Jamie Figueroa, BROTHER, SISTER, MOTHER, EXPLORER
[0:01]Hi, this is Vivi Owens, and you're listening to the award-winning podcast, Momstone Have Time to Read Books.
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[1:22]Jamie Figaroa is the author of Brother Sister Mother Explorer, a novel.
[1:28]Jamie received her MFA in creative writing from the Institute of American Indian Arts.
[1:34]Her writing has appeared in epic, mixed weenies, and American short fiction.
[1:38]She is the recipient of the Truman Capote Scholarship and a breadloaf scholar.
[1:42]Puerto Rico, by way of Ohio, Jamie lives in New Mexico.
[1:47]Welcome, Jamie. Thank you so much for coming on Mom's Start Have Time to Read Books.
[1:51]Absolutely. Thank you for your interest in the novel and for having me.
[1:54]I really appreciate it. No problem.
[1:56]And you have such a great cover.
[1:58]Brother Sister Mother Explorer, it's gorgeous. I love it.
[2:01]Are you so excited?
[2:03]I was so excited to see that.
[2:05]You know, it's a little bit nervous, right?
[2:07]Nervous energy when you're waiting for the cover, because we all know that a book is not
[2:11]judged by its cover, and also everyone wants to have a beautiful cover that reflects
[2:15]what's inside and I couldn't have been happier.
[2:18]Exciting.
[2:19]Well, I'm so excited to talk to you. I got to watch you on the media
[2:22]lunch that who put on catapult or something.
[2:25]Didn't I watch you on some?
[2:26]Me if you did.
[2:27]I'm going to get it.
[2:27]It's not great.
[2:29]I was like, oh, that's so fun. I definitely want to talk to her.
[2:32]And your book was beautifully written, fantastic.
[2:34]And also, the way you wrote about the mother child relationship was just so beautiful,
[2:39]especially the grief.
[2:41]But anyway, let me, you start first.
[2:43]Why don't you tell, let me go back a little bit.
[2:45]Jeannie, do you look as tell listeners what your book is about?
[2:49]Oh, Jimmy, that's always a...
[2:52]It's always a wonderful question when it's when it feels really complicated and multi-layered,
[2:56]right?
[2:57]You know, I think at the core, this is the weekend where generational trauma is interrupted
[3:03]for this family, right?
[3:05]And in order to fully get there and to have readers take in this experience of longing and
[3:12]of grief, for me was to do it in ways that disrupted reality, right?
[3:18]So aspects and elements of magical realism to kind of sneak past our own defenses
[3:25]and the ways we protect against fully feeling, right?
[3:28]And it's a book about a tremendous love that both a brother and sister have for each other
[3:34]and for their mother who's recently passed.
[3:36]You know, it's also about changing the focus, right?
[3:41]Who's privileged in the story?
[3:43]What narratives are privileged?
[3:45]What narratives get included?
[3:47]And also really thinking about the importance of what we're not used to hearing
[3:53]in the overculture and mainstream society, right?
[3:57]And I didn't want the reader to be passive, a spectator, right?
[4:02]So I have this narrator that's constantly poking at the reader
[4:07]and also wanting to support the reader's experience of this really intense weekend, right?
[4:13]So that's the beginning.
[4:15]That was a good one.
[4:18]That was a good answer.
[4:19]I could just let that keep going.
[4:20]I could have in our whole discussion.
[4:23]Well, this book starts with like such a bang and it just really is hard to
[4:28]like tear yourself away because the language you use and the intimacy and everything
[4:32]and I was hoping I could just read a passage.
[4:34]Would you mind if I did that?
[4:34]Oh, I would love to hear you.
[4:35]You said you wrote the day after Rose Linda's death,
[4:38]Rafa and Rafina had both lain on the cold tile floor of the living room.
[4:42]Neither of them able to will themselves to stand, put a match to kindling and tend to fire that
[4:47]would thaw them.
[4:48]Instead, they remained numb, grief weighted at the edges, sniffing the boundaries of their bodies
[4:53]waiting to be let in.
[4:54]The house had no choice but to watch.
[4:56]And then later you say, with each week, then each month, Rafa had lost more weight,
[5:01]hailed further, spoke less.
[5:03]Each new day had demanded he endure.
[5:05]He lit one of Rose Linda's cigarette butts,
[5:07]stained with her fuchsia lipstick and let the smoke fill his nose,
[5:10]lace with the scent of her headache inducing perfume.
[5:13]He could not get enough of his mother, the woman who was no more.
[5:17]Oh, so beautiful.
[5:19]Thank you so much.
