College of Arts and Sciences

Professor's research on Mexican author comes full-circle

Elena Hines
College of Arts and Sciences Staff Writer

The research project of a senior faculty member at Western Michigan University has brought her full-circle from her post-graduate days more than 20 years ago.

Irma López, chair of the department of Spanish as well as a Spanish professor, wrote her dissertation for her Ph.D. in Latin American literature on the first five novels of María Luisa Puga (1948-2004), one of the Mexican women writers whose fiction depicted the Mexican middle class from the female point of view.

Now, she seeks to digitize Puga’s journals, speak with those close to Puga (writers of Puga’s generation as well as those who studied at a cultural center she created to promote creative writing among young people in a rural, economically impoverished community), then write Puga’s biography.

“I come into the project with a base on her,” López said. “I know her work and understand her work very well.”

More than a year ago López knew she needed a research project when she went back to the classroom rather than serving as a department chair, but she had no idea what she wanted to do. She considered new Mexican women writers, but “nothing grabbed me.”

Then one day, she opened an email from a journalist who wrote for a Mexican newspaper. The journalist had read López’ book on Mexican women writers, and wanted to know how to get a copy.

“I will send you one,” López told her.

The journalist offered to pay, but López refused.

A month later, López received an email from the journalist, expressing high praise for the section on Puga.

“Your tone of voice changes — you took it to another level of my understanding of the work,” she said.

López, who feels she is in the last stage of her career, then deemed it very fitting to write about Puga.

“It will be nice to finish my career writing about María Luisa again,” she said.

One major challenge, however, was that nothing had been written about Puga because she was extremely private.

“I knew journals existed because she talked about writing in journals,” López said. If she could just get ahold of those books, she could base her biography on them.

Therein lay the challenge. María Luisa left the books to her sister Patricia Puga, and López’ Internet search proved fruitless. She did learn that María Luisa’s partner, Isaac Levin, had died two years earlier.

But the journalist owed López a favor — after all, she’d sent her a free copy of the book. López decided to contact her — and found out she knew the editor of the publishing house that had published Puga’s works.

They offered to pass along López’ proposal to Puga; after a month or two of silence from Mexico she tried again.

The next day she had mail.

“My name is Patricia Puga,” the electronic note read. “I know you are looking for me. What can I do for you?”

The two began communicating, and Puga expressed a willingness to interview López if she came to Mexico City.

López met with Puga’s family this past July, and they shared with her that they had not given access to other researchers because they never felt comfortable with their approaches. Puga’s journals were very private, and included some scandalous notations as well as comments about people who were yet living.

The family felt that others would focus on the scandals within the pages, but believed López would focus on Puga’s writing. They granted her permission to access the journals, and she has developed a friendship with Patricia Puga, whom López says is a great painter. They have even talked about Patricia doing a painting for the cover of Lopez’ book.

López returned to Mexico in November and will go again in March.

“María Luisa really had a fascinating life growing up,” López said. “Not a lot of people know about her growing-up years and how her experience influenced her writing.”

Puga’s father lost all of his money, and the children found themselves very poor in a time when class was very important.

“They needed to find a way to make it through and they did it,” she said. “These are all things I’m going to write about in her biography.”

She is extremely pleased to be the first researcher granted access to the journals.

“It’s wonderful, I feel so privileged,” she said.

Her project “has injected in me energy, revitalized the passion I have for literature. Being an administrator for five years I’ve focused on the program as a whole rather than research or teaching. Having a project I can’t wait to be back in the classroom and devote time to research.”

In addition, her research has benefited the graduate courses she teaches on Mexican novelists, of which Puga is one.

As to López’ future plans, “I expect to give talks and continue publishing on her because there exists plenty of material to write about for the rest of my career,” she said. “It’s a pleasure to talk about it. I want the work of this woman who dedicated her life to writing not to be forgotten because she is dead. I want to keep it alive.”

Puga’s 327 journals have so much information in them, and “you can even sense her moods. Almost like a leitmotif, an idea repeats itself in this journal. It is constantly talking about the importance of writing.”

It presents Puga’s theory on writing — what is a novel, the importance of writing — “things those of us who study literature always want to know about.”

López and others are in the process of digitizing the novels, which have begun to deteriorate due to humidity and improper storage before Patricia Puga became their owner. Some difficulties have arisen due to the journals’ various sizes and shapes, the fading of the different colors of ink used to write them, the pages’ colored background and the poor physical state of some of them, however, López expects to be done by the end of April.

López says the whole project has been an adventure, “but it’s just fun to see how things work out in the end.”