Sara Santistevan: Interview & Portfolio

I: Hi Sara, I am excited to have the privilege of interviewing you today! 

S: Hi Isha! Thanks so much. It’s such an honor to chat with you and have my poetry featured in this special issue of The Looking Glass Review!

I: So before we get into your work featured in this issue, I want to get to know you a bit more as an individual and creative. Tell me about your upbringing, and how that reflects into your present.

S: I was very, very shy as a child, so naturally, I turned to books for entertainment and comfort! I remember being awestruck by books like Scott O’Dell’s Island of the Blue Dolphins and Edith Pattou’s East—specifically, how I could read these stories and feel like they whisked me away to another world. That sense of subtle yet tangible magic is something I hope to capture in my own work. 

As far as non-creative experiences, I was aware of my identity as a Latina from a young age, and how it set me apart from some of my peers in elementary school and junior high. I lived very close to my maternal grandparents, and fondly remember visiting their house after school to eat traditional meals, listen to older Spanish tunes, and eavesdrop on snippets of my grandparents speaking in Spanish. Even at a young age, I always had the sense of navigating two worlds: the world where I was “American” at school and around my friends, and the world where I’m the child and grandchild of immigrants. Having one foot in each world has deepened my writing; I can pull symbols and imagery from either side and spotlight or mesh them together depending on my goal for a piece.

I: Thank you for sharing! What were your goals as a child, and how do they compare to your goals now? Where do you see yourself in 20 years?

S: The first dream I remember having as a child is of being an author and writing books! As much as I would love to do that full-time, it’s not exactly a profitable career for most people. I’d love to get a PhD in poetry or literature so I can contribute research about works from diverse authors to the field, teach fellow creatives and aspiring academics, and work on my writing on the side. In 20 years, I’d love to have an MFA in poetry and a PhD under my belt and be established in both my academic and creative careers. 

I: Those are lovely goals that I am confident you will achieve. I’m curious, what are your passions, what do you do in your free time?

S: I’m actually working to cultivate other passions with writing; when I overwork myself with my writing to the point of burnout, I struggle to find other ways to fill my free time. 

I love swimming and taking long walks to run errands; it clears my head and is a great way to exercise without getting sweaty! I recently took up needlework, like embroidery, and that’s another great activity that gets me out of my head. 

Other than that, I’m trying to tap back into other passions I had when I was younger, like drawing. I still play some of the video games that made me fall further in love with different forms of storytelling like Life is Strange, Undertale, Deltarune, Pokemon, and soothing games like Animal Crossing and Stardew Valley.

I: You truly are a multifaceted woman, and I wonder, what are some of your favorite memories or experiences- have any of these inspired your written pieces?

S: Some of my favorite memories are sitting around the kitchen table with my family and listening to my grandparents share stories from their childhood, before they immigrated to the States. I had some early encounters with mortality when I was younger, so recounting and documenting these stories feels like a way to keep my loved ones alive forever. Family, both literally and symbolically, is very important to me.

My writing isn’t always autobiographical, and when it is, it’s rarely an exact one-to-one comparison. However, family history definitely inspires and bleeds into my work. I think even something as small as family stories can act as a channel to tap into larger cultural histories. I hope my writing is part of an effort to highlight people and stories that, historically, haven’t been part of the literary canon.

I: Now your poem in “Motherhood, Martyrs, Misfits,” “Arroz con Leche” was extremely touching- I was wondering, did you draw inspiration from a real relationship with your mother, or your culture? Is this poem culturally significant in any way to you or others?

S: Thank you so much! This poem partially drew from my real relationship with my mother; she was born in Ecuador and loves eating arroz con leche hot! 

The rest of the poem is more symbolic. “Arroz con Leche” is in the final section of my forthcoming chapbook, The Root From Which Freedom Blossoms. I tried to arrange the poems in my chapbook into three sections, mapping out a positive character arc where the speaker learns to love their identity and place in their culture. I think this poem is an important part of that turning point, where the speaker realizes perhaps their lineage is full of people who felt similarly to them, but for one reason or another, weren’t able/allowed to think about their feelings in the same way. 

The shorter answer is: I wanted to write about the desire to mother one’s mother as a way to come to terms with the effects of generational trauma. The speaker rewrites a traditional lullaby to encourage their mother to pursue her own dreams as an act of love, healing, and revolution. 

I: Beautiful, I am excited to read your forthcoming chapbook! Is Spanish your mother tongue? If so, how frequently do you speak this language/does it bring comfort to you, a sense of familiarity? I know that when I am speaking my mother tongue, Telugu, I feel more connected to my Indian roots.

S: It isn’t! Another experience that is central to my creative work is the experience of growing up in a Latine family but never learning to speak Spanish. This experience definitely led me to feel a little alienated, or “lesser than,” my Latine peers in my teenage years. I’ve been lucky to meet plenty of other Latines who have similar experiences!

Going back to your previous question about where I see myself in 20 years, I’d love to fluently speak Spanish by then! During my teenage years, I experienced something pretty traumatic that made learning Spanish very difficult. I write more about this difficulty of wanting to connect with one’s roots, but feeling spiritually blocked due to trauma, in The Root From Which Freedom Blossoms.

However, when I’m around my family, it’s very easy to feel my tongue melting into Spanish, and suddenly, I’m saying words I never consciously realized I knew to say at that moment! I guess I absorbed some Spanish from hearing my family speak it so often at a young age. Like you, when I hear and speak my ancestral tongue, I feel more connected to my roots. It’s a very precious yet sensitive goal of mine to learn Spanish one day; I’m just trying to take it slow and be gentle with myself.

I: Lovely, thank you for sharing, and once again, I am definitely going to delve deeper into your written work! Alienation and acceptance of one’s situation are both simultaneously difficult to speak about but more to experience. Now I would love to hear you talk a bit more about "they don’t invite the family witch to the memorial service," it was a stunning piece!

S: That’s very sweet of you to say; thank you! I grew up with protestant parents and catholic grandparents, so Biblical imagery and allusions were such an integral part of my upbringing; even when I don’t intend to do so, I find religious language bleeding into so much of my writing.

This poem is one of my more personal works because I lost my dad to illness at a young age. Growing up, so many of the adults in my life commented on how much I looked like him. It was really difficult to grapple with my identity as a teenager (both as a Latina who didn’t speak Spanish and just as a clueless kid going through puberty) and lose my dad in the process. Writing this poem was a way to hold space for the grief of losing someone who I identified with in many ways; at the time of his death, it really felt like I lost a part of myself.

Another reason family history is very important to me is that I didn’t get to learn much about my heritage from my dad when he was alive. So, I wanted this poem to grapple with grief from multiple angles: the grief of losing a loved one, the grief of losing a sense of yourself, and the grief of feeling disconnected from a part of your lineage.

I: That is a lovely purpose of a poem, it truly does touch on a variety of important themes; I adore how you centered it around the experience of grief, while still maintaining diversity in its angles. This interview has been eye-opening and wonderful, and it was a pleasure to have you with me today- I hope to speak to you again in the future, and would love to read more of your work!

S: