#NuevasPaginas 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 give please spread the news so we can reach more readers and continue the love/support of Latine literature!
How does it work?!
Here’s the deal, I came up with a set of casual/random/fun questions to ask each Hispanic/Latinx/e author, I interview. If you are new here don’t forget to check out all the other amazing interviews! We also have a great line-up of guest authors coming up so make sure you don’t miss an issue by subscribing now!
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Hey Heyyy Book Franz!
As I mentioned earlier this week, I’m back in your inbox (!!!) for a second time this week. The reason is that I’ve had so many amazing Latine authors reach out about their books and I want to make sure you know about as many as possible. You won’t see me twice a week in your inbox every week but there will be a few weeks in the future, when you will. I’ll try to keep the second issue straightforward and right to interview but before we go there I wanted to share this event I have coming up next week. I’ll be celebrating the book launch of The Skin And Its Girl by Sarah Cypher in person at East City Bookshop April 25th at 7:00 PM. If you are in the area, I’d love to have you join us! You can register here to attend (it’s free).
I’m wishing you all the reading time this week and thank you so much for being here and making all this bookish fun possible.
Without further ado, our very special guest author for today’s Nuevas Pagina issue is……Ella Cerón author of ¡Viva Lola Espinoza!
Could you tell me a bit about where this photo was taken? Is it special to your book in some way?
These photos were taken in Mexico City in August 2021. I stayed with my grandma and aunt in CDMX for three weeks when I was about ⅔ of the way through the process of writing Lola. It’s where my dad was born and grew up, and where a majority of my family still lives. I’ve been to dozens of times over the course of my life — beginning when I was 6 weeks old, though I obviously don’t remember that trip — and I wanted to visit some of the places I was writing about, and finally visit others I hadn’t yet seen. (Typically my visits are spent catching up with family, which doesn’t leave much time to sightsee or do touristy things.) So many friends ask me for recommendations when they visit CDMX, and I was like, well, if they keep talking about the Castillo de Chapultepec, I need to see it firsthand, too. I’ve been to the pyramids at Teotihuacan so many times, though — it’s my favorite place in the world. The layers of history there feel spiritual and special, and I was so grateful to place a scene in Lola there, too.
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.
I hesitate to say there’s a gap here because I simply haven’t read enough to know if that exists. There are so many books out there, I’m sure other people are working in this space too — one where magical realism is less about the myth and fantasy and more about how people simply live and believe. My family travels to a woman in a nearby town whenever we need healing, for example — it’s magic, and it’s normal. But a lot of the things we do in those visits are more about ritual than about “double bubble, toil and trouble.”
Building Lola’s world was also about finding balance between coming-of-age and romance. The latter is important to anyone’s life and development, and I definitely could have benefitted from having access to more than one movie showing teenage Latinas falling in love (shout-out to Real Women Have Curves.) But romance shouldn’t be and isn’t the end-all-be-all of your life — you have to be your own person, too.
What are two central themes in your book that you connect with the most and why?
Family is such a core part of Lola’s story — I have a gigantic, dramatic, and messy family, and so does Lola. There can be a lot of love in families like that, but an underrated upside is that you don’t have to pretend to like everyone all the time. Fighting with one cousin? Go sit next to another one while you calm down or work through it. It took me a very long time to learn how to have distinct relationships with my family members, and I think it’s important to navigate that — including how to see your parents as their own people, with first names and dreams of their own.
A friend once described Lola as being a “reluctant perfectionist,” which is a feeling that certainly weighed on me in school. You’re your parents’ biggest hopes and dreams and they sacrificed everything for you, so you better get straight As and go to a good school and get a good job… that narrative. Real talk, though? All of that leaves very little room for figuring out what you like and who you are. Sometimes it takes being all the way out of your comfort zone and making choices that you know are out of character for you to land somewhere in the middle.
If a book was home, where would your home be?
Lola would be my grandma’s house in CDMX. A lot of people ask if I based Lola on my own life or family — there are overlaps, but they are also distinct entities. One thing that is consistent is this idea of the matriarch serving as the hub for the rest of the family. Neither my grandmother nor Lola's grandmother live in the trendy parts of town — these are neighborhoods filled with every day, working people who live and love in the city. The best way I know to experience CDMX is a kitchen full of food and a living room full of laughter.
