#NuevasPaginasconLupita is an expanded edition of the mini get-to-know the book and author interview series on Instagram aimed to "spotlight" Hispanic/Latinx/e authors with books out in 2021. The goal is to connect readers to new and/or old favorite Hispanic/Latinx/e authors and their books! So give this & every post a share to help us reach more readers!
How does it work?!
Here’s the deal, I came up with a set of casual/random/funny questions to ask each Hispanic/Latinx/e author I interview. For now, the questions will all be the same but maybe in the future I’ll launch this into more specific questions to the author or maybe I’ll turn this series into a mini-podcast or maybe……well, you get it! The possibilities are endless.
If you are new here don’t forget to check out all the other amazing interviews! We also have a really great line-up of guest authors coming up so make sure you don’t miss an interview by subscribing now!
Hey Heyyy Book Franz!
The end of the year is quickly approaching and I have so many more 2021 authors I want to share with you! So be on the look out for a *new* newsletter post more often as we say goodbye to 2021.
Today’s special author guest is giving us a peek into a place a special place. A place that I feel totally transmits good vibes and magic. I first read Quiara Alegría Hudes’s memoir - My Broken Language at the beginning of the year and passages from the memoir as well as descriptions about her environment/family have still stuck with me - her words are that powerful.
It’s truly an incredible honor to be able to bring you this interview. I’ll bow out now and let you read her words below.
Could you tell me a bit about where this photo was taken? Is it special to your book in some way?
In my studio, a space of complete privacy, I wrote My Broken Language. For most of my writing life, my desk sat bedside. But a few years ago I found this space and filled the closets with all my old drafts and play production postcards. There’s tons of bookshelves, my altar, and memorabilia from nearly twenty years of stage productions.
I used to do index card outlines all over the floor but Lin-Manuel (who I wrote In the Heights and Vivo with) teased me and his wife Vanessa sent me a gift: a pinboard which I now use to outline and post notes.
I absolutely love this space. It’s where I pray, meditate, blast music, watch movies, read, get in a writing groove, despair about writing, drink alcohol, day-shower, play piano, journal. So much of my soul is here.
These photos are from May 2019, when I was in the middle of writing my book and gathered a group of Latina artists with the shared goal of healing. We called ourselves The Bruhealers.
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.
[Ntozake] Shange’s “for colored girls…” was a turning point for me. I read it freshman year of college. Before that, I had loved literature in high school but it was almost 100% unrelated to any familiar life circumstances. I loved stuff outside my direct realm of experience, and I wrote like that too. Fantasies, stuff I had no experience with. By sophomore year of college I was writing essays, plays, musicals with a clearer vision that ones life can be literature. I realized my Abuelas living room, my moms altars, my Pop’s memories of rural Puerto Rico were the best novels I had never read. I became dizzy with the thought that I had this lifetime of material already alive inside me.
What are two central themes in your book that you connect with the most and why?
The push and pull between language fluency and “remedial” language. We’re all praised for the languages we’re most fluent in, and that cycle reinforces us to use our primary languages, to double-down and invest our lives in those directions. But what if the languages we’re “remedial” in actually harbor tremendous promise and truth for us, or hold entire parts of our souls in ways our primary language is not equipped to?
In the process of writing the book, I arrived at a place of true gratitude for and compassion toward my broken languages—my halting Spanish, for example, or my rigid body language in a family of natural dancers. I forgave myself and then went beyond the forgiveness to celebrate. I realized that precisely because mom was not a native English speaker, she was able to innovate and play with English in incredible ways.
If a book was home, where would your home be?
A forest full of moss, ferns, and dew. That forest would be located in a sidewalk crack.
If your book was a famous musician who would it be?
I think of the Celia Cruz songs where her voice is a drum, her lyrics are drumbeats. Like “quimbara.” What’s the literal translation of that? It’s a sound, it’s a song, it’s a declaration of life through invented yet accessible language. That’s what I’m trying to do in my book—blend languages and sounds in an uplifting, soulful way.
What comfort food could a reader pair with your book?
Rice and beans. Con pique.
In what ways has access (or little to no access) to Hispanic/Latinx/e literature defined you as a writer?
