
ELENA: So, this story is part of the-- it’s not really a genre, it’s more of like a style of literature, which we talked about before in our episode about Ken Liu’s Paper Menagerie, but this story by Marquez is a more, kind of like, traditional example of magical realism. So, magical realism is really popular throughout Latin America, and Marquez in particular helped to popularize this style. And, a particularly-- it’s kind of hard to define what magical realism is because it’s sort of part of this like postmodern-- you know-- like you can’t fully define what exactly it is, but one aspect of it in Latin American magical realism specifically is this implicit criticism of society, particularly of the elite. So, kind of thinking about that when reading this story and talking about it. A literary critic named Salman Rushdie describes Marquez’s magical realism as a space where “the impossibly old struggles against the appallingly new” and where “impossible things happen constantly, and quite plausibly” in broad daylight.
KIMBERLY: I just want to point out that I have never read a lot of magical realism stories until doing this podcast, so I was introduced to a lot of wonderful stories and they’re very impactful and very like-- have a lot of deeper meaning than I suppose people give credit for. I mean, I’m sure you can like-- you know-- read the stories from both Marquez and Liu, but, I mean, as a writing center podcast [laughter] you know, we can like-- we love to decipher themes, and symbolism, and characters, and all that stuff within magical realism. And something that really occurred in the story was the theme of religion, and it’s really interesting with the symbol of the angle because we think of angels as sort of guardians or gatekeepers to heaven or-- you know-- they’re such a symbol for heaven in general, but the way the angel was treated in the story was vastly different than what you may have expected. In general-- you know-- people would think that people would be really in awe or like-- you know-- on your knees for an angel, but they literally treated this person as a circus animal and benefited off of their, sort of, like uniqueness in the neighborhood, which I thought was really interesting. Yeah, I mean there was a line in the story that says something about this like this angel was dropped from like a-- something about it being like a-- I can’t remember the line but it was something along the lines of saying that the angel was part of a bigger movement, or part of a bigger cause, um, and that’s why they fell down or something like that. There’s just some sort of different interpretations of the angel within the characters, and also as a reader. So, I’m curious to know what you guys thought about sort of the theme of religion in the story, or if it was apparent to you, or if you thought that it was more negative than positive or was actually positive than negative or what your thoughts were.
KARISSA: I think it’s interesting, like you talked a little bit about the symbolism of the angel and like in religion a lot of times they’re seen as like good omens, so if you are visited by an angel or if you-- like your guardian angel for example, like good things it’s usually like a blessing, and I think it was interesting how like this angel was not really seen as that until it started benefiting the family in more of a material way. So, like they gained money from it or whatever. And I guess especially in like a Christian or Catholic religion, just from my experience, the emphasis isn’t really on material things, it’s more on like spirituality and things like that. So, I thought it was interesting that such like a spiritual symbol for that religion kind of got turned into a profit in a lot of ways, or like exploited for material profit, rather than like spiritual gain or profit, um, which I thought was kind of interesting. I also thought it was interesting how, like, taxing it was for the family to have to like put up with the angel-- you know-- quote, unquote. Because a lot of times, again going back to the good omen aspect of an angel, like a lot of times it’s not a chore-- you know-- like that’s the hope, like, if you’re visited by an angel, like, you’re so blessed and you’re protected and things like that, but, like, the family was so relieved to have this angle finally leave, and like when it was living with them it was like a chore, like they never knew where he was gonna be and things like that. Like, when he started showing up in the house everywhere, and how, just like, again, the dynamic between, like-- a lot of times angels are seen as like caretakers and protectors, and like when the role is reversed, the family just didn’t do that, like they just exploited it for, like, money and profit, stuff like that. So, I just thought that, that dynamic between the two was really interesting.
SARAH: I also really loved-- I just--I love angels in general. I think they’re such a-- I don’t wanna say cool concept because I feel like really demotes them [laughter] as angels [laughter]. Um, but I don’t know if you guys know this, but I grew up in a household with two religions, so I practiced Christianity and Islam for my entire childhood. So with Christianitiy and Catholicism, which like, Karissa did touch on, they’re very like-- guardian angels and this kind of thing, but like-- and you can get visited by one and like can still be alive, if that makes sense. But like, how I was taught in Islam, I remember this like one thing really, really stuck to me in school. They told us that when you die, like, and you’re like buried, and things like that, after the last person-- this is very specific and I hope it ties into the story [laughter]-- but the last person to leave your grave, like seven steps after, the angels come to you and then bring you up to heaven. So like, I don’t know, like when I read the story, when the lady was like, “he’s an angel; he must have been coming for the child,” because the child was sick and the child was dying, I thought the child was like going to die. I don’t know if the angel was supposed to like come and like heal the child and then leave, but I thought that it was really interesting. Also, I had no idea-- I don’t know if it’s like just the story, but I specifically remember they tossed mothballs at the angel because that’s what the angel is supposed to eat and I thought that was so interesting because, like, mothballs are obviously created from an older-- like a super, super old, like stored clothing and the angles would, like, feed on that, like, old substance-- I don’t even know. Yeah. Thoughts?
