Katherine Vaz writes Portuguese magic

I first read the writing of Katherine Vaz back when I was researching Stories Grandma Never Told. At that time, she was teaching at UC Davis. Her father grew up on Terceira in the Azores Islands. Although she had been writing stories since she was a girl, she said she found her voice when she started writing about her family background. Much has changed in her life since we talked. She moved to the East Coast to teach at Harvard, but she continues to give us stories that bring the Portuguese culture in Portugal and the U.S. to life. Vaz’s is a voice worth hearing. Find out more about her at Katherinevaz.com.

Vaz’s first book, Saudade, published in 1994, is the mystical story of an Azorean girl, Clara, who is born mute and speaks in a language of sugar crystals. Her world is one where ghosts appear regularly, and the unexpected is ordinary. When her parents both die, she is left in the hands of a priest who is supposed to care for her and take her to claim a parcel of land she has inherited in California. Instead he endeavors to cheat her out of her property. Clara triumphs over the priest, finds love with a kind widower and learns to communicate in a marvelous language of colors, translating numbers, words and even musical notes into colors. Much of the story takes place in Lodi, California, where Vaz’s godmother lived. Saudade was well-received by critics and readers. Barnes & Noble included it in its Discover Great New Writers series. Vaz followed that up with Fado and Other Stories, published in 1997. That book won the Drue Heinz Literature prize.

Then came Mariana, published in the UK by HarperCollins in 1997, in the U.S. by Aliform Publishing in 2004. It started with a slim volume of love letters written by a Portuguese nun in the late 1600s. Vaz originally just planned to do a new translation of the letters, but she was so enchanted by the story that she decided to write it as a novel. It took a massive amount of research. Vaz traveled to mainland Portugal more than a dozen times. She visit Mariana’s family estate in Beja and studied the books and artifacts in that town’s museum. The result is a long, mystical, emotional novel that opens the door to worlds most Americans can’t even imagine.

Mariana Alcoforado, headstrong teenage daughter of an influential Portuguese landowner, is put into the convent during the Portuguese war for independence from Spain. Like many women of that era living in the convents, she didn’t necessarily have a call to the celibate life of a nun. She falls in love with a French soldier fighting for the Portuguese. They have a passionate affair which ends when he goes back to France. Her overwhelming love causes her to write the letters which ultimately are published and distributed far and wide. Mariana, closed off in the convent, doesn’t even know that the world is talking about this passionate Portuguese nun.

Vaz has totally captured the Portuguese style in her language and in the magical realism that permeates the story. We learn a tremendous amount about Portuguese history and culture, but the research does not intrude on the story. It is a slow read, with dense print and long Portuguese names, but for the Luso fan, it’s worth the effort.

Vaz’s most recent book is Our Lady of the Artichokes and other Portuguese-American Stories (University of Nebraska Press, 2008). How do I describe these stories? Although Vaz is a California native, these tales are filled with Portuguese language and traditions, superstitions and mysticism. They’re fascinating, and some of them are downright weird. But they are so rich, the settings in California and Portugal so vivid, the people so real. The title story, “Our Lady of the Artichokes,” parodies the craziness that arises around any possible sighting of the Virgin Mary. “The Man Who was Made of Netting” takes us backstage at one of the annual Holy Ghost festas that happen wherever Portuguese-Americans congregate. “The Lisbon Story,” the longest in the book, still resonates in my heart as I think about the two dying men at the center of this tale.

Vaz is one of many Portuguese-American authors whose voices are finally beginning to be heard. Look her up.

Lara Gularte shares her poems with us

California poet Lara Gularte, whom I have known for many years, kindly shares her poetry with us today. She often writes about her Portuguese-American family and their roots in the Azores islands. For more about Lara, see her website at https://sites.google.com/a/laragularte.com.

CALIFORNIA BRIDE

Bones half-grown, she rises
from a ship’s dark hold.
Gives herself up
to a hard-handed miner,
and grows thin from miscarriage,
fat from pregnancy.
Sings songs in Portuguese
as she hurries from cabin to sluice box
on small calloused feet.

I remember the old woman,
not the girl.
A widow in black,
with thick stockings, heavy shoes.
Lived in the corner
of my grandmother’s kitchen
gluing broken dishes.
Always moving and praying.
Boiled her own egg
till the day she died.

The face of Maria Neves
floats in my dreams.
She was my great grandmother.
I wear her eyes,
speak in her voice.
She is waving her hands,
reshaping the air
to tell me in broken English,
that “life is no sugar.”

First published in the San Jose Mercury News, Gold Rush Series.
*************************************************************************
AT THE VILLAGE OF SANTA BARBARA, ISLAND OF PICO
Looking for my great, great grandmother, Maria Francesca do Cabral

My fingernails scrape lava stones,
loosen dust.

