Quiara Alegría Hudes, MY BROKEN LANGUAGE: A Memoir
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[2:04]Kiara, Allegria, who does?
[2:06]I hope that pronounced that right is the author of my Broken Language, a memoir.
[2:10]She is also the Pulitzer Prize winning playwright of Water by the Spoonful.
[2:15]And with collaborator Lynn Manuel Miranda, I don't know if you've heard of him,
[2:20]she wrote the Tony Award winning Broadway musical in the Heights,
[2:24]and also the film adaptation, and the book in the Heights Finding Home,
[2:29]which she co-authored with Lynn Manuel Miranda and Jeremy McArthur.
[2:32]Her notable essays include High Tied of Heartbreak in American Theatre Magazine
[2:36]and Corey couldn't take it anymore in The Cut.
[2:38]In opposition to the carceral state,
[2:41]who does and her cousin founded emancipated stories,
[2:43]a platform where people behind bars can share one page of their life story
[2:47]with the world.
[2:48]As a barrio of feminist and joyous mischief maker, Kiara E. Sue Hermona
[2:54]created the Latinx casting manifesto.
[2:56]She also wrote Vivo, the movie, which my kids are obsessed with,
[3:02]and which I love, and we have been playing the soundtrack non-stop,
[3:05]and she wrote the book for that, so you should definitely watch that movie
[3:08]with your kids if you want, or even by yourself.
[3:10]Who does is a native of West Valley, USA?
[3:13]And now lives with her family in New York.
[3:14]Welcome, Kiara.
[3:15]Thank you so much for coming on mom.
[3:17]I'm starting to have to read books to discuss my broken language,
[3:20]and memoir.
[3:21]Thank you.
[3:22]Thank you.
[3:23]So happy to be here, chat and talk about this book.
[3:25]This book, I know I was just saying this, but it's so good.
[3:28]I mean, it's so beautiful.
[3:29]You're such a great writer.
[3:30]Obviously, you won like the Pulitzer Prize for your play and all the,
[3:34]I mean, you're just obviously a rock star, but the memoir,
[3:37]I'm like a memoir fiend.
[3:38]I love memoirs.
[3:40]It's my favorite genre.
[3:40]I read a million of them.
[3:42]And it was so good.
[3:43]So anyway, just have to say that, the friend.
[3:46]My inner child is smiling because when I was a little kid and people ask me,
[3:51]what do you want to be when you grow up?
[3:53]I said I wanted to be a rock star, so now I feel that it has come true.
[3:57]There you go.
[3:58]Oh, that's awesome.
[4:01]But now I feel like I have a peek inside of you as a young girl in your whole life.
[4:05]So that means like even more.
[4:07]Would you mind just telling listeners what inspired you to write this memoir?
[4:11]And why now?
[4:12]You know, it's kind of the two sides of one coin of my family experiences
[4:19]as I became an artist.
[4:20]You know, in some ways, the book is me becoming artist.
[4:24]In other ways, it's me coming into my own as a woman and my family.
[4:28]And the thing about being a woman in my family,
[4:33]was bearing witness and having proximity to so much struggle and hardship.
[4:38]It was very hard times and the Puerto Rican community and Philly,
[4:44]you know, to the lot of hits in the 80s and 90s, for sure.
[4:47]But the flip side of that coin, you know, I wanted to bear witness to that.
[4:50]And I wanted honestly to even before bearing witness just to make sense of that.
[4:53]Would it all of that mean for me as a kid?
[4:55]But the flip side to that coin is it was also the family setting was also a site
[5:01]of tremendous exuberance, joy, tenderness, healing, humor.
[5:07]And I think that vivaciousness, that life force, that juice, you know,
[5:15]really informed the pain and vice versa.
[5:19]And I'm still so compelled by the kind of coexistence of both of those things
[5:25]and my family growing up.
[5:27]He described it so beautifully too when you were talking about how in your family,
[5:31]it was no his words.
[5:32]Right?
[5:32]It was actions like the banging of the pots and wait, I have to find.
[5:36]I think I dug you in this page, but yeah, here's language was not what connected us as a family,
[5:41]a dinner table ritual where people gather to discuss news of the day was not at the heart
[5:46]of how we communicated bodies were the mother tongue at a boilers with Spanish second and English third,
[5:51]dancing and ass-lapping, palmfuls of rice, ponytail pulling and wound dressing,
[5:55]banging a pot to the clave beat, hands didn't get lost in translation.
