Alberto Roblest says don’t judge his book by its cover
By hola | Published | No Comments
Hola Cultura’s co-founder, the Mexican writer and digital artist Alberto Roblest, found inspiration for his new book, “Against the Wall”, after his father fell ill.
“My father was dying. I was really sad and thought that writing him a story would be a way to keep him close to my heart,” Roblest says. “That was the start of the book.”
It contains 17 short stories that have been described as “magical realism.” Its cover sports a close-up image of the wall at the U.S.-Mexico border, though Roblest says it’s not the best representation of what’s inside.
“A lot of the time, you go by the book’s cover,” which Roblest says might lead a person to assume the book is exclusively about the border. But he notes the stories are set in a variety of places around the country including New York, Washington, D.C., and Texas.
“So it really is an American book,” he says. “These really are American stories.”
Roblest wrote the book in Spanish. It was translated into English by the renowned Nicolás Kanellos, a professor of Hispanic Studies at the University of Houston and the founder and director of Arte Público Press, the country’s oldest publisher of Hispanic literature. The Houston-based publishing house published the English edition in 2021. The Spanish version followed this summer.
To celebrate its publication, the Mt. Pleasant Neighborhood Library and Hola Cultura hosted a bilingual author’s talk with Roblest on July 23. This branch of the D.C. Libraries’ system is in the heart of Washington’s traditionally Latino section of the District. Though gentrification is transforming the neighborhood, the library continues to cater to a sizable Latinx community and is actively trying to integrate more bilingual material in order to reflect the neighborhood’s diverse population.
Photo of Roblest at the Mt. Pleasant Neighborhood Library on July 23 by Talia Jackson
“This is something that’s embraced at every age level here at the library,” according to Julie Seigel, an adult services librarian, who says Mt. Pleasant librarians are working to provide more Spanish-language translation at children’s activities as well as adult events and on flyers and signs. They’d like to have more events featuring Latinx authors and presenters and encourage more input about library programming from people in the community.
After screening a short video adaptation of the book’s prologue by Hola Cultura volunteer Jose Luis Mendoza, intern Isabel Fajardo read from Blackened Obelisk, the first story in the book, which opens on the National Mall, where cockroaches have overrun the Washington Monument. Roblest also answered questions from the audience.
Guillermo Fajardo, Isabel’s father who was in the audience, says the story reminded him of Franz Kafka’s novella, “The Metamorphosis,” about a salesman who wakes up as an insect one morning and has difficulty adapting to a modern society as a marginalized being. After the reading, he asked Roblest about why he used cockroaches in his story.
Roblest responded, saying cockroaches came to mind because they are so common in the D.C. area. He says he’s discovered the pests all over Washington, in wealthy homes and even out in the streets in the summertime. He also addressed his use of the cockroaches in the story and the government response to them as a metaphor.
Members of the Latinx community were not the only ones who took away something from “Against the Wall”. Thomas Devine, a member of Hola Cutlura’s Board of Directors, shared what he learned from the book during his opening remarks.
Explaining the message he discerned from the story, “Once You’re Down, Don’t Forget to Ask for God’s Help,” Devine had the following takeaway. “For the inhumanity, for not treating immigrants like human beings in New York City, the message is the American Dream is a fraud.”
As someone outside of the Latinx community, Devine says some of the stories “rang true” based on his own experiences, while others gave him insight into other lives.
“The book was taking you into a dream world of alternate realities,” Devine says. “I haven’t experienced those.”
Blackened Obelisk, meanwhile, “put an exclamation point,” Devine says, “on the issue of mistreatment of immigrants by U.S. society and by the government. Roblest, Devine says, masterfully underscores the fact that people come to the U.S. and perform vital services [but] aren’t viewed as humans.
“They’re viewed more as service objects.” Devine says. “They’re taking care of things, but … we don’t view them as people.”
At the event, Roblest also responded to a question about Hola Cultura and its origin, sharing how a stint volunteering with Latinx teenagers at a community organization just after moving to the District sparked his realization that D.C.’s Latino youth needed to develop better role models by broadening their horizons.
“When I came to Washington, I saw all these (young) guys, all these young people, you know, acting like gang members. They didn’t have any kind of inspiration. And I got very sad,” Roblest says.
His desire to connect D.C.’s Latino youth with better role models prompted him to launch what is now Hola Cultura. In the decade since, the organization has published over a thousand stories about local Latinx artists and the community. It’s grown into an independent nonprofit organization and local online magazine celebrating the area’s Latino arts and culture.
“Today, we do a lot of different reviews. Basically, the idea is to help promote to the Latino community the habit of reading…,” Roblest says. He feels young people today are too consumed by their smartphones and other technology. “They don’t like to read, which is very sad.”
As Roblest works on his next book, which he describes as dealing with the “Trump-ist era,” he continues to write and edit book reviews by other Latino authors, essays and short stories published every Monday on the Hola Cultura website with the help of volunteer writers. He says he hopes the stories encourage more community involvement in Latino literature and arts.
—Barbara Ron-Giron
Recent Stories