ELENA: I thought the mothballs thing was really interesting too, because it’s like-- and I think that from the other stuff that I’ve read form Marquez too, like, it’s almost kind of tongue-in-cheek with it because we think of angels as, like, ancient and kind of like-- I don’t know-- I think part of the jarring nature of the story was that there was an angel in this apparently modern-ish setting. And so, like, the mothballs-- I think you’re totally right, it brings to mind this idea of like preserving, like, something old. But, I think in the story they were like the angle didn’t eat the mothballs too, so it was just like-- the lady was like, “yeah angels eat mothballs,” but then he didn’t do that, so it’s almost this subversion of like-- you know-- you expect this thing to be like ancient and like pure and holy and all that, but this angel is just like a weird subversion of all those I think.
KIMBERLY: I think he was right not to eat it, but I mean, that’s just my opinion [laughter]. It’s kind of demeaning if you think about it [laughter]. Um, but yeah, just wow. It kind of took me for a second, ‘cause I looked at the word “mothballs” and I was like, “oh, like moths,” and then like, uh, crafted into a ball or some sort of like-- it was like a dish. I thought nothing of it, I just saw it and I was like, “oh, great,” and then you said it and I was like, “wait, what?” and that was me like quickly looking it up and I was like “oh! Not what I thought at all” [laughter]. I just, like, saw it and thought the author meant what I thought, so I was like, “oh great, mothballs. I guess.” Yeah so [laughter], dealing with the sort of-- the idea of how, like, the religious sort of connotations of angles but also like what the angel itself could represent as sort of, like a miracle or the fact that like maybe the angle had something to do with the child getting better, ‘cause at the end of the story the child was like suddenly better and could walk around and stuff. Or the spider woman that was like, “oh, I got cursed because I ran away from my parents or I disobeyed them or something like that, and I’m suddenly cursed with the body.” And I know this is, like, magical realism and-- you know-- it’s not meant to be like this happens in real life, but like I just think it’s so interesting the way that we treat these sort of like supernatural or like not ordinary things that happen to us and the way we treat it-- you know-- especially for both the angel and the spider woman. You think of the spider woman as sort of like a curse or like some sort of like horrorness happening, but the angel is supposed to be a symbol of light, and pure, and heaven, and all things like supposedly good-- you know-- but they profited off the angel so it’s just the idea of how we react to these sort of unearthly things is interesting. And I did throw in like the miracle of the child being better, but that’s more of our, like layman’s terms, of what we think a of miracles, like good things happening, like oh the child got better, but like, miracles can also be oh there’s a woman with the body of a spider, or oh there's an angel that just flew in my courtyard and now I have to deal with it, kind of thing, so just understanding how we play around with that term and the way that we sort of see that in the story. I thought that was, um, interesting and if you have any thoughts about that.
SARAH: I also kind of got the feeling that like the angle wasn’t enough for the people to praise. Like it was more entertainment-- I don’t know if it’s just-- I don’t know. It’s also just a religious and interpretation thing like “oh, I’m going to expect an angel to be x, y, z,” and when a literal angel appears and it’s not x, y, z they’re not going to praise it. Like the priest in the town or whatever was like, “oh you don’t speak latin so you’re not an angel.” It’s like really? He has wings like [laughter] what else can you ask for? But yeah, just that like-- I don’t know-- what you were saying about how the angel could be interpreted as miracles in general, and maybe some people believe, again, that miracle falls under a certain category of rules, but then when one of those rules isn't fulfilled so they’re like “oh well it’s not a miracle so we’re not gonna face it.”
KARISSA: Yeah, I really did like that interpretation as well, and another thing that I was thinking about after I first read it was like-- it talked about how the difference between the angel and the spider lady, like the spider lady had a story and she had a lesson to be taught, and things like that. Like she would answer people’s questions and like how there-- I can’t remember the line exactly but something about how that drew more attention then like just the silence and like the patience of the angel, and just like thinking about that and how-- I mean, yeah it makes sense why more people would want to see the spider lady if she’s like talking and saying all this stuff. But just again like, how in terms of like, how do you define miracles, like maybe they’re both like miracles in and of themselves, like this happened, and it’s really crazy, and it’s an anonmany and like yeah, but then just kind of like-- it’s just something I thought about a lot because it was like-- what is so appealing in that you can explicitly learn front he spider lady because she’s like telling you her lesson like, “I got turned into a spider because I was disobeying my parents,” or whatever, and then like just the angles’ silence and not reallying doing anything, and yeah, and how it said its only true gift was patience. So I thought that was interesting, the two different ways that they described those things that, um, could both be considered to be miracles, and one drew more attention than the other.
ELENA: So I think in like in the context of Latin America and South America with like Catholicism being so prevalent, but kind of like a specific brand of Catholicism, where there’s still this like heavy, a lot of times Indiginous influence, but it has this sort of like, belief in miracles as being still a thing, just like an everyday occurrence that I think is something that you see a lot in magical realism from Hispanic cultures and I think this idea of like-- it’s almost-- it’s like a cynical take on miracles but it’s also kind of hopeful, because it’s like these people are not recognizing this literal angel that’s there because, like you said Sarah, he doesn’t fit their-- like their idea of what an angel would be, but at the same time there is an angel there, and it is kind of implied that this kid got better, like you could totally read it that way, I think. So I just thought it was such a cool mix of like, cynical because they’re treating the angel like this and they’re not recognizing that he has this like holiness and-- you know-- the priest is really skeptical, and again, this like, “you don’t speak latin,” like assuming he would know what an angel speaks as if he’s ever met one before, but at the same time they’re like-- this writing about actual miracles happening and being possible. I think it’s kind of like this hopeful take on it to be like miracles are everyday occurrences and can happen to anybody.
