Angie Cruz, HOW NOT TO DROWN IN A GLASS OF WATER: A Novel
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[0:54]Angie Cruz is the author of how not to drown in a glass of water a novel
[1:03]Angie is a novelist and editor
[1:05]Her novel Domenicana was the inaugural book pick for GMA book club and shortlisted for the women's prize
[1:11]Longlisted for the Andrew Carnegie Metals for Excellence in Fiction the Aspen words literary prize a
[1:16]Rusa Notable book and the winner of the ALA Y-A-L-S-A Alex Award in fiction
[1:22]It was named to most anticipated best book in 2019 by time Newsweek people Oprah magazine
[1:27]The Washington Post the New York Times and Esquire
[1:30]She is the author of two other novels
[1:32]Solidad and let it rain coffee and the recipient of numerous fellowships and residencies including the lighthouse fellowship
[1:38]Sienna Art Institute and the Cooney Dominican Studies Institute fellowship
[1:43]She has published shorter works in the Paris Review
[1:46]VQR Calaloo Gulf Coast and other journals and she's the founder and editor in chief of the award
[1:51]winning literary journal Asterix and is currently an associate professor at University of Pittsburgh
[1:57]She divides her time between Pittsburgh New York and Turin
[2:00]Welcome Angie. Thank you so much for coming on moms don't have time to read books. Oh, thank you so much for having me
[2:06]It's my pleasure
[2:07]So your latest novel your fourth novel is how not to drown in a glass of water
[2:12]Can you please tell listeners what it's about and what inspired you to write it?
[2:16]So the novel how now to drown in a glass of water is about Gara Romero who is 56 and has
[2:23]Lost her job in an unemployed from a job. She had an factory over
[2:28]25 years and
[2:30]She's now has to look for work and the novel basically is 12 week sessions of her meeting with a job counselor
[2:37]Called to senior workforce program and in the process of meeting this job counselor for 30 minutes each week
[2:43]She tells the story of her life. It's amazing. I'm such a sucker for a good structure
[2:48]And I feel like this is amazing
[2:50]I used to have a zivi I do the zivi awards and I used to have a zivi awards for like the best structure because I think it's so
[2:56]Underrated, right? It's so anyway, so I love how you divided it into 12 like that
[3:00]Why now this story and by the way, I love the playlist on Spotify
[3:05]Sing to the rest of the day. So thank you for that
[3:08]So I you know, why now I mean I think that when you went to a book
[3:12]You're not thinking the now. I mean it takes a long to write a book, right?
[3:15]So when I started the book in 2017 it was a moment in my life where I wasn't sure if I was going to continue writing
[3:22]I had been going through numerous rejections from my last book the minikana four years of rejections really
[3:29]The book wasn't there wasn't a market for the book that the book was to quiet and
[3:36]And I was thinking my god, I still have time to start a new career if I wanted to and you know the Trump presidency
[3:41]Really had me worried about what was going on in the country and I was realizing what could I do with my gifts?
[3:46]and what would it look like to start it over and
[3:49]One day on a platform. I was standing there and Washington Heights and 168th Street
[3:55]And I saw this woman reading some kind of handbook and she seemed to be like in her late 50s early 60s
[4:01]And I started thinking a lot about the women in my family who lost their jobs during the great recession
[4:05]There were a lot of them. In fact, one of the largest demographic of long-term unemployed people are working class
[4:11]Latinx and black women in New York City
[4:13]recession and
[4:14]In 2007 2006 2009 and I said, wow, what must it be like to start over as someone who might not speak the language
[4:21]Or who has been in a job for so many years and and the of workforce has changed because of technology
[4:27]And I just said I don't know like I was like, huh, it would be funny to see them in an interview
[4:32]What would they say and that day I just downloaded all these interview questions from online
[4:36]The most popular ones like what is your weakness? What are your strengths?
