Unloving And Belonging...
con Naima Coster author of 'What's Mine And Yours'
#NuevasPaginasconLupita is a space that is both an archive and resource aimed to "spotlight" Hispanic/Latinx/e authors with newly published books. 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!
“I AM SO EXCITED”- I know I say this every week but really it’s because bringing you author interviews through Nuevas Paginas is one of my favorites things to do. Tack on that excitement with the added fact that today’s special guest is celebrating the paperback release of this novel….. and well now it’s a whole CELEBRATION!!
To properly celebrate this big day, the folks at Grand Central Publishing are partnering with me to host my first ever BOOK GIVEAWAY for Nuevas Paginas! If you want to win a FREE copy of the book (I have THREE copies to giveaway) featured in today’s interview all you have to do is the following: comment that you are interested and would like to be entered below (one comment/entry per person). It’s that simple :) however if you want to increase your chances of winning a copy - share this interview by either forwarding the email to a friend or on social media (Instagram, Facebook, TikTok - basically wherever you social media!) Once you’ve done that add a second comment below to let me know you’ve shared the interview as well.
Good luck to those that enter! I really loved this book so much because it’s a book with so many multiple themes. Themes that for me just hit so close to my heart. I’ve reviewed the book on Instagram here and just the other day I mentioned it on TikTok because it was a book with a plot twist that I didn’t see coming and that nearly destroyed me!!! Truly I could go on about the book but I’ll stop here and let you read this amazing interview with someone I admire deeply <3.
Could you tell me a bit about where this photo was taken? Is it special to your book in some way?
My book is about searching for home—in your family, romantic love, faraway places, yourself. So, it’s fitting to take this picture in my home in Brooklyn. I’ve moved a lot in the last decade, and it feels good to be rooted now.
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 knew I wanted to create a mosaic, a story built of distinct parts that would add up to a gripping, meaningful whole. And I knew I wanted to write a book that could move—across time, place, and multiple points of view. I looked to A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan and The Dew Breaker by Edwidge Danticat for inspiration.
What’s Mine and Yours became a story about two families that collide during the integration of a local high school. It’s about motherhood, North Carolina, and the burden of being expected to prove your worth as a person of color in a largely white environment. The novel gets close to so many different characters, which is what I love most about it. It’s an experience you can’t get in real life—you can never get into the head and heart of the people closest to you.
What are two central themes in your book that you connect with the most and why?
Belonging—how hard it can be to belong in your own family, in your school, or city, these places that are meant to be home.
And unloving, or to borrow language from a New York Times review of my book that I loved, “how we come to unlove our beloveds.” What’s Mine and Yours chronicles how relationships fall apart—between lovers, siblings, parents and children. I think every day about how to live on after loss and estrangement, what can be recovered, and what can’t.
If a book was home, where would your home be?
I love Their Eyes Were Watching God. I read it for the first time when I was fourteen, and I’ve read it many times since then. It’s a story about making and remaking oneself, about love and desire, and moving forward through loss with an openness to life and beauty. If there’s a heart or spirit I’d want to live inside, it’s Janie’s. She’s a hell of a character.
If your book was a famous musician who would it be?
Can I say Phoebe Bridgers? Her songs are sad and tender, but also smart and tough, and I like to think my writing is like that—it’s vulnerable and opens you up to deep feeling without being sappy or sentimental. I love her songs “ICU” and “I Know the End.”
What comfort food could a reader pair with your book?
If you’re reading in the morning, a strong cup of coffee and a chocolate donut, preferably Devil’s Food (IYKYK).
In what ways has access (or little to no access) to Hispanic/Latinx/e literature defined you as a writer?
I have the strange, contradictory experience of feeling both that there were never enough stories that reflected my heritage and experience and also that I was totally, sufficiently nourished by all the books I found. For me, reading Latinx/e literature, but also Caribbean literature and literature from across the Black Diaspora, gave me the boldness and permission I needed to be a writer. Julia Alvarez’s books were huge to me when I was young, especially In The Time of the Butterflies and Before We Were Free. Edwidge Danticat was life-giving—Breath, Eyes, Memory changed what I thought a book could be: intimate, painful, hopeful, about both familial and national history. Esmeralda Santiago’s memoirs were also important. Later, I found Angie Cruz and Nelly Rosario. These were a few of the writers who gave me a body of work I could imagine my stories might belong to someday.
Where can readers keep up with your work?
I’m @naimacoster on Instagram, @zafatista on Twitter, and you can sign up for my sparingly sent newsletter at www.naimacoster.com .
A huge thank you to Naima Coster for taking the time to chat with me about her work! Please please make sure you purchase a copy (or request your local library carry a copy) of her book #SupportLatinxLit!
Bio for Naima Coster from her website:
Naima Coster is the author of two novels, What's Mine and Yours, an instant New York Times bestseller, and her debut, Halsey Street, which was a finalist for the 2018 Kirkus Prize for Fiction. Naima's stories and essays have appeared in Elle, Time, Kweli, the New York Times, The Paris Review Daily, The Cut, The Sunday Times, Catapult, and elsewhere. In 2020, she received the National Book Foundation's 5 Under 35 honor.
Naima has taught writing for over a decade in community settings, youth programs, and universities. She currently teaches in the low-residency MFA program at Antioch University in L.A. Naima tweets as @zafatista and writes the newsletter, Bloom How You Must. She lives in Brooklyn with her family.
Synopsis for What’s Mine And Yours from Grand Central Publishing:
A community in the Piedmont of North Carolina rises in outrage as a county initiative draws students from the largely Black east side of town into predominantly white high schools on the west. For two students, Gee and Noelle, the integration sets off a chain of events that will tie their two families together in unexpected ways over the next twenty years.
On one side of the integration debate is Jade, Gee's steely, ambitious mother. In the aftermath of a harrowing loss, she is determined to give her son the tools he'll need to survive in America as a sensitive, anxious, young Black man. On the other side is Noelle's headstrong mother, Lacey May, a white woman who refuses to see her half-Latina daughters as anything but white. She strives to protect them as she couldn't protect herself from the influence of their charming but unreliable father, Robbie.
When Gee and Noelle join the school play meant to bridge the divide between new and old students, their paths collide, and their two seemingly disconnected families begin to form deeply knotted, messy ties that will shape the trajectory of their adult lives. And their mothers—each determined to see her child inherit a better life—will make choices that will haunt them for decades to come.
As love is built and lost, and the past never too far behind, What's Mine and Yours is an expansive, vibrant tapestry that moves between the years, from the foothills of North Carolina, to Atlanta, Los Angeles, and Paris. It explores the unique organism that is every family: what breaks them apart and how they come back together.
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.
Would love to win a copy- my library never has it in stock!
I loved this interview! Would love to read this book as well!