January 31, 2014
Sinead O'Connor: "Marcus Garvey Words Come to Pass"
January 30, 2014
Jomo Kenyatta Speaks About Marcus Garvey's Influence
January 29, 2014
Kwame Nkrumah Speaks About Marcus Garvey's Influence
January 28, 2014
A Brief History of the Exoneration of Marcus Garvey
Over
the past six months, I've heard many competing claims about the
exoneration of Marcus Garvey. In order to set the record straight, here's an
excerpt from The Marcus Garvey and
Universal Negro Improvement Association Papers, Volume 7.
Since then, Representative Charles Rangel has reintroduced the bill, at least two times.
In fact, on January 10, 2007, Representative Charles Rangel reintroduced H. Con. Res. 24 to the 110th Congress: "Expressing the sense of the Congress that the President should grant a pardon to Marcus Mosiah Garvey to clear his name and affirm his innocence of crimes for which he was unjustly prosecuted and convicted." This bill didn't make it out of committee.
This is the reason why
I've posted a petition on Causes.com for Representative Frederica Wilson to
champion in Congress.
We, the undersigned, are
requesting the assistance of our representatives in reintroducing the
resolution with the following change in the wording: "Expressing the sense
of the Congress that the President should exonerate
Marcus Mosiah Garvey to clear
his name and affirm his innocence of crimes for which he was unjustly
prosecuted and convicted." We urge Congress to take action and reintroduce
H.Con.Res. 24 to exonerate Marcus Mosiah Garvey.
As a result of our efforts, we delivered 11,009 signatures to Representative Wilson's office on November 9, 2013.
As a result of our efforts, we delivered 11,009 signatures to Representative Wilson's office on November 9, 2013.
If the effort to exonerate Marcus Garvey can have bipartisan support from an unreconstructed
Southern conservative Senator Jesse
Helms and liberal Representative
Charles Rangel, surely President Barack Obama can exonerate the Right Honorable Marcus Mosiah Garvey?
Visions & Voices: Conversations with Fourteen Caribbean Playwrights
For those interested in theatre and
Caribbean literature, 2014 marks the release of a seminal collection, Olivier
Stephenson's Visions & Voices: Conversations with Fourteen CaribbeanPlaywrights.
Featuring
the words of the most important of the first generation of postcolonial
playwrights-some of whom are still alive-this exploration presents expansive personalities such as Errol Hill, Errol John, Trevor Rhone, and Dennis
Scott, discussing their experiences of working in the Caribbean, the UK and
North America; their struggles to survive as artists; perceptions of the
relationship between their work and the region's socio-political condition;
views on the relationship between their work and the art of other playwrights;
and their attempts to build popular audiences and develop a Caribbean theatre
aesthetic.
"Without
exception, these playwrights were engaged artists and their work never lost
sight of the sociopolitical dynamics of the region. For this reason, their
words offer us a way to understand, at least in part, the role of the
playwright in Caribbean society. I sincerely believe that a lot of what was
said in the interviews still holds true to the present time." ~ Kwame
Dawes.
Visions & Voices: Conversationswith Fourteen Caribbean Playwrights
is a unique collection of interviews with prominent Caribbean playwrights of
the 1970s: Derek Walcott, Errol Hill, Errol John, Michael Abbensetts, Trevor
Rhone, Alwyn Bully, Roderick Walcott, Edgar White, Slade Hopkinson, Lennox
Brown, Carmen Tipling, Dennis Scott, Stafford Ashani Harrison and Mustapha
Matura.
About
Olivier Stephenson
Olivier
Stephenson is a poet, a playwright, a screenwriter, and a journalist. He is the
former executive director and a founding member of the Caribbean American
Repertory Theatre in New York City and Los Angeles. He currently lives in
Miami, Florida.
Publication
date: 1 December 2013
ISBN:
9781845231736
Pages: 436
Price:
£19.99 /$39.95
Publisher:
Peepal Tree Press
17 King's
Avenue, Leeds, LS6 1QS, United Kingdom
Tel/Fax:
+44 (0)113 2451703
www.peepaltreepress.com
About the
Press
Peepal Tree
Press is home of the best in Caribbean and Black British fiction, poetry,
literary criticism, memoirs and historical studies.
