Newsroom

Mateo Gonzalez was always drawn to literature, but before enrolling in El Proyecto Odisea—the Spanish-language program of the Odyssey Project—he’d never had to chance to study it formally. His education in his birth country of Mexico and later in his adopted home of Chicago was always technical, designed to support his career as a machinist in a manufacturing setting. That changed when he heard an advertisement for Odisea on the radio. “At the time, I wasn’t doing anything extracurricular other than my job,” he said. His three children were grown and mostly on their own, leaving a peaceful and quiet house. “I was working eight hours and coming home early, so I was free to do other things. It sounded like an interesting way to spend my time.” It turned out to be much more. The class kindled his love of literature, but also his love of writing. He knew he had an imagination, but it was in an early class that he discovered how people responded to that imagination on the page. A professor asked students to write descriptively and turn their work in to her. The following week, when Mateo entered the room a few minutes after class had begun, everyone started clapping. “I thought it was some sort of punishment for arriving late,” he joked. Instead, the professor had shared his work with the class. “They said, ‘What you wrote was amazing.’ I was surprised. After that I started cultivating my writing more.”