Poured Over Double Shot: Esmeralda Santiago and Elizabeth Acevedo

Jenna Seery

Las Madres follows a group of mothers and daughters between Puerto Rico and the U.S. as they face challenges of health, natural disaster and family secrets with rich, warm prose and characters. Santiago joins us to talk about her personal connection to her characters, the challenge of writing real events, representing Puerto Rican history and culture and more.

Elizabeth Acevedo’s Family Lore brings the secrets of a generational saga and the surprises of magical realism together in her adult debut. Acevedo joins us to talk about writing prose and poetry, the importance of silence and power, the danger women face in the world and more. We end this episode with TBR Topoff book recommendations from Mary and Marc.    

Listen in as these authors speak separately with Miwa Messer, host of Poured Over.

This episode of Poured Over was hosted by Miwa Messer and mixed by Harry Liang.      

Featured Books (Episode):
Las Madres by Esmeralda Santiago
Family Lore by Elizabeth Acevedo
Conquistadora by Esmeralda Santiago
When I Was Puerto Rican by Esmeralda Santiago
Almost a Woman by Esmeralda Santiago
The Poet X by Elizabeth Acevedo
Olga Dies Dreaming by Xochitl Gonzalez
Blessing the Boats by Lucille Clifton
Red at the Bone by Jacqueline Woodson
The Secret Lives of Church Ladies by Deesha Philyaw
Afterlife by Julia Alvarez

Featured Books (TBR Topoff):
Lotería by Mario Alberto Zambrano
The Shoemaker’s Wife by Adriana Trigiani

Full Episode Transcript

Miwa Messer

I’m Miwa Messer, I’m the producer and host of Poured Over and Esmeralda Santiago. I’m so happy to see you this morning. Thank you for joining us.

Esmeralda Santiago

Thank you so much. It’s really wonderful to be able to talk to you about literature.

Oh, Las Madres this new novel and we’re going to talk about Conquistadora too. But I want to start for a second with When I Was Puerto Rican, because that was a discover great new writers pick the old Barnes and Noble program. We have a new version of that program now. But the old discover great new writers program tapped you in 1993 when the book came out. Fans of yours for a long time.

Thank you. Well, I’ve been a great fan of Barnes and Noble. Also, even before that, you are my local bookstore. So I was able to go to— my neighbor’s actually got to see oh, wow, she lives in our community.

I love that so much. Last month as though, is a new novel, which I knew it was coming. I didn’t know exactly when it was coming. Very glad I got to read it. And I’d love to talk about these women. And I’m going to ask you to explain who Las Madres are. Okay, and then we’ll get to the daughters in a second. But let’s start with Las madres themselves.

there’s three. There’s two generations in this book. There is Shirley, who’s 70 years old, born in Maine, but her mother is from Puerto Rico. And so she has been to Puerto Rico, has a lot of relatives in Puerto Rico and is bilingual. Her partner is Ada, who is a little bit younger than her and she was actually born and raised in Puerto Rico and when they get together other moves to vein with Shirley with their daughter Graciela who is much younger, obviously. And Graciela also is raised in Maine and Puerto Rico going back and forth, the two mothers and then there’s Luz, Luz is a young woman that we met at the very beginning, that is a friend and becomes really almost like a sister to Shirley and Ada. Luz also has a daughter called Marisol. So there’s Shirley, Ada, Luz, and then there’s the two daughters, Graciela and Marisol.

I really like these women a lot. I really, really like these women. And Luz has a very sort of complicated story. She has a brain injury. And I’m not really giving anything away, because honestly, it happens very early, her parents are killed in a car crash, and she’s left with a brain injury. And this is 1975

75 when the accident takes place, and 76 when she’s more recovered and able to function.

And I thought that was an incredibly interesting choice for you to make as the writer. Brain injury is something that I think people know exist, but they don’t think about it. And certainly not when it comes to teenagers and not when it comes to being back in the world. Like I think we have this idea that brain injury either leaves you entirely incapacitated, and you can’t speak and you can’t function And here’s this teenager who now no longer has dance. She’s got these sort of, do we call them seizures? What do we what do we call her episodes?

Disassociation episodes, is one of the medical terms for it. So she doesn’t have any physical manifestations. She doesn’t shake or you know, not a seizure. It’s more happens in her brain. So it’s completely different. Yeah.

And the people who know her know that this happens, and they know the signs to look for, and they talk about, you know, what is quite going on. You know, it’s hard enough to be a teenager, right? And then on top of it, you have a brain injury. This is this is a lot. And I’m wondering if you knew as you sat down to write because it’s been a minute since Conquistadora, right, like it’s been over a decade.

It’s been over a decade. And actually, when I was at the very end of the writing of Conquistadora. I had a stroke. And I believe that Las Madres, this begins with my experience during that process of recovery and a stroke is considered a kind of brain injury. I think that sense one of the things that I have never forgotten from the stroke that I had was that there was no muscle involvement. I didn’t my face didn’t freeze up or, physically I was it Fine. And so many people said to me, you don’t look like you’ve had a stroke. And yet, I knew that I’d had a stroke inside. And so I think that this is the beginning of my thinking about what is it like for somebody who’s actually living with something like this. And it there’s no visible, visible way for people to identify it. But what does it feel like for you as a person going through it, and then it just went a little bit further than I had. Because when I began to, to think about this character, being a young woman and a ballerina, and a very accomplished and popular young girl, there’s, you know, you just lose so much. I was already a 60-year-old woman I had had her whole life before. But what happens when this young person has no idea, she only has those few years, and only what she remembers from them. So that’s where I think that germ begins to grow.

You have a couple of different points in the novel, where you talk about Luz actually being a fiction of herself, and also having no idea of selfhood. And it’s a really interesting idea to play with in a novel, because you’re crossing time, you’re covering character development as well. And you have a character who really, it kind of takes unreliable narrator to a different level, even though this is third person, close third person story, this is not narrating her own story. But I love all of the things that you do with the narrative. So I have to ask, because you’re cutting back and forth between 1976 and 2017. You’ve got a really tight cast of these five women. Now granted, there are some other folks who, Luz’s grandma, we will come back to grandma, and Warren, who’s the nicest man in the world, we’ll come back to because there’s so many nice people in this book. It’s really terrific. I mean, there’s some horrible people too, but the nice ones outweigh that horrible. Are you sitting down to map this out? I mean, it’s very different when you’re writing essays that form a memoir. Right? But you’re making this up as you go along, you have had a brain injury yourself. But also, you’re covering a lot of ground in Puerto Rico’s history in America’s history. Because, you know, Puerto Rico is a colony, like we need to talk about all this

All that stuff. Well, you know, in a way, I think she Luz is that the avatar for me, and millions of people who have left their homes for whatever reason. In her case, she has that very particular, and specific reasons. But I think that it, a lot of her experiences, you don’t have to have had a brain injury to disassociate, when you’re from one culture, and different language, different climate, different physical environment, it’s not very, very hard to imagine that one then goes to the new environment, and you feel completely, you don’t know who you are anymore. And so I think that that for Luz, it really represents a lot of these experiences that that I’ve had, that so many people that I know, were in my life and people that I’ve met, and I’ve talked to about the sense that you, you know who you are, but you don’t know who, you know, you see them there, you see a person, somebody else sees somebody completely different. And depending on whether they are kind and open, for are closed off and ignorant or uninformed, or whatever one wants to call it. You still are. There’s a Spanish word, which I really love, lidiar. It’s you’re trying to manage everything that’s happening around you at the same time. Sometimes you fail at doing it, you know, impossible sometimes I think that that’s where this whole idea came with Luz is to represent an experience that in her case, she has a brain injury. In the case of the 10s of 1000s of people that I’ve met in my long life, you don’t need to have gone through that to have an experience like it. And I believe that, you know, having my stroke gave me that concept or that realization in my own life. And I just wanted to make it real for other people and for other readers.

You did. Oh, yes. That is exactly what you did. Summer 2017 is a very deliberate choice on your part, I think some listeners will remember that Puerto Rico was hit by two very vicious hurricanes sort of within a two-week period, wasn’t it?