[5:59]Hip's bridged gaps where words failed.
[6:02]It loved that.
[6:04]Yeah, you know, we, it's like the harder it got, the harder we partied, the harder we celebrated
[6:09]and we did that with our bodies.
[6:11]Actually, I was quite shocked.
[6:13]I got together, you know, later in the book, you meet a character called the boy.
[6:16]And spoiler alert, we stayed together.
[6:18]He's now my husband and the father of my children,
[6:21]but I was 17 when I met him and this isn't in the book,
[6:25]but I would go to his house and his family would like sit down and have dinner at the same time
[6:29]and have conversation.
[6:30]This was a totally new experience.
[6:31]I was like, what is happening?
[6:33]Like, referral at our last house and there was always dancing.
[6:40]There was always eating, cooking, usually some sort of healing going on.
[6:45]Someone was always sick, you know, babysitting and, you know, that all happened simultaneously
[6:50]when it naturally occurred.
[6:52]Well, and then you can trust that with Yale.
[6:54]But by the way, we were there at the same time because I graduated in 1998.
[6:58]Oh my God.
[6:59]Yeah.
[7:00]So I was in Davenport, but I lived off campus half the time.
[7:03]But anyway, when you were talking about Ashley's ice cream and, you know, the halls of
[7:07]Sterling, and I was like, oh my gosh, we were, you know, spraying all the places.
[7:11]It was crazy, like a little flashback.
[7:14]But anyway, how you contrasted what that sort of, you know, traditional old school,
[7:20]beauty intimidating atmosphere was like for you coming, you know, and then even saying
[7:26]about your, about Gabby, like why did you get that?
[7:29]And she does not get that necessarily, right?
[7:31]Like that wife, why did you get that in your family?
[7:34]And I don't know, talk to me a little bit about that because Yale feels like a very central
[7:38]or maybe it was my own bias, but essential piece of your, of your coming of age, so to speak.
[7:45]Well, at Yale, I read for the first time a very important play for me in just in my life
[7:52]and in my heart, which was for color girls by and Tazaki Shange, and in the final
[7:57]pages of that play, she talks about a laying on of hands as this healing cathartic healing act.
[8:02]And of course, I was familiar with that phrase because it's kind of like a well known biblical
[8:05]phrase.
[8:07]But to hear it spoken about like within a woman's space, it gave me language to something
[8:12]I had known all my life, which was, which was we were very physical with each other.
[8:16]Our bodies and our family, which is, in my experience, quite typical and Puerto Rican families
[8:21]ran the gamut from very light skin like mine to darkest, darkest skin, like cousins of mine
[8:29]or my aunt's, you know, from straight, some of us has straight silky hair, like some
[8:33]of my younger cousins, but might be us had Afro's, my mom had an Afro body shape.
[8:38]So we had very skinny and we had very, very, what would be called obese or fat.
[8:44]You know, I didn't, I didn't use the word fat for a long time because it was such a slur.
[8:49]And now it's starting to come back as like, how no, I'm going to call myself that.
[8:52]I'm going to claim that word and I'm going to make it mine.
[8:56]And so and all of these women were wildly confident, possibly overconfident and it was amazing
[9:01]to see because when I was like in middle school, that's when, you know, it was like heroin
[9:07]and chic.
[9:08]It was the Calvin kind under our ads and everyone was stick thin and looked emaciated.
[9:13]And here was this very robust like cellulite, written, you know, botched tattoo, surgical
[9:20]scarf family, just like mostly women being, being together sharing space, dancing, healing,
[9:26]laying on of hands.
[9:28]And it's because that was the environment I was used to, I almost didn't notice it.
[9:32]And then going, going somewhere quite different like, yeah, I just could see with relief
[9:37]and with a little more clarity what I had left behind and how special that was.
[9:41]Things like eating disorders and low self esteem, low body image was, were new concepts
[9:47]to me.
[9:48]Our bodies were our chapels, they were our, they were our scripture, they were our joke
[9:53]book, you know, they were like our family history.
[9:56]And so in some ways we didn't have the ability to.
[10:00]who have those same body issues,
[10:02]because our bodies were just much more activated
[10:04]and engaged with each other every day.
[10:06]So yeah, those were things I started to notice
[10:08]with a little distance at Yale,
[10:10]and that's just one of the things.
[10:12]I do the thing that was most front and center for me
[10:16]going to Yale, being first and my family
[10:18]to go to college was leaving my four-year-old sister behind.
