We recently connected with Scott Duncan and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Scott thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Can you talk to us about a project that’s meant a lot to you?

My meta-novel and magic memoir Old California Strikes Back has been the most personally meaningful project for me…it’s the narrative of untangling my mixed ethnic background and taking back the story of Mexican and Native California. My mother’s side come from the over fantasized people called Californios “Spanish Californians” who were hardly Spanish, mostly Mexican and Native Californians (and same story for my grandfather’s side from New Mexico). I often say I’m the Chicano with the whitest name in America: people think I don’t belong to my name and outright demand to know “my tribe,” “When I came from Mexico”, or say I “just look white.” I’ve sighed when I’ve heard one or the other because that means later in the week I will hear each statement from a different person. I wanted a book to answer the question who I was, what my family and ethnic history was in a place people tell me to “go back to Mexico” and at once hate me for my native blood (the US finished off detribalizing my family along with internalized self hate) or spit on me “for what you Spaniards did to the ‘Indians” as they celebrate places of horror like the Spanish Missions and enjoy all the “Spanish California” movies about dancing. I wanted the book to be a vehicle to belong. Working on the book, researching, seeing the history of becoming displaced, robbed, change ourselves to survive, and learn about the development of the strange fantasy of Spanish California to further exploit and rob culture while denying our native roots, that the truth that the USA came to us and treated us as they did other native nations lead me to be deeper into Chicanismo and open my eyes more to how this society dominates not just the physical, but the imaginative, words, histories. Writing the book caused a deep depression as I engaged with familial and cultural trauma, caused me to withdraw more, but I don’t regret the book. It freed me. Getting it published, getting told often that “brown people don’t read” and other nonsense reinforced what I learned, and is a story in itself, laying bare problems of mainstream publishing, but it’s now coming out this year and seems something I can finally move on from.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

For years I was only a writer getting short stories (my main craft) published here and there, though my first book, a novel is coming out soon. I got a MFA in Creative Writing at Mills College and was associated with a few literary magazines. While I’ve recently left the organization, I joined in 2017 Somos en escrito Online Magazine dedicated to publishing “Latinx” people (I see the term as Eurocentric now and prefer to use raza or Chicane (or Chicano) for my own group). In 2019 I co-launched Somos en escrito Press, a small press dedicated to putting out books that challenged the Chicano community or gave it information it needed. We published about a dozen books: a history book on the Bracero Program (the program that brought most Mexican Americans to the United States), poetry books, a nonfiction anthology, and El Porvenir, ¡Ya!: Citlalzazanilli Mexicatl, the first Chicano sci-fi anthology, which I was the driving force behind.

My own experience as a writer, an editor and a publisher showed me the mainstream doesn’t give an even chance to raza writers. Programs dedicated to diversity will ignore or rarely publish or award our authors, though we soon be the largest ethnic group and are already in many places across the land. I’ve been part of the wave of new raza publishers (I’m currently working on setting up a new press with other editors, Maiz Poppin Press) and a Chicano Renaissance, books, comics, arts that has been going on the last several years. I’m currently organizing with other presses to create an independent raza press collective that will benefit all our publishers, all us to be the voice of raza publishing, and to better connect with our community.

I’m proud as a lead editor and creator of the anthology which will be published next year (through a different press than Somos en escrito) called Chicanofuturism Now! A Raza Futurology Anthology.

While I was with Somos en escrito I organized the first Chicano sci-fi anthology, but I saw that we had many authors, thinkers, artists envisioning the future of la raza in a fragmented manner, some had been trying to get into the mainstream that doesn’t want us, and other doing their own thing with varying amount of success. I wanted a space to showcase our veteranos who have been peering towards the future for decades and support our exploding up and coming authors (recall the Chicano Renaissance I mentioned). I thought of a space where we could bring in one place our imaginations on the future of where we could move in a decolonial manner, written to our community primarily, where the nonfiction pieces that lay out problems or call to actions could go hand in hand with visions of our stories continuing in the future, finding new ways of survival, grasping for arrival, and show everyone that this kind of sci-fi and futurology has a great potential for our culture to evolve, to bring us together and question and imagine once more. I see this collection, amongst others can put an end to the trauma voyeurism and witnessing that our literature is stuck in (the stories gatekeepers allow) and move towards looking for solutions to issues that burden our community whether the format is nonfiction, poetry, comics, fiction or visual art.

