An Interview with Zinta Aistars

How did your love of language, your interest in writing, begin?

Zinta: I suspect the moment I pursed my lips to make a sound. Or a yowl, as the case might have been, and discovered that sound, especially when shaped into language, could produce powerful results.

My first language was Latvian; I didn’t learn English until I began attending public school—kindergarten. I have an older sister by four years, Daina, and I remember her walking me to school and back every day, and every day she would have me recite what new English words I had learned. Since Latvian is a phonetic language—learn a sound once, and it will forever be pronounced the same way—I certainly found English baffling, if not downright nonsensical. Tough, though, thought, through, threw… honestly! But it didn’t take me long to learn. A child’s mind is a sponge, absorbs quickly and easily, and so I’ve never understood why we wait until high school to start teaching languages. By then, that window of opportunity, to learn a new language with utmost ease, has closed.

So, with Latvian being phonetic, I learned to read in Latvian by age 3. And did so, constantly and with tremendous curiosity and appetite. I not only attended American public schools, but Latvian private school, too, every Saturday and all summer long. With a basic understanding of how reading happens, I found it easy to learn to read English. My vocabulary is largely learned from reading, and so even today, all these many years later, I still mispronounce words, guessing incorrectly at the sounds. Let’s just say it adds to my charm!

Did your upbringing add to your love of books?

Upbringing is crucial, I’m convinced of it. I grew up surrounded by books, as well as other forms of art. My parents may not have had a lot of money, being new immigrants to the United States from Latvia, but every room in the house was filled with book-laden bookshelves, the walls were hung with original art—mostly my father’s. And ceramics, pieces of sculpture, carvings…

I am blessed to have been born in a family of artists. My father, Viestarts Aistars, is a painter. His father, my grandfather, Ernests Aistars, was a writer. My grandfather was the director of the Jelgava Teachers’ Institute in Jelgava, Latvia, and he wrote 12 novels in his lifetime, spanning nearly 100 years. His wife, my grandmother, Lidija Sulte Aistars, was a teacher who was very passionate about education, and she was my grandfather’s live-in editor and first pair of eyes. She didn’t buy us toys for special occasions; she bought us books. Always books, carefully inscribed. My maternal grandfather, Hermanis Dunkelis, although not an artist per say, had an intense love of books and learning, too.

Coming to a new country, like all immigrants, that generation lost their educational status. It was like starting all over again, from nothing, with all degrees and work experience suddenly become meaningless. Both of my grandfathers worked as janitors when they first arrived in the United States. Imagine, a college president sweeping floors … and my maternal grandfather, too, became a security guard at Nazareth College in Kalamazoo, Michigan. He would see the teachers there toss out old books, boxes and boxes of them, and he would pour over them and bring many of them home. He, too, learned English from reading. All of my grandparents spoke several languages—German, Russian, French.

So there you are, my heritage was this incredible passion for books and learning. And art. Other members of the family include other writers, painters, musicians, photographers. I was immersed in creativity.

Did your grandfather, writer Ernests Aistars, teach you creative writing?

Well, honestly, I do not believe creative writing can be taught. It can be learned, but not taught. I learned to write by writing, simple as that. Only, of course, it is never simple. Writing is the hardest work I know, but it is also what I love. Never say love is easy!

And still, he had his influence, undeniably. I watched him as a child, saw how hard he worked, saw how he would get lost in his thoughts, then scribble something on a piece of paper, then get lost in this thoughts again. Fascinating to a child. I saw the piles of manuscripts, the many, many revisions, and understood then what hard work this is. He never seemed to care that much about the finished product, the published book; he seemed to always crave the next project, the writing itself.

When I was 13, I had an idea for a story and I thought maybe it was good enough to submit to a Latvian literary magazine for youth that I subscribed to—called Mazputnins. I titled it, “Zimetais Velns,” or “The Illustrated Devil.” In Latvian folklore, the devil is not evil so much as mischievous. A little on the foolish side, actually, and quite gullible. In my story, a child had drawn him on paper and he came to life and got into all kinds of mischief. I brought my first draft to my grandfather, and he made a few grammatical corrections, suggested I rethink some of my phrasing, but all in all, gave it his approval. I submitted the story, and it was accepted for publication. Which should have been a highlight in my new career—only quite a few people in our Latvian community who read the magazine accused my grandfather of having written the story and allowed me to put my name to it. That hurt. Flattery, I suppose, that people didn’t seem to believe I was capable of writing the story at 13, but the lesson that taught me was to not attach importance to publication. It is the writing itself that is of importance, the creative process.

I published pretty regularly after that, however. I submitted stories and poems to various Latvian publications, and my work was published in the Latvian-Canadian newspaper, in the Latvian newspaper Laiks, in various magazines. By the time I was 19, I had my first poetry collection in manuscript, and with the encouragement of Latvian poet, Astride Ivaska, I submitted that to a publisher in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and it was accepted. Mala Kausa (In An Earthen Mug) took a couple years to see print, however, so I learned the frustration of waiting for a manuscript to turn into an actual book.

