Poured Over: Andres N. Ordorica on How We Named the Stars

By BN Editors / February 22, 2024 at 6:00 am

“I describe this as a love story steeped in loss.”

How We Named the Stars by Andrés N. Ordorica is a heartbreaking yet hopeful debut novel of first love, first loss and how we become ourselves. Ordorica joined us live at B&N Upper West Side to talk about growing into your identity, writing community legacy, his literary influences and more with guest host, Jenna Seery.

This episode of Poured Over was hosted by Jenna Seery and mixed by Harry Liang.                  

New episodes land Tuesdays and Thursdays (with occasional Saturdays) here and on your favorite podcast app.        

Featured Books (Episode):
How We Named the Stars by Andrés N. Ordorica
Diaries of a Terrorist by Christopher Soto
Small Bodies of Water by Nina Mingya Powles
Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett
The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros

Full Episode Transcript

Jenna Seery

I’m Jenna Seery. I’m the associate producer and a bookseller here with Barnes and Noble. And I am so excited to be talking tonight with Andrés Ordorica about How We Named the Stars. This is our discover pick for this month. And it is just truly a beautiful story of first love, of loss of growth of identity, all these things that happen when you’re 18, 19 years old, and just trying to figure things out. So I am so excited. And thank you for being with us here today.

Andrés N. Ordorica

Thank you for having me. It’s just such an honor to be launching a book in New York City that feels very surreal to be able to say, of course.

Now, there are probably many people here who have read the book, I know your family’s here. I know you have friends here who have I’m sure already come to love these characters. But I know there’s also people here and people listening who haven’t had a chance yet to read this book. So I was hoping you could set up the story for us.

So I describe this as a love story steeped in loss. And so it is not giving away the ending at all, you find out that by page three, that the character of Sam is dead, the chapter opens with Sam is dead. And so it really is a novel about processing, mourning, and what does it mean to mourn but I think at the heart of it, it really is a coming of age story of like recognizing with these two sort of universal rites of passage, both our first love and our first loss. And when I say first loss, what I mean by that is like loss outside of the family, you know, so and that’s not to sort of say that losing a grandparent or a parent or a sibling doesn’t hold that kind of weight. But that when it’s someone who comes to you through friendship or through love, it can, it can be very much one’s emotional undoing. Beyond that, I think it’s just a what it’s a story about what it means to become an adult, you know, this is sort of the Scottish and made, my phrase I keep using is like, I find it very bonkers, that like, you know, at 18, we kind of envision that there’s like this magical moment that you’re an adult. So like what happens at 11:59pm on your last day of being 17 to that point of midnight, that you turn 18. And you just go out in the world and you’re supposed to have this sense of self, you decide what your political beliefs are, are the same as your parents, are they different? You know, for some of us, it’s kind of reckoning with what is our sexuality, what’s our sort of experience with our gender. And so it’s just that kind of unfurling and chrysalis of a character. And it just happens to be tied to these very weighty subjects of love and loss.

Just a few little light themes in the book, nothing too heavy. No, I mean, and the way that these characters experience growth and experience change, and especially Daniel, our main character whose voice we really live inside in this novel, both in present time and in retrospection, there are just so many moments that feel, even if they haven’t been things that I think people themselves have experienced, completely in that same way, those moments of trying to understand how am I going to be an adult in this world that really connect because we all had those times of saying, Who am I going to be? And especially when you’re going away to school, and you’re sort of experiencing a different kind of life? You have to make some choices pretty early on to say, Okay, I guess I’m going to try this, or I guess I’m going to be that.

Yes, definitely. And I think there’s that sense that like, if you choose to go to university, and say you are like, I was like a first gen student, you know, you’re kind of going through these hallowed walls of academia, you know, you’re being asked day in and day out of what are your views on the world. You know, if you study English literature, you’re reading these books, these great tomes from the canon and, and there’s also this sense that like, if you don’t come from that world, that you are having to, like play catch up, because like, what is the Canon? You know, what are the books that all good learned men should know, by the time they’re 18? And I think for Daniel, there’s just so much of that. So it’s not just him trying to grow up, it’s him trying to, like align himself with this person that he wants to be or that he thinks he should be. But also, I think there’s this sort of pressure that he, I think maybe it’s a bit misplaced pressure, but he kind of feels on behalf of his family. He has to ascend. You know, all of these people. He comes from an immigrant family, all of these people have worked towards getting him to this place. So it has to be for something. And again, I think that’s just such a lot for an 18 year old. But I think it’s very real. I think, you know, it’s funny, I work part time for a university in Edinburgh, and I often see that like walking around campus and, and I was working there as I was finishing up the novel, and I think it was, it was great to kind of be immersed, and be reminded and kind of, yeah, to be able to say to myself, Okay, I’m not miss remembering, I’m not making this overly heightened like this is the true sense of what it is to try to be a person at 18.

