Learning to Listen: The Journey to We Have Always Been Who We Are

Learning to Listen: The Journey to We Have Always Been Who We Are

By Sofia T. Romero

When I was in middle school, we had these current events assignments where we were supposed to choose a story from the newspaper and write about it. Most kids chose a serious news story. But one time, I chose a story about birds getting drunk on fermented berries. I chose it because it was funny . . . and weird. I didn’t get a good grade on that assignment. Go figure.

Years later, when I was in college, I wrote a story about two kids who hear a rumor that a new resident in town is actually a snake in human form. When they eventually encounter her, they see that the rumors are true. Weird paid off that time—that story won a prize. I felt like I was on to something.

But this isn’t a story about overnight success. I was prolific when I was younger, but then life happened. By my mid-30s, I had two kids and a full-time job. I wrote stories here and there, but I didn’t publish anything. I was too busy, too sleep deprived, I told myself. The well of ideas seemed to have run dry. But the truth was, frustrated at not having the success I had hoped I would have, I let doubt creep into my head.

Fast forward to my early 40s. I began to feel an urgent need to write. And as I wrote, I started to figure a few things out.

For one thing, weird is great. In fact, it’s interesting. And it’s worth writing about. And when I started to explore that, I realized the ideas were always there, I just wasn’t listening. Every time I said to myself “What if…?” was a potential story idea. And these ideas would marinate in my brain for a while—sometimes a really long while. When I was sick of thinking about them, I would write them down. 

So I started to listen to myself more, and realized I wanted to explore the places in my imagination the story of the snake woman came from. A place that was magical and sometimes creepy. I allowed space on the page for this: a mask comes to life, or a dead woman finds a way to communicate from beyond, or a man turns into a many-colored flying fish.

Second, I gave myself permission to banish the idea that being a “real” writer meant that I had to have a novel in me. I started reading a lot of short stories. I cheered when Alice Munro won the Nobel Prize. It didn’t mean that I ruled out the possibility of someday writing a novel, it just meant that I got comfortable with the idea of being a short story writer.

Third, I wrestled with how to talk about who I am. Growing up in a predominantly white, well-to-do suburb in the Boston area, I was far removed from my extended family in Puerto Rico—as well as the culture, the language, the food, and so forth. So while it didn’t feel authentic to write as though I was fully immersed in a culture that I didn’t really know, it also didn’t feel authentic to pretend that part of me didn’t somehow exist. 

So I started to write what I know: how to be in between. How to be not from here and not from there. How to coexist with my fragmented relationship to the language of my ancestors. And what that feels like—yeah, sometimes it gets weird.

Finally, I started to respect writing as a practice. I jotted down every “what if…?” I wrote most days. I made more deliberate choices about what I read. I took workshops. I joined a critique group. I started to submit stories for publication again. I dared to hope.

I had told myself that I would be happy if I published just one story. And then “Things I’ll Never Get Back” was accepted for publication, and I was over the moon. Then I told myself I’d be satisfied if two stories got published—to prove getting published wasn’t a fluke—and then “We Have Always Been Who We Are” was accepted. And then several others were accepted. The collection started to take shape.

Writing We Have Always Been Who We Are has been an exercise in letting go. Letting go of who I thought I was as a writer and a person. Letting go of what I was told were the “rules” of writing. Letting go of my fear of making up my own rules. Letting go of the worry that I am not a good enough writer. 

I didn’t set out to write a collection. I set out to write stories and sort of backed into pulling them together into a book. But the process has been exhilarating and exhausting as I write and rewrite, examining every single word. I have drawn from wells of resources I didn’t know I had. I have learned to say yes when others offer their support. And I have learned to listen to my own voice.

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Sofia T. Romero is a Pushcart Prize nominee and has published work in Necessary Fiction, Blue Mountain Review, Rigorous, and Waterwheel Review. She lives in the Boston area, where she works as an editor. Visit her website at www.SofiaTRomero.com.

We Have Always Been Who We Are

From Pushcart Prize-nominated author Sofia T. Romero comes a breathtaking debut collection of interrelated stories suffused with magical realism.

In stories that evoke the haunting beauty of New England beaches and resonate with a bittersweet loneliness, Romero blurs the lines between life and death, reality and fantasy. A deceased woman counsels her son’s fiancée on how to be a good wife to him, with disastrous consequences. A mysterious, commanding cat appears in a young woman’s home, as inexplicable as the demise of her years-long relationship with her boyfriend. At turns humorous, sorrowful, and whimsical, this collection spans the familiar setting of a college-town supermarket and eerie dystopias that are not just postpandemic, but postart. Romero masterfully conveys the follies of youth and the regrets of life, and a sense of loss—of a relationship, a child, a time before—pervades each page.

With this remarkable debut, Romero joins the ranks of writers such as Brenda Peynado and Marytza K. Rubio, offering a superb collection of speculative fiction with a distinctly Latina perspective. We Have Always Been Who We Are is at its heart a testament to the power of storytelling, and invitation to develop our inner strength through imagination.

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