Peepal Tree
is a wholly independent company based in Leeds, founded in 1985, and now publishing
around 25 books a year. We have published over 250 titles, and are committed to
keeping them in print. The list features new writers and established voices. In
2009 we launched the Caribbean Modern Classics Series, which restores to print
essential classic books from the 1930s - 70s. We are grateful for financial
support from Arts Council England. We are also home to Inscribe, a national
project which supports writers of African & Asian descent.
Review
Copies
For review
copies, images, interviews or for more information email
hannah@peepaltreepress.com
January 27, 2014
Malcolm X Speaks About Marcus Garvey's Influence
January 24, 2014
"Old Marcus Garvey" by Burning Spear
I first heard about Marcus Garvey through the music of Burning Spear. Of course, it wasn't until I came to America that I learned about Marcus Garvey because he was never a part of my high school curriculum. It was the musicians, the "players of instrumants," as Seeco liked to say, who awakened my curiosity about Old Marcus Garvey, and since then, I have been chanting with the Spear, "Please remember, please remember..."
Remember Marcus Garvey and sign the petition for his exoneration:
https://www.causes.com/campaigns/71936-urge-president-obama-to-exonerate-marcus-garvey
Enjoy, sign, & pass it on:
https://www.causes.com/campaigns/71936-urge-president-obama-to-exonerate-marcus-garvey
Enjoy, sign, & pass it on:
***
January 23, 2014
Submissions Call: The Caribbean Writer –Volume 28
The
Caribbean Writer is seeking works that explore the
defining moments of the Caribbean experience, the symbolism in the places that
dot the Caribbean landscape, the journeys that inform our experiences, the
memories that will not let us go. We hope to highlight and document Caribbean
life in its broadest sense. We also invite works that provide a critical and
historical overview, of times, places, and memories that reflect the wit,
resilience and resourcefulness of Caribbean people as well as the implications
of certain periods that have helped to define the notion of the contemporary
Caribbean.
Major events in the history of the
Caribbean and the experiences of people wherever they live the Caribbean
experience is relevant in very profound ways. Memories of these events are meaningful
not only because they provide fodder for introspection and change, but also
because their implications are articulated on a number of levels. Memories of
natural disasters, calamities, migrations, pivotal national decisions, national
movements, societal trends, populations shifts, alienation issues, economic
swings, internal struggles, and survival strategies ripple through the diaspora
and have had such an impact on people that they possess an abiding ability to
elicit passionate responses that can create new rifts or forge new alliances.
Caribbean publication accepting submissions
for new volume
Deadline: February 28, 2014
Theme: Re-Visioning the Future of the
Caribbean through Time, Place and Memories
Submit to:
submit@thecaribbeanwriter.org
The
Caribbean Writer
University of the Virgin Islands
RR 1, Box 10,000
Kinghill, St. Croix
U.S. Virgin Islands 00850-9781
More info:
Call for Submissions, Volume 28
info@thecaribbeanwriter.org
http://www.thecaribbeanwriter.org
January 21, 2014
President Obama, the children are crying
"Never let the children cry, or you gotta tell Jah-Jah why"
"Trench Town Rock" by Bob Marley.
"Trench Town Rock" by Bob Marley.
Through no fault of their own, Black children have been in trouble for a long time. From the moment our children become aware of themselves, they are surrounded by negative self-images. No wonder some of them grow up to hate themselves. I've seen evidence of this self-hatred in my family, neighborhood, and in the elementary schools that I sometimes visit.
Now while stable families and meaningful work that paid a living wage could
curb some of this self-hatred by providing the children with positive images of
Black men and women who could support themselves economically, how our children
think about themselves remains the primary challenge. In a culture that
privileges white male patriarchy—everyone wants to be Don Draper—our children
are hard pressed to find positive role models, and often act out their
self-hatred on themselves and others. The gun violence that plagues our communities is just one of the symptoms.