KIMBERLY: I wanna know the curriculum on what makes an angel, ‘cause I didn’t realize that Latin was one of them [laughter]. I thought it was from heaven and has wings [laughter] but-- you know-- that was my understanding of an angel, at least growing up I was just like “oh!”
So we’ve picked apart the angel and the spider woman quite a bit, I was just wondering if there were any other characters like Pelayo and Elisenda, or Father Gonzaga, because I feel like we can say a lot about Father Gonzaga, or even the child if there are sort of things about those characters that you thought were really interesting or that stuck out to you. I know personally that I-- I mean, it’s kind of like-- you know how you read typical stories and you try to pick out who’s the protagonist, who’s the antagonist, who’s the-- I forgot the word for like, not-- like a neutral one, neutral character, but in a way as I was reading I was like, “everyone’s kind of an antagonist, or an antagonist at least to the angel.” Not saying the angel’s like good per se and not saying that all the characters are bad, but they definitely have treated this character very poorly and I’m not one for-- you know-- not for one to stand against, uh, mistreatment of any kind, but I definitely was interested in the way that-- the sort of arc, especially, for the married couple, how they sort of started off as-- and they were, to be fair the were annoyed the whole time with this character. They maybe, uh, gave them a little slack, ‘cause he helped them profit and improve their house and all that stuff, but towards the end, even the line says she felt like this relief because she wasn’t with this annoyance anymore, so it’s just really interesting of like, was there an arc, did they change at all? Sort of, you could argue, but I think they were pretty consistent in their feelings for this angel, like, I think the child was where-- played sort of a key role in helping ease that sort of tension between the two, because the child was just so willing to play with this angel. And they tried desperately to not get the child near the angel at all, but the child was like-- I mean the child doesn’t know any better, but-- you know-- it wasn’t until after the child started hanging out with this angel, and the angel was like obviously deteriorating and like in critical health that the couple was like, “you can sleep in the shed.” And then the angel got better, so-- sort of wondering about what you-- if anything stuck out to you with those other characters, the mortal characters, if you will.
KARISSA: Um, kind of talking about what you-- like going back to what you talked about at the end about how like the angle’s living, or like health got better as its living conditions got better, it kind of makes me think about just the Studio Ghibli movie Spirited Away and I don’t remember the character’s name, but he like eats everything in the bath house, he just like eats everything and then gets nicer the more time him and the little girl spend together. Ugh it’s been forever since I’ve watched it, but my sister was telling me about how it’s kind of to say that you’re a product of your environment, so the more time he spent with the little girl the better his environment was and the happier and like more calm and less violent he got, and I think in a lot of ways that can be argued about the angel as well, because when the angel first appeared Pelayo and Elisenda were like “get out, we don’t want you here, we’re going to lock you in this chicken coop, you’re just like an annoyance, whatever, just in our way,” and so his health was deteriorating, things like that. And then the child paid a little bit more attention and the couple kind of had a change of heart, I guess if you could call it that, that was like you can sleep in the shed, there’s more room, the chickens aren’t bugging you and like people aren’t throwing things at you, and with that the angel became healthier and got better, so that’s something I thought about too. I don’t-- I guess I don’t really know where the child comes into that, maybe just kind of like helped the couple see like the humanity aspect of that a little bit more, like maybe we shouldn’t be keeping this creature in a place where they’re not comfortable and like able to be healthy. But yeah, that’s something that I did think about as well, just between the relationship between all of them that were living on the farm.
KIMBERLY: There’s a lot of interesting things that you can-- you may have agreed with us or may have like questions about. We’d love to know your thoughts, but we’d also love to know, uh-- you know-- encourage you to have these discussions with people within your group, and to really read other works by Hispanic authors and a couple that we have are Junot Diaz, and then Judith Ortiz Cofer, Ocatvio Paz, and of course we encourage you to do your own research because there are, again a lot of Hispanic authors out there and Hispanic poets, and Hispanic artists, and so we really encourage you to celebrate these amazing works especially this month.
In addition, we have a special announcement: for the month of October, the Writing Center is hosting a Spooky Story Contest (ooo!). We have a corresponding promo post on our social media but for those tuning in to this episode the rules are this:
SARAH: Alrightly, so your story can be about anything. Keep it university appropriate - per in agreement with students code of conduct for communication, but please, please, please have fun with it. You can also surely share your stories of any spooky SU experience, as Elena has pointed out to me The Spectator has done a piece on buildings haunted at SU or SU jusst haunts in general.
ELENA: Yeah, the haunted history of SU, it’s great
SARAH: Ahh, good.
KIMBERLY: There’s always a haunted history of any school [laughter] which I think is really funny.