That’s a bonkers time for all of us. There’s a lot that we all go through. And so I have some of the cards in the audience. And a couple of people put that down variations of this, and I have my own variation as well. But how did you come to Daniel’s voice in the form that it was? And beyond that, how did you know that his story was the one you wanted to tell in this book?

That’s such a lovely question. So, like many writers, this was not my first attempt at a novel, I think this was my third attempt. But there was sort of, I would say, the framework there in a previous iteration, that was largely inspired by stories of my mother, I always say that my mother was my first storyteller, that someone actually who taught me the art of storytelling. And I think that was just a way of her being able to like hold on two memories, especially when we moved abroad through my father’s career. And so there was like a version of the novel that was more aligned with my mom’s stories of what it was like to grow up as a daughter of immigrants. And to return to Chihuahua, where part of the novel is set, but I think I found that there was too much distance between me and that character to really get to the to the meat and bones. So I kind of put it away in the proverbial drawer. And then I think a few years later, I was facing the my 30s. And kind of reflecting back on life and thinking, wow, how strange to have Yeah, like, I don’t know, did I make it? You know, like, how unscathed was I or not? And to kind of reflect on that time of my life. And so Daniel kind of just came from those musings of, of, of really trying to sort of, yeah, kind of honor those memories. And I think that’s the funny thing about memory. Like, obviously, that’s us rewriting stuff. So you know, can you be authentic with your own memory, I would like to say if there is a means of doing that, I hope that Daniel is an authentic representation of what I felt like going through that chapter of my life.

I know you have sort of stated in your author’s note after the book and everything that this is not your story. This is fiction. And there are, of course, pieces that you can tell feel come from your soul and come from your own experience. But this is not your story, fictionalized. And I think that’s really important to sort of lean into as we go through this. And, you know, I think it’s very often that especially young writers get sort of placed with this, like, Oh, this is your life, because there may be some similarities to you.

Definitely. And I think this often happens with marginalized writers, with queer writers, with writers from the sort of the global south or from sort of diasporic communities where I think, you know, in order to reckon with, okay, this doesn’t really fit with our idea of a literary novelist, so we have to kind of make it make sense. So obviously, this is Andres and or the regards sort of drawing upon his life like this is, you know, Tin House is very smartly trying to sort of put this as like, you know, is it auto fiction? And, you know, I was really inspired with the amazing activist and novelist Yara Rodrigues Fowler in the UK. And this was something that you’re experienced with her sophomore novel, where it is a beautiful political novel that was shortlisted for the Orwell prize, but really kind of struggled to get it taken seriously, as a political novel. Everyone wanted to see it as this is the daughter of Brazilian immigrants writing about her family story. And so for me, that was sort of me being my most political self of saying, No, this is literary fiction. And yes, like many writers, I’m drawing upon my own life, but this is not my life.

And I think that it’s an important distinction because this clearly was, in many ways, a labor of love for you, and something you really poured a lot of yourself into. And I know that this is featured in the questions as well of people wanting to know how long this took for you to sort of go from inception to where we are now and sort of that process of getting it to come to light.

And like I totally appreciate that inquisitiveness, you know, I often especially when it kind of if there’s someone who’s sort of not on your radar, and they kind of you come across their book and you just it’s very intriguing, you know, like for me when Douglas Stuart came on the scene and you’re like, how did this person write this like, epically beautiful debut novel that went on to win, like the Booker Prize, and then you kind of find out about his life, you’re like, Oh, my God, like, he used to be like, the Creative Director for all of these famous, like design houses, I understand people’s desire to know, you know, like, for me, all in, I would say it took six years. And that wasn’t continuous. You know, I was fortunate, you know, I know, it’s sort of in deep dark, the pandemic, a lot of creative people, I feel like you fell into two camps, you were either to be able to be prolific during lock downs, and others rightly so, you know, there was very scary things going on a lot of loss, a lot of death, a lot of uncertainty that was very crippling. I think, for me as a means of processing, I kind of just threw myself into, like these last drafts of the novel. And that was sort of really the conduit to get the final thing out.