Perhaps, the most striking example of this pathology of self-hatred was a
study conducted by Kenneth Bancroft Clark and Mamie Phipps Clark. The Clark’s
research conducted between 1939 and 1940 on “children's self-perception related
to race” became part of the landmark Supreme Court decision on education, Brown
v. Board of Education.
The doll experiment involved a child being presented with two dolls. Both of these dolls were completely identical except for the skin and hair color. One doll was white with yellow hair, while the other was brown with black hair. The child was then asked questions inquiring as to which one is the doll they would play with, which one is the nice doll, which one looks bad, which one has the nicer color, etc. The experiment showed a clear preference for the white doll among all children in the study. These findings exposed internalized racism in African-American children, self-hatred that was more acute among children attending segregated schools.
Interestingly, filmmaker Kiri Davis repeated the experiment in 1976 and the
conclusions were similar to those of Kenneth Bancroft Clark and Mamie Phipps
Clark.
Although researchers and educators have proposed many solutions, Marcus
Garvey’s exhortation in African
Fundamentalism,” (6 June 1925,) is as true now as it was then:
"We must canonize our own saints, create our own martyrs, and elevate to
positions of fame and honor black men and women who have made their distinct
contributions to our racial history... Africa has produced countless numbers of
men and women, in war and in peace, whose lustre and bravery outshine that of
any other people. Then why not see good and perfection in ourselves?"
Garvey went even further by not only encouraging Black enterprise, but also
promoted businesses such as Berry & Ross that manufactured Black dolls.
Despite his visionary approach to education and Black identity, Marcus
Garvey, a hero to people of African descent worldwide, was wrongfully convicted
on June 21, 1923 on charges of mail fraud. From 1925 until 1927, Garvey served
his sentence in the Atlanta Federal Penitentiary until President Calvin Coolidge
commuted his sentence. To this day, Marcus Garvey remains a convicted felon.
Garvey’s arrest and conviction is one of the great ironies that many parents
and educators confront whenever we try to teach our children about heroes such
as Marcus Garvey. How do we in in one breath engage our children’s imagination
with quotes by Marcus Garvey such as “The Black skin is not a badge
of shame, but rather a glorious symbol of national greatness,” and
in the next breath explain that Garvey is still a criminal in the eyes of the
law?
Of course, this situation could be reversed by the exoneration of Marcus Garvey by President Barack Obama, who wrote about Black self-hatred in his remarkable memoir, Dreams From my Father and quoted Marcus Garvey’s famous words, ‘Rise up, ye mighty people” (199).
It is for this reason that the Coalition for the Exoneration of Marcus Garvey is petitioning President Barack Obama to exonerate the Right Honorable Marcus
Mosiah Garvey, the First National Hero of Jamaica.
It is hoped that Garvey's exoneration will accomplish three goals:
1. In the name of justice, initiate the PUBLIC rehabilitation of the good
name/character of Marcus Garvey
2. Honor the legacy hero in the struggle for Black identity
3. Reintroduce Marcus Garvey's ideas of self-reliance, personal
responsibility, and success into the body politic.
Here is the link to the petition: https://www.causes.com/campaigns/71936-urge-president-obama-to-exonerate-marcus-garvey
Mr. President, the children of the African diaspora are calling out to you to become their champion and to exonerate our hero—an action for which you are uniquely qualified, as an inheritor of Marcus Garvey’s legacy.
***
January 20, 2014
No One Remembers Old Marcus Garvey
If you look closely at this cartoon, you will see President Barack Obama standing on the mountaintop of Black achievement in North America, the pinnacle of which was Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
If you look even closer, you should notice one glaring omission: Marcus Garvey.
The irony is that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in a speech in Kingston, Jamaica stated, "Marcus Garvey was the first man, on a mass scale, to give millions of Negroes a sense of dignity and destiny ... . He gave us a sense of personhood, a sense of manhood, a sense of somebodiness."