[10:21]So she was my baby, she was born when I was 13,
[10:24]and she presented really differently.
[10:26]She had much darker skin than me.
[10:28]She was a very chubby kid from the beginning.
[10:31]She kind of spoke with this like North Philly John accent,
[10:34]like she had this whole North Philly thing going on.
[10:37]And she was so confident about her body.
[10:41]There's a chapter where I talk about like that she's,
[10:45]I'm trying to get her dried off after a bath,
[10:47]and she finds her naked self in the mirror.
[10:49]She's like four years old.
[10:50]And she's like, oh my God, my body is round as mother earth,
[10:54]my body is round as the moon.
[10:56]And to her, this is like miraculous, you know?
[10:58]And it was so, it made me feel very alive,
[11:02]but I also had a little bit of an up-oh,
[11:04]because I thought like, so when does the world
[11:07]begin to tell her that that should be the source of shame,
[11:11]not the source of joy or celebration?
[11:13]So that was, you know, these were the things
[11:15]at the front of my mind or some of them when I got to Yale.
[11:18]What is she doing now?
[11:19]Like what's the PS?
[11:21]Right now she's expecting her first child song.
[11:23]Oh, yeah, PC.
[11:25]Which I'm very excited about.
[11:26]And she's a theater producer and a cultural producer
[11:29]in Philadelphia.
[11:30]So she started a Latino and a women of color
[11:32]a theater company in Philadelphia.
[11:34]Wow, that's a great hour's for you.
[11:36]Amazing.
[11:37]Well, you could really feel how hard it was for you
[11:39]to leave her and go into this new environment.
[11:41]So I'm well acquainted with that separation.
[11:44]Anxiety, you know, you had like a preview for the kid.
[11:46]Yeah, but that's like a super special relationship.
[11:50]I also really liked your whole conversation
[11:53]on what you believed in and whether or not you believed
[11:55]in God and that whole conversation
[11:57]of what does it mean to believe and who, you know,
[12:01]who you're out, I'll read like a little passage
[12:03]from it because of course I'm like watching it
[12:05]as I try to talk to you about it.
[12:07]But here I think it was a little earlier.
[12:09]Oh, also, I love this whole section on the books
[12:11]that you loved, a book is its presence and absence.
[12:14]I keep just like quoting because you're such a great writer.
[12:16]But you know, who would I be without Ralph Ellison
[12:19]without the battle royale's electric brutality
[12:22]without five words string together.
[12:24]I am an invisible man who would I be without reading
[12:26]beloved on the L North Philly zooming below
[12:29]if I'd never known Seth's back scars.
[12:31]And then at the end, you said, and yet as I read with double
[12:34]vision, thinking of her off in each book
[12:36]had the strange effect of binding me to her,
[12:37]the more I learned of our divergence,
[12:39]the more I paid attention.
[12:41]I don't know, just so great.
[12:42]Anyway, I was reading about my cousin who was my older cousin
[12:46]and one of my role models growing up.
[12:48]So such a funny woman, really a survivor and a fighter.
[12:51]And that was on me learning that she could not read
[12:55]and had never learned to read despite graduating
[12:57]the Philadelphia public school system
[12:59]and just realizing some of the golfson divides
[13:02]that existed within my family.
[13:04]I had already begun to be a literate teenager.
[13:08]You know, I loved books, I loved writing
[13:11]and that was a shocking thing for me to learn.
[13:15]So as I went to Yale, I was very mindful of the fact,
[13:18]you know, boy, I wish Nitchie and my cousin,
[13:21]I wish she could read this story.
[13:22]I think she would connect to this story.
[13:24]And then even you start to second guess yourself
[13:28]with those sorts of thoughts because it's like,
[13:29]well, who am I to judge?
[13:30]She's doing just fine.
[13:32]Like she's looking all she survives,
[13:34]look at her fighting spirit and am I implying
[13:38]that there is a deficiency there?
[13:40]You know, and that's the kind of thing that, you know,
[13:43]going to Yale gave me a lot of double vision there.
[13:46]Well, I loved how your mom later
[13:49]when you were sort of struggling
[13:50]to figure out what to do after Yale
[13:51]and you were doing a lot of musical stuff.
[13:53]And obviously your musical genius
[13:55]in addition to everything else, but how she was like,
[13:57]but you always wanted to be a writer.
[13:59]What happened to that?