Looking for the other world
I find a fissure in the earth that leads
to where the sea tosses its wet creatures,
their lungs exhaling.

The ocean spreads dark and cold beneath the night,
reaches with every wave
for drops of light shed by the moon.

Musty air and a ghost rattle through banana leaves
you rise up, bones of family architecture, luminous.
A woman without soil, you carved roots
from stones of the island.

Into the Azorean sea you dive.
The splash of your body, and I jump,
scattering stars, to pull towards you.
Where ocean and sky meet, you vanish.

Your memory, the afterlife dissolving
all that salt
seeping back into the sea
an ocean mist without end.

I hold my breath, hear the heartbeat of waves,
feel the ocean of my blood.
My body takes pleasure in forgetting gravity,
the need for breathing on my own.

I ask God to throw me a line.
Floating to the shore I feel the pull of the universe
slow everything down, as heaven pulls the earth
into its arms.

First published, SAAL-Suplemento Acoriano de Artes e Letras, da revista Saber/Acores.
*************************************************************************
IN THE STARS

My house razed
I live in a modular now,
furnished
and sealed shut.
I won’t cook electric
the food tastes flat.

When I get hungry
I build a fire outdoors.
Near the shell of my old house
I cook myself a big pot of beans.
The smell of wood and fresh air
gives the food flavor.

My daughter visits,
brings the Fire Marshall.
She says if I don’t stop
cooking outside,
she will put me in a home.
My home is gone, I say.

I miss the music of the old country—
goats bleating, roosters crowing,
the sound of church bells.
From my adega you could hear
seals bark,
waves crash against rocks.

At night I look for signs
in the stars,
see canvas sails of my young years
billow along routes
the fishing boats took
when they left port.

First published in Watershed.

All poems used with permission from Lara Gularte

Mary Alves lived to sing

Mary Alves, founder of the choir at Five Wounds Church in San Jose, sang all her life. Not only did she lead the choir at Mass, but she and others from the church took their music on the road, singing at festas, weddings, funerals, and other events where the Portuguese gathered.

In 1947, as gifts to her three sons, Mary went to the old Sherman Clay music store in downtown San Jose and recorded versions of "Ave Maria" by Schubert, Bach-Gounod and Renault. On the flip side of each vinyl record, she recorded a different Portuguese ballad. Years later, her son Richard treasured those recordings, which he had copied onto tape.

A native of Faial, Mary came to San Jose with her husband John S. Alves in 1910. John became a barber, working at a shop at First and Bassett streets for more than 50 years. Meanwhile, Mary built her life around her children, music and Five Wounds Church.

When Five Wounds opened in 1919, Mary led the seven-member choir. She continued in that role for 50 years. One of her greatest joys was receiving a special apostolic benediction in 1961 from Pope John XXIII for her years of service to the church.

Mary had little formal education, but she made a special effort to learn English and to pronounce the words properly, especially when she sang. Every time she heard a new word, she would write it out phonetically, so she oculd look it up and learn it. After Mary's death, her son found her little word book among her possessions.

In her final years, Mary was crippled with arthritis and had to give up the music that she loved. She died in 1971 at the age of 86. John, who was 90, died 13 days later.

(excerpted from Stories Grandma Never Told, copyright 2007 Sue Fagalde Lick)

Have you seen Avo' on YouTube?

I was searching for perfectly serious information about Portuguese grandmothers when I stumbled upon the Portuguese Grandmother series on YouTube. I couldn't stop watching. Jeffrey Popsick of Toronto, Canada, has been filming his grandmother, Angelina, since Dec. 2007. In the short episodes, she is doing simple things like eating soup, sleeping or washing the dishes, but the way she does it is so familiar to anyone who actually has had a Portuguese grandmother and so funny. I don't understand all the Portuguese words. She says them so quickly, but boy, do I understand the gestures. Worse, in about 15, I'll probably look just like her.
You can "Like" Portuguese Grandmother on Facebook or search for her on YouTube. The website, given, www.popsick.com, was not working when I checked it today.
Moral of the story: even if you're a wrinkly Portuguese grandma in black, you can be famous on YouTube. Here's a sample.
Enjoy.

"Portuguese Grandma" to generations of journalists

When I started working on Stories Grandma Never Told, one of the first women I contacted was Dolores Freitas Spurgeon.She was one of my journalism professors at San Jose State. She never used the "Freitas" part of her name, but I was pretty sure she was Portuguese. I soon learned that her father was born in Madeira, and her Hawaii-born mother was the daughter of immigrants from Madeira.

Like so many other Portuguese women I interviewed, Dolores didn't think she was important enough to be written about, but the story she told me at her home in Santa Clara was an inspiration for a young writer.