Until we have a clear sense of our history, we will continue to repeat the mistakes. In this case, it is the message of self-reliance and economic empowerment that Marcus Garvey brought to the Black community--a meme that has been forgotten because of Garvey's erasure from our collective consciousness.
It is for this reason, the Marcus Garvey Celebrations Committee (South Florida), Rootz Foundation, and the Institute for Caribbean Studies, have joined to petition President Barack Obama to exonerate Rt. Excellent Marcus Mosiah Garvey, leader of the first and largest economic justice movement in the USA and the world, and the first named National Hero of Jamaica.
If you would like to join in this cause to recognize the historic contribution of Marcus Garvey, please sign this petition:
https://www.causes.com/campaigns/71936-urge-president-obama-to-exonerate-marcus-garvey
***
Graphic: David Fitzsimmons in The Arizona Daily Star: http://azstarnet.com/
***
January 19, 2014
Bob Marley: "Marcus Garvey was a Prophet"
January 18, 2014
Why We MUST Fight To Exonerate The Most Honorable Marcus Garvey
Cleophus Miller, Jr.
President-General,
Universal Negro Improvement Association
The Coalition for the Exoneration of Marcus Garvey is petitioning Senator Bill Nelson, Representative Frederica Wilson, and the Congress of the United States of America for the exoneration of Marcus Garvey:
http://www.causes.com/actions/1722148-urge-congress-to-exonerate-civil-rights-leader-marcus-garvey
We are also petitioning President Barack Obama to exonerate Marcus Garvey:
http://signon.org/sign/exonerate-marcus-garvey?source=c.url&r_by=4631897
Thank you for your support..
January 17, 2014
Marcus Say, "Rally Round the Flag" by Steel Pulse
Marcus say, so Marcus sayGreen for the land AfricaMarcus sayYellow for the goldThat they stoleMarcus sayBlack for the peopleIt was looted fromMarcus Garvey's work has inspired so many African, African American, Pan African, Black British and Caribbean leaders, artists, singers and songwriters..including Steel Pulse.Yet,sadly, according to the records, Marcus Garvey remains a convicted felon. This is why we are calling on President Barack Obama to EXONERATE Marcus Garvey.
If you would like to join in the online petition to clear the name of a good man, of an innocent man, here is the link:
"If I Never Went Home" by Ingrid Persaud
Sometimes
the only way home is to leave the one you know.
Written
in two distinct, alternating voices, If I Never Went Home follows ten years in the turbulent lives of two narrators –
thirty-something Bea, an immigrant in Boston, and ten-year-old Tina in Trinidad
– as they separately navigate devastating losses, illness and betrayal in their
quest to belong.
Moving
back and forth from the present to the past through flashbacks, this is the
powerful story of how these women unearth family secrets that go beyond
anything they could have imagined. Then unexpectedly their lives collide, and
they are offered the chance to create a home. But can this gamble survive one
last surprise about Tina’s real identity?
About Ingrid Persaud:
Ingrid Persaud is a Trinidadian writer
and artist. She came to writing and fine art having first pursued a successful
legal career that included teaching and scholarship at the Fletcher School and
King’s College London. Her creative work has been widely exhibited and her
writing featured in several magazines. She lives in Barbados and London. You
can follow her blog Notes
From A Small Rock.
Paperback:
304 pages
Publisher:
Blue China Press (November 1, 2013)
Price:
$20usd
Language:
English
ISBN-13:
978-099269770
Available
on Amazon, Kindle, Smashwords, Barnes & Noble, Book Depository
“Powerful
characters, evocative descriptions, and a tale of two cultures make this
lyrical debut novel sing.” ~ ForeWord
Review
“Ingrid
Persaud writes a fantastic tale of survival and triumph without making the
story too sweet or melodramatic.” ~Readers
Favorite
“An
often colorful novel that refreshingly doesn’t fall back on clichés.” ~ Kirkus Review
“All
together, If I Never Went Home is
fantastic. The story is fascinating, the characters are real, the emotions are
strong, and the writing is beautiful. I simply cannot recommend this enough.”
