The Forbidden Stories of Marta Veneranda

Sonia Rivera-Valdes's short story collection, The Forbidden Stories of Marta Veneranda, is, among other things, a provocative exploration of readerly, authorial, and fictional realities. Preceded by an "explanatory note" that defines the stories not as stories but as case studies in a failed doctoral thesis in psychology, the nine stories in the volume are presented as "true" narratives -- edited, but related to the author/recorder, Marta Veneranda:

"The idea to collect these confessions over a five-year period grew out of a comment by Professor Arnold Haley. Dr. Haley was speaking in the classroom about a research project, which revealed the disparity between what human beings commonly consider shameful to tell about their lives and the ignominy of the deed itself... I was in class and left the room determined to explore this issue... Dr. Haley insisted on the need for scientific rigor. Unfortunately, against my will and best interests, our professional differences increased... after each recording session, what the transcription consistently offered me was not a set of quantifiable data but a new story too fascinating to resist."

Marta Veneranda, the "fictional" author, therefore decides that "...the solution was not to change my research method but to change my discipline... this decision reflected, to a large extent, my devotion to truth." For Veneranda, paradoxically, fiction is more truthful than scientific, computerized data. This is especially interesting given the fact that the agent demanding empirical, unbiased information is a privileged white man who is largely unaware of his own bias and emotional stake in maintaining the status quo. In Rivera-Valdes's book, this narrative intermediary creates another layer of reality, which forces the reader to interrogate her own notions of truth, personal agency, and meaning-making.

This orientation to content and specific questions also affects the form that these stories take -- making their shape unruly and somewhat difficult to categorize. Each piece in The Forbidden Stories does not have what we would term a traditional story arc. The conflict is not usually introduced, developed, escalated to a full-scale climax, and then resolved. Most stories in the book begin with the "subject" introducing herself/himself to Veneranda. In "Five Windows on the Same Side," for example, the narrator says, "My name is Mayte. Mayte Perdomo. Actually Perdomo Lavalle. That's how I'm registered in Caibarien and how my name appears on my American passport." The narrative is then often summarized, or explained in terms of the organizing principle of the whole interview and book, for the reader: "So many lurid things take place in New York every day that hardly anything seems forbidden. But forbidden is a relative term. Any event that is embarrassing enough for someone to keep it secret is that person's forbidden story."

The voice often gives some personal history to Veneranda, sometimes addressing her personally, so that the reader feels that this might actually be a case study, or that we are there in the room -- that the "you" that the speaker is referring to is actually us: "You didn't hear me? I wasn't aware that I had lowered my voice. I'm sorry. I was saying to you that I fell in love with her." Details follow, sometimes scenes, but the reader never loses sight of the fact that this is a recorded interview -- one that Veneranda is shaping as it is related to her. This approach has the effect of undrscoring the "constructedness" of both language and experience, which is a central tenant of the language school of experimentalism. Though Rivera-Valdes uses a more conventional narrative structure to do this, the effect is more or less the same.

The Forbidden Stories also expresses what Ana Castillo terms a conscienticized poetics in Massacre of the Dreamers. For Castillo, a conscienticized poetics "takes on everything and everyone at once," in order to represent the social reality of the impoverished, largely brown majority. Rivera-Valdes's book embraces this paradigm through the interconnectedness of all its stories and protagonists. Most of the characters know each other, and have played both limited and key roles in the development and concealment of their "forbidden" acts/obsessions. This technique of interconnectedness renders the voices less individual and more communal. Although each story exists within its own, disparate sphere, each one also spills over into the next, making it very hard to see where one leaves off and the next begins. Given the subject matter, it seems that Rivera-Valdes is suggesting that it is not our "forbidden" secrets that keep us apart, but rather, the act of concealing them from each other.

Rivera-Valdes's subject matter, and the way it is handled, also contribute to this subversive, conscienticized poetics. Almost all of the stories feature sex (mainly lesbian sex) as the focus of the "forbidden" act. Most of the romantic relationships between men and women are presented as somehow cold and emotionally stifling. Even though many of the lesbian relationships in The Forbidden Stories are far from ideal, one definitely gets the feeling that Rivera-Valdes views woman-woman relationships as holding the most potential for true emotional intimacy: "I asked her why she preferred to be with her girlfriend than with her fiance. She said that she felt less alone with her." In fact, sexuality itself, along with other aspects of identity, is borderless and transformative in the book. A woman who starts out in a heterosexual marriage has a series of lesbian relationships, which she sometimes "supplements" with heterosexual encounters. A man who thinks he is gay finds himself strangely attracted to sexual fantasies of women later in his life, and has to reexamine his understanding of himself as a gay man. Class also functions fluidly in the collection, as the characters find that they must travel between various barrios in the city in order to work, visit family and friends, and revisit old haunts. The Forbidden Stories is therefore a postmodern meditation on identity in the contemporary context -- except, curiously, with regards to culture. Every story unequivocally celebrates the importance of Cuban and Cuban American culture and community in the lives of its characters; this cultural appreciation is often the only constant in the ever-changing mosaic of their lives.

Published in The Writers of Color Special Issue, Vol. 24, Number 1, Spring 2002.