It was within less than 10 days, there was a hurricane that was coming was coming, everybody prepared, everyone was really scared, because it had been a long time. So there had been a very, very powerful one like that. And Irma, actually, skirted the island, just went north and east and then went directly somewhere else into the Atlantic and then did damage in other places, but didn’t do as much damage as people in Puerto Rico expected. But it was still a lot of damage on two other islands in the archipelago to the east of the Big Island, they were completely devastated. So when Maria comes a few days later, there were two strains of thought that that the residents had ones were like, oh, you know, I prepared for Irma, had water, I had this, I had that. And then it just went away, that’s what’s going to happen, I’m not going to pay attention to Maria too much. And then there were the people who actually experienced what happened with Irma in the really the third east of the island, particularly very, very much affected. And those people were much more thoroughly prepared and scared, within a few hours of Maria hitting Puerto Rico, the entire grid, kaput. Everyone is now Puerto Ricans who have experienced storm but know that this happens quite often. And but in this case, it was months and months and months and months. And there are places that are still not connected on the island. So it was a devastating event. It was a historical event. I was in New York, at the time. I’m Warren.

I can imagine.

And spending, you know, every waking hour trying to get information because I have relatives on the island. I have many, many friends. And of course, this is the place where I was born and where I was raised. And so there’s all this emotion as someone who is not there, but knowing what’s going on how awful it is, and knowing that they on the island don’t know how awful it is, unless the people who are getting rattled around by the storm. So there was a lot that I really wanted to, to express about that experience. And I really went back and forth where it is the story about these people being in the United States, panicking and worrying the way I was and at a very, very early stage of the writing. I said no, I’ve got to I’ve got to put these characters in the middle of the storm.

And you did. No, you did. And I understand exactly why you did it. I had some moments and thinking, Okay, I’m gonna trust Esmeralda because she’s Esmeralda Santiago. But I did have some moments. I will say though, structurally, it’s a great way to talk about class. It’s a great way to talk about access. It’s a great way to talk about privilege. I mean, I love Marisol, I love Graciela, they are great women, although you had to put her in Maine. Saying this is someone who spent quite a lot of time in Maine as a child. And I was like, okay, so you made her first and only in a lot of rooms, progress. And, you know, I mean, I suppose we could argue that she passes more than some but yes, you know, her mom’s you put everyone isolated in Maine, everyone else gets to be in the Bronx. There’s a reason. I know, I know. And I’m going to ask you.

I was in a little cottage in Maine, for 30 plus years. That’s where I wrote all my books. And I have always wanted to write about this little community that I adored, this place, it’s just a fishing community and the people there were so kind and open and generous and wonderful. And so I’ve always wanted to write about this. And I have to tell you, I wrote a lot more about that place that didn’t make it into the book, maybe in another book. But at a very, very early stage again, when Shirley appears to me. She just said to me, I was born in Maine and I’m a Puerto Rican who was born in Maine and Graciela is a Puerto Rican who is raised in Maine. Well, it was, there was me being in this very small community at the beginning being really probably the darkest and more exotic of this place. They were all very descendant of Scottish and Irish and Vikings, probably who knows and much more stoic than I am. I’m very active. So there was a lot. There was a lot for me to explore about what my culture in Puerto Rico is, and the culture that surrounds Graciela and Ada, who was born in Puerto Rico. I just again, you know, I think you hit it when you said you’re talking about class and privilege and passing for Graciela, who, who was very conscious of her Puerto Rican-ness, the language, she has visited the island many, many times. And yet, she loves this place. She worked in a lobster boat with her grandpa, you know, and so she is a Puerto Rican who is not like the Puerto Ricans that most people have met. And that’s what I wanted to, I really want to explore also Puerto Rican-ness beyond the stereotype, or let’s say, the familiar for people, you know, none of these people were none of these women are performers, or boxers, for sports figures, you know, they are an accountant and a nurse and a teacher. They’re regular people who happen to share this culture and this history. And that was very important to me.

They’re also American citizens. Yeah, let’s not lose sight of this like they are. This is we’re not talking about an immigrant story. We are talking about a cross cultural story. But if you’re Puerto Rican, you’re an American citizen. Puerto Rico is a colony of the United States. And, you know, we should be having conversations about statehood. Yeah, apparently, we’re not doing that at the moment.

Or other options, the option of independence, which is very, very alive on the island, I think people speak about the three options that are out there many more. There are many different ways of looking at the future of Puerto Rico, and people are discussing it and try to figure it out. And it’s really beyond the scope of the novels that I write. But it’s the kind of thing that as a Puerto Rican who cares about this place, and the people in it are the people who have had to emigrate from that island. There are things that I pay attention to.

I mean, I’m obviously not Puerto Rican. But I live in New York. And I’m surrounded by folks who have connections to the whether they grew up there or family, what have you. And I mean, it sounds like there’s so much opportunity for change. And I see it represented in all of your women, right, when I see the character arc that you’ve given Las Madres, there’s a lot and it’s very cool, and I don’t there’s some stuff that happens that we are super not spoiling because I want everyone to be able to enjoy this. As you know, especially as I did to be honest, I got the galley. I saw your name, I saw the title and I just started reading. I didn’t even look I honestly, I was like, you know, I’m sure it’s gonna be great. But I went back and looked at the flap copy later on. Okay, yeah, I got all. So thank you, whoever wrote the flap copy. But I was so excited. And all of these women. They have very distinct points of view. They have very distinct experiences. Yes, they’re all tied together. Marisol though, is her mother’s primary caretaker, which that’s that has to speak to a lot of people across everywhere, right now. Because I mean, there’s this whole sandwich generation, right. You’re taking care of your children and you’re taking care of your parents. And there’s a lot and Marisol was a nurse and she’s got this lovely dude, Warren. Nice guy. Marisol to me feels like all of the best bits, right of someone who wants to do the right thing and yet, she’s a little stuck. She keeps putting mom first.

That’s right. And this is you know, this is something I have nurses in my life. I in fact, just getting a little bit from the story during the beginning of the pandemic. One of my sisters had retired recently from nursing after, 35 years, at least 19 of her cohort of nurses who had retired within the last two or three years, volunteered to work in New York City hospitals during that pandemic. So this is what these people are like, you know, a nurse who somebody who chooses to do that job is somebody who, who wants, life wants to make sure that if that that life goes as long as possible, as long as the people who are going through it, want it, and are having a good quality of life. And for me, it was, it was almost an homage to them. Because so many of those women from my sisters, community, and men, some of them passed away because they nobody at the beginning, of course, nobody knew. And my sister is one of the people who, two years later, she probably would be there. Yeah, I wanted her to be like those people who were my skills, my connection to humanity, my love for humanity, I want to be there to help so she was very, I was very clear with her that I wanted her to be that person, I had to learn a lot about nursing because I’m, I’m not. And although I did take care of a lot with my siblings, of course, with my elderly parents until they passed away. And of course, I’m the eldest of 11 children. So I’m used to taking care of people, for probably more resentfully. But it’s just, I just didn’t really like being the eldest daughter. But I really understand that, you know, that thing that you just you can’t let go of those people that you’re taking care of you, you just you love them in a way that, in a way, even if there’s dangers to you for that short period of time, that is working with them, she loves them in a way that other people don’t, because she doesn’t know their history and know who they are. She’s just seeing a suffering human being. And I want to help. And that’s what I loved about her so much. You know, when she came to me, I was like, Oh, you’re so nice. I wish you were my friend.

You gave Graciela something else that I know you’re quite fond of, which is this love of tech, and social media and staying connected. And I was laughing. I mean, it fits her perfectly. But I was laughing when I realized what you were doing. Because I’ve read earlier interviews where you’re like, Oh, I think this is great. This is the best thing ever. And I have to say like there are people I can stay in touch with on sort of like a low simmer and it’s nice, like, Oh, your children are lovely. That’s great, or, you know, cousins. Let’s talk about that connectivity for a second because that is so much of what you’re writing about in terms of diaspora, right. Like, you don’t always have that connection, you don’t always feel part of where you’ve got someone saying, Well, you’re not quite all there, right? Like it’s not you don’t have enough grasp of the language or you grew up away, or all of these things where people have lots of opinions. But now we’re in a place where sometimes social media isn’t the worst thing.

