#NuevasPáginas: "A woman finding her place in the world"
with Jennifer Silva Redmond author of Honeymoon at Sea!
#NuevasPáginas is a space that aims to amplify and spotlight Hispanic/Latine/x authors with newly published books. The goal is to connect readers to their next favorite Hispanic/Latine/x authored book through a mini casual get-to-know-the-book-and-author interview. So please help me connect to more readers. So that together we can continue to build the love/support of Latine literature!
Hey Book Franz!
Happy Summer :) I hope your summer is off to a great start but if it’s not and you are feeling strange or not quite like yourself — I totally and deeply understand. I’ve written about how typically around this time towards July and the beginning of August I start to get clouds that come over me that carry showers of sadness, shame, and doom. There are tons of reasons why I think this happens to me during the summer (aka The Body Keeps The Score) and reasons I might not be aware of but I know that every year having the awareness that I might catch myself feeling off, has helped tremendously. Being open about it and sharing my feelings has helped as well. It can be hard with it being summer and this expectation that sunshine should bring on happy thoughts and all things relaxation. The truth is we can’t control how we feel, sunshine or rain. But we can be a little less hard on our feelings and try to embrace them (can you tell I watched Inside Out 2? If you haven’t, go see it!!). So however summer has found you, I wish you acceptance because that’s what I’m trying to do and I wish you happy reading!
What’s Lupita reading this week?
My reading is all over the place. I’ve made excuses that for the most part feel valid, that my brain isn’t able to focus on books and reading right now but the other part of that is I think I’m looking for ways to disassociate which makes turning to scrolling on social media so much easier. The thing for me about disassociating is that it doesn’t replenish me. Instead, I’m left feeling like I need more alone time to scroll. Acknowledging that, this past weekend I told myself and my family I wanted to spend more time reading and I was caught off guard completely when my five-year-old stopped playing to come over and whisper to me: Shouldn’t you be reading? Put your phone down.
Yikes! I laughed a lot about it and then I realized that when I do set my phone down and spend more time reading, I feel a lot more capable of showing up. Long-winded way of trying to tell you all that I am reading about five books at the same time and I am now motivated to focus and finish them. One of the books I’m almost done reading is CRAFT STORIES I WROTE FOR THE DEVIL by Ananda Lima. I have the opportunity to chat with Ananda for her DC book tour stop and wow is this short story collection so incredibly unique— the title exactly describes this strange and profound collection which to me asks the question of how we define evil and how do we work against the types of stories we are expected to tell as BIPOC folk. If you are in the DC/MD/VA area, please join us if you can :) If you aren’t local, hang tight because I’m hoping to feature Lima right here in the future.
Sent with bookish love,
Lupita <3
Without further ado…our special guest author for today’s Nuevas Pagina issue is…Jennifer Silva Redmond author of Honeymoon at Sea!
Could you tell me a bit about where this photo was taken? Is it special to your book in some way?
This photo was taken in my favorite writing spot on our sailboat, our home since 2005; This is where my memoir begins and ends; though this is not the first boat we sailed on (that was a much smaller boat), I can’t imagine us ever wanting a different boat, so I think it will be the last boat we ever have!
Tell me about your book without telling me about your book - share any literary inspirations behind your book! If there are none, the gap you wanted to fill in the literary canon with your book
Two different memoirs were highly influential—Wild, by Cheryl Strayed, and Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer. I wanted my memoir to be as active and honest and funny as Wild, and to bring the everyday wonder of the natural world into the writing as beautifully as Kimmerer does in Sweetgrass.
Then, while I was editing the book in 2022, I got Ann Patchett’s These Precious Days, and that had a significant impact on my rewriting—trying to keep the themes present and still invisible, and to leaven it all with humor where I could.
What are two central themes in your book that you connect with the most and why?
One big theme I love to read and write about is a woman finding her place in the world, finding her voice and her calling. So much of this voyage I was on was spent with me saying to myself “What do I want to be when I grow up?” So many of us grow up and go straight to work, as I did, which can be limiting; I had big dreams, but I didn’t have a pathway to realizing those dreams. Luckily, I got new big dreams—and have been realizing them for years.