Star Rating: 5 out of 5 -~San Francisco
Book Review
5
Stars: “Author Ingrid Persaud is a talented writer, bringing together so many
elements into this book that is difficult to put down. Her teenage Bea is
equally as gripping as the adult one; the interplay between the two is
brilliantly written.” ~ IndieReader
“This
new author has fallen straight into her stride with her debut novel
…
(the) novel has that magic something that sets it apart.” ~ AI Seal of Excellence for Independent
Fiction
“Persaud’s
debut will reward readers who enjoy a sensitive engagement on the perils and
pleasures of finding one’s own safe berth.”
~ Trinidad Guardian
“If I Never Went Home is a true survivor
story; it sugar coats nothing. Expect to be shocked, saddened, and horrified by
many of the uncomfortable realities of these characters.” ~ Luxury Reading
“Absorbing,
warm and rich” – The Book Bag
***
January 16, 2014
“Marcus Garvey: Angel of Black Success”
“Marcus Garvey: Angel of Black Success”
By
Geoffrey Philp*
In the early 1900s, one of the unfortunate outcomes of the fratricidal battle between the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA), which was founded by Marcus Garvey, and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), which was founded by W.E.B. DuBois, was the further splintering of the Black community—a state from which the latter has never fully recovered. It may be argued that the NAACP “won” the battle. Sadly, the models of entrepreneurship and self-reliance that Garvey advocated were partially lost by the Black community due to the NAACP’s emphasis on legal redress and governmental assistance to resolve issues that Garvey said should be resolved within the Black community.
For more information, please follow this link: http://www.blackeconomics.org/BELit/MARGAR.pdf
'via Blog this'
After delivering over 10,000+ signatures to Frederica S.
Wilson, the Coalition for the Exoneration of Marcus Garvey is now focusing on the White House:
Exoneration is first step in the campaign to promote the values
(Redemption, Education, Self-Reliance, Entrepreneurship, Community, and
Tradition) to which Garvey dedicated his life.
Please sign and share with your family, friends, and
contacts: http://links.causes.com/s/clOoxG?r=bOje
One Love,
Geoffrey
The Coalition for the Exoneration of Marcus Garvey
RESPECT Garvey
January 15, 2014
The Heartbreaker: Chatting With Anjanette Delgado
By Jennifer Maritza McCauley
In Anjanette Delgado's The Heartbreak
Pill, scientist Erika Luna tries to develop a cure for heartache after her
marriage crumbles. Delgado is a broken heart specialist herself. “Anytime I’ve
written anything, I’ve written about somebody’s heartbreak,” The celebrated
writer says. “I'm obsessed with it.”
Delgado’s obsession
has paid off. During her eighteen years writing and producing for outlets such
as CNN, Vogue, NPR, Univision and Telemundo, Delgado has received much acclaim
for her stories about women struggling with emotional pain. Delgado’s
documentary series “Madres en la Lejania” won an Emmy,
her sitcom “Great in Bed” was bought by HBO Latin America, and her latest
novels The Heartbreak Pill and the upcoming
The Clairvoyant of Calle Ocho have been optioned by De Oro Media, of the
Jenni Rivera reality shows fame.
The author is just as accessible and
vivacious as her work. Even if she barely knows you, she speaks to you like
you’re a long lost girlfriend. I conducted a phone interview with Delgado and
we talked about self-transformation, sticking to deadlines, and why her work
connects so well with readers.
JM: Your first published novel The
Heartbreak Pill was originally written in Spanish, and your newest book The
Clairvoyant of Calle Ocho was written in English as your MFA thesis.
What was your process like working on these two novels?
AD: For The Heartbreak Pill I
had no process. I didn’t know what I was doing. I wrote four drafts of it and
threw them all out. It took me five years and I was so confused with [writing
in the English] language. Ultimately, I
felt the voice coming through more clearly in Spanish and I went with it.