You well as so many of us learned during lockdown, but all of a sudden, we can actually see one another through video in a way that many people resisted. And I know that because I have a very close friend, who is also a writer, and we would share our drafts with one another. And so for years and years and years, we would meet together weekly via Skype. And this would tell a lot of my other friends because when you’re writer, as you know, writers, we live in our own universes alone, we only see a lot of our friends, if we don’t live in the middle of the city or in Brooklyn, where apparently they all live. You know, if you’re living somewhere else, you don’t have the contact. And I would always say to come earlier what we Skype and just that we can see. But all of a sudden, everybody had to learn how to do that, how to do that to do FaceTime, Skype, zoom, the many other you know, WebEx, all the other technologies that all of a sudden became absolutely essential for us. And it was very exciting to kind of because all of a sudden saw people I had not seen in years right? In this the way that you and I are seeing one another and just wouldn’t be able to talk to each other and parties and birthday parties and dinner together and those kinds of things. And I loved that people were able to connect with their elders. Because again, that was the only way to do it. And not just the ones that were, you know, in hospitals, but they had to teach them out work your devices and that I thought was really, really, really wonderful. For I know my parents had already passed when Maria hit Puerto Rico. But I know that that was one of the things that, I would set them up with as soon as I could to be able to stay in touch with them during the time that was possible. But it’s wonderful to be able to connect. And one of the things that’s very interesting for my community of Latine people from all of Latin America, is that we, the only a few come from El Salvador, or you come from Venezuela, or Argentina or Chile, whatever, the only way to stay in touch with your loved ones, in fact, were things like this technology. And so we kind of knew how to do it long before everyone else realized that, oh, you know, we can do this. I mean, I think for a lot of people with the thing about privacy for us, this is the only way we could connect for people who are so far away, you know, and so I want to Graciela that to be kind of that person she knows she knows about all this stuff, and she loves it. And in a way, that’s her way of connecting to the rest of the universe is to be there and create websites and do research and you know, FaceTime and all that stuff that that she enjoys. And, and as well, although she’s a little more extreme than I am.

Yeah, it’s a little harder to keep secrets in this day and age. And that’s all I’m gonna say there, but I appreciate her quite a lot. But is that what you write? Do you write to connect? Do you write to be heard? Or do you write to connect? Or are they not separate.

I write to be seen. I remember when I came to the United States, within two days of being here, a girl about my age, who I talked to, in this big tall building, I lived in rural Puerto Rico, here I am in Brooklyn, right? And this girl, the first thing she asked me, eres hispana? And I’m like, What? What is that? What is hispana? It’s bad. I had no idea. She said, Well, you know, if you come from a Spanish speaking country, that that’s who you are, we’re like, but wait, it’s like I’m Puerto Rican. What happened? And she just well, you hear they call us Hispanic. And it was shocking to me. And then I realized, oh, even you know, my very particular culture, language, music, my accented Spanish, which is very different from let’s say, a Mexican accent or Argentinian. All of these things are unknowable in the United States, and so in that, in that way, I felt invisible. Once I learned how to read in English, and of course, I learned in English, by reading, I realized there was nobody like me. And the big moment in my life when I realized that I was invisible, and I could be made invisible, was when Langston Hughes came to my high school to do an event. This handsome, graceful man dressed in like an ivory suit with a beautiful tie and this gorgeous faced and kind and sweet and, and he talked about his work. And he read from his books, and I got on the train that, right after school, and I didn’t even go home. I went to the library, and I asked the wonderful, helpful librarian. I want everything by Mr. Langston Hughes. And I took it home. And I read everything that that she had given me from the start, and she said, I can get you more I got everything I wanted to read. And so all of a sudden, I understood that this man is not Puerto Rican. Eventually, I learned that he translated into English. So he was a poet, and it is everything about him, was so exciting. And he became my mentor without even knowing it. He was the person who first told me Oh, if I feel invisible, I have to make other people see me, because I’m here. So I think that that’s where this begins this sense that I have to make myself, my people, my history, my family, the people that I love. I have to make them visible to people who ordinarily would just pass you on the street and not even glance in that direction.

With Conquistadora too, I mean, there are people who were trying to say, well, this woman never would have existed near like, well, actually, I don’t have any family records. So I think this woman did. And you can’t tell me otherwise. And we know who writes history. And so I’m just gonna end I’m just thinking about, you know, talk about being your, you’re giving everyone their due. And one of the things you do in Las Madres, too, is you give everyone first and last names, you make sure that everyone is acknowledged and named, and I just those, all of those acts, right, all of those things add up, were like, No, you can’t tell me that these people didn’t exist, just because you don’t think you’ve ever experienced someone like this. And I love the idea that they all fold up under you. And there’s this idea that I’m going to be seen, and I’m going to bring some people along with me, right? Like, that’s what books are about you hold the door open for someone else.

That’s right. I mean, I want to be the Langston Hughes for somebody. I mean, I really wish and I hope that you know, there’s going to be at some time young man or woman who says, oh, you know, this person got me on this path of writing and to make myself visible in a society that does everything possible to make me invisible. So yes, I think, with Conquistadora one of the interesting things is, you know, that story is completely fiction. My family are not wealthy, they did not own land, in fact, my entire family was landless peasants, but I really wanted to explore what it’s like to be a Spaniard, a young woman faced with this place, in the beginning of the 19th century, and then having her own dreams and aspirations. The interesting thing is that I can’t tell you how many people have written to me saying, you know, this story is like my great aunt, or my great grandmother, did you find her journals? Or could you send me a copy of the journals? I made her up, based on, you know, a lot of research that I did, and, and also, because, frankly, I had a 19th century upbringing until I came to New York, I was living like, These people lived at that time. And so I knew a lot about it. Plus, I talked to my parents who live that life, from the perspective of the people literally on the ground, not the wealthy, mostly white, mostly male, mostly well educated men, who wrote about us, from a very, very, you know, quite a distance, and I just wanted to bring them to make them real with all its dirt and smells, and touch, and what it’s like for an aristocratic woman to face this. And I think with like, I also tried to bring the tactile being of being alive, you know, it’s, I really love the sensory aspects of living. And maybe I think even more so after my stroke, where for a certain period of time, I didn’t have access to a lot of these things. And, and so this whole aspect of textures and smells and sounds and music and understand voices, and which language do you speak? When do you speak in Spanish? When do you speak in English? My characters that speak languages, I don’t speak. Like, why are you speaking German? I don’t speak that language. But again, I’ve known people like this in my life, and they are Puerto Rican. And they are not what people think they are much fuller, much fuller than what people are familiar with.

I think we need to be able to define our own communities, right? A lot of the literature of East Asia certainly has been translated by white men. Just like well, why now you you’re bringing your very specific POV to this and yes, you may be a renowned scholar and renowned translator and I do not doubt that your Japanese is better than mine, but there’s some cultural stuff. Yes, some cultural stuff that maybe you might be missing.

Yes, there’s also the gaze I mean, a woman looks at women in a different way that men do. I think that this is one reason I so so important for us to do to read, if I’m reading a translation, that’s the first thing I look for, if this character, the main character, male or female, and who is the translator, nothing to take away. Now the translators who are very well trained, and I admire, even the that they do it, it’s fantastic. But I really want to I do want that connection that that we have with one another. I mean, I have a connection with Puerto Ricans, I don’t have with people from other places, even if I don’t know if they’re Puerto Rican. It’s so weird. And it’s so strange. And, you know, like Ada says, we recognize each other, without even knowing, you know, it’s something that maybe it comes through the DNA or whatever, whatever it comes from, I don’t question it, I just know it exists. And I’ve had so many, many experiences, in which I have met total strangers, who turned out to, you know, to have had a connection to have had ancestors, or they were Puerto Rican, or their grandmother or their mother or whatever. So I think, again, you know, my work really is like you ask, it is about connecting, connecting, my, my experience, my history, my culture, my Puerto Rican Spanish, all these things with the greater scheme of humanity, you know. And this is, I think, this is really where I write, I want to connect this little, tiny little island when, if you look at a map of this hemisphere, it’s about where do we go? It’s a dot even it’s shaped, like this little block there, you know. And yet, 3 million people live there, you know. And they have lives, and they have histories, they have emotions. And it always humbles me to look at a whole globe, and then see my little speck and realize, I came from that little speck. And I’m gonna make sure that it is not invisible, that it’s bigger than a speck in people’s minds. Who may be. That’s all they see.

I love that idea. I really do. Do you have a favorite moment from Las Madres? Whether it was you in the writing or something that a character did that we can talk about? That isn’t a spoiler, there’s a moment

There were two moments that, particularly one of them, made me smile through it. And that is, when Marisol is walking around the Bronx, with all the Puerto Rican flags. You know, it has been recently Puerto Rican parade time. And so her vision, you know, all of a sudden, it’s like, I live here. But all of a sudden, today, I see flags everywhere, you know. And so this is one thing actually, I was raised more in Brooklyn, but my, my sisters ended up living in the Bronx. And so I remember that from going to the Puerto Rican communities in the Bronx, people were displaying the flag with such pride and, you know, nobility really, then it just become something entirely different, you know. So, that was really fun to write. And when that scene came to mind, I was, I had a good time with that. And then I remember I knew because these women go to Puerto Rico, and Maria is happening. And so I knew and I was dreading, how am I going to deal with this hurricane situation. And I remember one day, literally, I just woke up and I said, Okay, I am going to become a hurricane today in my writing, I have to do this. And I sat down very early, seven in the morning, no breakfast, no nothing I just said to myself, you have to do this, you have to get through this because I knew it was going to be difficult. It took me the whole day to be this hurricane. It’s still emotional for me when I read it, because the things that happened during that event, we did not know until after it was over. And including, you know, some of my some of the things that are discussed in that particular chapter, things that happened to people in my family, it still moves me even though I wrote it was as if somebody else did it.

