March 4th, 2017
Denver, Colo. – Like many first-time novelists, Elena Torres doubted whether her work was worth publishing.
Whether anyone would care to read it. Whether it was good enough to finish.
In the end, she did finish it and we are glad she did. The result is a heart-warming but dramatic family story that is character-driven but with just the right amount of history.
Torres likes her debut novel partly because the three-year odyssey of writing it, and the twenty years of germination that preceded it, did payoff in a finished novel.
“It’s amazing because when I finally finished it, I did feel like it made me an author, good or bad,” Torres said. “That’s why I like it.”
Her book, “A Golden Moment of Freedom,” was published by Xlibris in 2015.
The book follows Teresa Moreno, a young Hispanic girl living in Texas, coming of age throughout the 1960’s and weaves in the tumultuous events of that decade as she embraces her Chicano identity.
Torres said that the novel turned out better than she thought, though she was full of doubts whether she should would even finish.
Any writer can relate to these doubts but it was the emergence of an editor and supporter that really allowed her to see it through. Her friend Britni, to whom the book is dedicated, was crucial in bringing the book to light.
“Britni pushed me to set deadlines, encouraged me and especially helped with getting the timeline right,” Torres said. “She was my motivator.”
The novel is a historical family drama and Torres wanted Teresa to grow up parallel to events such as the Kennedy assassination, the beginning and escalation of the Vietnam War, and the Martin Luther King assassination. Once Teresa leaves home, she becomes involved in the United Farm Workers (UFW) led by noted activist, Cesar Chavez.
But the cost is an unpleasant break from her family as she is drawn to far-off California, against her parents wishes. She ends up in Delano, CA., which was the true-to-life center of the noted grape and lettuce boycotts, organized to force growers to pay migrant workers fairly.
“I wanted to get Teresa’s age right with the dates of the history, but I didn’t want it to be a history book,” Torres said. “That’s why I didn’t go into detail about historical characters like Angela Davis, Chavez or Luis Valdez. I hoped it would be something that would make the reader check it (the history) out for themselves.”
Teresa encounters some famous characters, but it’s always in passing and her story is told through the personal relationships she has. Not that Torres avoided making some commentary about that time. Her narrative celebrates the revolutionary spirit of the farm workers and the Chicano movement, but also offers a multi-dimensional viewpoint. While the UFW successfully came together in force during the boycotts, Torres also details Teresa’s disillusionment at her people’s inability to get along at other times.
“The Latino’s have a hard time coming together politically, and I’m not sure why. Whether it’s competitiveness or failure to compromise, it held back Latinos from becoming the powerhouse they could be… to this day, ” Torres said.
When Teresa learns about the fight for Latino rights, she also begins to feel the dichotomy that many Mexican-Americans feel. The Chicano identity is wrapped up in the fact that they aren’t regarded as Americans or Mexicans. They have a foot in each but aren’t fully accepted by either. “The school principal wants them to act and identify as Americans, but that’s not how they are treated,” Torres said.
Torres is honest about the generational divisions in the Latino community. In the book, Oscar and Linda, Teresa’s parents, can’t understand why their daughter wants to get involved with “radicals.”
“Parents of that generation wanted to blend-in and urged their children to know their place. The movement and unions, they were totally against that. The culture was very docile, among first generation Latinos in the US,” Torres said.
The book itself came out of research and observations she made living during those times. At some point she said, the characters took on a life of their own, and she just had to follow them to the resolution.
Her books can be found at Coyote Ridge Books, where she is a writer-in-residence, working on a collection of short stories. Also check out Book Bar located in Denver, for print copies, as well as eBook format on Amazon.
While sales are growing, “I didn’t care if it sold or not, I just wanted to give it to friends and families,” Torres said. “That strangers are buying it though is extremely gratifying.”
– Matthew Johnson