Much of your early writing, then, was in your native language—Latvian?

Yes. Almost entirely. I was well into my thirties, forties, before I did any serious writing in English.

Why?

I decided early on that Latvian was more suitable to poetry. Consider that this is one of the oldest languages spoken in the world today. That means it has layers and layers of meaning, of cultural resonance, a richness that many other languages don’t have, or at least not to my knowledge. I find it much more musical, with an internal rhythm, which I didn’t feel in English. English seemed like a hard language to me, and I don’t mean that as in “difficult,” I mean that in terms of its sounds. Hard sounds, even clunky at times.

What made you first want to try to write in English?

In part, practical reasons. By my mid-20’s, I had begun to establish myself as a Latvian writer. I had three books and a chapbook published in my 20’s, and I had received some prestigious awards, done many author’s readings, participated in the Latvian Song Festivals with my work, reading to audiences of often many hundreds of people. My books were quickly sold out. But financially? Let’s just say, I could take a vacation on what I made from each book, and that was it.

I had this dream, maybe it was a fantasy, that I could make a living writing. Joseph Campbell has that saying, “Follow your bliss,” and that seemed right to me. Be true to yourself and do what you do best. The thing is, though, that you have to pay your dues first. Wipe baby bottoms, wait tables, stack books on library shelves, and write on your own time and your own dime.

I think it was an authors’ reading I attended in the winter of 1999, in Portage, Michigan, at the local library, and I spent the evening listening to poets read in English. It stirred something in me. I had never written a poem in English (well, maybe once in third grade), but that night, I hurried home from that reading, feeling an incredible hunger for words, and I wrote a poem called “Hunger.” Right about that time, there was a literary contest going on in the Kalamazoo community. I submitted my poem and won first prize. I was on my way.

The practical reasons were paying the bills. At this point in my life, I was a single mother with two small children dependent on me. I worked a fulltime job plus a part time job at a library, and whenever I could, I wrote.

And the money started to come in…

A wan little trickle, you might say. I got even more practical, and for the first time ever considered writing that was not “creative.” Which was quite a grating gear shift in my brain. I thought about writing as a journalist, although my degree was in English with an emphasis on creative writing. Newspapers didn’t appeal to me, but magazines became a possibility. I could still be creative in descriptions of people and places.

I started writing for local magazines as a freelancer, writing articles that were profiles, travel essays, or about interesting events. To my pleasant surprise, I liked this kind of writing very much. And the pay wasn’t bad, either. Being a journalist opened doors that I might never have otherwise opened, introduced me to people I might never have otherwise gotten to know. Every story was an adrenalin rush. Every article enriched my own experience.

For seven years, I was an editor and writer for a college alumni magazine, and that often put me on the road, traveling to meet alumni who could tell me interesting stories. I was a pig in mud. Following my bliss, at last! If I love to write, I love to travel nearly as much. To combine the two was heaven. To get paid for it, and my travel expenses, too… that felt almost decadent.

You now write for a health care organization. Does that mesh well with literature?

Surprisingly, yes. I still freelance for the college, as well as other organizations and businesses, but my bread and butter is to write about health care. And, what do you know, I love this, too. Not the same way as I love a creative turn of phrase, no, but in a different manner.

I think for a writer to practice her craft for very different kinds of venues and audiences is a very good thing. One skill honed sharpens the other. I won’t say I don’t still dream of living in a tucked away cabin somewhere up north, writing poetry and novels fulltime… I most certainly do, and someday intend to… but this has been a wonderful opportunity to stretch my comfort zone and give me new challenges. It has forced me to really think about my readers, what they need and want to know, and about the accuracy of information I provide, the style of communication.

How important is the reader to a writer?

I can only answer for myself on that one, but I feel pretty strongly that a writer who focuses overmuch on the reader, that is, on publication, will never achieve greatness. Or will be very disappointed once that kind of popularity is achieved.

That was that early lesson I learned at age 13… that publication is nice, but your reader has a mind of his own, and may or may not understand what you have worked hard to say. If you think that moment is going to validate you, it won’t. Like all ego boosts, it is very short-lived and of almost no value whatsoever. Public approval comes and goes. Books that have little or no literary value can achieve great popularity and sales, and books of literary genius might lie on the back shelf collecting dust. It would be foolish and self-sabotaging for a writer to put too much weight on seeing one’s own work in print and expect acclaim for it.

Let’s just say, if it happens, nice. If it doesn’t, no big deal. Don’t attach importance to it. Just keep writing. Keep writing, because that is where the writer lives, in the process of crafting a piece of writing that taps into what you and you alone can say.

What are you working on now?

Aside from that bread and butter writing, I am working on a novel, and I am putting the final spit and polish on a second collection of poetry. Both of these works are in English. Both challenge me greatly, and that is as it should be. Writing is wine in my blood, an intoxication, and simultaneously, what clarifies my mind and heart like nothing else.