For my second novel, I used the model I
now use for my class [“Finish Your Novel – the TV Way” at The Center for Arts
and Literature at Miami Dade College.] In T.V. writing you have a deadline and
can’t go off that deadline. You budget your
time and how many scenes or chapters are going to be written in so many days.
You have maps, you have pre-pro work. You write out the dialogue of the scenes,
but you have a map. You have a route.
For the second novel, I did all this and it
worked for me. That’s why I created this class. I think I could have done a
better first novel if I had had a process. With the first I was grabbing time
when I could and writing on yellow pads. I didn’t even own a home computer when
I started. So there wasn’t really a process for the first book. I would have
had more fun writing if I did.
JM: In The Heartbreak Pill your
protagonist Erika Luna undergoes serious emotional pain. She loses her husband
and her sense of self all at once. Heartbreak is both universal and unifying.
I'm sure readers connect with the book emotionally. How did you feel about the
positive responses to The Heartbreak Pill?
AD: I love The Heartbreak Pill. It
was the best book it could be at that time. I wrote it before I finished the
MFA. It's what I wrote on my own, by myself. And it was a hard novel to write,
with no help and a lot less training. But it was heartfelt. I had
insights about it and I really wanted to put those thoughts down. I think
that's why readers seem to have such a deep personal connection with the novel.
I get e-mails all the time from people saying how the book changed them. That
amazes me.
I had a reader write to me via
Facebook. She told me she gave my book to her mother-in-law and that it had
been the first time she'd seen her laugh in nine years! Others write to me and
tell me their stories of heartbreak. Even men.
I have three friends who I’ve met
through the book. One of them is the editor of Siempre Mujer, Maria Cristina
Marrero. She looked me up and said, “I read your book and had to become your
friend.” It’s definitely a novel of connection. Some call it chick lit, but it
connects and that is what is important to me.
JM: Do you have any themes that
consciously come up in your work?
AD: Heartbreak is my theme. In the end,
there are a lot of lessons to learn in life. One of them is that heartbreak
isn’t always sad. It can be cleansing. It can teach you lessons. Heartbreak is
the thing I keep returning to in my writing. When I talk to my students I ask
them, “What are you seeing…what holds you? What comes up again and again in
your writing?”
As a T.V. producer, I won an Emmy for a
T.V. series called Madres en la Lejania. This was a
story about immigrant mothers who left their children behind to become nannies.
It’s a series about immigration and it’s about the plight of mothers and
children, but it’s really about heartbreak. In that case it was the heartbreak
of separation.
I’m working on a story called Gridlock,
and it’s about a couple on their way to an abortion clinic. She wants to
terminate the pregnancy and he doesn’t. So, another kind of heartbreak. I’m
obsessed with the idea of it and how it changes you. Why you love some people and not others.
In the end, anytime I’ve written
anything, I’ve written about somebody’s heartbreak. I’m obsessed with it and
with self-transformation.
JM: Your work is very empathetic. Do
you feel, since heartbreak is your “theme”, that you are hyper-aware of your
own suffering or the pain of others?
AD: There are ways to experience heartbreak.
There are stories that stay with me and there are stories that have broken my
heart. Sometimes [pain] is like a bullet. Sometimes the news will say this or
that, and I’ll see that somebody’s life is shattered and it feels like a
bullet. Like somebody physically hurt me just by reading that headline as if it
were just one other thing that happened that day to be brought to you tonight
at six.
I remember [working on daily newscasts] and forcing myself not to feel it, though. I do think it’s like being a doctor.
When you’re writing the news you’re thinking about doing your job. You can't
feel all of it, it's too much. But when I'm on the other side, it's amazing how
much it affects me.
JM: So much of your work encourages
Latinas and women in general, to positively transform their lives. At the end
of The Heartbreak Pill, and even as she gets a green light to research a
remedy for heartbreak, Erika realizes that this elusive “pill” is really just her decision to stop
suffering. Can you talk a little bit about writing fiction that both empowers
and entertains?