I am also director of Palabras del Pueblo, an online workshop for la raza that is meant to be affordable and accessible, which started in Spring 2023. As a writer, I saw a major problem with most workshops if they weren’t heavily funded from the state, they priced out people from my community. This goes for writing workshops that cater to “BIPOC” or “Diverse groups” as I began to be suspicious that the most Mexican and Native American person in the crowded room was named Scott Russell Duncan. It’s not the space for people from a marginalized community, moreover, no one seemed to be teaching on reaching our own community as an audience, but how to make it in the mainstream and replicate it.

Through a nonprofit organization I belong to called MeXicanos 2070, I created with input from others members, an intensive writing workshop that was designed to be affordable and accessible, happening on the weekend to help with work schedules and child care, that wasn’t dependent on whether a grant was awarded that year or not.

We have great writers, some of whom have long experience teaching in the workshop venue and also I purposefully created a space to give our authors a chance to gain experience teaching a workshop. I organize presentations giving information on the writing life and what sets raza apart as writers, what are our issues, and stress the importance in creating connections with each other and creative opportunities for each other that involves our community as an audience. I hope the workshop continues the invigorating wave to our cultura and helps creates the audience our authors need as we write to them and each other and not solely to the gatekeeping interlopers and tourists.

What do you think helped you build your reputation within your market?

Reputation is everything for a publisher, particularly a small press publisher. In an overall literary scene of awful literati who look at others as stepping stones or toady lickspittles, I seek sincerity and honest admiration, mutual aid, and openness. I don’t seek to be a competitor with other small presses, particularly Black or Brown ones, they publish the books I love. Giving authors information, referring them elsewhere pays off in the long one, one small indie press can only do so much, and groundwork to cooperation is more important, which leads to others letting you know about opportunities. It also builds networks and knowledge base, the grapevine of knowing someone who knows the answer to a problem.

I also try to look at the big picture and see what needs to be addressed and fill that need. Many projects are “kinda nice to do” if there were unlimited time and money, but with limited resources, you should strategize with the biggest, most necessary project you can. Going to a project that provides opportunities and tries something new gains reputation.

For you, what’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative?

There is joy in creating when it comes together, not just the composition, but in finding the structure and the right words to bring about the right effect. I never understand people who pester authors with the question “Can you tell us your writing schedule” and think there is only one way is the way to write, the more arduous the better. The truth is you have to love writing and creating. Love to find answers in narratives or images. You have to want to do it. There’s also the serendipity, the joy of discovery, and deconstruction of knowledge and the world. You come to realize all our knowledge is narrative based, the story of you, your family, your nation, your city, your relationships, all threads your memory holds. Finding some of the threads you are standing on aren’t so sound and might actually be against you allows you the opportunity to break them and find new ones and create new worldviews. Another aspect of being a creative is the connections with other writers, seeing their work develop, be challenged in your own work and craft and outlook. Writers often talk about seeing other work as “permission” to go to certain places, to be inspired and write in new ways.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.scottrussellduncan.com
• Instagram: @scottrussellduncanfernandez
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/scott.duncan.14268
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/scott-duncan-0785628a/
• Twitter: @scorussdun

Image Credits

Image of Old California Strikes Back by @elindioarts and cover by FlowerSong Press
Image of Our Creative Realidades by Joanne Ayala Cooke and cover by Jenny Irizary and Luz Schweig
Image of Porvenir Ya by Polaris Castillo and cover by Scott Russell Duncan.
author photo by Scott Russell Duncan