You know, listening to you talk about the experience of writing this book and the things that you love about writing and the sort of tactile bits of it. You also wrote the screen adaptation Almost a Woman for almost a woman, which was your second memoir, which I still can’t get over this, but it aired on PBS Masterpiece Theater. And I love that it just feels so subversive and right and good. And but I mean, I think Masterpiece Theater and I think, Upstairs Downstairs and not, you know,

You know, I always call it I call it men on horses, women in corsets.

Absolutely. So I just I every chance I get to say that, you know, Almost a Woman was aired on Masterpiece Theater just delights me to no end. But screenwriting is a different set of writing muscles entirely. And you actually have to strip out all of the things. I mean, obviously, it’s character and dialogue, and that moves the story forward. But you have to strip out all of the bits you actually really liked to write. I know, having a moment, like you have to not do the things you really liked most. And I’m sitting here kind of going wait, how do you watch? So can we talk about that shift for a second? Because I think there are lots of folks who think when they see a thing on the screen, right? It’s such a different process. Can we just talk about that first?

No, no, my husband and I have owned a film company for since 1976, we do art and documentary films. And so my first really consistent writing was of documentaries and educational films. So I knew the technique more or less, but I had never written a full, you know, one and a half hours for the screen, of screenwriting. And it was really difficult. Because like you say, you cannot, the directors don’t like it for you to say anything about they don’t want you to describe anything, everything has to happen by action and dialogue, you know, so and so, you know, kills somebody, you know? Or is it a god was or indicted, you know, they do not want the details, it was very, very difficult to, for me to do that. Because, of course, I had the book, which I wrote, with all the stuff that I love, because my first language is Spanish and Spanish is very expansive and we love description, we have lots of syllables and and that kind of thing, and all of a sudden were like, Oh, my God, you know, you can’t even say, he said, you just put the character’s name on top. And then you know, so it was a very challenging period of time, which I had to do very, very quickly, actually. Because, like, now there’s a Writers Guild strike still happening at the time that you and I are talking at that time. Another strike was imminent. And so we had to do it very quickly. And I remember how I basically had to kind of turn off the this person, and then become somebody else, who only saw spoke, and then just gave very, very, very little information, just enough for them change of scene, it’s raining, or daytime, or, you know, sunrise or whatever, where where I would have written this, the sun comes over slowly over the mountain spreading over the beautiful, do you know, the sun rises? You know, it was annoying, there were times to say I would like really wake up, I do that. That’s what I’d say. But that wasn’t my job. You know, once you as a writer, you’re, you’re creating something for somebody else. And this is one reason why I became a book writer and stopped being a screenwriter, because I want to control the entire universe. And I don’t want to be a film director. It’s a complete, it’s a completely different thing. But I think I must say for screenwriting, you really pay a lot of attention, of course, to dialogue, and, and plot, you know, if you’re a good screenwriter, and you’re really know how to put together a story in a way that people who don’t have that kind of training sometimes struggle with. And so, in my writing, I outline my work. And I always start with what happens at the end. Okay, my mind, I remember I have these characters that have been buzzing around in my head. And then I said, Well, who are they and where they’re going and what are they doing? And, you know, how is this story going to end? And then I also think, well, what happens in the middle? And again, this is screen structure that I know that it’s just ingrained in me. So the middle in screen writing, it’s like a climax a big moment as a swing. So what is that middle moment that then brings the characters to that? The end because it’s very easy to start to finishing a book, it’s really really hard that training has helped me in the writing of, of novels. And I really love the expansiveness of writing fiction. You know, I’m not a meta writer. I love the scripture. I love movement. I love beautiful words. And I have access to two languages. How cool is that?

It’s fabulous. It’s fabulous. You know, when you were doing some of the promotion for Conquistadora, in hardcover, you mentioned that it might be the start of a trilogy, and not in the conventional sense is Las Madres a sequel to Conquistadora at all, but I could see them sitting as part of a trilogy. And I’m just wondering, Am I reading that correctly?

You are a smart reader. Yes. Not deliberately. This is actually, Las Madras is what probably would have been one of the last in the book, I originally considered this as a series of four books. And then I said, Well, maybe I can do it in three. Well, I think maybe it’s gonna be five, the history of Puerto Rico is so fascinating to me. And I have a lot of information about the history of Puerto Rico, because my family there were still alive, and I recorded them. So have a lot of information. And then my dad also loved technology, I sent him these little cassette players recorder, and he would love when he would go visit his friends, or the family, he would bring his tape recorder, and he would just put it in the middle of the room. And I have access to them telling stories. So I have so much information, but many books, I have to live long enough to write all these stories, but so Conquistadora was the beginning, okay. There’s another book that is actually written that it’s sitting in a drawer right now it’s done, which would have been the real actual, it begins. The day that Conquistadora ends, then there’s another book and then I because of Maria, it just accelerated the story. For me, I needed to get these characters in there. So yes, these women are all descendants, distant descendants, they don’t know. And, you know, other places, of course, are our places that have evolved since a lot. And I’m so, so grateful that you figured it out. And that you noticed it, because I really worked very hard to make sure that that was there.

It was a very cool reading experience; I will say you can read either on their own. It’s just it was really delightful for me when I started. And it was very early, sort of in Las Madres, where I was like, oh, wait a minute. Oh, I see what’s happening here. And obviously, you know, again, you can read them separately if you’d like it’s a richer experience if you have both of them. But you certainly do not need to have read Conquistadora in order to sit and enjoy Las Madres, which is certainly I had read it, but at the same time, you know, it had been a while my friend between books.

It was a while I mean, there were a lot of things going on in my life. You know, I did write the other book. That is, you know, the real technical sequel to Conquistadora. And then of course, I like Marisol, I was a caretaker for my parents, that I do have a lot of sisters and brothers. So I didn’t do it by myself. But it required a lot of attention at a very vulnerable and tender time for both of them. And they were living in completely, you know, my mother was living here, my father was living in Puerto Rico. And so there was a lot of back and forth and an emotion because, of course, when you’re taking care of somebody as Marisol introduces us to, if we were not aware of that, all the things that you’re feeling, you can’t express to the person that you’re taking care of, because they’re going through enough. And your job is to make things easier and better for them. And, and so I was going through a lot of that stuff with parents flying here. It was, it was a lot and but all the time, you know, thinking and writing and knowing that all these characters are alive in my head. The other book was finished. Let’s put away last mother’s is here. There’s probably a book or two in between those books. And that’s probably what I’m going to be working on next. And that is what I’m like, maybe about halfway through the next. The next book. I think it’s important. And whenever I’m done, like people could read this whole history of Puerto Rico and these people that some of them were known to me, and I and others that I invented, and for me they are, a lot of them are well known. Several of these are my imaginary ancestors. So my imaginary ancestors are speaking to me and telling me, do not forget us. There’s a lot going on about Puerto Ricans today. Don’t forget us, we survived, so that you could tell this story. And I take that very, very seriously. And that came to me from that one moment in high school, with Langston Hughes, saying, this is what I’m doing. He’s still speaking to me. He’s still mentoring me. And I adore him because I have a picture of him in my wallet, in my in my office and just think, thank you.

I love that. I love that story. So, so much, and I cannot wait to read the next book and the book after that, and the book after that. And however many, Esmeralda Santiago thank you so much Las Madres is out. Now. When I Was Puerto Rican is certainly in paperback and Conquistadora. There are a lot of books to choose from, from Esmeralda. Thank you, Las Madres is pretty spectacular.

Thank you. And I would like to just mention that all my books are available in Spanish. And I do hope that people who would prefer to read it in Spanish, they have access to that. And hopefully they will get back in touch with me after the read them and tell me I really love to hear from my readers. Because my, you know, years and years of working on these books and then one day you get an email or a text or something from someone who has reached out because you move them. That’s fantastic.

Okay, and readers can find you through your website and on Facebook and on Instagram. Yes. Okay. Excellent. Esmeralda. Thank you so much. It was so much fun to talk to you.

Thank you. It was great talking to you. And thank you for liking my books.

