Elisa Gonzalez
Elisa Gonzalez
Recent Stories
Cyprinidae
Fiction
In her dream, she tried to contain them, capture the fish from the air and shove them into glass jars brimming with water. “I couldn’t tell if I was trying to save them or kill them,” she told me after describing their fins, thin as tissue paper, waving protests, and the tracing of veins she could see through scales. “But I knew it was urgent. I couldn’t stop.
Extein, Gonzalez, Gordon, Moreno and Spencer: Internships worth saving
When we read that the Bulldogs Across America program was under review (“Bulldogs internships under review,” Nov. 18), we decided to speak up on behalf of the program that did so much for us. For its meaningful internships, underexposed cities and dynamic housing setup, Bulldogs Across America is a cut above Yale’s other summer offerings.
Gonzalez: Speaking to power
Last spring I had what I can only call a “difficult encounter” with a police officer. I cannot describe the full situation, as it also involved other students, but the level of aggression by students in the encounter was nonexistent. Nevertheless, the police officer was threatening and verbally abusive.
Gonzalez: Breaking with the tradition
I meander in and out of love with iconoclasm. As a freshman in Directed Studies, my first foray onto page two appeared as an argument for Diversified Studies, an extracurricular discussion group Rhiannon Bronstein ’11 and I had founded. We had wanted to expand our ideas of the Western Canon to questions of race, gender, class and — beyond all other questions — what of the reading we were given we should accept or reject. Although the existence of the group itself generated much discussion among the DS students of our year, we maintained it was important not to let the idea of tradition make us too reverent.
Gonzalez: Why write
This week, I started to be afraid I would never write again. A few weeks ago, I was afraid that I would never write well enough again. The enough is important: “I want to write well enough to include this in my senior project.” “I want to write well enough to be able to improve this for my senior project.” “I want to write well enough that I’m not embarrassed to show this to my adviser.” “I want to write well enough that I’m not embarrassed to look at this myself.”
Gonzalez: The call of Katrina
Five years later, New Orleans is transforming but still marked
On Monday, August 30, four friends and I went to to see the “The Big Uneasy,” a documentary that investigates levee failures in New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina. There were only six other people in Criterion’s small screening room, plus a theater employee who came to adjust the volume before ducking out. Before it started, one old man helping his wife to a seat in the front row called out, “Is anyone here from New Orleans?” He pronounced New Orleans as a native New Orleanian would, long-vowelled and smooth. “We are too.” One other person raised his hand.
Gonzalez: Better with friends
Post-Modern Love
In the past few weeks, I fell for one of my friends. This wasn’t a serious infatuation, less than love but more than a crush. I could eat and breathe around him, but when I ran into him on Cross Campus, my smile was always too enthusiastic, my idle chatter about classes or the weather always went a little too long. I liked to make him laugh, so I stored up funny stories about my mishaps for these encounters. And when we said goodbye, promising to see each other soon, I walked on with bubbly excitement.
Gonzalez: A little rebellion then and now
Post-Modern Love
If today’s Yale students are still defining boyfriend, they are even further behind in making rules for general romantic behavior. Just this past weekend, I was asked about this column. “What kind of advice can you give me? What are the rules for ‘Post-Modern Love’?” He was teasing, but the question stayed in my mind, mostly because I couldn’t answer it except as a joke. Post-modern love exists in a space empty of rules but full of consequences.
Glück fuses poetry, teaching, style
At Yale, Pulitzer Prize winner Louise Glück is both an artist and a teacher. She recently spoke with the News about National Poetry Month, poetry classes and wearing leather jackets.
Gonzalez: No divine answers
Post-Modern Love
When I was 11 or 12, my father asked me to promise that whomever I married would be a Christian. We had just come home from an Easter service in which the pastor referred to the Biblical characterization of the church as “the bride of Christ.” My father was very solemn, and my oath seemed very important to him, so I promised. I did not remember this promise until the summer before freshman year, when he reminded me of it during a fight over my first real boyfriend. When my father asked me point-blank whether my boyfriend went to church, I couldn’t lie. I avoided saying he was an atheist, choosing the more palatable term agnostic. It didn’t matter. My father stopped speaking to me.