If your book was a famous musician who would it be?
It’s hard to pick just one, not least of all because playlists were a big part of my writing process. I made Spotify playlists for Lola and Javi, the Elizabeth and Darcy of Lola, and added one for Río later down the line. Lola’s playlist is a mix of American and Latine artists across the diaspora, while Javi’s is built more to showcase some of the variety that Spanish-language music has to offer. (It isn’t just one genre!) I’m very type-A, so I built the playlists in a way that they flow with the story — the highs and lows and lyrics all mimic the plot.
What comfort food could a reader pair with your book?
I have a lot of feelings about Mexican food, and it comes through in Lola — she spends her summer in CDMX working as a hostess at her cousin’s restaurant. Juana is hellbent on building a culinary legacy by riffing on her grandmother’s recipes, but I’m far less precious about how I source my Mexican food. I love my grandma’s cooking, I love the sauce-laden enchiladas you get at restaurants with faux-hacienda decor, I love foodie-forward restaurants (though it kills me to spend $8 on a single taco), I love sidewalk vendors in CDMX, I love the tacos I get at 1AM from the guys who run the taqueria in my New York City neighborhood, I…. have a place in my gremlin heart for Taco Bell and Chipotle… you get the idea. I would die for the lady who runs the tamale stand off my subway stop. Basically, I hope that if you read Lola, you’re inspired to support your local Mexican joint, or to pick up a Mexican cookbook and try a few recipes for yourself.
In what ways has access (or little to no access) to Hispanic/Latinx/e literature defined you as a writer?
For a very long time, Latine literature felt closed off to me. There was always so much emphasis on words in Spanish in the (perhaps three total?) books I was assigned at school, which wasn’t helped by the forced italicization of such words. And it didn’t help that sometimes it felt like random words, and not the Spanglish my family and I flip between.
It took a very long time for me to verbalize how such italicization felt othering — Daniel José Older has a great video making the case to not italicize these words and I was adamant that the Spanish in Lola be seamless, too. If you don’t understand Spanish that well, I hope the Spanglish and Spanish are immersive — that it’s like overhearing people speaking Spanish during a trip to CDMX. And I promise you won’t miss anything in terms of plot.
I’m still learning Spanish, and I’m still learning a lot about my heritage and about Mexico. I hope to never stop learning, honestly — and one of the best ways to do that is through books that expand and explore what it means to be both de aquí y de allá. I’m also grateful that there are so many of us writing and working and advocating for our cultures and each other now. The more I read, the more I want to join in.
Where can readers keep up with your work?
I’m on Twitter and Instagram at ellaceron
Thank you to Ella Cerón 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!
Ella Cerón is a writer and editor from Los Angeles, California. She lives in New York City with two black cats. Her work has appeared in Teen Vogue, GQ, InStyle, and other major publications. Viva Lola Espinoza is her first novel.
Synopsis for ¡Viva Lola Espinoza! from the Bookshop website:
A debut young adult novel that's Pride & Prejudice with a dash of magic, about a booksmart teen who spends the summer in Mexico City, meets two very cute boys, attempts to learn Spanish, and uncovers a family secret that changes her life forever.
Lola Espinoza is cursed in love. Well, maybe not actually cursed -- magic isn't real, is it? When Lola goes to spend the summer with her grandmother in Mexico City and meets handsome, flirtatious Rio, she discovers the unbelievable truth: Magic is very real, and what she'd always written off as bad luck is actually, truly . . . a curse. If Lola ever wants to fall in love without suffering the consequences, she'll have to break the curse. She finds an unlikely curse-breaking companion in Javi, a seemingly stoic boy she meets while working in her cousin's restaurant. Javi is willing to help Lola look into this family curse of hers, and Lola needs all the help she can get. Over the course of one summer -- filled with food, family, and two very different boys -- Lola explores Mexico City while learning about herself, her heritage, and the magic around us all.