Miwa Messer

I’m Miwa Messer, I’m the producer and host of Poured Over and Elizabeth Acevedo is a National Poetry Slam champion which I haven’t been able to say that in a really long time. And it makes me happy. So I’m leading with that. She also has a National Book Award, of course for Poet X and a Carnegie Medal and a Walther Award and a Horn book Honor Award. Lots of good things have happened for Elizabeth over the course of her career. And we have so much ground to cover. But she’s also written her first novel for adults, and it’s called Family Lore. And I promise you, you are going to love these women, the way I love these women. There are some men in here that you know, well, some of them we love and some of them we don’t. But really, it is about a family of women. And Elizabeth, I’m going to ask you to introduce listeners to these wonderful, wonderful, wonderful women.

Elizabeth Acevedo

Thank you so much for that introduction, for the excitement. I’m excited to be here with you, Miwa. Family Lore follows two generations of women, four elders, right in their late 60s, early 70s. We have Flor who can see when someone is going to die in her dreams. We have Matilde, who doesn’t have an innate magic but can dance like nobody’s business. We have Pastora who is known to not have silk on her tongue, she will tell you like it is and she can tell you are not telling it like it is and we have the forgotten sister Camila who is the youngest and an herbalist. And Pastora and Flor both have daughters, and that is the next generation that’s kind of bringing a little bit of the urban Hip Hop young millennial flair to the novel. And so we have Ona, who is someone that possesses an alpha vagina, and I’m not gonna spoil anything, but you can make with that what you will. And we have Yadi, her cousin who at the ripe age of 20, inherited a taste for limes. And so some of these magics and powers are really quirky. But these are women whose capacities in various realms are kind of on a wide range of of supernatural, magical and fantastic.

It’s fun, this book, it’s very real too. There are a lot of real world moments. Yeah, that are part of this narrative as well. But when did you start working on this? I sort of feel like from my research, it was like you were writing multiple things at once and kind of putting things down and coming back and sort of figuring out where you felt your work was going in terms of the poetry and where it was going in terms of the prose. So when did you actually start working on Family Lore?

I think the hardest thing is that for me writing is thinking so I’ll think about a book for a long time before I ever really get started but If I remember in 2009, visiting my aunts in the Bronx and kind of being like, she deserves to be in somebody’s book, right. And at the time, my mother is one of 15 children, one of nine sisters. It’s massive, I have like 64 first cousins like it is legion, right. And I wanted to write a collection of short stories, each kind of loosely based on each one of these aunts. That’s in 09, I write many other things. At the time, I did not know how to write fiction. I didn’t know how to write prose, there was a lot of things I needed to teach myself before I could find, conquer that approach, or this this wider story. And then 10 years later, in 2019, was the first time when I started writing. And I began with the character that ended up being Ona, and about wanting to go to Columbia University and like what like to not be able to go to school in the neighborhood where you’re raised. And from there, that one character and her alpha vagina led to the populated the novel, and I lost some sisters and I combined some things. And then the imagination took over and a whole new story emerged.

It’s a great story. And it happens really over the course of like two days. Yeah, it’s really a compressed timeline. I mean, we have a moment where you’re sort of setting everything up until like six weeks out. And we get this very sort of quickie. But then all of a sudden, we are in it. And you’re flipping back. And I love the setup of this to the physical setup of the story. Because you’re flipping back and forth in time we’re getting mom’s stories, Auntie stories, we’re getting stories set in the DR with grandmas and some aunties that you and I are going to elliptically discuss because I have questions about those aunties. Okay, you know, the aunties I’m talking about. And you’re also cutting back and forth between the first person and the third person. See, you made a lot of really sort of complicated choices. Yeah. And I don’t know if you did it, as you were sitting down to write or if that all came with the revision. I mean, you’ve talked about this in the past, you’ve done really hard revisions on previous work. And I’m kind of like, alright, let’s, let’s talk about the structure before we come back to the characters.

There were some hard choices that I had to figure out as the novel developed, I learned very quickly, one of the first characters I had to write was Matilde and Matilde’s wedding. And I realized in that moment, that the way memory would work was going to affect form, right, that there was going to be this back and forth this back and forth, right, this ebb, which is fascinating, because she’s a dancer, so it makes sense that she was the one who taught me how we’re gonna step forward. And we’re also going to write and so I knew this rhythm wasn’t always going to be as forward moving as some of my other novels that a lot of it was going to be spent in nostalgia, and that was going to have its own effect. And so I’m glad you brought up that the pacing does this thing because that’s super intentional. I thought it was all going to be written in third person. Well, the things that I was interested in, is how do those of us who come from oral storytelling backgrounds where we learn, we don’t have like a chart with our descendants, right? We don’t have a coat of arms, we don’t have it written, in someone’s front page of the Bible, right? We learn about family members from talking to each other from stories learn all this nickname is for this great grandfather. And we’re piecing it together. How do you make text out of what you learn orally, and the project of the book is trying to capture the stories from the person who is telling you how they love who they love, how they learn to be a woman? Right? And that the answers complicate each other contradict each other contradict timelines, right? You have to figure out with ensemble truth telling, which I think is what like oral history can be, where do I find the through line in all of this, and so the first person kind of had to come through to just try to hold the project of why we’re hearing it in this way.

Yeah, I was about to say it’s a little bit of a book within a book.

Little bit. Not quite,

but there is a little bit of that element. So if that’s if that is, you know, one of the forms of literature you love. Part of why I wanted to talk about structure too, is you know, I, as a reader, I think there’s a difference between telling an immigrant story and telling a diaspora story. And Family Lore feels much more like a diaspora story to me and I and it’s not necessarily just because of the Dominican experience in the United States, right? Like, we’re in New York, we have, I’m in New York and we have one of the largest Dominican populations outside of the DR itself. But if you think about diaspora communities, right, like I’m also thinking of Puerto Rico, right, like Las Madres is the Esmeralda Santiago that’s about to come out. Olga Dies Dreaming the Xochitl Gonzalez. Like these are more stories of diaspora than they are about necessarily coming to America. And I think it’s easy for some people to conflate the two or just assume that a diaspora story is an immigrant story. And I would love to put your women into that context, because I really, they are of both places and yet, yeah, they’re of their own place. And, you know, being part of a diaspora, right, like you’re in this weird liminal space.

Yeah. And I, I think the liminal space is something that I’m continuously exploring, right? The total, the dash between Dominican, Dominican American, Dominican native but American citizenship, right? Like, what happens in this in between when you are no longer of one group and are not fully in another? Yeah, I love this distinction you’re making because I have heard the book described as like this immigrant saga, and that didn’t feel precise. Although four of the women do emigrate to the US. But I think stories of immigration are often on the process of immigration around the journey, it’s about the journey, I think diaspora is is often about the longing for what you don’t know and for what you had to leave behind and how you had to leave it behind. But maybe you’re already a bit more, you’ve already repotted, you’re already in the pot that you need for a while. It’s not it’s not the process of removing you from the from the ground, right. And I think that the perspective of the younger generation, which has lived in the US for as long as has for the for these women’s pretty much lives, I think they ground the novel in a very different way that feels American, and their relationship to the Dominican Republic is different from each other Yadi and Ona. But their, but their narratives are based here.

Yeah. And I love the fact too, that Ona, she teaches, she’s a professor and she’s doing some research. Yeah, yeah. But you give her this line, sort of, in the middle of the book, where she’s talking to her classes. And she’s like, Listen, I’m not doing a download for you. I’m not handing you a USB and saying this is where we’re from and who we are, and everything else is. She’s like, I’m trying to construct a picture of who we are, with your help, like all of us need to participate. I mean, obviously, I’m paraphrasing you slightly poorly. Sorry about that. But it’s a beautiful moment in the book, especially because of who she is as a character too. But she’s like, listen, there is no blueprint, there is no cookie cutter, there is no stamp. It’s just we’ve got and again, this comes back to what you were saying about the oral tradition and building a text out of an oral tradition like academia, certainly, you know, for sure, that’s part of it. That’s a really big part of it. Like who gets to tell the story? Yeah.

And how do you honor the way that stories get told, the artifacts don’t look how we imagined. What do we do with that? That material? But I think when we talk about diaspora, that’s a living thing is constantly growing and changing on us. In particularly, I think you’ll see it with, with language, right? We went from Hispanics, or Latinos to Latinx to Latine. And, you know, some people get really frustrated, why can we find the term? And I think for me, it’s what language you know, unless it’s a dead language, it is a learning language, am I right? And it’s about precision. It’s about that generation saying this names us. And then the next generation says, no one does it. And we find something else. And we say this names us. And so I think for me, that moment within Family Lore, where she was saying, we’re building this thing, understanding of who we are, it is a collective experience, right?