And we’re so glad you did, because some of the themes, and some of the characters and moments in this work, really, were sort of the best kind of gut punch, that sort of moment where you can look at a page and say, I didn’t know that’s exactly what I needed to read. But that’s exactly what I needed to read. And I think so much of that comes in this sort of floundering first love. And these things that for Daniel are the most intense feelings he’s ever felt and some of the biggest things he’s ever felt. And he’ll look back on, you know, with varying degrees of thought over the years. And yet, sort of that first experience of what you think could be real love, it’s kind of a marvel to read in a novel.

That’s just been such a lovely bit of feedback to see, you know, both people, people sort of reaching out to me in direct messages or sort of tagging me in posts, or just lovely reviews, you know, you set out to write this thing, and you don’t really know what is going to happen. Don’t want to say like I was writing for the margins, I at times knew like, there was a lot of pressure on writing a book like this, that it was going to be read in a certain way of writing a young queer character, a young POC character from an immigrant background. And I think for a lot of people, you know that it would be an opportunity to see a version of themselves represented on paper, in the same way that I kind of hungered for that when I was younger, but I think to kind of know that people have just felt moved by those sorts of smaller moments. It’s just been beautifully profound. I have some beautiful girlfriends here from my time at Ithaca. I won’t embarrass them. But there’s definitely one who I can think of who I probably bored her brains off by being at that same age of like, pining after someone and just wanting to find someone who was just a bit more mature, or just a few years ahead of me, who could just sort of make sense, because you’re right, you know, we kind of see definitely in the first half of part one, Daniel, you know, he’s described by the character of Bernie Bernice as like a naive little cherub. And he’s just so very much is afraid of misreading everyone, his friends, himself, but the biggest one is, you know, there’s a lot at stake to misread is Sam, interested in him? You know, on paper, Sam is just his polar opposite. he is, you know, the All American jock. He’s a legacy kid, his parents both went to university. One is a vet, owns his own practice, the other is a doctor. And so there’s Yeah, he just is an enigma to Daniel, probably more so than anything, because he’s nice. Like, he’s just like this nice, emotionally competent, young man. And so for Daniel, he just, he’s not someone who I think really, at any point in his life, probably felt that like he was deserving of that type of love and attention. And so to get that from Sam just kind of throws him off kilter, I think, for a lot of the beginning of the novel. But I think hopefully, the readers experience as they go through the rest of their story, is really being able to appreciate that we’re actually seeing Daniel or at least a version of Daniel and his retelling of coming into himself and he’s starting to feel more confident in his ability to read other people but also to kind of lay claim to who he is.

And watching Daniel sort of reach out for all of these people that he perceives to be more put together. Other than he is and us as the reader, and people who have sort of already gone through that stage in life can be like, Oh, honey, they all don’t know, just as much as you don’t know, this person is 21 years old, they do not have it together either.

Yeah, it’s really funny, especially, you know, I’m turning 35 in July. And so, you know, the characters that I have is like, the older characters are like 24-25. And like, Daniel just looks up to Bernie Bernice, who’s the character, he meets, sort of towards the end of Part One. And Bernie Bernice is a grad student at Cayuga University and lives in a house with just other grad students, and they all happen to be queer. And so for Daniel, this is like he’s won the lottery, like they just know so much. And it was funny to kind of write and I think there is a lot of truth to that. But also, I think the 35 year old in me would be like, Oh, my God, like at 25? What advice could I give an 18 year old,

It is so interesting to watch that navigation. And as he learns, you know, some advice is better than others. And, you know, some things he has to come to trust himself on, and only himself, because it’s all coming back to him. And he is in this massive space of transition from, you know, leaving the place that he is from that he has lived. And not only going to sort of this primarily white institution, as a person of color, and sort of navigating these challenges in classes and challenges amongst friends have not only, you know, questioning his own sexuality, and you know, sort of those internal things, but having a very blatant external struggle of his own race and his class amongst these people who probably don’t understand how difficult it is for him to be in that space.

