Author wields Valley’s storytelling tradition

A new voice has emerged on the Rio Grande Valley literary scene, but for those who have grown up on its rich local story-telling tradition it’s going to sound very familiar.

Patricia Cisneros Young of Brownsville recently published her own book of stories titled South Texas Tales: stories my father told me (Tate Publishing, $12.95)

Young’s family has lived in the region since 1749. “My parents are both descendants of the original 13 families who settled San Juan de los Esteros Hermosos (now modern day Matamoros) under the leadership of my ancestor, Capitan Hinojosa,” she said.

Growing up with that much history around her, it was hard not to fall in love with the art of story-telling. Young, 54, was determined to carry on that tradition by putting many of her favorite stories into print.

“I realize that if I don’t tell these stories — even if they are fiction peppered with truth — they will be lost forever. I want to give my characters a voice because some of them haunt me,” she said.

“My father and I would talk about characters who lived in Brownsville and Matamoros on Sunday afternoons after our weekly Sunday luncheon. We would invariably sit on my front porch, away from the others, and he would tell me about the people he had heard about or known. I then would make up the rest.”

One of those stories was about a serial killer whose hands would tremble if he hadn’t killed someone. Young spent weeks writing the story called “Killer” and anxiously presented it to her father for his approval. When he liked it, she knew she had a winner.

“Another time my dad and I were discussing Doña Porfiria, the peanut lady who sold peanuts at the Mercado in Matamoros and who would visit my grandmother occasionally. Remembering her led to “Doña Porfiria Comes Calling,” she said.

Some of Young’s other stories deal with the tension between Anglos and Hispanics along the border in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, when the Texas Rangers were notorious for their brutal tactics.

“The conflicts and the themes are very different in each story. Some of them have to do with redemption while others show the decay inherent in selfishness and isolation. There are victories and defeats and they are all knit together in the stories’ patterns,” she said.

Young spent more than two years writing and rewriting the stories, all while working full time teaching English at both Rivera High School and University of Texas at Brownsville.

Paying homage to those family members who instilled a love for story-telling, Young also credits her professors at UTB with helping her improve her writing.

“Dr. Mimosa Stephenson and Dr. Ronny Noor, among others, stand out as my writing mentors and helped develop discipline and structure,” she said.

Still, no one deserves more credit than her father.

“I will always love how my father told us stories when we were children. He would talk about the circus and the painted horses that were red, gold, silver, orange, green, etc. He made my imagination fly.”

Already a published poet, Young hopes to write another book of stories this summer and promises that the characters in South Texas Tales will re-emerge in her next work.

“They are alternate realities for me and I love to revisit them,” she said.

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Martin Winchester is a book critic for The Monitor. He is an English teacher at IDEA College Preparatory in Donna. Send comments to mwinchester@ideapublicschools.org