I mean, for me, language needs to evolve, right? And I think we’re living in a moment to in our social history, where language has evolved at a pace that has made some people cross their eyes. And other people have said, well, finally, you’re catching up a little bit, which is great. But I mean, language is such a powerful, gorgeous thing. I mean, when I think about the fact that you wanted to start out in music, before you came to poetry, right, and you think in things in terms of a four, four beat, which is, you know, I know enough about music to know that that’s like a basic building block. And I love the idea that you’ve added words sort of on top of that, but you keep the cadence and that again, goes back to that oral storytelling tradition. But it’s also a musicality that not everyone can capture. I mean, And obviously, you must read your stuff out loud as you’re working. There’s no way you can’t. I’m sorry. There’s just no way you can’t.

I do. I’ve never thought of the way that hip hop and hip hop is very much 4/4 a bar. Yeah, the Metronome, right. And that’s what makes it fun to find different pockets. I get asked a lot about how my poetic background influences my prose. And so I’m gonna steal that next time.

Please do because I feel it. I mean, having read across your work.

It’s how do we grab rhythm and music? I think more novelists would do well, to read poetry and, and to read song lyrics. And think about rhythm because it does so much on the emotional level. That is, when you have momentum, you take out punctuation and the rhythm is a straightforward that creates anxiety, it creates chaos, dictates that’s what’s happening with the character. When you find the beat, and you low, you slow it down, that creates a way to like sink into language. And so you can participate as the writer while the reader is receiving this, just having like a really strong grasp of music.

But how much do you have to flip though, when like, is there a set of poetry muscles? And then a set of prose muscles? Like, are you flipping back and forth between two sets of muscles? Are you just saying this is the word that works? Now, this is the structure that works now, I mean, I can’t think of many novels for adults that had been written as long form. I mean, Vikram Seth had a novel called Golden Gate a million years ago, one comes to mind there aren’t maybe a couple of Russians, there’s not a lot but YA has embraced the form, which I think is fantastic, because anything that gets you in the door, and keeps you here. But I mean, Natalie Diaz is an influence for you. Ilya Kaminsky has an influence for you. Lucille Clifton, like you’re pulling from lots of different places.

I do. I think I’m lucky to be in the lineage of a lot of incredible study. I’ve always been drawn to narrative though. So even as a poet, a lot of my poems, like a place and a character, and a thing that was said, like an inciting incident, and then a response. So most of my poems are response poems. And I think it’s because I’ve always thought about scenario, right? So my, my instinct is the narrative, but music and poetry was my way to language. And so there’s this thing that’s happening, I would say, Family Lore probably gets the closest to this marriage of prose, and poetry and h I have, I had to balance six different storylines. And so their narrative inclination, but the language was at the forefront, the interiority of their lives was at the forefront. This was not about heavily plotted beats, it wasn’t about oh, and then all the conflicts are going to boom, boom, bap, like that’s not how I’m not as interested in in those really clean, well plotted, I want to know, what are the kinds of choices that women would make? And I want to be mindful of feeling that yes, thought, yes. Action? And yes, how we hold things in our body, and that coming across?

Yeah, I really love the push and pull sort of between the two generations, where the mothers, the mothers and the aunties are like, well, we don’t really want to tell you those stories. And, Ona and Yadi, you’re looking at them going, you didn’t tell us that. And it’s that kind of and we all have it. Like regardless of our background, you know, mothers are complicated. Aunties are complicated. Daughters are like, we’re all complicated, for sure. But you also want to control your own narrative. Everyone wants to control their own narrative, right. And so listening to them and listening to the silence of the older generation, like, I think we leave that out of the conversation a lot of the time when we’re when we’re pushing, you know, our elders, to tell us what it was like. And then, I mean, half the time I’m listening for the silences, I’m listening for the stuff that they’re leaving out, because I’m like, you are not telling me?

What can’t they look at anymore? Or what do they think, if they say will cause you to imagine differently? I mean, silence appears on the page in varying ways there will be literal speech that said, Zion is she didn’t say that. Like, of course, she didn’t say that. Right. Like, this is what I imagined. She is thinking there are moments where people are redacted and it’s like, why not? Can’t the name be said right, that I think when folks particularly come from inherited trauma, and silence is a weapon. Feel what for you? There’s something to be said about how you communicate that on the page and how how reluctant folks can be to tell their story. And so I had to find really, without saying she couldn’t say this because it would hurt. How do I show the gaps in the stories.

I mean, that’s one of the things I love about the older generation, Flor and her sisters, especially Pastora. Right? Because she’s got this ability, and it, it saves her in a moment in her youth and then makes things much more complicated. And to see her sister to see floor show up for her the way Flor does, you know what I’m talking about. But all of the things they couldn’t say are the things that got them into trouble, because they did say them instead of keeping quiet all of these things that happened. And then to have it switched to be in a place where they’re like, well, actually, I can say whatever I want. And I will say whatever I want, but not about the thing you’re actually asking. They will not

And I think that feels so honest. Like I don’t know your family but I will ask one thing, and my mom will answer something else. And I’m like, wait, but that. But that’s the story she wanted to tell. That’s the story she needs to tell, you know, as the one that you’re talking about? Well, silence, it’s like, well, maybe you haven’t had an opportunity. And the question doesn’t matter. You are going to tell this story, because it’s a story you need to get out of your body, regardless of what I asked.

You know, one of the things I appreciate too about Family Lore is that it’s a coming of age for many different women at different points in their lives, that it’s not just like, you know, a lot of the times when we’re talking about coming of age stories, right, especially, now we’re thinking oh, teenagers, 20 somethings like the narrative of the messy 20 something girl? Yeah, here we go again. Okay. But, you know, we have a couple of characters who, as you say, are in their 60s and 70s. They finally learned some things like, I can remove myself from the situation, which is not something women are commonly taught anywhere. Like you can remove yourself from a situation like you can physically just, you know, and watching the evolution. Yeah, of the moms and beyond is so much fun. It’s I mean, I’m glad Yadi, and please don’t misunderstand me. I mean, they’re great. But not every older person gets to change. Yeah, and push forward, the way you let, these are the way these women just decided to do it. And you wrote about it. I’m not sure which happened for you.

I mean, I know from the beginning that I admire the way the women in my family are vibrant. And they’re not just off in the corner, because they’ve grown us there in age. It’s not like now it’s time for the next generation to take the front stage. Like they’re involved. They are dancing, they are part of, of the way the family holds itself together. And yet, there’s so much I didn’t know. And so curiosity about where are you now and the whys of how you land here. Pay here or choose not to, was a big part of, of wanting to imagine that magic can be discovered at any age, right? And every metaphor of what magic can mean, there are 72, you can make some big choices about your life. And yeah, and be okay with the ramifications, I was really intrigued by some of the conflict that they encounter, and also the way that their youth are going back in the past and kind of looking at what would allow you to get here, and also make it really hard to leave here.

I mean, it’s wild, if you were talking about nostalgia for life in a place that wasn’t always easy for these women. And yet, it’s still home, it’s family, it’s a really fine line to walk.

And it’s complicated.

You balance past and present. And there’s some suggestion in the future. But mostly you you’re doing this thing where you’re flipping around, and it’s not necessarily linear, which I really like, it’s like, well, this is the part of the story, we just need to tell. And this is the part we’re going to tell now. How much did you surprise yourself as you were writing Family Lore? I mean, again, like you’re doing some stuff on the page here, that is not the easiest thing.

I surprise myself quite a bit. I mean, I, I am very clear that I will not be writing The Poet X again, right. And I don’t want to, there are readers who just want the same book over and over. And every single book, I want to try something different. I want to, I’m stretching, this book stretched me. And I mean, like, it’s going to be nine stories. And then it’s going to be stories that are linked into in our novel, and then it’s going to be this living week. And because we’re thinking about death, we’re going to have to reconsider things. And then Matilde talked about her wedding. And I realized this is what’s happening. We are in the present, and the present, is going to take us to what we need to know about how we got here, and it was even more nonlinear. And I had to make concessions to the fact that like, I guess you just have to follow it up to be able to hold on to something. But for me, you know, that is not how I know stories to be told. I mean, I’ll be in the middle of a story with especially Someone who’s older. And it’s like, as they’re telling you that way, but you don’t know that you have to first know that. So then let me backtrack. And then they go off and they never get back to the first story. They’re just meandering in memory. And I think there’s something about wanting to capture cadence, wanting to capture what the character thinks it’s most important for you to know, that the past may not be you may not know the exact age that the person was there, you know, but the preseng is always really clear is really straightforward is the timeline of the present is narrated by ours, you know, exactly where you are, is murkier. Right. The past might require a little bit more work to make sense of, and that’s okay. Right. I think sometimes, Western storytelling, particularly American storytelling wants to hold on to time in a way that is really tight. And we think that’s the only way a novel can pace itself. But that doesn’t feel Caribbean that that’s not how we experience time. That’s not you go to DR, time is different. And so like, I wanted to write from a tradition that, that challenged the way we think of time and storytelling and how a narrative can be held. And that’s going to be hard for some folks, right? There’s like you mentioned, there’s a lot of risks on the page. But I think some people are going to find it so rewarding to have a different kind of thing at play.

