From Maui to Spain
How does someone go from the middle of the Pacific Ocean to studying a Spanish poet in his home city? If I had a dollar or a euro for every time I got asked this question, I could buy myself a Spanish villa. All jokes aside, it’s a good question! As a way of introducing myself more on my website, I thought I’d write a bit about my life story so far and how I’ve gotten here.
As a child growing up in Maui, Hawai’i, Spanish was always a part of my life. From my babysitter Silvia who only spoke to me in Spanish, to mandatory Spanish classes in middle school, it was always around me. I took to it like a fish to water—or to use Lorca’s imagery, like a fish to the moon—especially once I realized that it opened up a whole new world of literature to me. I adored reading magical realism stories in their first language, and was a huge fan of Gabriel García Márquez (and still am!). I had always been a big reader and writer, and Spanish let me access an entire other dimension of literature.
I first “met” Federico García Lorca at the tender age of seventeen, in Barcelona. I was attending a summer school program and in my literary workshop class was introduced to Leonard Cohen’s song “Take This Waltz,” a translation/adaptation of Lorca’s “Pequeño vals vienés,” which we read immediately after. There was a “before Lorca,” and then everything that has come since. I fell in love at first read, unquestionably. It’s rare to know what you want out of this life, especially at such a young age, but that dream arrived to me in crystalline form: study Spanish literature, and live in Spain.
With a flame alit in my heart, I went on to study Spanish and English at Wellesley College, where I also studied translation, Italian, creative writing, and women’s and gender studies. Going to Wellesley changed my life in so many wonderful ways, and most importantly set me on the current path I am today. I didn’t have to wonder long if I should write my honor’s thesis in the English or Spanish department, as a summer internship at Editorial Cuarto Propio in Santiago, Chile, proved to me that the world of Hispanic literature was where I belonged. I first set out to write a thesis on the queer writers of the “Generation of ‘27,” but it soon became obvious to both me and my advisor that who I was most interested in writing about was Federico. My final year of Wellesley was one of my most significant, as it was there that I met my future PhD advisor, the incredible Christopher Maurer. I knew he was a famous Lorca scholar, but at the time didn’t fully comprehend just how esteemed internationally he was, nor how far being his student would take me. After meeting him and showing him my translations of Lorca’s poetry, I was off to the “big city” only a few miles from Wellesley.
After graduating with my B.A. in 2016, I started at Boston University that same fall as the youngest in my cohort. What followed were seven amazing, challenging, transformative years at the Boston University Department of Romance Studies. I’m one of the rare people who can say that I absolutely loved my PhD program and experience. In addition to my studies of Hispanic language and literature and women’s and gender studies, I received incredibly high-quality training in second language pedagogy, as well as writing pedagogy training through the Writing Program. For the first part of my teaching training, I taught different levels of Spanish for several years as a Graduate Teaching Fellow, spanning from beginning Spanish all the way to Spanish Through Film. I spent my last two years of my PhD program as a Graduate Writing Fellow, teaching first-year writing and inquiry in an independently-designed course, “Hispanic New York City,” which you can see more about on my Courses page.
Along the way, my teaching and research adventures took me to Granada and Madrid for dissertation research, New York City to lead a Lorca walking tour, and places like Oxford, London, Chicago, and Baltimore for various conferences. After visiting Granada and conducting research at the Centro Federico García Lorca, I fell completely in love with the city and the Lorca magic that permeated every corner. I simply had to return.
The path wasn’t always without its bumps, though it surely looks like that from afar. I always remind younger scholars that despite my successes, I’ve been rejected from plenty of opportunities, and certainly received many more “no”s than “yes”s over the years. I like to think they’re for a good reason, though. The best example is that I was rejected twice from the Fulbright—once my final year at Wellesley, which then opened the path for me to head straight to grad school, and once my final year at BU, which let me apply for a Postdoctoral Grant the following fall, which was absolutely the better option for me. I spent a year following my PhD graduation continuing to teach at BU, this time as an adjunct writing lecturer, and continued to refine my “Hispanic New York” class. In late February of 2024, I received an email that would change my life: I got the Fulbright!
In the span of a few months, I packed up, got my paperwork, and headed to Spain for the 2024-2025 academic year to work on researching my future academic monograph on Lorca and the queer body. I had the most spectacular experience with the best cohort anyone could ask for. I truly think I got my grant at exactly the right time: I’m not sure that under the current administration a grant with “queer” in the title would fly. It also meant that I got to be with the most special group of people for that year, and my arrival also coincided with the opening of the “Lorca and the Archive” exhibit at the Centro Federico García Lorca. I was personally and professionally fulfilled in so many ways, and my Fulbright year included traveling through Spain and Andorra, learning to sing flamenco, and broadening all my horizons as I integrated into Andalucian culture.
Given how happy I was with my work and life in Spain, and also given the political situation of my home country, I decided that my research and teaching were best conducted abroad. I’ve now been living in Spain for almost two years, and was recently granted a four-year visa renewal. Safe to say, I’m thrilled! You can find me in Granada, or traveling throughout Spain and Europe for conferences, talks, and various adventures.
