As a little boy in Peru, Oswaldo Estrada would amble down the sidewalk on his way to school, his oversized backpack bobbing with each step. Lost in his thoughts, he rarely paid attention to where he was going; instead, he was crafting a fictional scenario with bits of dialogue that only he could hear.
In these plots, he allowed his characters to have the words and agency that he didn’t always have in real life. His grandmother loved his stories and encouraged him to recreate them for her when they were cooking a meal together or having dinner with the family.
By the time Estrada was 10 years old, he began recording these narratives. He recalls one summer vacation when his mornings were spent writing fictional tales, and in the afternoons, his cousins would perform them.
“It was awesome. I was the child who always wanted to write instead of playing soccer and other games,” he shares with a laugh. “I had this need to create a parallel, alternative reality to my own. Perhaps because I was very asthmatic and had to miss school frequently.”
Now a professor of Latin American literature at UNC-Chapel Hill, Estrada has transformed his childhood passion into a career. He has written several books on literary and cultural criticism and numerous short stories. In 2020, he won the International Latino and Latin American Book Fair Prize and has received a handful of International Latino Book Awards, including a gold medal for his short-story collection, “Las guerras perdidas (The Lost Wars).”
Most recently, he published his first novel, “Tus pequeñas huellas (Your Little Footprints),” which tells the story of two Peruvian immigrants who find their way into American society while suffering the premature loss of their child.
In this fictional work, Estrada, who moved to the United States from Peru at the age of 14, draws on his own experiences as an immigrant. Through his writing, he sheds light on the struggles many newcomers face when moving to this country, such as learning a new language and culture as an outsider.
“My fiction is always moving back and forth between my everyday reality, what I left behind, and, of course, the dreams and hopes of the immigrant — who is always living somewhere in between what you have and what you wish you could have,” he shares. “That’s why my fiction represents me. I am in that in-between zone.”
Science to literature
Estrada never planned on becoming a literature professor. Growing up, his mother dreamed of him becoming a doctor, so he went to the University of California, Davis with the intention of taking pre-med courses.
But he didn’t like his science classes in big lecture halls. In the hopes of trying something new, and because he was already fluent in Spanish, Estrada decided to take a Spanish culture class.
During the roll call, when his professor accurately pronounced his name, he felt something he hadn’t before: a sense of belonging.
“No one asked what I went by or stumbled over my name,” he recalls. “The professor said it perfectly. And I just thought, This feels like home.”
From that moment, he continued to take Spanish culture and literature courses purely for enjoyment. It wasn’t long before professors noticed how much Estrada was excelling. He participated enthusiastically, wrote exceptional essays, and often stopped by office hours, eager to discuss his latest insights. One day, his Spanish advisor confronted him: “Why haven’t you declared this as your major?”
Caught off guard, Estrada replied, “I’m doing this for fun. I want to be a doctor.”
But his professor saw something else in him. “You’re kidding, right? This is your passion. You write the best essays, and you’re always engaged. This is what you’re meant to do.”
Those words planted a seed, and he considered pursuing something he genuinely loved, like Latin American literature and writing.
Breaking the news to his mother wasn’t easy. She was disappointed. She’d endured hardships and made sacrifices to provide him with opportunities — ones she hoped would lead to a prestigious career in medicine. They didn’t speak for two months as they struggled to reconcile his passion for literature with her dreams for him.
“I remember her saying, ‘We came this far, and you want to study literature?'” Estrada recalls.
Over time, his mother’s disappointment waned.
“Now she’s very proud of me,” Estrada says. “And she tells everyone that I’m a professor at UNC and shows them the books I have written.”
Notes to narratives
Estrada’s creative process is both spontaneous and meticulous. A story often begins as a simple, fictional scenario that lingers in his mind for weeks or even months. These raw thoughts capture flashes of inspiration he can return to later and refine.
“Sometimes I take notes, but mostly, I write out of superstition,” he says. “I always feel that if I don’t put something down, I might lose it forever.”
For Estrada, writing is woven into his daily life. Whether he’s commuting, teaching, or simply observing, he records his ideas whenever they strike — on his phone, in notebooks, or on scraps of paper.
“I might see a student, and suddenly, a thought occurs to me,” he shares. “I grab whatever I have and jot it down.”
His writing process results in a patchwork of notes scattered across devices and journals, a collection of pieces waiting to be assembled. Once he feels he has gathered enough material, he sits down to write formally. At this point, he starts to shape the story, even if he doesn’t yet know how it will end. The process often requires significant research, especially when his fiction delves into unfamiliar territories.
During his fellowship at the Institute for the Arts and Humanities, he developed a story involving Latino workers in North Carolina’s tobacco fields and was encouraged to learn about “green tobacco sickness,” a type of nicotine poisoning that can affect people who handle wet tobacco leaves.
Estrada dove into this research, learning about the alkaloids absorbed through the skin and the experiences of those who work in the fields. Although he had no personal experience in this area, this investigation brought him closer to the reality faced by his characters.
“I spoke with people who worked in the fields, read extensively, and tried to immerse myself in that world,” he says.
This resulted in the story “Under My Skin,” a fictional piece about the challenges faced by migrant workers.
“The best thing that happens to me as an immigrant and Latino writer is when I do a reading and a student comes up to me and says, ‘My mom worked in the fields, and I feel like you’ve told my story.'”
Spanish to English
While Estrada is fluent in Spanish and English, he writes primarily in Spanish.
“For those of us who are bilingual, you kind of take on a different persona when speaking each language,” he explains. “I’m most authentic when I’m speaking Spanish. Even though I write competently in English, I have all these nuances in Spanish because it’s my native language.”
But English is always present in the back of Estrada’s mind. Some of his characters are also bilingual, frequently code-switching in his fiction.
Translators have occasionally approached him, offering to translate his work into English to reach a broader audience.
“I’m sort of a pest when it comes to translating,” he admits with a chuckle.
Unlike monolingual authors, who rely solely on the translator to accurately reflect their work in a different language, Estrada actively collaborates with the translator, scrutinizing every word choice to ensure the translation captures the tone and expression of each character’s dialogue.
“Sometimes the translators suggest something I would never say, and I’m the one who’s going to be reading the story to an audience if I do a reading, not the translator,” he explains.
This meticulous attention to detail reflects his deeper goals as a writer.
“I hope that readers who have felt that sense of otherness can feel validated, seen, and heard,” he says. “I also hope that those who haven’t experienced it can gain insight into what it’s like to be the ‘other,’ to know what it feels like to be an immigrant.”