I think it’s totally satisfying, because the women’s voices are so clear to me, and the way you cut between them and the relationships they have with each other. Also, Pastora has a job in a clothing store, and she meets someone and she is she has feelings about it. Yeah, she has a lot of feelings, but very strong feelings. And I’m just kind of laughing because she’s not really someone that you would want to have mad at you. I’m talking about a fictional character. I’m talking about someone that you made up. And I read about, and I’m laughing because I can absolutely imagine her own world being her very Pastora self.

Yeah. Yeah, no, some of these characters feel they felt so real. I mean, I could have written anecdote after anecdote I had there were so many sections. Each one of them had there were, you know, it was so fun to play in their memories to think about, if you could tell five stories, who would let me understand who you are, what would they be? Right. And those kept evolving and having to cut them and probably could have cut further for wanting to make this really, you know, a particular kind of narrative, but, but I gave a breath, I gave it time, but they were real to me, this novel was written from 2020, May of 2020. When I began with a writer’s group, I had been sporadically writing since 2019. But I really set on daily until pretty much 2022. Right when I turned it in, as I was about to give birth.

Oh, so tiny person and book at the same time.

Tiny person, tiny person turns nine months, officially out of my body as long as he was in my body 4 days before the book comes out.

Wow, all right, well, yay, everyone. I’m delighted that tiny person is here. But that sounds like a lot. Sounds like a lot.

It was it was a lot. And it added a different pressure to needing to get the book done. And it meant that I was just in it, I was in it. Because I knew that I have this time. And I can’t bump up against, I’m not going to be on maternity leave working on this book. But I lived with these women in a very isolated, very lonely couple of years. And so they became my friends. I just had this post this wall in one of the bedrooms in my house that was just posted with different names of each character, like they were just, I could have written four books about them.

As much joy as there is in the book, though, we need to talk a bit about the men. And that’s not to say that there aren’t some men who are great in this book, and some that get great arcs. But also we have to talk about the misogyny. And certainly, you know, this is across all kinds of communities. It’s certainly not limited to any one community. I want to be clear about that. But we have to talk about the bad stuff, too, because there is some stuff that happens in the book, and it goes straight back to misogyny, and you keep a very clear eye on things. And some of it is, you know, hard to read, though. I will say mama showing up when Mama shows up next to the riverbank. Thank you, Mama. Yeah. But for you as the writer, how are you balancing that? Because obviously, you don’t want to write a polemic, right? But we have to talk about the stuff that goes wrong in our communities.

I couldn’t look away from power when writing this book, and although there are very few men that have a lot of page time, the ones that do I needed to think about what are they doing? How are they either empowering, particularly within certain cultures, right, sharing power, ceding power or trying to assert power. That is the dynamic. That is how there’s still a difference that can be paid in Dominican culture to men in a way that is hard to escape. Right. And I, it would have been hard to hit a realistic note without acknowledging this, especially the elder women were raised to cede power, right, to me very often in maybe domestic capacities, but still, right. So that was important to have a handle on, I found it really hard to have it just be this thing that was going to weigh down the novel. But the Dominican Republic has one of the highest femicide rates in the world right now.

That is saying something.

You know, there’s a line where, where I think it’s not to give too much away. But Camila is talking and she’s saying, you know, a man like him could disappear me and my thing would not be as important as his status. Right? Some people are going to receive, well, you had to do it for your reputation. And women just disappear. I get that it might be weighty. But it’s also just such a moment that needs to be captured on why it’s important to tell our stories, why it’s important, essential, why it’s important to make space for each other, because there’s still this kind of danger in certain communities where if women don’t hold each other and don’t protect each other, we’re being thrown to the wolves.

Right? We can’t pretend this isn’t happening. No, I’m not saying it’s the only thing that defines us. I’m not saying it’s the only thing that we have.

But violence against women is real women that is not taken as seriously as it could or should be. And I think when we talk about the traumas that our elders may have experienced, that they won’t talk about, yeah, it might be important to acknowledge that it often will be a kind of violence that is hard to name and that they have shame around. So what can the generation that maybe has a different relationship to shame, and to womanhood and feminism do in trying to bridge forgiveness for oneself and trying to say, Mom, I think you can forgive yourself. You didn’t do anything wrong,

Right. And it all comes back to the evolution of language, which we’ve essentially been taught this entire episode is essentially about the language, that’s what you and I are talking about, like the fact that we even have conversations about shame, or that we can say trauma, let alone generational trauma, like, yes, I’ve got some older folks in my family where I’m like, yeah, they still can’t say that phrase, and you know, your 80 and okay, but the way we’ve been able to change the conversation about family dynamics, and what’s acceptable and what’s not, and where we should speak up, and where we shouldn’t, I mean, I’ve seen so much change just in the space of my lifetime. And I mean, I’m sorry, if you were alive in the 90s, we were all raised by wolves. And like, we were barbarians, like straight up, when you say some of the stuff, you’re just like, what, what are we doing? This is horrible what? So even in the span of like, 20 years, right, we’ve been able, 30 years, we’ve been able to make some pretty significant strides forward. But at the same time, you’re asking your parents and your grandparents and your aunties and your uncles to make adjustments that they might possibly just not have the language for. And I don’t mean English versus whatever the language of origin is, I just straight up you might not have the word like, and then you’ve got 15-year-olds who are like…, exactly how they wanted to find everything, which is great. And I would like to see everyone sort of get what they need emotionally. But yeah, language, right language, they have to be able to actually talk about this stuff. And the idea that, you know, women are seen as sort of objects more than people, right, and like, who’s seeing how are they being interpreted? And who’s protecting?

And it’s also one of the reasons, you know, people often ask, like, Why didn’t someone appear in the book? And I’m like, no, because of that, like, we’re trying to get the stories we wanted here, which get the folks who are often pushed to the back and aren’t around the domino table telling their glory stories over and over again, like that, to the book is about it’s not about the dudes.

Yeah. And it’s also how you end up leaving, because in a lot of cases, you don’t get to leave. If there isn’t something extraordinary that pushes you away from the community. And I think we have to remember that I mean, we have sort of parts of the community, our community, our country, whatever, who get a little cavalier about the whole migrant thing, and the way it’s described, and I don’t think it’s an easy decision for anyone to say let’s pick up and go. And certainly not if you’re facing sort of extraordinary circumstances. But you know, it’s not like you’re just walking to a desk at an airport and buying a plane ticket, you’re not leaving as always, right?

I mean, you have to think about what leaving must have meant in the 70s. And late I mean, prior to what I’m writing about folks who were living in the 70s, and 80s. And, you know, mid 90s, where there was no FaceTime, there was no internet. I mean, we had a calling card, and my mom would call. And I remember this vividly because at the end, you would get the like, you have one minute left. And because I don’t want to have to be disrupted mid conversation, my mom and my aunt would say, Okay, it’s time to just start laughing. Because I want to make sure the call ends and I just hear you laughing. And they would laugh until the phone click, because that was done. That’s how they closed every call. And okay, now it’s time to just hear each other laughing. The last memory I have for you this week, I want to be one of joy. Right? And that was when they all had phones when it was the 70s. And my mom is just writing letters that go out and like, you know, who knows when her mom is gonna write her back? Like, how hard is it to leave somewhere where you have nothing, you don’t know where you’re going to, but also your connection to what’s homehas so much time and distance from you. It’s just, there’s so much pain in the joy of those calls, and so much, they missed each other.

Do you remember those pale blue airmail—the letters that you buy at the post office and you’d fold them? Because they were the lightest thing? Yeah. And I just remember my mom getting really excited when she whenever those came in, yeah. Or we would be traveling and she would like take a stack with her. And I’m like, yeah, can you mail those from anywhere outside of the states? I just I think she needed to know that if she needed to drop a note. She could, um, there were also a lot of postcards. I remember.

If I need to reach my people, I can.

You know, now it’s funny, because, you know, technology, in some ways has helped us in many, many ways, stay in touch and in ways that we couldn’t, but there is kind of this. I do miss letters. I really like, I think about this a lot. Like I should actually write more letters to friends. And because it’s so nice to just get a thing in the mail. That’s just, you know, simple and chatty. And then I think about the rest of it. I’m like, Yeah, but I’ll text you and say Happy Birthday emoji, emoji, emoji.