The other is discovering my roots—my Mexican-ness, if that is a word. I really knew nothing about Mexico before my sailor-artist husband and I set off on the boat for Cabo; I was a Mexican-American who had lived on the border most of my life and never been south of Ensenada. And I fell in love with everything about Mexico, especially the people, of course. (Early on, my memoir’s working title was “Becoming Mexican in Baja California.”)
If a book was home, where would your home be?
Right here on my sailboat; I feel like my book was built like a boat, from the keel up, with lots of different parts and helpers, and, like a boat, it has been launched and is off to sea, and I’m hoping it will find its way in the big world of books.
If your book was a famous musician who would it be?
Joan Baez. Because she is associated with the time when I first imprinted on the world—the 1960s—and also because she reminds me of my mom, who I lost in 2019—she embodies our two Mexican and American cultures so seamlessly and gracefully. And because Joan Baez is still so kick-ass and opinionated and still out there being an activist for the natural world.
What comfort food could a reader pair with your book?
Chilaquilas! Or enchiladas, or tamales, or a simple quesadilla. All of those are comfort foods for me, and I wrote so much in the book about eating Mexican food (specifically chilaquiles) and about us stretching our food budget by eating the fresh fish we caught along with rice and beans and local dishes throughout Baja and also mainland Mexico.
In what ways has access (or little to no access) to Hispanic/Latinx/e literature defined you as a writer?
I had absolutely no access to books written by Hispanic/Latinx writers as a kid. There were just so few out there, at least that I was aware of. But my mom was a writer, she wrote poetry and journaled daily most of my life, so that was hugely influential. Then, at about 20, I read One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez and it blew my mind. Then I read The House of the Spirits by Isabel Allende, and I thought, this is different, and this is great. There have been so many great Latinx books and authors since then, I couldn’t begin to list them!
Where can readers keep up with your work?
The best way to follow my adventures right now is by reading and subscribing to my new free Substack Honeymoon at Sea , about traveling and book marketing and life!
I am also on social media here:
https://www.facebook.com/jsilvaredmond
https://www.instagram.com/jsilvaredmond/
https://www.tiktok.com/@jsilvaredmond
https://twitter.com/jsilvaredmond
Thank you to Jennifer Silva Redmond for taking the time to chat with me about her book! Please please make sure you purchase a copy (or request your local library carry a copy) #SupportLatinxLit!
Jennifer Silva Redmond is a writer and freelance editor from California. Her essays, articles, and fiction have been published in numerous anthologies and magazines, and on sites such as Brevity. She is on the staff of the Southern California Writers Conference and San Diego Writers, Ink, and was the prose editor for A Year in Ink, vol 3, and co-founder of the critically acclaimed Sea of Cortez Review. She lives with her husband Russel, an artist and teacher, aboard their current sailboat Watchfire, somewhere on the West Coast of North America. Formerly editor-in-chief of Sunbelt Publications, Jennifer is now their editor-at-large. She is currently writing a book about editing; her book reviews and blog posts about writing, editing, and the sailing life can be found at www.jennyredbug.com.
Synopsis for Honeymoon at Sea:
In this charming, meditative memoir, Jennifer recounts that fateful first year, moving back and forth with the currents of her life. On their voyage, the couple sailed Watchfire to Baja California's Sea of Cortez, where they spent twelve months before sailing south along Mexico and Central America and through the Panama Canal. Jennifer's unique experience on the boat weaves through time as she explores the events that lead to taking her first step onto Watchfire--from her bohemian 1960s childhood in Southern California to the years she spent as a struggling actor in New York.
As Jennifer's grandfather once said, "If you want to get to know someone, take a long trip in a small boat."
The memoir begins and ends with the couple on their current sailboat in San Diego and then in Port Townsend, Washington. More than thirty years later, their honeymoon at sea continues.
I'm so thrilled to be in #NuevasPaginas. And, perfect timing: my book just won a National Indie Excellence Award in the category of Latinx Nonfiction!