Susan Salguero Discovers Emotional Depth of Journey Into Flamenco
September 15, 2009, Austin Writing Examiner
Sylvia Dickey Smith

In her book, The Gachí, Susan Salguero paints a poignant picture of Flamenco life. She shares vivid insights of a Spanish world, the excitement of flamenco, and the pain that followed her life as she followed flamenco.

Now, many years later, she shares her earlier life, but now from the perspective of a mature woman. In it, the reader feels the open wounds of her soul as she discovers herself.

In the 1960s, before she crossed the ocean to Spain in search of her heart’s desire to learn Flamenco dance, she wasn’t the only angry woman at Cal Berkeley. She felt edgy but had no clue why. She only knew she had to flee, that she couldn’t save the world until she first saved herself. Her passion for music propelled her to Spain, to Seville, a provincial city fertile with the excited cry of the guitar. Coveting gypsy power, and driven to dance that wild and perfect audacity, she staked her claim, and her life, on Flamenco.

She first penned the words of The Gachi many years ago, but it took maturity to fully learn the lessons inherit in those earlier years.

"I wrote the book when I was young and in the throes of life. It took maturity to understand my motivations and weave in those third dimensional depths - which is part of why it was published 30 years after beginning on it.

The disadvantage of age," she says," is word finding. A perfect word's hidden in there, but I can't finger it onto the keyboard until tossing dictionary and thesaurus around, and then waiting hours or days for it to bubble up on its own. I have a list of oft-lost verbs, (engender, glower, defect) which helps. Once they're down, they're here to stay."

But finding the right word notwithstanding, Susan opens her heart and soul to the reader and shares, in all honesty, the struggles she faced during those earlier years. But along with the struggles, come the power of a woman finding her own voice. Nothing carries more weight.