[5:21]It's an honor and a pleasure to listen to you read it.
[5:23]Oh, please, but thanks.
[5:26]Where did this come from from you?
[5:28]Where did this sense of loss?
[5:30]Where did you tap?
[5:31]What did you tap into to write this?
[5:33]Why this narrative?
[5:34]Why this book?
[5:35]Why this passage?
[5:36]Yeah.
[5:37]So, you know, I have to tell you that about a year before this opening scene,
[5:42]sort of rose to my consciousness, almost like a remembered dream, right?
[5:46]And that's how it appeared.
[5:48]It appeared as me remembering this scene on the plaza, these two behaving in this way,
[5:55]and fully flushed demanding my attention and me thinking to myself,
[6:01]what in the world is going on here.
[6:03]And also right from the start, the angel and its mess of being was right there also.
[6:10]So it was really a matter of me leaning in and that beginning,
[6:15]paragraph or a few paragraphs, came almost completely whole.
[6:18]The presence of these characters and the language went together.
[6:22]About a year or so before this remembering of this dream or this opening scene,
[6:28]I spent some time in Portugal for the first time in Lisbon.
[6:32]And I spent some time around this notion of sauadaji, this longing and melancholy, right?
[6:40]It was a really incredible trip that also introduced me to some writers like Jose Luis
[6:46]Pajoto and Fernando Pazoa, got a little bit more familiar with his poetry,
[6:51]and this kind of bittersweet haunting of that which we love and have lost, right?
[6:58]So I had been kind of marinating in that spending time in Lisbon for several weeks,
[7:03]and then a year later having this image flush forward.
[7:07]And then you know how it is, the deeper that you write into the particular,
[7:10]even though these are characters who are, I'd like to think beyond me,
[7:15]there's an element of emotional autobiography, right?
[7:18]And I'm not the first writer to say that with the actual emotional teeth
[7:23]can grip because of my own experience, right?
[7:27]So of course that's there, the deep love and loss of a sibling, right?
[7:32]Doesn't look like that necessarily, but having that sense of fracture in that relationship.
[7:37]And you know, even though sometimes we don't actually lose someone physically
[7:43]in our family and our life, sometimes we lose them because of they become another thing, right?
[7:49]They go through incredible change, they endure mental illness, they endure just their own
[7:56]transformational journey.
[7:58]And sometimes that puts them closer to us and sometimes that puts them further away from us.
[8:03]And so that also was very much, I think, at play at the bones of this story.
[8:09]That's so true. I mean, the way we experience loss, grief is just one type of loss, right?
[8:16]But the grief you can feel is not just because of death.
[8:20]Like there's so many people particularly mental illness, but yeah, I've experienced that too.
[8:25]And even dementia, right, losing elderly people as they slowly fade away and they're there,
[8:31]but they're not there or everything.
[8:34]I mean, even a breakup or I mean, there's so many ways to lose people or animals or things
[8:40]that you love. It's almost endless. It's amazing to get up in the morning, honestly.
[8:44]But you think about it. It's true. It's true. And actually, right, that's what's happening
[8:48]to Rafa. Like how does he get up? Yes. And what you're saying is absolutely true, Zibi. It's this,
[8:54]I don't recognize you anymore. You are here physically, but yet you're not here.
[9:01]So how do we even talk about that? That phenomenon that happens and that we're deeply affected
[9:06]by. I mean, in a sense, that's the baby and the mother still hanging around, right?
[9:15]What happens when the person that's right in front of you is a ghost of sorts,
[9:18]but not they haven't passed on. How do we reconcile that kind of relating?
[9:24]I know. It's so neat that you chose to approach it this way.
[9:28]You know, there are like other, I mean, there's so many books out there of people who have gone
[9:33]through this type of experience, right? And memoir form or a memoir about, you know, their spouse
[9:39]to Alzheimer's or, you know, I mean, like, there are different depictions of this, like, slipping
[9:44]away, right? But to do it with this magical realist bent is so neat. It's just really a neat way
[9:52]to put something that people experience in a new way. And that's what literature is all about.
[9:58]Right? Getting people to look at.