Uh, a page is fine, we recommend a max word count of 3000-4000 words, and I can’t tell you how many pages that is off the top of my head, but if you check the word count and whatever-- it’s three pages--
SARAH: Sorry I know I could’ve just unmiced, but I thought – [laughter]
KIMBERLY: So for those listening to our podcast, which is purely audio, Sarah was trying to show me how many-- with her fingers-- how many pages there were and it looked like 21 or three depending on how you interpret it, when she meant 12 [laughter]
ELENA: Just several pages.
KARISSA: And don’t forget to make it spOoOoOky.
ELENA: Also, although we would love to hear all of your spooky stories, we have to limit it to one submission per person
SARAH: And, keep in mind that SU students, faculty, and staff are the only people that can participate in this contest.
KIMBERLY: And please do a Word doc format, no PDFs. Or like a Google doc. Whichever you use. Don’t – just don’t use a PDF.
KARISSA: Also make sure to indicate if you’re okay with us reading your story if it’s chosen, um, you can also indicate if you want it to be read anonymously, so if you want it to be read but you don’t want your name attached to it, you can also feel free to indicate that as well.
ELENA: And the contest starts now when this episode is released on September 29th, and it ends on October 13th, at 11:59 PM.
SARAH: We'll choose the ones we like the best and compile them into a document that can be accessed by the public to be read, as well as an opportunity to have your short story be read by us, Hoo's At The Writing Center Podcast team, on one of our mini episodes!
KIMBERLY: But I think we said we were gonna have an episode dedicated – a bigger episode. One of our main episodes, right? So –
SARAH: One of our main episodes. [Laughter]
KIMBERLY: [Through laughter] That’s my fault, it’s okay! [Laughter] Um – so as Elena said, the contest starts now until the 13th of October, and you can submit your stories to, uh, [email protected]. Tell your friends, teachers, peers, anyone at Seattle U to submit a story and GET SPOOKY, and most importantly: have fun.
KARISSA: Thank you so much for joining us today. Again, we will include a link to the story in the description box for those who want to read it again, or share with others.
ELENA: Also, if you haven’t gotten the chance to, we had our first episode addressing antiracist work in the writing center, in which we talk about how institutional racism can permeate even in writing center spaces and how and why we work towards dismantling it.
SARAH: We’ve included our blog, which includes annotations of notes regarding articles we’ve read from that episode, as well as posts from our own consultants.
KIMBERLY: With that, be sure to stay safe, take care of one another, and this has been another episode of…
SARAH: ...How many hoos? [Laughter]
ELENA: There’s only two, right?
[Experimental background hooting]
KARISSA: I think two?
[More serious experimental hooting]
KARISSA (with more confidence): One extra hoo. [More hoots] Right?
KIMBERLY: I thought it was three!
SARAH: Is it “hoo, hoo, hoo’s at the writing center,” or is it “hoo, hoo’s at the writing center?” [Laughter]
KARISSA: We’ve never really talked about this.
ELENA: No, we never said –
KIMBERLY: Hm.
ELENA: Hmm.
KIMBERLY: Hmmm – [Laughter] Let us know in the comments below how many –
[All burst into laughter]
SARAH: Like and subscribe –
ELENA: How many hoos should there be?!
KARISSA: Are we doing this correctly? Let us know.
ELENA: Please help us.
SARAH: [Laughter]
KIMBERLY: There’s gonna be like someone – someone who keeps track of our hoos is just gonna be like, “You guys did three!” and we’re gonna be like, “Oh, thank you!” [Laughter]
ELENA: “This is an unacceptable change!”
[Laughter]
KIMBERLY: Also, check out our future D&D episode – DMed by Elena –
[Laughter]
ELENA: Oh boy.
KARISSA: No pressure.
[OUTRO MUSIC PLAYS]
ELENA: Hello and welcome back to Hoo’s at the Writing Center! I’m Elena
KARISSA: I’m Karissa
SARAH: I’m Sarah
KIMBERLY: And I’m Kimberly! So, from September 15th to October 15th is National Hispanic Heritage Month! Woo! Uh, as the writing center podcast, we wanted to dedicate an episode celebrating Hispanic authors that you should add to your reading list. Today, we have a short story by Gabriel Garcia Marquez and a discussion about his short story An Old Man with Enormous Wings along with other recommendations because there were so many authors to choose from but only so little time! So, we'll be attaching the other authors you should check out in the description box.
So to begin, we want to talk about the author’s background.
KARISSA: Gabriel Garcia Marquez was born March 6th in 1927 in Aracataca, Columbia and died April 17th 2014 in Mexico City, Mexico. He was a renowned Columbian novelist and was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1982 for his piece Cien años de soledad, or in English 100 Years of Solitude. So, in addition to that novel he’s written many other novels, short stories, and he was a journalist for sometime. He generally writes in the genre of magical realism, and some of his other famous works include: El otoño del patriarca, which in English is The Autumn of the Patriarch, El amor en los tiempos del cólera, in English Love in the Time of Cholera, El general en su laberinto, in English The General in His Labyrinth, and so many more!
SARAH: The story starts with the family of Pelayo and Elisenda, who are tending to their ill child while fighting against the rampage of crabs that have appeared in their home from the neighboring sea and a downpour that has lasted three days. Pelayo is startled to find an old man in the courtyard of the house, face down in the mud, but possessed with enormous wings.