There’s definitely a defensive mode I get into. An “it’s my turn now” vibe. An “I gotta invent new modes and worlds even if the powers that be say it’s inaccessible to mass audiences.” An “I will not be silenced” mode—and legit, I am often the one most guilty of silencing myself. The stakes are too high. Our stories die all the time without seeing the light of day. Our kids deserve to know our paths, and they deserve to get them in the highest quality kick-ass creative tellings possible.
For me the goal is not just to get on the library shelf or on the syllabus. It’s for there to be so many of us, writing at the peak of our craft and smashing the genres with our innovation, that future generations think it’s completely normal to have our histories and stories everywhere. So that one day Boricuas being a huge visible part of the American cultural record is not even special or particularly exciting—it’s normal and expected. Punto!
Where can readers keep up with your work?
On IG @quiaraalegria and online at Quiara.com
A huge thank you to Quiara Alegría Hudes for taking the time to chat with me about My Broken Language! Please please make sure you purchase a copy (or request your local library carry a copy) of her book #SupportLatinxLit!
Synopsis for My Broken Language from PRH website:
LONGLISTED FOR THE ANDREW CARNEGIE MEDAL • ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: NPR, New York Public Library, BookPage, and BookRiot • “Quiara Alegría Hudes is in her own league. Her sentences will take your breath away. How lucky we are to have her telling our stories.”—Lin-Manuel Miranda, award-winning creator of Hamilton and In the Heights
Quiara Alegría Hudes was the sharp-eyed girl on the stairs while her family danced their defiance in a tight North Philly kitchen. She was awed by her mother and aunts and cousins, but haunted by the unspoken, untold stories of the barrio—even as she tried to find her own voice in the sea of language around her, written and spoken, English and Spanish, bodies and books, Western art and sacred altars. Her family became her private pantheon, a gathering circle of powerful orisha-like women with tragic real-world wounds, and she vowed to tell their stories—but first she’d have to get off the stairs and join the dance. She’d have to find her language.
Weaving together Hudes’s love of music with the songs of her family, the lessons of North Philly with those of Yale, this is a multimythic dive into home, memory, and belonging—narrated by an obsessed girl who fought to become an artist so she could capture the world she loved in all its wild and delicate beauty.
Bio for Quiara Alegría Hudes from her website:
Quiara Alegría Hudes is an American writer of books, plays, musicals, films, and essays. She is the Pulitzer Prize-winning dramatist of Water By the Spoonful; author of a memoir, My Broken Language; and screenwriter of the major motion pictures In the Heights and Vivo. She co-wrote the musicals In the Heights with Lin-Manuel Miranda and Miss You Like Hell with Erin McKeown. Hudes’ notable essays include High Tide of Heartbreak, #OurMothersToo, and Corey Couldn’t Take It Anymore. In opposition of the carceral state, Hudes and her cousin founded Emancipated Stories so people behind bars could share one page of their life story with the world. As a barrio feminist and joyous mischief maker, Quiara y su hermana created the Latinx Casting Manifesto. A passionate wife and mom, Hudes is a native of West Philly, U.S.A., and now lives with her family in Washington Heights, NY (on unceded Munsee Lenape land).
Friendly reminder that the best ways you can support Latinx/e authors and Latinx/e literature is by doing the following:
Leave a review for their books on any website that sells books
Request that your local library carry a copy
Purchase a copy of a friend, family member, your nemesis (hey! I’m sure they read too).
Shout about the book on any social media platform or to your friends and family!
Share this interview widely! Word of mouth does wonders for connecting readers to books.
Love this interview so much. It’s lovely to see her writing practice and sacred space. As a writer I want in on her Bruhealers group! 😂 Definitely one of my favorite books this year. I’ve been a fan for year. So grateful to finally be seen in a memoir 🌻
I loved that this isn't just relevant to Hispanic/Latinx/e people and literature, but to all those who identify as BIPOC. I definitely feel the same in terms of having [little or no] access to stories that you felt represented your own circumstances and experiences. As well as that defensive feeling when it comes to wanting to write your own stories. Loved this interview xx