[10:00]things in a new way because we all like open our eyes and have the same day essentially right
[10:04]the world is there but getting us to shift how we see it sorry I'm being like ridiculous this is like
[10:09]totally no this is this is absolutely perfect and it reminds me of a story I don't know if you're
[10:15]familiar with my short story by Amy Bender called Mars a Pan and it's about a family and the
[10:20]father in that story and wakes up one morning and he has a hole in his middle like a literal hole
[10:25]in his middle he's lost his his mother recently right and so the daughters are trying to figure
[10:32]out what's going on with their father that he has this hole in his middle that they can see
[10:38]through but he puts you lifts his shirt up and there's the hole and the whole story is them
[10:42]understanding this hole and who he is now and his sense of loss and this this bit of Mars
[10:48]Pan and the freezer that they take out and reading that story it's such a great reminder again
[10:54]of what literature can do and that is sneak past all of the protective layers and the boundaries
[11:01]of us saying you know I don't want to read a story about grief or I've already read enough
[11:08]stories about whatever heartbreak loss how do we present it in a way that is mesmerizing magnetizing
[11:17]and gets beyond again those really strong defenses of honestly not wanting to feel
[11:25]and also during this time what we need to do more and more even though it hurts like hell
[11:32]is to feel as much as we possibly can because that is going to drive all of the changes that we
[11:40]need to drive it's not going to be from numbing ourselves out pretending things that don't exist
[11:45]getting more distance getting more dislocated right from ourselves and from each other so
[11:53]it's another great function of stories and of literature to remind us of our humanness right
[11:59]of our sense of compassion and and that deep essential quality that we must find our way back to
[12:07]and that is to being relational beings. I want to like stand up and clef.
[12:12]Yes I totally agree with that I totally agree I mean that's really what it's all about like human
[12:19]connection loss love being there observing all of it that's it I mean without all of that
[12:27]feeling and connection what is left I don't know right it's true and also I have to say
[12:33]just to sort of push a little bit further like the novel does is that we have to open up even
[12:38]beyond that right yeah we're in a time of climate emergency so how do we realize that everything
[12:48]around us is in relationship with us even if we haven't neglected for decades or whole life
[12:56]to acknowledge that fact. Well and I think these days it's hard to ignore that I mean I think
[13:02]if Covid has done anything positive which it hasn't but you know it is at least made it
[13:08]incontrevertible what's going on in the world and how the effects of everybody staying home
[13:13]have so benefited the physical world and you know it's like you can't not pay attention to that anymore
[13:22]you know and I think especially in this time of loss and grief like everyone globally has lost
[13:29]something which is their last life right like we've all lost what it was even though it was
[13:35]different for everybody we have to let go of the fact that like we thought that that was life
[13:40]and life would go on like that and it won't and like that fundamental belief is has been robbed
[13:46]of us you know so how do you make sense of that so it's almost like everybody is going through this
[13:51]and you're right not everybody wants to acknowledge it and not everybody wants to be like oh I should
[13:55]read a self-help book on this because like a morning you know the future that I thought I was going
[13:59]to have right but absolutely to a story about it you might be like okay right and if we look at
[14:06]fables and folktales and myths and we listen to folks like Martin Shaw who talks about we're going
[14:12]through sort of a planetary initiation right and what does that mean and what does that look like
[14:19]and also folks like Michael Mead who also deals with myth and the what's behind and what's
[14:25]underneath and really listening to sort of what they have to say from their perspective
[14:30]about the symbolism and the metaphor of what's going on and what happens when a world comes to an
[14:36]end right in a sense our world has come to an end and we've been lodged on this precipice
[14:43]in this great fear about the world coming to an end without without recognizing our deeper knowing
[14:50]which is then it begins again so when it begins again how do we participate in the remaking of
[14:59]that world and that reality right what are the questions that we ask ourselves how are our values
[15:05]put forth what homes do we draw from right what stories do we take along to help us to remember
[15:13]that which will again keep us at our most best and fullest expression of our humanness
[15:20]okay so I know that you are an author but tell me about the rest of your life and ambition
[15:27]and whatever because I feel like if you are not already a teacher who needs to be or some sort of
[15:33]leader like inspirational something podcast or anything what else what is like what are you doing now
[15:40]what are your plans like how are you what else here yeah I teach I'm an assistant professor at
[15:47]the Institute of American Indian Arts here in Santa Fe, New Mexico so that's one of the only
[15:52]tribal arts colleges and the nation and it's it's tremendous it's tremendous because this is a place
[15:59]where we are constantly decolonizing the idea of education looking at how education has been
[16:06]used as a tool looking at all the ways in which learning happens and then staying in relationship