[14:00]Right?
[14:01]And then now like to read that story in the memoir,
[14:04]it's like so satisfying,
[14:05]because of course here you are writing it,
[14:07]not to mention everything else.
[14:08]So I don't know, that was 70.
[14:10]It was, I for a brief amount of time,
[14:13]I collaborated with an incredible Mexican, Mexican-American
[14:17]songwriter named Lila Downs.
[14:19]And one thing she said to me,
[14:21]stuck with me all this time, which is moms just know.
[14:24]And that was a moment when it was like moms just know.
[14:29]She knew who I was with clarity and with much simplicity.
[14:34]And I didn't.
[14:35]And she was like, you're a writer.
[14:36]Yeah, she wasn't telling what she wanted me to be.
[14:39]She was telling me who she saw I was.
[14:42]And I had never conceived of that.
[14:44]But once she said it, I was like, oh yeah, I am.
[14:46]And I had been training all my life to be musician
[14:50]and put in so many studio hours.
[14:52]And I loved music so much and Chopin and Coltrane
[14:56]and Bach in some ways were my saviors.
[14:59]They saved me from my adolescent depression.
[15:03]They gave me beauty at times that felt very desolate
[15:06]in my youth.
[15:07]And I remember in my mind, my heart just saying like,
[15:12]goodbye Coltrane, goodbye Bach, goodbye Chopin,
[15:16]I thank you so much for all you've given me.
[15:20]But now I have to go into my thing, which is right.
[15:23]But don't you feel like there's still that melody?
[15:27]I mean, even the way you write is still,
[15:30]I think music really informs writing a lot.
[15:32]You can hear it in the rhythm of the words.
[15:36]I mean, I don't sound so hokey, but it's true.
[15:38]I feel like you can tell when people have like a really
[15:40]musical bent because it becomes more lyrical.
[15:42]Almost more, you know, if the scale is poetic
[15:46]to mainstream, right, it's closer.
[15:50]It's a more poetic, I don't know.
[15:52]I haven't slept.
[15:53]I'm not making any sense.
[15:54]But I know what I mean.
[15:55]So that's good.
[15:57]Well, it turns out that musical training was extremely
[16:01]appropriate training for a writer too.
[16:04]You know, from just daily habits of self discipline
[16:09]and being alone, finding creativity and solitude,
[16:13]to also like working with sound and structure,
[16:16]all of those things remain super relevant
[16:20]to my writing every day.
[16:22]And now what has it been like?
[16:23]I mean, I know you already had won the Pulitzer Prize,
[16:25]but with this whole rise of In the Heights
[16:27]and that was like the one thing everybody was watching.
[16:31]You know, it's in some ways it's terrible
[16:33]to have a memoir come out during a pandemic
[16:35]and a book and all of the stuff, right?
[16:37]I've seen so many careers sort of like, you know,
[16:40]so much hard work disrupted.
[16:41]But at the same time, we finally have a society
[16:44]where we can all focus on like one show at a time.
[16:47]But you haven't had it in a long time.
[16:49]So how is this sort of rise to fame and achievement
[16:53]been for you?
[16:54]I have felt somewhat disconnected from it.
[16:56]And I've had to like really consciously find ways
[16:58]to acknowledge it and feel that it's real and celebrated
[17:01]because it is during the pandemic.
[17:03]And you know, the work takes so much time.
[17:06]The book took me years to write in the Heights
[17:08]took me decades to write.
[17:10]And Lynn Manuel and I who we were in the Heights together,
[17:14]we also just released this animated movie called
[17:16]Divo on Netflix.
[17:17]My kids saw it and I'm so annoyed
[17:19]they watch with my ex-husband.
[17:20]So anyway, I'm gonna have to make them watch again,
[17:22]which they will not mind at all.
[17:23]But yeah, it's very sweet, it's romantic.
[17:25]You know, and that took me years right.
[17:27]So, you know, years and actually decades
[17:31]of my work all of it opened during the pandemic.
[17:35]But it is what it is.
[17:36]I mean, I don't know what to do other than to surrender
[17:38]to that fact and just be grateful for the ability to write.
[17:42]You know, the release into the public
[17:44]is always my least favorite part
[17:46]because I get self-conscious and I get scared of criticism
[17:50]and all that ego stuff.
[17:51]I have to like work hard on all that ego stuff.
[17:54]It's the making of the thing that is really joyous
[17:57]and exciting for me.