Dolores wanted to go to college, but her parents offered no help or support. They figured education was a waste of money for a girl because she'd just get married anyway. She received a $25 PTA scholarship,which in the 1930s was enough to pay for her first year, but not enough to buy books. She had to borrow her friends' books or do her reading at the library. Her parents' overprotectiveness was also a problem. In her senior year, when she became editor of the school newspaper, her parents wouldn't let her go to the print shop at night to check the proofs. "They just didn't see any reason why any girl should be running around at night."

But Dolores was determined. She managed to make passing grades and got jobs on campus to help pay for the rest of her schooling. She graduated in 1936 and started teaching at Jefferson Elementary School. When San Jose State established its journalism department, she got a job as secretary to the department chairman. Over the years, she moved up to assistant instructor and finally full professor. She earned a master's degree and a general secondary credential at Stanford.

By the time I got to SJSU in the 1970s, she was a veteran professor, specializing in magazine writing. She took me under her wing, helping me publish my first articles and earn a $100 scholarship to help pay my fees.

She was married to the late John Spurgeon, but in an age when most women stayed home and took care of their families, they had no children, and she continued to teach.

Growing up, she attended the festas and enjoyed connecting with her Portuguese heritage, although she never became fluent in the language. One of the great thrills of her life was when she finally got to visit the land of her ancestors, she said."I'm in Portugal! I'm in Portugal!" she shouted when she landed in Lisbon for the first time. She wished her parents were still alive so she could tell them how she felt.

Over the years, we have kept in touch. Dolores, who retired in 1975, has sent me proud letters congratulating me for my books and honors. She helped me join the California Writers Club and was still an active member when I became president of the South Bay branch in the early 1990s. While the world moved into the computer age, she continued to send notes written by hand or typed on her old typewriter. Just last month, I received a Christmas card from her.

Although Dolores never had children or grandchildren, she gave birth to several generations of journalists, making her a very special Portuguese grandma.

Remembering Marie Gambrel

When I interviewed Marie Dutra Gambrel in 1997, I wasn't sure she'd live until Stories Grandma Never Told was published. The tiny 77-year-old peering at me through thick glasses had spent more time in the hospital over the previous year than she had at home. She suffered from heart problems and severe asthma. Widowed and living alone in a single-wide mobile home in Sacramento, she somehow survived on $700 a month. Not just survived, thrived. Marie was a bundle of energy, full of stories. I had trouble writing fast enough to keep up. Her memory for names and dates was amazing.

Our interview went on so long we both got hungry and continued talking at a fast-food place nearby. She insisted on paying, even though I knew she couldn't afford it. I was two hours late to my next interview, but when I told them who I was with, they laughed. They knew Marie. Everybody knew Marie and everybody loved her.

Marie had had a hard life full of loss, but she didn't let it weigh her down. Instead, she treasured her sons, her friends, and her Portuguese heritage. She never got a chance to participate in the Holy Ghost festas in her youth, but in recent years, she was active in Sacramento's Portuguese community, usually showing up in one of the Portuguese costumes she had made, red, green and yellow for Portugal, blue and white for the Azores. She was active in the annual Camellia Festival parades, winning the hat contest three times, helped raise funds for the Portuguese Community Park, and helped research the book Portuguese Pioneers of the Sacramento Area.

By the time I left her place, Marie and I were old friends. After all, our families both came from Faial. On our trips to California, my husband Fred and I visited, and he loved her as much as I did. Between visits, Marie telephoned and sent me cards loaded with notes and clippings. She continued to spend a lot of time at the hospital, but she seemed unstoppable.

She outlived many of the older women in the book, but Marie Gambrel passed away on March 19, 2009, finally at rest with the Lord she loved.

Remembering Edna Sousa and Elaine Avina Fagalde

Ah, memories. One day when I was working on Stories Grandma Never Told, my mother, Elaine Avina Fagalde, invited her favorite aunt,Edna Freitas Sousa, over to go through the old photo albums that had been hidden in the cedar chest for years. The tiny black and white pictures were taken when my grandmother and the rest of the Sousa/Souza siblings were young, growing up in Santa Clara, California, surrounded by aunts, uncles and cousins.

"Is that...?" "Oh my God, look at Annie." "Is that you?" Mom, Aunt Edna, my Dad (in the background) and I laughed and smiled at the memories. Of course, all of these pictures were taken long before I was born. But for these photo albums and these wonderful Portuguese women at our kitchen table, the memories would have been lost.

My mother passed away in 2002 from cancer. Aunt Edna made it to 100 years old before leaving us in April 2009. Just this morning, I thought of a question to which only my mother would know the answer, but it's too late.

This holiday season,take out the photo albums--yes, the pre-digital pictures--and look through them with your loved ones. Share the memories.