[16:13]with our students and encouraging them to to really fortify those aspects in their own lives
[16:20]they're where they come from their own tribal communities and also for the students who are not
[16:25]indigenous but when I sit with my students I look at them and I see them as they are sovereign beings
[16:32]who will not under my watch and care be harmed by education but be transformed hopefully
[16:42]into the greatest expression that they can be through this learning and through them
[16:47]learning to value their own voices which have been silenced for so long right I'm getting getting
[16:56]goosebumps because right because I found myself after a 15 year break from college and many
[17:04]attempts at many different institutions at the Institute of American Indian Arts and the first thing
[17:09]that I noticed taking into of the campus was like who are all these brown women in charge right
[17:16]this was like you know in the early 2000 something that was really new especially from me coming
[17:22]from the the rural central high on the Midwest and then every time I went to class no matter what
[17:28]class it was I was constantly being asked to bring forward who I am where I come from my ancestors
[17:38]my extended family their stories their perspectives anytime before I was in the classroom
[17:45]and in a place of higher education I was asked to compartmentalize myself and so I went through kind
[17:53]of wilting right when your roots aren't strong I feel my experience has been your voice can't be
[17:59]strong right you're pulling from your family you're pulling from where you come from you're
[18:05]pulling from those stories in addition to your own reality right now so how do we again come from
[18:14]a place of wholeness and connectedness and really being in relationship with so I was fortunate to
[18:20]have professors who met me for coffee and went over my stories line by line because they were
[18:28]invested in me right many different opportunities to go to conferences and then to come back and
[18:34]decompress around I was the only person of color again in that workshop room and my story being
[18:41]workshop got sidelines instead of talked about on the basis of craft like everyone else's story
[18:47]right it got sidelined by a cultural content or using non-English words right and so I had a place
[18:54]where I could go to to process this through and talk about this and continue to go to become
[19:00]really strong so it's a place unlike any other place it has given me so much and I am immensely
[19:08]grateful to the students that I went to school with the alums the mentors the professors the visiting
[19:15]writers and the students that I'm working with now you know I've kind of ventured out into the world
[19:20]I did some teaching in the MFA and interdisciplinary arts program I gottered and spent some you know
[19:25]time in other places wonderful places but there's no place like I I for me wow well you should
[19:33]like make that into an ad for that school you can take this video I'll send you the file
[19:40]that you know what are your roots like can you share what your background is not to take away from
[19:47]the conversation but just as an extra layer yeah absolutely you know I'm speaking to you as
[19:52]someone who's not culturally confident and I'm just going to be very upfront about that okay
[19:57]I identify as a boriqua as a
[20:00]as an Afro-Taino woman, as a woman of color,
[20:02]as a mixed race person.
[20:04]And what I do when I say that is I privilege
[20:08]the aspects of identity that have been attempted
[20:12]to be erased, right?
[20:14]So in the family, it was like,
[20:15]oh, say you're from Puerto Rico,
[20:16]say you're Spanish descent, right?
[20:19]Which is a very small part of the story.
[20:22]So my work as an adult has been to really include
[20:26]those family members, those ancestries
[20:30]that were hidden, shamed, ignored, right?
[20:37]And going from the island to the US, mainland,
[20:41]this masking happens or can't happen, right?
[20:44]Where it's like the hand of assimilation is so heavy
[20:50]and it is so destructive that, you know,
[20:53]my mother's life was spent assimilating
[20:56]and she would tell me in these small Ohio towns
[20:59]that we lived in to not draw any more attention
[21:03]to myself because I already stood out, right?
[21:06]This is survival speaking through my mother's experience.
[21:12]This is assimilation, this is colonization
[21:15]happening in the mid 90s, right?
[21:18]And I internalized that.
[21:19]And so I censored myself, I read literature
[21:23]and thought I need to mimic the voices
[21:27]that actually don't resemble me in order to be heard
[21:32]and in order to be successful.
[21:34]And so my experience as an adult,
[21:38]writing further and further into myself and into my world
[21:43]and into my wholeness has been to include those aspects
[21:47]as best I can and constantly learning.
[21:50]And, you know, when I think about childhood memories,
[21:53]it's rural Ohio, you know,
[21:55]it's walking county roads between cornfields
[22:01]and, you know, feed corn, soybeans, it's pig farms, right?
[22:06]It's like watching the Amish buggies on the road.
[22:10]It's all of that.
[22:11]And also that experience gave me very much an outsider
[22:16]perspective and so I was always watching
[22:18]and meant like many other writers,
[22:20]I'm sure that you've talked to,
[22:22]cultivating that, that ability to watch
[22:25]and to really ponder and sift through our creativity
[22:29]and our imagination and put it on the page
[22:31]can be a real asset even though it was painful, right?
[22:36]Absolutely.
[22:36]Do you have advice to aspiring authors?
[22:39]I do.
[22:40]I do.
[22:41]I was thinking about this.
[22:42]There's so much advice, right?
