Dariel Suarez on an Awkward Style

 Dariel Suarez's On a Non-Native English Speaker’s Creative Journey to Authenticity on Literary Hub deals with his difficulties of going from being a Spanish speaker to being an English writer.

After three years of this and getting into an MFA program, the feedback remained: your phrasing is awkward. By then, I’d developed a bit of a complex. When asked about my biggest area of weakness, my fixed answer became “language.” It wasn’t a huge confidence boost to admit this. The whole enterprise of being a good writer, it seemed to me, hinged on that very thing: your ability to successfully string just the right words together. I tried camouflaging my insecurities by claiming that conflict and plot were more important. Secretly, though, I felt profound envy for the writers who seemed naturally gifted at wielding evocatively inventive sentences at every turn.

Then, during workshop one night, a professor praised the supposed awkwardness of my style as something worthy of embrace. “Nurture it as your own,” he said after class. Suddenly, I realized what lay at the heart of my struggle. I was aiming to please an audience whose native language and cultural experience were fundamentally different from mine. No matter how much I tried, the result would be artificial, clunky, detached from the reality and sensibility driving my fiction.

I think we from the hinterlands might face a slightly similar problem. We are not Brooklyn hipsters; we do not all have MFAs. We may be natives but we are natives with a different, less recognizable backgrounds. I think we should take Mr. Suarez's solution to heart.

Following the completion of my MFA, I committed to two projects: a story collection and a novel, both set in Cuba. My language, I decided, would remain “awkward.” Which, in practice, simply meant I would prioritize the cultural authenticity and idiosyncrasy of my characters over any American reader. Immediately, I experienced a level of freedom and confidence I hadn’t felt before.

At the same time, a new set of obstacles appeared. How could I remain true to a people and culture in a language that wasn’t theirs? What would I do when something was untranslatable? How much Spanish should there be in the writing? To what extent would I be willing to compromise for the sake of clarity or familiarity, especially at key moments in the story? The incessant wrestling with these questions could have a detrimental or even stifling effect if the answers weren’t clear.

Thus, I established a set of craft parameters I use to this day. The first is to use Spanish whenever a word or phrase would be severely undermined by translation. For instance, certain idiosyncratic Cuban expressions just wouldn’t have the same impact in English...Therefore, if I choose to include them, instead of offering an immediate translation, I focus on placement and rely on the context and tone of the narrative for the reader to get what’s necessary.

Then there are the cultural references unique to a country or region. Having to constantly explain the context for a detail, setting, or circumstance—especially if it doesn’t deepen or complicate the story—is ultimately a burden for both writer and reader. I find it more effective to weave these types of references into the conflict and stakes.

 He gives more details on the execution of his ideas, so it may pay to read the whole of the essay. Definitely think on what he says for those of you who are from the places where writers are not supposed to be from.