“There are so many ways to tell a story”: An Interview with Carlos Martínez Assad

Authors

  • Rachel Norman Linfield University Author

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.24847/v10i12023.398

Keywords:

interview, Mexico, Mexican Mahjar, Literature, Lebanese Mexican

Abstract

In this interview, Carlos Martínez Assad reflects on his transition from a long career as an academic and historian to an author of fiction, as well as what it means to be Lebanese in Mexico. Before delving into the creative world of novels, Martínez Assad taught as a professor of sociology at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM). As a scholar, he has published prolifically (over twenty books and essays) and received numerous prestigious awards, including a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Medal of Historic Merit, and the Mexican National Prize of Arts and Sciences. His fiction draws heavily from his academic research into Lebanese Mexican history, and he acknowledges that although fiction grants the author artistic license, his goal is to write fictionalized accounts that are still as accurate as possible. His creative process, he states, is one of imagining how history might be duplicated, allowing for a new encounter with Lebanon, lived again with the family left behind.

Author Biography

  • Rachel Norman, Linfield University

    Rachel Norman is the director of the writing program and an associate professor of English at Linfield University, where she teaches courses on critical race and ethnic studies, American literature, and Middle Eastern literature. Her research focuses on translingualism and language politics in multiethnic literature, and her most recent publications have appeared in Amerasia and American Quarterly.

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Published

2023-06-27