Category Archives: Commentary and Critiques

Katherine Vaz

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This semester, Baruch College’s Sidney Harman Writer-In-Residence Program, welcomed Katherine Vaz, author of Our Lady of The Artichokes and Other Portugese-American Stories. For the duration of the semester, Vaz taught a select group of CUNY students interested in creative writing.

On October 25, 2012, however, Vaz made the time to visit our very own Features Writing class to talk about her writing experience in greater detail. Vaz, who has an impressive resume under her belt, including fellowships, an array of published stories, and awards, always wanted to be a writer. Since the age of 12 years old, she practiced her craft and eventually worked towards where she is today – a successful author.

Getting to where she is today was not easy, however. Vaz describe how much work and practice she put into her writing. In fact, she would set time aside from her schedule just to write.

“I got up every morning and sat at a desk from 9 to noon. I don’t think I have saved one word from all those hours and hours and hours I did, but I was learning how to make sentences, I was learning what words matched,” she said.

Her persistent practice writing soon became the start of her career. Life experiences also added to her talent. Vaz has been married and divorced, lived on both ends of the country, and worked with several companies. She studied in California and was part of fellowships in different universities.

“I started teaching, writing, freelancing,” said Vaz. “I did a lot of, I guess you can call it, woman magazine type journalism.”

For a long time, Vaz lived on freelance work, which was enough to support herself at the time. But she admitted that she would never go back to that type of living.  Instead, she worked on her fiction writing to earn a living.

“I started selling short stories to literary magazines,” said Vaz. “I never had a sense of being downcast by a rejection note. I would just turn right around and send it back somewhere else.”

Her strong will to become a published writer paid off. Before getting to this point, Vaz would be very savvy with her money.

“Instead of going out to eat or to the movies, I would buy literary magazines,” said Vaz. “It was as an act of faith. I bought them because I wanted people to read my articles too.”

“That was my world and I wanted to be part of it,” said Vaz.

In order to get where you want in life, you need to work for it. Katherine Vaz properly displays this notion. If it was not for her dedication, Vaz would not be as notable as she is today in the literary world.

Katherine Vaz

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Katherine Vaz is a true inspiration. She’s been surrounded by death and war from a very young age and instead of turning away from her pain, she has utilized her experiences to write some magnificent pieces. Vaz’s works brim with dark emotion, intriguing plots and most importantly, authenticity. She is the embodiment of the idea that through tragedy, one can create art. In fact, Vaz believes that most of her stories show the different ways in which people find happiness despite the pain they may endure.
In her writing, Katherine Vaz does not merely report on her experiences but uses them as a base or as I thought of it, “a springboard” for fiction that goes beyond her reality. This is a skill I would like to improve on myself, as I often find it challenging to detach myself from the truth when drawing upon my own experiences to write fiction. Vaz explains that it is not about what she shares about herself, or what happened to her specifically, but more about the idea that she wants to share with the world, the emotion that has built up inside of her that she wants to release for others to connect with. In her story “Taking a Stitch in a Dead Man’s Arm,” it is clear that Vaz drew from some of her own experiences with death, fear and religion when creating the Isabel character, and yet I didn’t dwell on this fact while reading it. What caught my attention more was the idea, the process of overcoming fear, which is essentially what Vaz wants the reader to focus on.
Hearing Vaz speak about how she came to be a writer also inspired me very much. I feel a writing persona within me as well. It is part of me in the same way 12-year-old Vaz realized it was a part of her. Once she had this realization, Vaz began practicing. She gave herself prompts, played around with ideas, and even took other people’s writing and began to deconstruct it in an effort to further her understanding of the structure and how she could improve her own. Considering the persistence and determination Vaz exhibited in honing her craft, it is no surprise that she is an acclaimed writer. I, myself, have only recently begun to truly exercise my writing muscles. I have always had a facility with language and writing which has caused me to rest upon that skill and regard it as my comfort zone. After hearing how Vaz pushed herself to improve her writing however, I feel motivated to do the same.

A Muslim Leader in Brooklyn, by Mayara Guimaraes

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How would you describe his place on the social/political spectrum? Is he a conservative, a liberal, or middle of the road? Back up your description by giving examples from the article.

Mr. Shata, in my view, simply doesn’t fit the conservative, liberal or middle of the road, definitions that we, people unrelated to his experience, like to use to classify people.

This man is trying to balance one of incredibly difficult situation. He is leading his people, keeping them close to their fate while understanding that they live in a completely different world than the one from which they came from. To try to live in America, pretending that the children and young members of their fate cannot see what’s in front of their eyes, and to pretend that they don’t question things, would be more than just “conservative”, it would be essentially stupid. However, to accept American culture and adapt to it, considering how different in terms of values and morals, that would be more than just “liberal”, it would be, again, stupid.

So what this man does is something that we can’t just classify. He manages to balance two worlds, as the tittle so efficiently states.

He has elevated himself from any common ground of definition in the social and political spectrum, and created a different place from himself, in which he became a leader of the Muslim fate that lives harmonically in New York City!

The Deadly Choices at Memorial Article Response

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This article written by Sheri Fink is a captivating read. The introduction made me sit up in my seat and lean in to read more of the story.