AD: So this really goes to the center
of why I write. At one point I even considered calling myself a self-help
writer. While I was writing The Heartbreak Pill, I was in my thirties
and I didn’t have any training or contacts. I had two children and I had a very
demanding job as a TV producer. Back then I was addicted to self help books.
Addicted! If you went to my bookshelf you’d see all of these self-help books, Why Men Love Bitches… you know. I was just obsessed. I especially
wanted to know more about relationships. Because of that obsession, I think all
of my novels deal with women teaching themselves something to make themselves
happy.
Women are into self-transformation. If
we want to be something we’ll go find a book and find out how to be that thing.
If we want to be sophisticated, we’ll go and buy a book called “How to Be
Sophisticated.” If we want to be better at romance we’ll buy a book called “How
To Be Romantic.” For all the things people say about women, we work to make
things work. We figure out what it is we need and we get it. Same with
immigrants, even though my books are not about Latinos in the traditional way
you'd define a book to be about a people.
JM: How so?
AD: When I’m writing I think about the
story, not about the narrator being Latina. If you want to promote an idea or
rewrite history, that’s all fine. But when you start it’s about the story. You
have to think about how the reader connects with your book, who spends time
with it. I don’t think about empowerment. I think about what I want to learn.
The Heartbreak Pill is about suffering and how to let go. How we
can’t control everything, so of course my protagonist had to be someone who had
it all together. She had to be a scientist and she had to go through a divorce,
there had to be an arc. This thing had to tear her apart so she could realize
she can’t control everything. So I’d love to think I’m empowering women and
Latinas but I don’t think about that. I just like a good story. I’m a Latina
and I like humor and it’s really hard to not put my sense of humor in my work.
[Erika] is a scientist not because I wanted her to be an empowered Latina, but
because I wanted her to be dramatic for the story’s sake.
In The Clairvoyant of Calle Ocho the protagonist is the opposite. She only has a
high school diploma but she learns what she needs to learn for the book. So the
story, for me, comes first.
JM: Your narrator in The Heartbreak
Pill has a desire for her pain to be understood. Is being understood also a
theme of your work?
AD: I really think that [idea] survived
in my agenda. Heartbroken people do want to be understood. The other day I was
watching an episode of the Mindy Kaling Project on television. I love
that show. I'd love for [Mindy Kaling] to play Erika [in a film adaption of The
Heartbreak Pill]! Mindy said she needed a Heartbreak Day and when she
didn't get it, things went bad. She said to her boss, “If you'd given me a
Heartbreak Day, we wouldn’t have had this problem!”
Really, heartbreak is just as awful as
a cold. If you have a cold someone will say, “Aw, I’m so sorry you feel sick”
and they expect you to get better and they'll wish you “get well.” But if something bad happens to you and you
feel heartsick, people think you should suck it up and move on. People don’t
really understand and it’s frustrating. So in The Heartbreak Pill Erika
is trying to cure heartbreak like it’s an illness because it is an
illness.
JM:
You capture Erika's denial of her loss beautifully. Erika’s lawyer and
friends tell her that she doesn't want a quick remedy for her pain. She really
just wants to go back to a happier time with her husband. She wants her
marriage back. Why do you think it takes so long for women and men to
get over heartbreak?
AD: After all of my research, I didn't
get an answer to that one. I don’t think the problem is in the brain. I
think the brain could get over [heartbreak] really fast. There are some things
in life you can get over in two seconds. You say, “Oh my God, that thing is
useless to me!” and then you're done. If you're open to seeing that [it’s
useless], it takes a good day or two to get over it. But you are your habits
and love is a habit.
For some, heartbreak is always there. Maybe
the person you loved is great or she's a sack of shit, but loving her is a
habit. It's ingrained in you. Since you loved her yesterday, you can't just
stop loving her today. It's going to take you a while. I thinking hanging on is
a reflex. If you were able to change your feelings, you would. Lots of people
measure things in terms of how long they loved the person. How long they
invested themselves. If you loved someone for a long time, it feels more real.
And we are always trying to make love more real. To make it stay, to make it
true. You think, “I'm going to push that person away, but then you think, “Holy
crap, I put so much into that
person.”