Definitely, yeah, but I think there are just some really lovely people that he’s blessed enough to come into contact with. So, you know, we have Naomi, who is his advisor, who’s also an Afro Dominican professor who has worked quite her way up within the English Lit department at his university. So like, there are moments where I think, and, and my intention was certain characters that you know, as much as I love Daniel, I think he needed some tough love, I didn’t want him to be a perfectly formed character, you know, he is fallible, he at times is a bit judgey, he tells this to people and his friends tell him this, like he’s quick to make judgments of others. But you know, and it is, it’s a lot for him to go and reckon through, but there are people who help him sort of make sense of his place. And then, you know, there are other characters, and I don’t want to give anything away. But we, you kind of learned that at times. Daniel was a bit myopic, during his first year and was just like, so intensely in love with Sam, that there are these things that he doesn’t know about his friends like that are quite big things. Yeah, I think it was my means of kind of playing with, you know, yes, there’s a lot of weight to come from sort of ethnic minority backgrounds and go to university, but it’s also not everyone is coming at the same thing. Some do come from very affluent backgrounds. Um, you know, you have the character of Elia, who is rumored to have had like her 16th birthday spread in Vogue Brazil, and her father is like, the heir to some Brazilian rum company. But she’s also an afro Latina. And that’s sort of where they bond over as being two people of color. But it is very divergent experiences. And I think it was important to have Daniel confront moments like that to sort of, almost say, like, you can’t lean on these things all the time, like you do have to kind of start to carve out your own path and make a decision, like, what does it mean to you? What kind of way or credence Do you want to give to these sorts of markers of identity.

it all goes back to just him putting together those building blocks of who is he going to be as he moves forward. And I think so much of that comes sort of in the way you were saying of his vision of his time, and his friends. And I mean, we all have college friends that I’m sure we’ve really put through the wringer over the years of going through different things. But we all did it, you know, back and forth to each other, but watching him sort of learn how to rely on other people, and how to rely on himself. And to sort of not feel like he has to struggle so hard against and with everything all the time and sort of lean into friendships that are helpful and lean into these moments where he can trust himself. It’s very beautiful to watch someone go through those things. And you were as I was reading, I feel like we all kind of go and go, did I do that too? And I just didn’t realize it all this time.

Definitely. Like that concept of like offloading, and you’re right. And I think it happens throughout like I think the characters, the friendships that Daniel makes, you know, I don’t think he’s just taking from others I think he also is very giving me he’s very giving in terms you know, there are moments were sort of at the beginning of the spring semester where we’re Sam is like a bit rocky and I think he kind of gains of perception. And a lot of that is having learned it from Sam, but in reverse when he was going through those moments, and he starts to kind of build this emotional intelligence and but also Yeah, I think he’s very much indebted in many ways to his friends who kind of do help, they have these great moments where they’re kind of like, you know, you need to stop being so serious, like, you know, we’re also university students, like you need to go to a party, you need to go and enjoy life. And I think being able to just have that kind of friendship, or the peer group of going through similar things. And yeah, again, you know, it’s funny, to kind of look back retrospectively a bit older and kind of be able to say, like, oh, wow, you know, I definitely was maybe a bit OTT. But yeah, I also remember, you know, my friends were too. And we thought, like, these were like, just the biggest things like, Oh, my God, this guy, and like my intro to philosophy class, you know, he’s always looking at me, he invited me for coffee, is it just coffee? Or like, are we gonna get married? And you’re like, it’s just, I think I appreciate that. Because there is really, at that point, sort of, to my earlier point, you know, you’re, as you become an adult, you’re just trying to make sense of the world around you based on what little information you have. So there are these moments where some of these things just feel like the biggest thing in the world, but you give it three, five years, and then you kind of laugh at yourself, and like, Oh, my God, I was so earnest.

There were so many moments, I feel like, and I think this goes to a lot of people I’ve talked to where you think something is the biggest thing that’s ever gonna happen to you. And then I’ve already forgotten it. Like, there are moments that I thought were going to change my life forever. And I’m like, I look back, and like, I don’t really remember what that meant. When I wrote that down to my journal or on my planner or something. It’s gone.