[18:00]So, you know, it was many, many good engaged years.
[18:04]And what are you working on now?
[18:05]Some new stuff, it's wild.
[18:07]It's like you spend so much of your adult.
[18:10]Like my kids were born and became, you know, bigger kids
[18:15]while I was creating this stuff and now I'm writing new things.
[18:17]So now it feels like a whole new chapter of life.
[18:19]I'm writing an original movie for Warner Brothers,
[18:22]developing a 30 minute sitcom.
[18:26]Yeah, fun stuff.
[18:27]I have a prison writing project I do that is about people
[18:31]that are behind bars, sharing some of their life story
[18:34]of the world.
[18:35]So those are some of the things I'm working on.
[18:37]It's amazing.
[18:38]Yeah, I read about that program that sounds fantastic
[18:41]and a great way to, you know, give back
[18:43]and help and everything.
[18:44]So awesome.
[18:45]All emancipated stories for any of your listeners
[18:49]that want to check it out emancipated stories.
[18:51]Perfect.
[18:52]So what advice would you have for aspiring authors?
[18:56]I mean, I think it's really important to know why you're in it,
[18:59]like to have that central compass to return to
[19:03]because no work that you write is ever going to be perfect.
[19:07]It's always going to be flawed.
[19:08]You have to kind of live with those flaws.
[19:10]You know, some of your best work might not be seen that way
[19:14]from the public.
[19:15]Some of you are like more mediocre stuff
[19:17]might be really embraced by the public.
[19:18]It can be very confusing and disorienting.
[19:22]Plus like collaborations might fall apart.
[19:24]All that sort of stuff.
[19:25]And so when you have that compass of what am I doing?
[19:27]And why?
[19:28]Why does it matter?
[19:29]It really helps maintain some kind of emotional stability
[19:33]during it.
[19:34]I think the biggest advice I have is,
[19:36]I mean, when you're starting out, you just got to write a lot
[19:38]and you got to get yourself out there.
[19:39]But then when you hit a certain point,
[19:42]especially in playwriting, I realize I'm on in this conversation
[19:45]if you talk about a book, but in playwriting,
[19:47]there's this thing where it's like you need audience feedback
[19:49]and you need a lot of feedback.
[19:50]And I feel that it's not great because young writers
[19:54]can become addicted to feedback.
[19:56]And it's dangerous.
[19:59]I mean, you want...
[20:00]to respond to your audience and hear what they're saying
[20:04]and if possible improve your work of art accordingly.
[20:08]But Glenn and Doyle has this quote that really makes me think
[20:11]of like feedback and rewriting.
[20:14]It's like, if you're asking someone for feedback,
[20:16]you're asking them for directions to a place they've never been.
[20:20]You know, so I think you have to be careful with like,
[20:24]you should be giving yourself feedback.
[20:26]You should be doing the hard work of figuring out
[20:29]what are the deficiencies?
[20:31]What are the strengths in this piece?
[20:33]And can I make it better tomorrow?
[20:35]Wow, that's awesome.
[20:36]Well, I have no sense of direction.
[20:39]So I'm hoping that it doesn't fall out of like,
[20:41]right, I think I feel like I would definitely need
[20:44]the directions, but amazing.
[20:46]Well, thank you so much.
[20:47]This has been so fun.
[20:48]I know we're both very tired, but you couldn't tell for you.
[20:51]So I'm just so great to connect and just to even think
[20:56]how our lives have intersected and over the years.
[20:59]And I'm just so excited to see what's coming next
[21:03]and follow your career and everything.
[21:04]So it's awesome.
[21:05]It's truly my pleasure.
[21:06]Thanks for reading the book and taking the time.
[21:08]I love it.
[21:09]I loved it.
[21:10]OK.
[21:11]Have a great day.
[21:13]Bye.
[21:13]Bye.
[21:15]Thanks for listening to this episode of Moms Don't Have Time
[21:18]to Read Books.
[21:19]Don't forget to follow me on Instagram, at Zibi Owens,
[21:22]and at Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books.
[21:24]Also sign up for my newsletter at Zibi Owens.
[21:26]dot com and sign up for my virtual book club
[21:28]and meet lots of authors on Zoom every other week.
[21:31]Thanks so much to Steve and Ryan.
[21:32]In fact, texture sound for the sound editing.
[21:35]And thank you to Morning Moon Productions
[21:36]for providing this fantastic intro and out trim music.