Dramatic writing professor speaks about his immigrant experiences

Guillermo Reyes gives a Q&A with Latino Perspectives magazine in its September 2010 issue about his new book, Madre and I: A Memoir of Our Immigrant Lives. Reyes is interim director and head of dramatic writing in the ASU School of Theatre and Film in the Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts. Madre and I: A Memoir of Our Immigrant Lives is his first non-fiction book. Primarily a playwright, Reyes has produced and published various plays in anthologies, such as Men on the Verge of His-Panic Breakdown (Dramatic Publishing Company). But his new book illustrates the real drama of Chilean immigrants in his family, delving into personal history as well as his mother's family, immigrating from Chile and then struggling to make it in America.

Reyes describes his new work as not Angela's Ashes, but close enough in its portrayal of a mother-son relationship. He says it delves into issues of sexual identity and other matters, but it's not Running with Scissors, which was a more dysfunctional mother-son relationship. Reyes’ story explores various personal issues, neither talked nor written about easily, but explores truth and portrays the immigrant experience, warts and all, in a time when he feels people are busy blaming immigrants for everything. Reyes says immigrants are not guilty of everything, just of being human. He began writing it in 2006, then traveled to Chile to interview family members, and a good working draft was complete in 2008.