I mean, you know, I think like, what I love about sort of writing a character, like Daniel is just thinking, like, I totally believe that, like, the love that He has for Sam is going to be something that he will hold space for throughout, however long on earth he gets to live. But there are definitely, you know, I say, I don’t think I said this in my note to reader vote in sort of doing interviews, I think I said that because the character of Sam was sort of inspired by like, the best bits of like, men I knew or dated at the time, but I kind of reflected back to him and think, oh, my gosh, there was just so much time I wasted pining after these type of men whose like I would say a certain word for but my parents are in the audience, I’m not gonna say but like, you know, like an F boy. And you think you just like waste this, like, all like, and you kind of, then you choose to like, go on Facebook, or Instagram or whatnot, and you see what they’ve done with their lives. And yet, you just consumed so much of my emotional time and energy. But it again, it’s how you sort of tried to move through the world. And I think, you know, it would be unfair to tell someone of the age that Daniel and Sam and his friends are in the book, that that isn’t the most important thing, because at that time it is and you know, I think it’s important to honor what you’re experiencing at any sort of given time, as you move through life, you know, like the sort of things that matter to me. Now, my 18 year old self would be like, Oh, my God, get a grip.

The Container Store. Yeah.

Like, is it that much fun? Yeah. Like, do you really need to clean like your refrigerator that many times a week?

I do? Yes. I think that the other sort of big beating heart of this novel for me is Daniel’s family, and his connection with his family. There is a lot of ups and downs. I think like many of us when we’re 18, and you know, interacting with our family, but between his mother over the phone sort of checking on him so voraciously, just making sure he’s okay. His grandfather, who I think is one of my favorite characters in the entire novel, to this sort of legacy relationship with his uncle who has this extreme pull on him, even though they’ve never met or, you know, been alive on the planet at the same time. Daniels navigating sort of this whole world and his family sort of entirely separate from what he’s experiencing at school.

Yeah, and I think you know, there is that kind of like weight of, sort of my earlier point when you come from, you know, a certain type of background and you’re kind of entering academia. And I think for Daniel, there’s like this sense that he knows as he’s going through these kind of like sticky points that like his own family, just do not have sort of the language to help them get through it, you know, and so there’s instances where he has to rely on others and that can feel like a great distance but then there are also these moments of just like intense love and fervor and you’re right like there is throughout his like first year at university you know, he has his like weekly calls with his parents and, and he talks about sort of when he goes through his growing pains at the beginning of sort of having to learn how to, like share news in a way that doesn’t bring upon sort of their distress or whatnot. He wants everyone to think everything is going all right, at any one time. And I think you know, I appreciate that about that character like that kind of decision to do that. But that I think it was very important to show someone like his grandfather, which has been really lovely, like the reception that I’ve gotten, particularly from queer men, but also I would say, particularly, of fellow queer Latinx men, that kind of representation of a paternal figure that is sort of the antithesis of machismo. But you know, I think in order to kind of get to that type of truth, you know, it did have to add sort of another layer of loss. And so again, we’re not giving anything away, you know, that Daniel is named after this uncle that he never meets and that he died. And the circumstances I won’t tell you, because that’s sort of unfurled later, when he in the second part of the book when he’s in Mexico for the summer with his grandfather, but I think for me, it was really important to have like these two different types of men, that kind of almost fried, I think, Latino men have the stereotype that’s, you know, rightfully so is it you know, machismo is very pervasive. And you know, in Mexico, we continuously see demonstrations up and down the country against femicide against, you know, against women and non-binary people. But I think I wanted to sort of color the book with my own experience. And I would say, by and large, you know, the men in my family did not sort of come from that heritage of machismo. And so I was really grateful that the reception did feel true for people. And however, you can have sort of authentic truth in writing, but that, you know, that men have reached out to me in particular, and said that, you know, I find the grandfather character, very moving. And, you know, I can understand he’s not perfect, you know, and he’s very, there’s sort of revelations that happened between them both, it’s a bit of a slow burn as well, because I think they’re both trying to meet each other in the middle. But their, their love is deeply intense. And so yeah, you know, I am glad that I had that sort of authoritative decision to not have his parents in Mexico, I wanted it to just be the grandfather, and Daniel, because I thought it was very important to kind of put those situations in place and kind of see what will unfurl between these characters? And what will we learn if Daniel by only having his grandfather as sort of the conduit into this kind of family lore.

I think legacy and how we pass stories is so important for the queer community and for cultural community as well, that there are these people that are passing down to us. And for us, these representations of, of how they live their lives, and the struggles that they’ve experienced, and the joys that they’ve experienced to and the passions and how just the vast experience of life, I think, for a lot of young people to have these sort of representations of elders and have connection, it’s so important to understand, you know, where the communities have come from and where they can still go.

