Tag: Marcos McPeek Villatoro
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Writing From the Classroom: Dana Gil, Ghost-Seer
This is an essay by Dana Gil, who took my class “Literature and Contemporary Issues.” She has a real knack for storytelling, and this story, well…something to tell around the campfire. My grandmother, María Elgega, died three weeks ago. She died in her sleep, at her nursing home, my mother at her side. She had…
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What I Reap From Mamá’s Stories
It’s been fun to post my mother’s memoir here on The Writing Bull. And it’s just as fun, and even more meaningful, to listen to her stories. Which, I have heard all my life. I have known, for decades, about her murdered father–my grandfather Pilar Reyes–who was shot in the street by some guy named…
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The Massacre of 1932
After my father’s murder, and my mother and I had to flee, my grandfather ¨Papa Polo” was the main figure in my life. Grandmamá had one of the women to be responsible about my care, which was not the best but nevertheless made my character of a survivor all through my entire life. Because of…
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Why did they murder my father?
My mother, Amanda, continues with her memoir–and the questions of why her father was murdered. My grandmamá Martina’s servants gossiped about my father, Pilar Reyes, and his murder. He had been the ninth of twelve children, all who lived in Berlín, the town where I was born, in the northern mountains of El Salvador. They…
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A Letter to My Generation: We f**ked up.
I’m teaching Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale now, and it just hit me–it’s not about feminism. I mean, yeah it is. Most everyone knows the overall plot: it’s a dystopian novel, in which a zealot, religious military takes over the United States and subjugates all women, making a number of them into Handmaids. They’re the ones who…