KIMBERLY: He was believed to be a Norwegian, a stowaway from a foreign ship wrecked by the storm. He was bald and had no teeth, his wings were plucked and entangled in the mud. But the neighboring woman to the family said that he was an angel who was coming for the child but eventually knocked down by the heavy rain.
KARISSA: The unnamed angel was held captive under the watchful eye of Pelayo and was eventually locked in the chicken coop that was owned by the family. The morning that the married couple decided to put the angel on a raft with food and leave him out at sea, they were greeted by the whole neighborhood surrounding the chicken coop. They tossed the angel things to eat, as if he were a circus animal.
ELENA: The town's priest, Father Gonzaga, arrived and was unimpressed by the supposed angel. He warned the people of the devil's doing and their capability of deceit and confusing the crowd. Father Gonzaga went to his superiors to decide the next steps for the angel's fate.
SARAH: From then on, Pelayo and Elisenda took advantage of the neighborhood's interest in the angel and began charging a fee for those that wished to see or interact with the old man in the coop. The angel, on the other hand, rarely roused any sort of interaction with the people and mostly kept to himself. The people tried to feed him mothballs, threw stones at him, and even burned him with iron branding steers.
KIMBERLY: Soon a traveling show arrived and had a woman cursed with the body of the spider as their main spectacle. The neighborhood became deeply invested with this traveling show, and soon the spider woman outranked the angel and Pelayo’s courtyard attraction was forgotten.
KARISSA: Pelayo and Elisenda, having used their funds to improve their house, continued to keep the angel captive and grew increasingly exasperated with the individual. But once they allowed him to sleep in the shed, his health improved and he had returned to his normal state. One morning, Elisenda caught the angel beginning to fly with his newly replenished wings. The angel left the family, who were relieved to be rid of him.
ELENA: So, this story is part of the-- it’s not really a genre, it’s more of like a style of literature, which we talked about before in our episode about Ken Liu’s Paper Menagerie, but this story by Marquez is a more, kind of like, traditional example of magical realism. So, magical realism is really popular throughout Latin America, and Marquez in particular helped to popularize this style. And, a particularly-- it’s kind of hard to define what magical realism is because it’s sort of part of this like postmodern-- you know-- like you can’t fully define what exactly it is, but one aspect of it in Latin American magical realism specifically is this implicit criticism of society, particularly of the elite. So, kind of thinking about that when reading this story and talking about it. A literary critic named Salman Rushdie describes Marquez’s magical realism as a space where “the impossibly old struggles against the appallingly new” and where “impossible things happen constantly, and quite plausibly” in broad daylight.
KIMBERLY: I just want to point out that I have never read a lot of magical realism stories until doing this podcast, so I was introduced to a lot of wonderful stories and they’re very impactful and very like-- have a lot of deeper meaning than I suppose people give credit for. I mean, I’m sure you can like-- you know-- read the stories from both Marquez and Liu, but, I mean, as a writing center podcast [laughter] you know, we can like-- we love to decipher themes, and symbolism, and characters, and all that stuff within magical realism. And something that really occurred in the story was the theme of religion, and it’s really interesting with the symbol of the angle because we think of angels as sort of guardians or gatekeepers to heaven or-- you know-- they’re such a symbol for heaven in general, but the way the angel was treated in the story was vastly different than what you may have expected. In general-- you know-- people would think that people would be really in awe or like-- you know-- on your knees for an angel, but they literally treated this person as a circus animal and benefited off of their, sort of, like uniqueness in the neighborhood, which I thought was really interesting. Yeah, I mean there was a line in the story that says something about this like this angel was dropped from like a-- something about it being like a-- I can’t remember the line but it was something along the lines of saying that the angel was part of a bigger movement, or part of a bigger cause, um, and that’s why they fell down or something like that. There’s just some sort of different interpretations of the angel within the characters, and also as a reader. So, I’m curious to know what you guys thought about sort of the theme of religion in the story, or if it was apparent to you, or if you thought that it was more negative than positive or was actually positive than negative or what your thoughts were.
KARISSA: I think it’s interesting, like you talked a little bit about the symbolism of the angel and like in religion a lot of times they’re seen as like good omens, so if you are visited by an angel or if you-- like your guardian angel for example, like good things it’s usually like a blessing, and I think it was interesting how like this angel was not really seen as that until it started benefiting the family in more of a material way. So, like they gained money from it or whatever. And I guess especially in like a Christian or Catholic religion, just from my experience, the emphasis isn’t really on material things, it’s more on like spirituality and things like that. So, I thought it was interesting that such like a spiritual symbol for that religion kind of got turned into a profit in a lot of ways, or like exploited for material profit, rather than like spiritual gain or profit, um, which I thought was kind of interesting. I also thought it was interesting how, like, taxing it was for the family to have to like put up with the angel-- you know-- quote, unquote. Because a lot of times, again going back to the good omen aspect of an angel, like a lot of times it’s not a chore-- you know-- like that’s the hope, like, if you’re visited by an angel, like, you’re so blessed and you’re protected and things like that, but, like, the family was so relieved to have this angle finally leave, and like when it was living with them it was like a chore, like they never knew where he was gonna be and things like that. Like, when he started showing up in the house everywhere, and how, just like, again, the dynamic between, like-- a lot of times angels are seen as like caretakers and protectors, and like when the role is reversed, the family just didn’t do that, like they just exploited it for, like, money and profit, stuff like that. So, I just thought that, that dynamic between the two was really interesting.