[22:45]You know, what's the most important thing
[22:46]that maybe I haven't heard?
[22:48]And I feel like our whole time today talking
[22:51]has been about being in a relationship with, right?
[22:55]I think sometimes what can happen for writers
[22:58]is that we can look at the craft,
[23:02]we can look at writing as I'm working towards a product, right?
[23:08]I'm writing, so therefore I'm working on a story,
[23:11]I'm working on a novel, I'm working on something
[23:12]that's going to have many stages of revision,
[23:16]it's gonna go to the marketplace, right?
[23:19]And that's all fine and good, of course.
[23:21]And I think what is much more nourishing and sustaining
[23:27]is to cultivate a relationship with your writing
[23:33]and to realize that your writing also has a relationship with you.
[23:39]Are you coming at your creativity with an extractive mind, right?
[23:44]With all the capitalism and consumerism
[23:46]and what are you going to do for me, imagination, right?
[23:51]We're talking about wild unseen forces
[23:55]that move with us and through us.
[23:57]This is really powerful and exciting.
[24:00]How do we honor and dignify and be in relationship
[24:05]with those aspects and how they engage with us?
[24:10]So that you don't write the novel that you wanted to write
[24:13]this year or next year or five years from now,
[24:16]you are still writing.
[24:19]You're still in relationship with that aspect of yourself.
[24:22]And furthermore, you are in relationship
[24:25]with the components and the elements of your life
[24:27]that support your writing and creativity,
[24:30]which might mean everything from being able to take long walks
[24:34]where you talk to yourself, getting good sleep,
[24:37]having people in your life that affirm your best expression
[24:42]and cheer that on, right?
[24:45]All of these things that can seem like they don't
[24:47]aren't directly related to a writing
[24:48]and to our creativity make us healthy and strong.
[24:53]And I believe that ultimately make us better writers
[24:57]and writers for the long haul,
[24:59]not for the next five years,
[25:01]but for the next three, four, five decades.
[25:04]Amazing.
[25:05]Well, I can't wait to see what you produce
[25:08]in the next three, four, five decades.
[25:10]Do you have another book you're already working on?
[25:12]I forgot to ask earlier, but I have some stories
[25:14]that I've been working with.
[25:15]And I have an idea of rumbling in the back of my head
[25:19]that has something to do with a collective voice.
[25:22]It has the we narrative that the you plural,
[25:25]I think can be a really powerful tool.
[25:28]Women's voices, how women change when they are growing life.
[25:34]And again, how do we have a story where it's like,
[25:36]I don't want to read a book about pregnancy
[25:38]and pregnant women, right?
[25:41]How could I possibly play with these notions
[25:43]with transformation and of what women go through
[25:46]to bear life and bring life forth?
[25:48]So I'm sort of rumbling around back there.
[25:50]I'm not sure how it's going to move forward,
[25:53]but I'm definitely giving it my,
[25:55]the attention of my inner ear.
[25:57]Love it.
[25:58]Jamie, thank you.
[25:59]Thank you for this conversation.
[26:01]I feel like it would be like a little like heavy, you know?
[26:04]It's like, I don't know.
[26:05]It was great.
[26:06]Like the meaning of life type of conversation, you know,
[26:09]where you really like think through things.
[26:10]So, you know, you're so absolutely hopeful.
[26:12]I feel like it, like, you know, bring it to, you know,
[26:16]relieve or whatever.
[26:17]I don't know.
[26:18]Anyway, thank you.
[26:19]And that was a long way to say thank you, Jamie,
[26:22]for coming on most of the time to read bugs
[26:24]and for sharing your thoughts and feelings
[26:26]and your unique way of seeing the world,
[26:29]which I think is super valuable and helpful.
[26:31]Thank you, Zippy.
[26:32]I loved having time with you this morning.
[26:34]You really appreciate it.
[26:35]It's really fun.
[26:36]All right.
[26:37]Have a great day.
[26:38]You too.
[26:39]Bye bye.
[26:41]Thanks again to Wine, Women and Words, the podcast
[26:44]for sponsoring this episode.
[26:46]Thanks for listening to this episode
[26:47]of Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books.
[26:49]Don't forget to follow me on Instagram,
[26:51]at Zippy Owens, and at Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books.
[26:54]Also sign up for my newsletter at zippyowens.com
[26:57]and sign up for my virtual book club
[26:59]and meet lots of authors on Zoom every other week.
[27:01]Thanks so much to Steve and Ryan at Textures Sound
[27:04]for the Sound Editing.
[27:05]And thank you to Morning Moon Productions
[27:07]for providing this fantastic intro and out trim music.