Renowned Latinx authors spoke at multiple events Thursday as part of El Gran Combo — an event organized by the University of Maryland’s arts and humanities college in a celebration of Latinx literature.
The event featured authors including Angie Cruz, Jaquira Díaz, Caro De Robertis and Lilliam Rivera, who have written highly celebrated and awarded books such as Dominicana, Ordinary Girls, Cantoras and Never Look Back. The group visited this university to talk about their work and share advice for students.
Randy Ontiveros and Sarah Humud, the director and associate director of Honors Humanities, organized the event. They hoped the authors’ sharing their experience could jumpstart students to tell their own stories.
“We [Honors Humanities] always bring in each year, one spring speaker who we hope will inspire students and get them thinking and engage their creative works,” Humud said.
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With four speakers this year, the topics ranged vastly from thought process to creative work, as each panelist discussed their writing process and personal lives — from drug use to complicated family relationships.
The event — which featured a lunch with the authors and a formal panel at the Ulrich Recital Hall in Tawes Hall — sparked raw, personal and notable conversations about storytelling and the importance of Latinx representation in literature.
Díaz spoke to The Diamondback about her memoir Ordinary Girls, and said how important it was for her to “engage young people in conversation,” on sensitive issues.
Her braveness to talk about her sexual trauma and unstable upbringing was an active choice, one that she hoped would have a meaningful impact.
“I really wanted for young people to read the book and understand that we can and should talk about it, that it’s not our shame to carry,” she said.
Over an intimate lunch, authors were able to mingle and chat with students and faculty, with some carrying a book they hoped could be autographed. Díaz and the other authors discussed the hardships of writing about draining topics and the frustrations with having to be the ones to create narratives from an immigrant or Latinx perspective.
For Cruz, the arts have always been “undervalued” but that shouldn’t stop people from making it.
“You should make the art you want to make … regardless of how other people feel about it,” Cruz said.
Coming from someone who makes a living from storytelling and pure creativity, Díaz validated the burgeoning artists and writers in the audience in a big way.
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The candor and intensity with which Díaz spoke in the lunch was not only moving, but deeply thought-provoking. Alongside her other authors, the conversation brought a renewed value for creativity and storytelling to the crowd.
In a world of book banning and censorship, these authors who made up the El Gran Combo are fighting the good fight with their literature, and are encouraging students to do the same.
“We need you to write these stories. We need them, we need them, we need them,” Cruz said.