Yeah, I think for me is I was in sort of the final draft. Before my agent went out on submission with the book, I had done an online event coordinated by the writer center and Letras Latinas. And I was in conversation with the poet Christopher Soto. And Christopher had said, this really profound thing I had asked them their collection, you must read diaries of a terrorist, they have this beautiful sequence that is very obviously taken from the archive. And I wanted to kind of get from them, like what was that decision to, to write this beautiful product sequence of these characters, not characters, these were real people that live, but that died during the AIDS crisis. And Christopher just said, this really brilliant thing. And they were like, you know, the AIDS crisis was such a horrific thing that happened, particularly to the queer community, but sort of statistically, it just like, decimated Brown and Black communities. So there’s like this generation of Brown and Black queer people, you know, particularly queer men who just do not have these elders to kind of learn from to have these stories. And so for me, as I was working in that final draft, I’ve realized, you know, this was a brilliant opportunity to have the uncle be that for Daniel, and you know, again from the beginning that he’s never met. his uncle, his uncle died before their family left Mexico. But yeah, again, it’s not giving it away. Every chapter after the prologue opens with a diary entry, and all you get is the date and they take place in a five year period between the mid 80s to the early 90s, right before the uncle passes away, and you just get his initials DM. But often, you know, it’s sort of as a narrative device. They’re either mirroring or foiling things that will go on to happen in the chapter with Daniel. And I thought it was a really good opportunity to show not just Daniel but also a reader that, yes, there’s been just beautiful evolution and in growth in terms of rites and acceptance, but also there’s lots of things where we still are going through, you know, very similar experiences, and that that I think, can be helpful sometimes to be able to reflect, you know, I just before I came to the US, I went with my husband to see Andrew Hayes “All of Us Strangers”. And I think, again, there’s a very similar conceit with the two characters of kind of realizing that there are these moments where, yes, there’s been great change and progress. But also, you know, you can have two queer men 2030 years, a difference in age, who also have very, like, similar things, and even not like that you could pass on knowledge, but literally in that moment, like are going through, like, how do you know, if you’re falling in love with someone you know, in older age? Do we ever actually like, are we totally confident if you know, we’re in our 30s 40s? What not like dating that? Like, is this the one? I don’t know? Yeah, I think you know, it was as close as I could get for the character of Daniel to have that older. And sort of in the latter part of the book, you’ve read you, the reader, figure out how Daniel has learned this information, and then what he’s decided to go on and do with it.

And there are some very beautiful parallels that come through, and some very incredible moments of connection and some heartbreak as well. But I think, especially once Daniel goes to spend his time in Mexico with his family, it butts up against one of my other favorite parts of this book and some other people’s favorite part as well via the questions is your use of nature as you write. And this connection that we find to the constellations to the landscape around Daniel, even to Daniel’s own name, De la Luna and this experience that he has, there’s a lot of nature in your work.