SARAH: I also really loved-- I just--I love angels in general. I think they’re such a-- I don’t wanna say cool concept because I feel like really demotes them [laughter] as angels [laughter]. Um, but I don’t know if you guys know this, but I grew up in a household with two religions, so I practiced Christianity and Islam for my entire childhood. So with Christianitiy and Catholicism, which like, Karissa did touch on, they’re very like-- guardian angels and this kind of thing, but like-- and you can get visited by one and like can still be alive, if that makes sense. But like, how I was taught in Islam, I remember this like one thing really, really stuck to me in school. They told us that when you die, like, and you’re like buried, and things like that, after the last person-- this is very specific and I hope it ties into the story [laughter]-- but the last person to leave your grave, like seven steps after, the angels come to you and then bring you up to heaven. So like, I don’t know, like when I read the story, when the lady was like, “he’s an angel; he must have been coming for the child,” because the child was sick and the child was dying, I thought the child was like going to die. I don’t know if the angel was supposed to like come and like heal the child and then leave, but I thought that it was really interesting. Also, I had no idea-- I don’t know if it’s like just the story, but I specifically remember they tossed mothballs at the angel because that’s what the angel is supposed to eat and I thought that was so interesting because, like, mothballs are obviously created from an older-- like a super, super old, like stored clothing and the angles would, like, feed on that, like, old substance-- I don’t even know. Yeah. Thoughts?
ELENA: I thought the mothballs thing was really interesting too, because it’s like-- and I think that from the other stuff that I’ve read form Marquez too, like, it’s almost kind of tongue-in-cheek with it because we think of angels as, like, ancient and kind of like-- I don’t know-- I think part of the jarring nature of the story was that there was an angel in this apparently modern-ish setting. And so, like, the mothballs-- I think you’re totally right, it brings to mind this idea of like preserving, like, something old. But, I think in the story they were like the angle didn’t eat the mothballs too, so it was just like-- the lady was like, “yeah angels eat mothballs,” but then he didn’t do that, so it’s almost this subversion of like-- you know-- you expect this thing to be like ancient and like pure and holy and all that, but this angel is just like a weird subversion of all those I think.
KIMBERLY: I think he was right not to eat it, but I mean, that’s just my opinion [laughter]. It’s kind of demeaning if you think about it [laughter]. Um, but yeah, just wow. It kind of took me for a second, ‘cause I looked at the word “mothballs” and I was like, “oh, like moths,” and then like, uh, crafted into a ball or some sort of like-- it was like a dish. I thought nothing of it, I just saw it and I was like, “oh, great,” and then you said it and I was like, “wait, what?” and that was me like quickly looking it up and I was like “oh! Not what I thought at all” [laughter]. I just, like, saw it and thought the author meant what I thought, so I was like, “oh great, mothballs. I guess.” Yeah so [laughter], dealing with the sort of-- the idea of how, like, the religious sort of connotations of angles but also like what the angel itself could represent as sort of, like a miracle or the fact that like maybe the angle had something to do with the child getting better, ‘cause at the end of the story the child was like suddenly better and could walk around and stuff. Or the spider woman that was like, “oh, I got cursed because I ran away from my parents or I disobeyed them or something like that, and I’m suddenly cursed with the body.” And I know this is, like, magical realism and-- you know-- it’s not meant to be like this happens in real life, but like I just think it’s so interesting the way that we treat these sort of like supernatural or like not ordinary things that happen to us and the way we treat it-- you know-- especially for both the angel and the spider woman. You think of the spider woman as sort of like a curse or like some sort of like horrorness happening, but the angel is supposed to be a symbol of light, and pure, and heaven, and all things like supposedly good-- you know-- but they profited off the angel so it’s just the idea of how we react to these sort of unearthly things is interesting. And I did throw in like the miracle of the child being better, but that’s more of our, like layman’s terms, of what we think a of miracles, like good things happening, like oh the child got better, but like, miracles can also be oh there’s a woman with the body of a spider, or oh there's an angel that just flew in my courtyard and now I have to deal with it, kind of thing, so just understanding how we play around with that term and the way that we sort of see that in the story. I thought that was, um, interesting and if you have any thoughts about that.
SARAH: I also kind of got the feeling that like the angle wasn’t enough for the people to praise. Like it was more entertainment-- I don’t know if it’s just-- I don’t know. It’s also just a religious and interpretation thing like “oh, I’m going to expect an angel to be x, y, z,” and when a literal angel appears and it’s not x, y, z they’re not going to praise it. Like the priest in the town or whatever was like, “oh you don’t speak latin so you’re not an angel.” It’s like really? He has wings like [laughter] what else can you ask for? But yeah, just that like-- I don’t know-- what you were saying about how the angel could be interpreted as miracles in general, and maybe some people believe, again, that miracle falls under a certain category of rules, but then when one of those rules isn't fulfilled so they’re like “oh well it’s not a miracle so we’re not gonna face it.”