Right, right, right.

I’m doing what I can, hey, can we talk about literary influences for a second? Because you do have an MFA, you did teach for a while you have all sorts of wonderful prizes for writers. And you’ve got some pretty great influences. Jason Reynolds, Jacqueline Woodson, Kiese Laymon, who I love, and we just talked about some of the other writers who’ve sort of helped make you Elizabeth Acevedo best selling writer, teacher of children.

I love talking about, you know, whose legacy I walk. And I think it’s to say the names of the writers that make you and who I think have their fingerprints all over my work. And so, I always start with Lucille Clifton, because I just think there was so much I found in her work, the novel Family Lore actually opens with one of her poems, the first poem I ever read of hers and her most famous poem, right, which, if you’re a poet, you’re gonna probably see it and be like, Oh, she picked this poem, but, but if you’re not a poet, I think there’s a lot that that poem offers. It’s “won’t you celebrate with me”. I read that, I just fell in love with her and then bought every book I could, and I was 16. Like, like the works of you know, Blessing of the Boat, Good Woman just dive into into her work. So I Love Lucille. I am a big fan of Jacqueline Woodson; I would say Red at the Bone really influenced how I thought about time and Family Lore and how time was going to be maybe more fluid. And in other books, the demarcation of time, which ended up a little bit more demarcated than I imagined and would have but, but really did some things with time that I love. Deesha Philyaw’s The Secret Lives of Church Ladies was a big influence for Family Lore, and like, how close can you get to the choices that the radical and redemptive and messy choices that women make, especially if they’re being raised within a particular primness? Right, which I think is a is a big part of… I’m talking about— you know, the story I’m talking about. I remember reading the story just like I just had so many things for how it’s gonna end and I mean, she’s fantastic. She’s so good. She did it right. Deesha is incredible, Julia Alvarez, I would say is a big influence. I loved the Garcia Girls. I I was really moved by In the Name of Salome, which is one of her lesser known works, but about the kind of prominent Dominican woman poet, and then her novel Afterlife, which I got an early review copy in 2019. So here’s the story of four sisters, and how they’re processing death. Right. And I remember being in the middle of thinking through Family Lore and being like, oh, Julia and I are in conversation again, right? Some folks that that I love, I mean, my friends, I’m really moved by the writers I write with Safia Elhillo, who is an incredible poet and is writing about nostalgia and loss and Sudan and her parents and, and blackness and what, what it means to try to make meaning of language and losing and gaining language. So I learned a lot from Safia, Clint Smith, right.

Oh, that guy is the best. He’s the best. I actually just bought a new copy of a book that he wrote an introduction. It’s a Ron Takaki history of America. And yeah, I I already own a different version. And then I saw that Clint had written an introduction. I was like, yep, need that copy. Thank you.

Yeah, he’s such a good friend. He’s a good critique partner. You know, I have a lot of writer friends, but not everyone is a good reader of your work. And I think Safia and Clint are really good readers of my work. And I will say Naima Coster, like those are the three that I feel like, get, not only what I’m trying to do, what I’m working on, but they can see when they’re like you’re not pushing enough.. And not every writer can say that. And it’d be really cool. But I just trust them so much. Like know if, you know, everything has to go through them before it goes to any editor, because I need the kind of stamp of, All right, I think this was a good effort, good job.

That is excellent. Well, I love the idea of being in community too. I mean, this is, I say this frequently. But reading is not a passive act. No, not a passive act. It’s an act of community. Writing is not a passive act. It is an act of community. And because why would you do this if you don’t want to connect? And one of the things I love is honestly, you and I have different backgrounds, but I love reading you because I get these women or they’re going to surprise me or I just like, I can find the universal truth in the details of someone else’s story, because I’m a reader. I love that so much. And it’s a treat. And I you know, obviously I bounced between your different formats, right? You’ve written a couple of novels, as long form poetry. And then you have a couple of prose novels as well. And I’m just like, Oh, okay. Okay. Just tell me a story. I’ll follow. Because ultimately, for me, it’s about voice.

Yeah. And I think that stays consistent. The container changes and the container is reflective of what the story needs. But the voice I tried to, I think, tonally, even with this novel, which is for a different audience, or for an audience that can kind of hold a lot of the complicated things we’ve talked about, that the children can’t, but this would have been a hard book for children.

Yeah, no, I’m glad you switched, I think. I mean, I think it would be nice for younger readers who’ve enjoyed the earlier books, certainly to come to this a little later. I think this is not something I would hand to a 15, even a mature 15-year-old I wouldn’t. I think, you know, once you get into your early 20s, this would be really satisfying. It’s certainly I’m certainly not in my early 20s and it was very satisfying. But I do think the short set should wait.

There’s a lot of work required of the hard it’d be worth it might make it too unpleasurable for young. Yeah. And the subject matters or just, I wouldn’t hand it to any child.. You know, I think it’s this team handle of what I mean, a lot of what I talk about in my young adult novels just let a little bit more loosely and left for readers to hold more of the story. You have to bring more as a reader, I think.

I think any adult reader does that I think kids are getting there. I think kids evolve over time to a point where they can bring their own experience to a book. But although I tread gently there, because part of how you started writing novels at all is because you had a class of eighth graders who are like Miss Acevedo we don’t see ourselves in books. Why are you making us read this stuff? And I love the idea. And I mean, certainly you’re not the only writer who responds to, I’m writing the thing that I didn’t see on the shelf or I’m writing myself into the strike. And I love that to bits. But I also think that the more people we can have writing their individual truth, right, like the more we connect, the more we get, like I don’t need to read books that are solely about people like me, I need to read a good story about characters that I want to be involved with and these women? I know I keep coming. My eyes get really big and I get really excited. But these women, they’re so great. They’re so mad when they’re even when…

When they’re not great.

There were a couple of aunties back in the DR that do not fall under the header of they’re great.

Sure.

They are who they are. I don’t see them being any different. I think they are products of their environment. They absolutely feel like they’re who they are. But I would not like to share a meal with them. I would like to share a meal with…

And it was interesting, right? Because those women don’t get to tell their story firsthand. I don’t know what made them. And the only there’s one matriarch who’s somewhat redeemed, but she’s redeemed by her daughters and her granddaughter, right. So you don’t get her story because someone had a piece of it. Because someone had an experience with her. And so it’s it is a little bit of like, who we make monsters out of, especially when we don’t have their side. But also one of them was just a monster and I don’t know that I’m getting that story.

Yeah, but forgiveness gets complicated, too. Because I think you know, there are some people who believe that you should just forgive because you should. I think you want to kind of have a whole separate conversation about forgiveness.

how it works and doesn’t work. Yeah. But it I was watching, I can’t remember what television show and there was a therapist that she was saying there’s a difference between resolution and reconciliation, yes, you can find resolution and not reconcile with someone. Right, there’s closure that can be had. And I think sometimes forgiveness is an answer that is may be too easy if the person has not done the work for you to share with them, or you cannot reconcile with them. But you can say you are who you are. And I’m stepping away. And I’m okay with that.

Yeah, power is the piece of forgiveness that people don’t really like to talk about. You know, in keeping with all of the things we’ve been talking about in this episode, and you know, we’re bumping up against time, and I knew we would, but can I ask what’s next? Have you started thinking about the next thing?

I have two things that I’m juggling. And so this goes back to one of your very early questions, I work on many things at once. Whenever I finish a book, the odds are I’m working on something else, because I get so anxious about the reception of a book that the only way I can move forward is like, I’m just going to do the next thing. So there’s a YA novel that, as of right now looks like it’s written in prose poetry. So they’re very short, stylized sections about a young woman who recently released from an adjudicated youth center wearing an ankle bracelet, who needs to go find her brother who’s dealing with a mental health crisis. And kind of the choices you have to make about right at its most literal sense that she’s probably the most unlikable character I’ve ever written. Like, she’s just such a smartass. And just like, just us, it’s really something new to the character who was like, Yo, brah, I just want to do my own thing, right. And she’s different. I read a lot of, you know, quote, unquote, good girls and she’s he’s bucking that in a way I love. I want to try my hand at an adult novel in verse. And so I’ve been toying with a novel that is about black maternal health, but it’s also about ancestors and very literal, the main character is in a coma while she’s being delivered of a child and she meets an ancestor. So we will see what all but you get you are the first person to hear any of this one as you.

Thank you for sharing that with us. Elizabeth Acevedo thank you so much for joining us on Poured Over Family Lore is out now.

Poured Over