This has just been such a wonderful thing to see people sort of be perceptive about because, you know, I love nature writing, I’m a huge fan. I’m also very fortunate to call certain writers, my friend, like the Canadian poet, who’s an amazing nature writer and eco poet, or Nina Mingya Powles, who has brilliant nature memoir, Small Bodies of Water. And I just think, you know, there’s just such this beautiful, contemporary literature happening, especially for marginalized writers is sort of taking back nature sort of fighting, firstly, at the table of saying we can sort of write to nature, I don’t think that I kind of set out with sort of these political motivations in mind, but kind of being able to read especially during my pub week, the reception from, from reviews and whatnot, picking up on that, you know, I feel really grateful, you know, this is a book that is very much rooted in place. In order to do that, I think it was very important to lean on ecologies, and I think it also rings true for the character of Daniel, you know, he’s from a small town in northern California, he talks about at one point in, I think, in the first chapter, actually, in in the current timeline. So you meet Daniel at the start of sophomore year. And that’s when he’s choosing to tell Sam the story. And he talks about, like, arriving back to Ithaca and flying over and kind of having this realization that he’s flown over all of these states that he knows nothing of, and that his parents sort of had this immigrant dream, and they came from Mexico to the US, and it’s his country, but he doesn’t know it that well. So when he gets to Ithaca, he’s just so very much fascinated by like the flora and the fauna, and the concept of like, four distinct seasons. And then I think, you know, it was important to give similar weight on the page when he’s in Mexico and that he would be as equally perceptive of the landscape especially because I think for him, it’s very sort of important to kind of go through this this chrysalis of understanding to say, I am supposedly from here, and I do feel a connection, but maybe this isn’t entirely me. And so he has this beautiful moment where he’s walking around his family’s ranch that’s been in the family for generations. And the last great nephew is about to sort of sell it off to like an American conglomerate. And Daniel realizes, like his grandfather jokes like Do you happen to have like, you know, 1000s of dollars to buy a bit of land. And he doesn’t say it to his grandfather, he says it in the narration. But he says that he knows he doesn’t have the skill or the acumen to do that type of labor, but his love of writing and words, you know, he could write the heat of the countryside, you know, he could write the sensory detail of walking, you know, a top like the sand dunes in the Chihuahuan Desert. And so for me, it was really important to allow him to kind of be in communion with nature, because he is kind of going to this very natural stage of life. And again, yeah, I just, I feel really heartened that that was something that people picked up, I also did a lot of work, you know, I don’t want to sort of have my own back. But I don’t think there’s like a lot in my background that would get me canceled, I had two big fears of canceled culture with this novel. That was one the reference of constellations, I did a lot of work on very nerdy websites, where I was making sure at the different points of the year that it would actually be possible for Daniel and Sam, to see these constellations. And as you read the book, you understand why there is of importance. And the other thing was the plants and the birds. And I just thought, Oh, my God, all I need is some marvelous to like, slip into my DMs and tell me, there is no way that that tree would be in season at this point of life. And then I also have to give credit to my amazing editor at Tin House, Elizabeth DiMeo, who had this brilliant idea of, again, I don’t want to give it away, but there’s like a chapter at the end of a chapter in the Mexico part, where we decided to add more of like the ecology where Daniel kind of has this dream sequence of the different animals and plants. But again, like I was going in Spanish and English websites, like making sure like, okay, what are these actual animals? You know, would they be there during the summer, bird migration was really freaking me out…

They’re just pulling your books off the shelves like, well, it’s wrong, the birds were wrong. But I’m, I’m worried that I’m going to run out of time because I talk too much. And there’s one thing that I have to ask you about, which is about some of your influences, particularly Waiting for Godot, which I know is a big influence. And I pulled off the shelf and read for the first time in 10 years after I finished this book, because I needed to know the connections and some of your influences in general. I know we see Daniel in the book who is so excited to be a writer in hopes to get his book in Barnes Noble one day spoiler.

He does say that yeah.

But he you know, sort of starts on this journey as well of reading some authors that he may feel more connection with. He picks up Marquez, he picks up Cisneros. He picks up these things to sort of help himself grow, but also Waiting for Godot.

