Authors: Nan Cuba

Tags: #Literary, #Contemporary Women, #Cultural Heritage, #Family Life, #Fiction

Body and Bread (33 page)

A
CKNOWLEDGMENTS

Thank you, Victoria Barrett, for including
Body and Bread
in your stellar lineup at Engine Books. Thank you, too, for being the rare editor with talent and initiative to become a true partner. You have made certain that my little book is the best that it can be. And how do you thank an agent who has believed in you for eight years? It’s impossible, but here goes. Thank you, Esmond Harmsworth, for your wisdom, tenacity, and sense of humor. I’ve wanted, for a long time, to feel I earned your faith in me. I hope this book makes you proud.

Surely, my teachers already know how grateful I am, but thanking them publicly is an act of vanity I can’t resist. Remarkable mentors all: Robert Boswell, Chuck Wachtel, Richard Russo, Douglas Unger, and Mary Elsie Robertson. I hear your voices still.

When you’ve worked on a book for twenty years, there are too many people to name. Generous friends have read and commented on stories that became the manuscript and later the novel in its various permutations. I thank them all. Here are a few: members of my first writer’s group, Daedelus, and fellow students in the MFA Program at Warren Wilson College. Close readers include Alison Moore, Grace Dane Mazur, Dale Neal, Helen Fremont, Faith Holsaert, Elizabeth Brownrigg, Susan Sterling, and Margaret Kaufman. For their inspiration and support, I also thank Martha Rhodes, Debra Monroe, Naomi Shihab Nye, Barbara Ras, Joan King, and Robert Ayres.

I am grateful to Dr. Veronika Tuckerova for her assistance with the Czech translations.
An Analytical Dictionary of Nahuatl
by Frances Karttunen was an indispensible guide. Thank you, Dr. Karttunen, and I apologize for any mistakes. The Nahuatl inclusions were meant to honor the people, their language, and their history.

I am not an immigrant, member of the medical profession, historian, religious scholar, or anthropologist, so I relied on research to furnish credibility. For information about Czechs who settled in Texas, I used
We’re Czechs
by Robert L. Skrabanek;
Czech Voices, Stories from Texas in the Amerikán Národní Kalendář,
translated and edited by Clinton Machann and James W. Mendl, Jr.; and
The Czech Texans
by The University of Texas Institute of Texan Cultures at San Antonio.

For information about the medical profession, I read
The Doctors Mayo
by Helen Clapesattle;
With Scalpel and Scope, A History of Scott and White
by Dayton Kelley; and
For the Good of Humanity, A Century of Surgery at Scott and White 1892-1992
by Patricia K. Benoit. Nugent, Texas, is modeled after my hometown, Temple, so I used
Temple, Backtracking 100 Years
by Martha Bowmer. I also used
My Master, The Inside Story of Sam Houston and His Times
by Jeff Hamilton, as told to Lenoir Hunt;
Sexual Adjustment: A Guide for the Spinal Cord Injured
by Martha Ferguson Gregory; and “Hers: Waterborne” by Suzanne E. Berger, from
The New York Times Magazine.

Research on religions included
The Existence of God
by John Hick;
Reason and Religion, An Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion
by Rem B. Edwards;
The Gnostic Gospels
by Elaine Pagels;
A History of God, The 4,000-Year Quest of Judaism, Christianity and Islam
by Karen Armstrong;
The World’s Great Religions, Volume 1: Religions of the East
by the editors of
LIFE
; and
INANNA Lady of Largest Heart, Poems of the Sumerian High Priestess ENHEDUANNA
by Betty De Shong Meador.

Research on indigenous people included
The Indians of Texas, From Prehistoric to Modern Times
by W.W. Newcomb, Jr.; Texas A&M University’s website,
Center for the Study of the First Americans;
Aztecs
by Inga Clendennin;
A Scattering of Jades, Stories, Poems, and Prayers of the Aztecs,
edited by Dr. J.J. Knab and translated by Thelma D. Sullivan;
Aztecs: Reign of Blood & Splendor
by the editors of Time-Life Books; “Weaving the Aztec Cosmos: The Metaphysics of the 5th Era” at the Web site
Mexicolore
; and “Aztec Philosophy” at the Web site
The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy.

Thirty-five years ago, my husband, Don, said, “You ought to write a book,” and I laughed, but his words became a mantra. I thank him for that and for the evenings he listened to me reading excerpt after excerpt, forever encouraging. I thank my son, Don Jr., for being proud of his mother. I hug my daughter, Julia Nan, for reading every draft and offering her remarkably astute advice. I’m grateful to my parents, Julia Martha Barton Brindley and Hanes Brindley, for teaching me to ask questions and appreciate the nuance of words. I thank my surviving brothers, Hanes Jr., Glen and George Brindley, for being keepers of our family stories and for allowing me as a child to tag along. We, each in our own way, thank our lightening-rod brother, Paul, for jolting us into awareness.

Thank you to the editors of the following journals, where excerpts originally appeared:
Columbia: A Magazine of Poetry & Prose, Quarterly West, Voices de la Luna,
and
VíAztlan: A Journal of Arts and Letters.
Excerpts appearing in
Art at Our Doorstep: San Antonio Writers and Artists, New Growth 2, Poets of The Lake,
and
Writers at The Lake
are published with the permission of Trinity University Press, Corona Publishing, and Our Lady of the Lake University.

A
BOUT THE
A
UTHOR

N
AN
C
UBA
is founder and executive director emeritus of Gemini Ink, a nonprofit literary center. She received a Fundación Valparaiso Residency Grant in Mojácar, Spain and is currently an associate professor of English at Our Lady of the Lake University. As an investigative journalist, she reported on the causes of extraordinary violence in publications such as
LIFE, Third Coast,
and
D Magazine.
Her creative work has appeared in
Quarterly West,Columbia: A Magazine of Poetry & Prose
,
Harvard Review, storySouth,
and
Connotation Press,
among others. She is coeditor of
Art at Our Doorstep: San Antonio Writers & Artists
(Trinity University Press).