From the very beginning, she completely takes the reader and pulls their interest in the details of the story. Writer Sheri Fink is clearly a master of using less is more and doing a remarkable job at illustrating the facts of the story. As a reader, I was fascinated and could not put the article down. I was shocked by the words and the way the story is presented makes me feel terrible about what occurred.

I do not agree with the approach that Anna Pou and colleagues used as conditions worsened after Katrina. I think it was unnecessary and more options should have been considered for the lives that was lossed.

It is a tragedy and the article was written to demonstrate all sides of the story. Anna Pou may have helped passed three laws, but it does not seem in align with the common good. I appreciate this assignment to read this article and the chance to become aware of this story.

The Deadly Choices at Memorial, by Mayara Guimaraes

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The article, “The Deadly Choices at Memorial,” by Sheri Fink gives the reader the ability to simply read the facts, and come up with his own opinion. By no means does the article influence the reader to choose one side.
That is, do you think that the decisions made by the nursers and doctors to leave behind the oldest and sickest people were  ethical or legal? Or do you think that it is never up to the doctor to make decisions like that?
Well, definitely the conditions in which the people in charge were in was an exception that no law or ethical value could think of so that people would know what to do in this case.
I completely disagree with anyone who thinks the doctors and nurses should pay for the decision they made like they committed a crime. These people are not criminals, and they did the best they could under an extremely stressful situation. Every person saved, all the efforts done by the staff, all the people they carried and cared for while hot, hungry and exhausted… that is what counts.

Katherine Vaz Profile

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By Teresa Roca

Standing at the podium, with her eyes fixated on the page in front of her, Katherine Vaz reads an excerpt from her upcoming novel “Below the Salt.” As she reads, the seated audience remains still. No cell phones vibrate. No one shifts in his or her chair. The only sound in the room is of the words that captivate the audience. As she portrays the themes of death and tragedy through these words, she is able to evoke emotion from her listeners. This talent makes her the critically acclaimed author she is today.

“It’s really hard to write fiction that doesn’t have those issues that connect to loss,” said Vaz. “Death is going to happen.”

Growing up in Oakland, California in the late ’60s, the issues of race and the Vietnam War plagued her community. After hearing stories of her grandmother’s death, how her mother was born dead then brought back to life, and experiencing her grandfather’s passing first hand, death has been prevalent throughout her life.

“I don’t think I am unusual or different. I tend to think of death as just plain life,” said Vaz.

“Taking a Stitch to a Dead Man’s Arm,” the first short story in her collection “Our Lady of the Artichokes and Other Portuguese American Stories,” is inspired by experiences from Vaz’s childhood such as taking the bus to school, forming a friendship of protection with another student, and her relationship with her father. Vaz took her father’s fear of the dark and a family myth to create a fictional story bigger than the truth it came from.

“It’s completely fictional. I am not that character at all,” said Vaz. “That is the thing about fiction, it is not an autobiography, but you do draw on essences.”

Vaz knew she wanted to be a writer at the age of 12. From 9 a.m. to 2 p.m., Vaz would spend her workdays giving herself writing exercises such as copying paragraphs to see the construction and writing short stories in a specific time span. Although she did not save one word from these exercises, this is how Vaz learned to write.

“I can even see the moment where that wasn’t just what I wanted to do, but who I was,” said Vaz.

After years of having her short stories published in literary magazines, Vaz was accepted into the MFA program at the University of California at Irvine in her early 30s. Her thesis, which drew on her past experiences, as opposed to conventional topics, became her first novel entitled “Saudade.” This novel portrays a young woman’s struggle with self-expression in a world with no sound. Her second book, “Mariana,” depicts the true story of a nun who wrote love letters that many people believe to be the most passionate documents in history. This novel received widespread popularity. It was printed in seven editions, six languages and remained on the bestsellers list in Portugal for years.

Aside from writing, Vaz dedicated her time to a teaching fellowship at Harvard University for five years. During that time, she also did a fellowship at Radcliff Institute for Advanced Study.

With a religious family that practiced the catholic faith, Vaz grew up learning about saints and their crucial role in her culture. The use of miracles and religious beliefs regarding saints are two consistent themes found throughout her work.

“I grew up with the stories of the saints,” said Vaz. “They were real people who had miraculous things happen, things phenomenal to me. I realize they’re mythological, but it does introduce the possibility that extraordinary things can exist the real world. ”

Her ability to present old Portuguese-American traditions and catholic beliefs, while understanding the complexities of life, has made her an award-winning author.

She won the 1997 Drue Heinz Literature Prize for her first short story collection “Fado & Other Stories” and was the 2007 winner of the Prairie Schooner Book Prize in Fiction for “Our Lady of the Artichokes and Other Portuguese American Stories.”

When asked how Vaz knows that her readers will be interested in the topics she writes about, she replied, “I feel and give weight to what’s important to me, what do I need to get across to people. You explore that and are not confined by having to report this is the way the incident happened. It is not about what I share about myself, what happened to me. It is about what I have in my heart that I manifest in the world, what I want to find as a story.”