KARISSA: Yeah, I really did like that interpretation as well, and another thing that I was thinking about after I first read it was like-- it talked about how the difference between the angel and the spider lady, like the spider lady had a story and she had a lesson to be taught, and things like that. Like she would answer people’s questions and like how there-- I can’t remember the line exactly but something about how that drew more attention then like just the silence and like the patience of the angel, and just like thinking about that and how-- I mean, yeah it makes sense why more people would want to see the spider lady if she’s like talking and saying all this stuff. But just again like, how in terms of like, how do you define miracles, like maybe they’re both like miracles in and of themselves, like this happened, and it’s really crazy, and it’s an anonmany and like yeah, but then just kind of like-- it’s just something I thought about a lot because it was like-- what is so appealing in that you can explicitly learn front he spider lady because she’s like telling you her lesson like, “I got turned into a spider because I was disobeying my parents,” or whatever, and then like just the angles’ silence and not reallying doing anything, and yeah, and how it said its only true gift was patience. So I thought that was interesting, the two different ways that they described those things that, um, could both be considered to be miracles, and one drew more attention than the other.
ELENA: So I think in like in the context of Latin America and South America with like Catholicism being so prevalent, but kind of like a specific brand of Catholicism, where there’s still this like heavy, a lot of times Indiginous influence, but it has this sort of like, belief in miracles as being still a thing, just like an everyday occurrence that I think is something that you see a lot in magical realism from Hispanic cultures and I think this idea of like-- it’s almost-- it’s like a cynical take on miracles but it’s also kind of hopeful, because it’s like these people are not recognizing this literal angel that’s there because, like you said Sarah, he doesn’t fit their-- like their idea of what an angel would be, but at the same time there is an angel there, and it is kind of implied that this kid got better, like you could totally read it that way, I think. So I just thought it was such a cool mix of like, cynical because they’re treating the angel like this and they’re not recognizing that he has this like holiness and-- you know-- the priest is really skeptical, and again, this like, “you don’t speak latin,” like assuming he would know what an angel speaks as if he’s ever met one before, but at the same time they’re like-- this writing about actual miracles happening and being possible. I think it’s kind of like this hopeful take on it to be like miracles are everyday occurrences and can happen to anybody.
KIMBERLY: I wanna know the curriculum on what makes an angel, ‘cause I didn’t realize that Latin was one of them [laughter]. I thought it was from heaven and has wings [laughter] but-- you know-- that was my understanding of an angel, at least growing up I was just like “oh!”
So we’ve picked apart the angel and the spider woman quite a bit, I was just wondering if there were any other characters like Pelayo and Elisenda, or Father Gonzaga, because I feel like we can say a lot about Father Gonzaga, or even the child if there are sort of things about those characters that you thought were really interesting or that stuck out to you. I know personally that I-- I mean, it’s kind of like-- you know how you read typical stories and you try to pick out who’s the protagonist, who’s the antagonist, who’s the-- I forgot the word for like, not-- like a neutral one, neutral character, but in a way as I was reading I was like, “everyone’s kind of an antagonist, or an antagonist at least to the angel.” Not saying the angel’s like good per se and not saying that all the characters are bad, but they definitely have treated this character very poorly and I’m not one for-- you know-- not for one to stand against, uh, mistreatment of any kind, but I definitely was interested in the way that-- the sort of arc, especially, for the married couple, how they sort of started off as-- and they were, to be fair the were annoyed the whole time with this character. They maybe, uh, gave them a little slack, ‘cause he helped them profit and improve their house and all that stuff, but towards the end, even the line says she felt like this relief because she wasn’t with this annoyance anymore, so it’s just really interesting of like, was there an arc, did they change at all? Sort of, you could argue, but I think they were pretty consistent in their feelings for this angel, like, I think the child was where-- played sort of a key role in helping ease that sort of tension between the two, because the child was just so willing to play with this angel. And they tried desperately to not get the child near the angel at all, but the child was like-- I mean the child doesn’t know any better, but-- you know-- it wasn’t until after the child started hanging out with this angel, and the angel was like obviously deteriorating and like in critical health that the couple was like, “you can sleep in the shed.” And then the angel got better, so-- sort of wondering about what you-- if anything stuck out to you with those other characters, the mortal characters, if you will.
KARISSA: Um, kind of talking about what you-- like going back to what you talked about at the end about how like the angle’s living, or like health got better as its living conditions got better, it kind of makes me think about just the Studio Ghibli movie Spirited Away and I don’t remember the character’s name, but he like eats everything in the bath house, he just like eats everything and then gets nicer the more time him and the little girl spend together. Ugh it’s been forever since I’ve watched it, but my sister was telling me about how it’s kind of to say that you’re a product of your environment, so the more time he spent with the little girl the better his environment was and the happier and like more calm and less violent he got, and I think in a lot of ways that can be argued about the angel as well, because when the angel first appeared Pelayo and Elisenda were like “get out, we don’t want you here, we’re going to lock you in this chicken coop, you’re just like an annoyance, whatever, just in our way,” and so his health was deteriorating, things like that. And then the child paid a little bit more attention and the couple kind of had a change of heart, I guess if you could call it that, that was like you can sleep in the shed, there’s more room, the chickens aren’t bugging you and like people aren’t throwing things at you, and with that the angel became healthier and got better, so that’s something I thought about too. I don’t-- I guess I don’t really know where the child comes into that, maybe just kind of like helped the couple see like the humanity aspect of that a little bit more, like maybe we shouldn’t be keeping this creature in a place where they’re not comfortable and like able to be healthy. But yeah, that’s something that I did think about as well, just between the relationship between all of them that were living on the farm.
KIMBERLY: There’s a lot of interesting things that you can-- you may have agreed with us or may have like questions about. We’d love to know your thoughts, but we’d also love to know, uh-- you know-- encourage you to have these discussions with people within your group, and to really read other works by Hispanic authors and a couple that we have are Junot Diaz, and then Judith Ortiz Cofer, Ocatvio Paz, and of course we encourage you to do your own research because there are, again a lot of Hispanic authors out there and Hispanic poets, and Hispanic artists, and so we really encourage you to celebrate these amazing works especially this month.
In addition, we have a special announcement: for the month of October, the Writing Center is hosting a Spooky Story Contest (ooo!). We have a corresponding promo post on our social media but for those tuning in to this episode the rules are this:
SARAH: Alrightly, so your story can be about anything. Keep it university appropriate - per in agreement with students code of conduct for communication, but please, please, please have fun with it. You can also surely share your stories of any spooky SU experience, as Elena has pointed out to me The Spectator has done a piece on buildings haunted at SU or SU jusst haunts in general.
ELENA: Yeah, the haunted history of SU, it’s great
SARAH: Ahh, good.
KIMBERLY: There’s always a haunted history of any school [laughter] which I think is really funny.
Uh, a page is fine, we recommend a max word count of 3000-4000 words, and I can’t tell you how many pages that is off the top of my head, but if you check the word count and whatever-- it’s three pages--
SARAH: Sorry I know I could’ve just unmiced, but I thought – [laughter]
KIMBERLY: So for those listening to our podcast, which is purely audio, Sarah was trying to show me how many-- with her fingers-- how many pages there were and it looked like 21 or three depending on how you interpret it, when she meant 12 [laughter]
ELENA: Just several pages.
KARISSA: And don’t forget to make it spOoOoOky.
ELENA: Also, although we would love to hear all of your spooky stories, we have to limit it to one submission per person
SARAH: And, keep in mind that SU students, faculty, and staff are the only people that can participate in this contest.
KIMBERLY: And please do a Word doc format, no PDFs. Or like a Google doc. Whichever you use. Don’t – just don’t use a PDF.
KARISSA: Also make sure to indicate if you’re okay with us reading your story if it’s chosen, um, you can also indicate if you want it to be read anonymously, so if you want it to be read but you don’t want your name attached to it, you can also feel free to indicate that as well.
ELENA: And the contest starts now when this episode is released on September 29th, and it ends on October 13th, at 11:59 PM.
SARAH: We'll choose the ones we like the best and compile them into a document that can be accessed by the public to be read, as well as an opportunity to have your short story be read by us, Hoo's At The Writing Center Podcast team, on one of our mini episodes!
KIMBERLY: But I think we said we were gonna have an episode dedicated – a bigger episode. One of our main episodes, right? So –
SARAH: One of our main episodes. [Laughter]
KIMBERLY: [Through laughter] That’s my fault, it’s okay! [Laughter] Um – so as Elena said, the contest starts now until the 13th of October, and you can submit your stories to, uh, [email protected]. Tell your friends, teachers, peers, anyone at Seattle U to submit a story and GET SPOOKY, and most importantly: have fun.
KARISSA: Thank you so much for joining us today. Again, we will include a link to the story in the description box for those who want to read it again, or share with others.
ELENA: Also, if you haven’t gotten the chance to, we had our first episode addressing antiracist work in the writing center, in which we talk about how institutional racism can permeate even in writing center spaces and how and why we work towards dismantling it.
SARAH: We’ve included our blog, which includes annotations of notes regarding articles we’ve read from that episode, as well as posts from our own consultants.
KIMBERLY: With that, be sure to stay safe, take care of one another, and this has been another episode of…
SARAH: ...How many hoos? [Laughter]
ELENA: There’s only two, right?
[Experimental background hooting]
KARISSA: I think two?
[More serious experimental hooting]
KARISSA (with more confidence): One extra hoo. [More hoots] Right?
KIMBERLY: I thought it was three!
SARAH: Is it “hoo, hoo, hoo’s at the writing center,” or is it “hoo, hoo’s at the writing center?” [Laughter]
KARISSA: We’ve never really talked about this.
ELENA: No, we never said –
KIMBERLY: Hm.
ELENA: Hmm.
KIMBERLY: Hmmm – [Laughter] Let us know in the comments below how many –
[All burst into laughter]
SARAH: Like and subscribe –
ELENA: How many hoos should there be?!
KARISSA: Are we doing this correctly? Let us know.
ELENA: Please help us.
SARAH: [Laughter]
KIMBERLY: There’s gonna be like someone – someone who keeps track of our hoos is just gonna be like, “You guys did three!” and we’re gonna be like, “Oh, thank you!” [Laughter]
ELENA: “This is an unacceptable change!”
[Laughter]
KIMBERLY: Also, check out our future D&D episode – DMed by Elena –
[Laughter]
ELENA: Oh boy.
KARISSA: No pressure.
[OUTRO MUSIC PLAYS]