Yes, I’m so excited about this question, particularly because I’m off to an event, I’m going to return to my alma mater to Ithaca College and my advisor who’s now worked her way up as the Dean of Humanities and Sciences at Ithaca, her expertise is in the theater of the absurd. And it was in my fourth year of university in which she introduced me to Beckett and changed my world. And for me, I just I love Waiting for Godot. And I say in I think either my acknowledgments or my note to reader that like controversially, I always will stick by a queer reading of the characters, I think Estragon and Vladimir are in love. And I think this is their love story, as they sort of face an existential crisis of whoever is Godot and why are they waiting, but for me, there is just such a beautiful language in Beckett’s writing, especially because he is so famous for like these just absurd setups for his plays, you know, where he just forces characters to kind of just reach almost a point of madness, like existential madness, but during sort of the, you know, the three arc storyline until we reach you know, the end, they say such beautiful, profound things. And so the epigraph that opens the novel, is this two line exchange between Vladimir and Estragon and they’re talking about the Holy Land and how I think Estragon says, you know, oh, yes, I remember the maps of the Holy Land, they were so beautiful and blue. I thought that we would go there to honeymoon and we would be happy. And it kind of just became like this driving force for me, for the novel. Of this just like absurd, existential thing that Daniel does, he falls in love for the first time, but like, just by a horrid turn of events, the person he falls in love with is like his first loss. And he has to find a way of just moving forward in life. And I just wanted to sort of center the reader in this kind of beauty. And then also, if you are familiar with that play, then you know, it is kind of absurd. And if not, you just think it’s these beautiful lines. But then in particular, there are two scenes in part two of the novel and Daniel’s in Mexico. And this is after he finds out that Sam has passed away. And you know, I wouldn’t say that it’s magical realism. I think especially as a Latinx writer like to say you’re doing magical realism is just opening up in a kettle of fish that I do not want to do. But like there are these moments where you know that this isn’t happening. Daniel is kind of going through a maybe a bit of psychosis. And so he’s imagining Sam, having come to him. And so in one of those sequences, I sort of really rift off the opening of Act Two of Waiting for Godot, in which Vladimir and Estragon are kind of just volleying back and forth, they need to know if each other is happy, if they’ve been happy. And it’s just thought, again, there’s just this beautiful sort of dialogue taking place that I felt would feel really true to Daniel, that in this moment of kind of psychosis and deep mourning, he needs to know that Sam is happy and that they were happy together. And obviously he’ll never get Sam to tell him that and by the end, he has to figure out if he is but then in terms of sort of writing to other writers or writers that have inspired me, I definitely had to mention Sandra Cisneros. And for me, you know is again, sort of imbuing myself a bit into the novel. I did not read House on Mango Street until I was 23. I was living in San Antonio where my parents now live and I was working for the Guadalupe Cultural Arts Center, which is amazing Mexican American, Latinx multi arts disciplinary organization. And they have this amazing library of Latinx texts. And so I was I was given a copy of Cisneros, and I read it and I honestly at the age of 23 just had this moment of like, I think this is like the actual first time I’ve seen myself in literature. And so for me, it was really important to have that moment for Daniel, and that it was gifted to him by someone who wasn’t in the academic setting. So he goes to use bookstore and Ithaca and he tells very endearingly earnest Daniel that he is the bookseller, that you know, he is he wants to read more Latinx literature, he wants to see himself more and so he knows he’s gonna get a Marquez like a series of novellas. The bookseller goes in the back, and he has just gotten in a secondhand copy of House on Mango Street, and he gives it to Daniel for free. And it’s just like this beautiful moment, I think, to kind of speak again to another type of legacy to understand, you know, as I’ve gotten older, you know, I’m someone who deeply, deeply loves literature. But it was an older life that I kind of realized that there was a canon beyond, you know, the stale, male and pale. And that, you know, there’s this rich heritage writers from the global majority, you know, female writers, queer writers, trans writers, writing and translation and that when you tap into that, and someone gives you that access, your worldview can just become so expensive. And I think for Daniel, he has that moment at a point that he really needs it because it’s before that big wave of loss is gonna come to him. But I think it gives him the sense that like, there is a possibility that his dreams can manifest and they’re not just a pipe dream like someone like Cisneros like Marquez, you know, they have given him that ability. And even for me, other writers, Edmund White, Colm Toibin, James Baldwin, Richard Blanco, others, all of these great writers that have just again been able to open up my worldview, especially the possibility of what it is to write to a queer cannon.

Who knows there’s going to be kids out there looking at Andres Ordorica the same?

Okay, well, please wait a few years, don’t make me feel old.

We need a couple more first, which kind of leads me to how I want to end this because I know there’s people out here who want to know to what’s next.

So oh, wow, this is very funny. Having my publicist from Tin House in the room because I have just finished my second novel, it’s with my agent, we haven’t shared yet. My agent is desperate for me to give the go ahead for them to send it on to Tin House. All I will say is I think it really speaks in communion with a character like Daniel but also, you know, I don’t like to sort of think of the magnitude of this book, but I know it has reached people and it is a very meaningful character. And I hope that you know, maybe people will come to Daniel and Sam and kind of feel a deep affinity in the same way. Maybe when I read Call Me by Your Name, and there’s these characters that maybe people hope that there’s a second book about Daniel, but I knew I needed a different story. So the book really looks at masculinity and religion, it’s set towards the end of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. And I would say, more so than the first novel, I think it’s the closest I’ve gotten to writing about my life, but it’s a character who is saying goodbye to a military installation that his parents live at, whilst also kind of, he’s a few years out of the closet. So it’s kind of playing with this idea of, okay, you’ve made this big step, you’ve come out of the closet. Now what happens, like if you don’t get this sort of glorious reception of, you know, sparkles and whatnot, you know, like, what does it mean to be a queer person in the world? And, you know, yeah, I look forward to it. Again, I play a lot with like, ecologies and whatnot. And there is a love story. Um, no one dies in this. Oh, you know, like, maybe he’ll write a happy ending.

Well, I can’t wait. And I’m sure there are so many people who will be waiting as well. But we don’t have to worry because we have How We Named the Stars right now to read. And I’m so excited for everyone to get their hands on it. So Andres, thank you so much for joining us here today.