Definitions, paths, and impressions from Arts Calling Podcast interviews

I picked an episode at random this week. So here we are: Episode 54 of the Arts Calling podcast featured the remarkable Daniel A. Olivas.

Daniel A. Olivas, the grandson of Mexican immigrants, was born and raised near downtown Los Angeles. He is an award-winning author of fiction, nonfiction, plays, and poetry. Widely anthologized, Olivas has written on culture and literature for The New York Times, Los Angeles Review of Books, BOMB, Jewish Journal, High Country News, and The Guardian. He writes regularly for La Bloga, a site dedicated to Latinx literature and the arts. By day, Olivas is an attorney and makes his home in Southern California.

Around the time we spoke, Daniel’s short story collection, How to Date a Flying Mexican, had just come out.

How to Date a Flying Mexican is a collection of stories derived from Chicano and Mexican culture but ranging through fascinating literary worlds of magical realism, fairy tales, fables, and dystopian futures. Many of Daniel A. Olivas’s characters confront—both directly and obliquely— questions of morality, justice, and self-determination.

The collection is made up of Olivas’s favorite previously published stories, along with two new stories—one dystopian and the other magical— that challenge the Trump administration’s anti-immigration rhetoric and policies. How to Date a Flying Mexican draws together some of Olivas’s most unforgettable and strange tales, allowing readers to experience his very distinct, and very Chicano, fiction.

Daniel said many things that resonated with me, here’s a few of them:

• Don’t panic. You have time to lead many lives. Daniel began his writing career in earnest at 39 years of age, inspired by his father’s own dream to be a writer. I turned 39 this year, so the timing of this episode could not be more appropriate. I used to feel suffocated by the idea of time. I was never quite sure if I was short on it or had too much on my hands. I often see posts on writing subreddits on whether it’s too late to be a writer at 25. Daniel’s trajectory proves there’s enough time to wear many hats in this life. When I was younger, I wanted my life to be one thing: My art. Life isn’t like that, however. I don’t think a life well-lived can be about one single pursuit. Life is not a series or checklists to achieve either, but rather, a refusal to let your mind calcify. Stay curious in life by wearing many hats! Daniel wears many hats in his myriad experiences: a family man, a lawyer, a writer, a Chicano arts advocate, and I’m sure there are countless other pursuits and goals and experiences that we didn’t cover on the podcast, but Daniel’s just getting started, and so are you. You have time.

• The quelling of heartbreak and sorrow through writing. First off, writing about traumatic experiences is no substitute for mental health support from professionals. But undeniable catharsis can be found in writing from one’s life experiences. To process the loss of a loved one, Daniel wrote The Courtship of Maria Rivera Peña. This novella aimed to capture the sorrows and joys of living, his family’s past, and his grief. This experience jumpstarted Daniel’s journey into a writing career that is still going strong decades later.

• I appreciate how Daniel embraces intuitive symbolism. As I prep my cluster project at the coalition, I found his perspective comforting. The work I’m producing at the coalition is a self-funded D.I.Y. fringe aesthetic, so I have free rein to veer outside traditional dramatic writing structures to prioritize my intuition as I craft my audio projects. It’s a little scary so far, but always exciting. Sometimes the coolest thing an artist can do is weave open-ended questions into their work so the audience can reach into their hearts for the answers.

A word of advice to a young brown kid out there just getting started?

One last favor: Please check out Daniel’s newest books, Chicano Frankenstein, and My Chicano Heart, collected stories!

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