I think the brain has to do with heartbreak
but the hanging on is us. I'm not a scientist or a psychologist or a marriage
counselor, but that is my instinct. I'm a woman and we're insightful. We're
wise.
JM: Why did you choose Miami as your
setting for The Heartbreak Pill and The Clairvoyant of Calle Ocho?
AD: I like Miami. I like a lot of other
places too, but I think there's something quirky-hazy-magical-romantic about
Miami. It doesn’t give itself up. Sure, you can go to South Beach and it's
there, but there's an underground. Even if you don't go to the beach, there's
still a lot to do. You can go find the Last Shoe bar open in Overtown and you'll catch a person jamming on at 3 a.m
on a Tuesday. You can try a vintage shop. It's not what you see in the
magazines or what you imagine on Ocean Drive. That's part of why Miami is so
unique.
There's cool poetry in Miami too, poetry from
all over the world. I also like the immigrant quality. My protagonists are Latina
and they do well in Miami. Maybe one day soon I'll place my novels somewhere
else, but for now I still have a few stories to tell in Miami.
AD: Who is your first reader?
These days it's anyone I can find. For
the first book, it was my husband. When we first met he was my number one fan.
The second novel was in English so I didn't have him all the time. I’m dying
for him to read it. My ideal reader is my best friend. She's a news director for NBC Six and she's a good friend, but we're
different in many ways and smart in ways that help her give me a good read.
She's tough, too. Sometimes I'll imagine she's reading my stuff to catch if I'm
missing anything.
One of the kindest readers I've ever
had is Lynne Barrett. She'll take your stuff and tear it apart, but whatever
comes out will always remain your story. She'll never tell you have to change
something; she'll just give you the tools. John Dufresne told me, I'd never
find a person more respectful of my work, who'll work with what's there, and he
was so right. So my husband is my first reader, my ideal reader is my best
friend and my kindest reader is Lynne Barrett.
JM: Who are your literary heroes?
AD: That's such a hard question for a
writer! My first books were in English. I learned to love books in English and
that’s why I connect to stories in English. Even though it's so much easier to
write in Spanish. I really love Muriel Sparks and Isabel Allende, Esmeralda
Santiago, Sandra Cisneros and Julia Alvarez. Another literary hero, although
it's hard to read him, is E.L. Doctorow.
I love Billy Bathgate. F. Scott Fitzgerald, I
love The Great Gatsby and all of his stories. And locally, John Dufresne
for sure. That man can make you laugh or cry with the just the slightest breeze
of words. Then there are new voices. Patricia Engel and I went to
school together and she has written a lovely book called It's Not Love, It's
Just Paris, and Justin Torres wrote a novel called We The Animals.
It’s amazing. Jennifer Bell writes really smart chic lit. I
just read Junot Diaz's This is How You Lose Her, and I loved it and him.
I felt like he was writing the male's side of The Heartbreak Pill. I
thought, Oh my God, this is what the other person is thinking!
Also, Tony Hoagland and Campbell
McGrath. John Dufresne, Lynne Barrett writes really wonderful women stories.
Lydia Davis has nothing on her. The teachers from [the graduate program at] FIU
aren't my heroes because I feel they are so close to me. They're mine.
JM: Why do you write?
I love stories. I love being God, creating a world that’s a little cooler than mine. I had so much fun decorating Erika's apartment. I love to create that world. I love writing characters who can say that cool thing that you never get to say in real life. There's definitely a control freak in me. When you write a book you can control everyone in it. I don’t have a noble purpose, I just love creating people and making my readers smile.
Anjanette
Delgado will join Isabel Allende on Saturday, February 1st at the Miami-Dade
College Wolfson Campus.
For
tickets and more information please visit the website: http://www.booksandbooks.com/event/isabel-allende-ripper-miami-dade-college-wolfson-campus-chapman-conference-center/
To learn more about Anjanette Delgado
visit her website at: http://www.anjanettedelgado.com
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