Suzanne Cane y Olvera

"The reality check on page 92 all by itself makes The No Sweat Guide one of the most important books ever written!"

Cheers!

Kurt Vonnegut

www.vonnegut.com

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Olvera... I love you!

Tarantino said in his interviews that one of his biggest longings in life, was that Pauline Kael - his favorite movie critic, who taught him critical thinking, died before she could see his first film... And now I realize what he meant by that...

You were one o the most influential teachers who taught me to think beyond my paradigms, and taught me to analyze themes in the books we read.

Your review strikes a deeper meaning than you can imagine.

And it makes me proud.

Gary "Gaz" Alazraki

Movie Director: "Nosotros los Nobles"

www.nosotroslosnobles.com

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I use the name Suzanne Cane y Olvera (the "y" means "and" in Spanish) and I like to think for an interesting bi-cultural reason. I was born Cane, but I spent many years as Olvera. Also, all of my kids are Olveras, so that "Olvera" has become an important part of my identity.

I was born 70 years ago in Brooklyn, New York, before it became trendy.

People tell me that I could easily peel ten or even fifteen years off my age, but that would change who I am. Lying about my age would be like someone saying he is tall when he is really short or that he is descended from royalty when his grandparents got off the boat at Ellis Island along with mine.

I was born when anti-Semitism was the norm, when the South was segregated, when "gay" meant happy, when sexual harassment in the workplace was an everyday occurrence, and long before anyone got the idea that women counted and were good enough to do jobs that had always been done by men. That was why I, like so many other women at the time, went into teaching.

Just before I turned 25, I went to visit Mexico City for a week, met my husband and had four children. (It has turned out to be a very long week.) The marriage ended, but I stayed in Mexico anyway. It was, as it had turned out, the family home.

Mexico is the kind of place where you have to improvise to survive. I sold books, did translations (in the days when I could barely handle the language), and taught British history just to get out of ESL. I had spent six years studying English and had begun a Ph.D. in American literature, only to end up teaching economics, political science and history, fields I have since become very passionate about - and even quite knowledgeable, if I do say so myself.

When I was eight, I had already thought that being a writer was the greatest thing anyone could do, and I set about writing a novel about Korean war orphans (it was the early fifties). The "novel" was four pages long, but I never lost my desire to write.

I did stop, though, for many years. I could say that the hiatus was due to building a home, having children and working to support them. The sad truth, I have come to realize, was a lack of self-esteem. I just never thought I could do it.

Many years later, when I had twins, I would snatch moments between feedings to write. The result was my first novel, a total, grotesque failure, but I was writing - finally - and that has made all the difference since.

Please feel free to visit my webpage, www.caneolvera.com