[4:40]What do you dream? You know, and I and Cara Romero came to me and she said Cara Romero
[4:45]My name is Cara Romero. I came to this hunt tree because my husband wanted to kill me. Don't look so shocked
[4:52]You are the one who asked me to tell you about myself
[4:55]Tell me, you know, and then I was riveted by this character and I just kept listening to her for the next year
[5:02]And I just came to you like that and write out your fingertips
[5:05]Yeah, you know, maybe she was always in me and you know
[5:08]I in the process of working on my novel the minigana
[5:11]I did many many interviews with women who came to the United States in the 60s and 70s
[5:16]And I heard a lot about their arrival story and and the kinds of things they went through that work
[5:22]I heard many laid off stories and how that forced them into early retirement and how difficult that was to sustain
[5:29]How they had to figure out ways to sustain themselves even though they weren't long-term employed
[5:34]And I guess like I was planning seats, you know, all those years
[5:38]I was working on the book for Cara Romero. So when she came to me it was like a like a weight like she was like
[5:43]I am going to be the voice of my people
[5:48]Do you have a visual like do you know exactly what she looks like in your head?
[5:52]I know I have a I hear her. I can't see her. I mean, she looks like many women, right? Like the translator
[5:59]Who's going to be translating to Spanish?
[6:00]Kianian Thiwa who translated also the minigana into Spanish. She said we are all Cara Romero
[6:06]And I actually you know, I started my book tour and I feel kind of like
[6:10]Strangely a lot of people identify with Cara Romero or as the interviewer right like these two people represent a big
[6:21]Section of our world in fact, you know, I had a man who said to me. Oh my god when I hear Cara Romero
[6:26]I hear myself and some of the things I told my kids and I said this is amazing
[6:32]That somehow this woman
[6:36]Is like speaking I guess because she's so candid and we're so afraid now to be candid because there's a little forgiveness for
[6:44]Mistbeaks and mistakes and I think that somehow I I sort of giving people permission
[6:51]Or kind of affirmation for the ways that we could be
[6:55]Messy or wrong or trying to figure things out in how we're trying to understand racism homophobia
[7:02]classes of all these things are like and so yeah, it's it's been a really interesting to see the response
[7:10]Wow, but can we go back to the fact that you were about to give up writing and you had four years of rejection?
[7:15]That's crazy. Why how did first of all?
[7:19]Were you expecting when you finished where you're like this is this is great
[7:22]This is gonna sell and then like you just kept getting rejected and what
[7:26]Show me the moment when you were like at your most depressed about that experience
[7:31]I think it was that day that I started working on Cara Romero
[7:33]You know like I was that it was like November 2017. I remember very vividly
[7:38]Trump had just announced the Muslim ban. There was a call on Twitter for immigrant lawyers to go to JFK
[7:45]You know, we were seeing tons and tons and tons of footage of kids and cages in you know on the border
[7:52]you know and
[7:54]receiving emails like from
[7:56]You know my agent basically with letters from editors saying oh the writing is beautiful
[8:01]But like we didn't know how to sell this book or we don't know is is their market
[8:05]You know and then smaller process. We're like it's not innovative enough
[8:08]It's not edgy enough right and I said wow like where do I fit in this conversation?
[8:12]Maybe I don't fit right like in this conversation and
[8:16]I guess I did feel despair
[8:18]I felt despair because I I was like wow like this is something I love to do
[8:23]And yet I have to figure out how I'm gonna survive right like I'm not
[8:27]So old I can't start over and find a real a real way to build my retirement account and all this stuff
[8:33]But I'm not so young that I could waste time right or lose time
[8:38]I'm waiting to see if you know and also I was up for tenure
[8:41]I wasn't gonna get tenure inviting get into contract. I mean there were a lot of pressures
[8:45]And yeah, so I felt despair from my country. I felt despair for my own career
[8:51]and
[8:52]Got a her middle emerge and you know, you know, I have a very dear friend Jennifer Clement
[8:56]It was a wonderful writer
[8:57]She wrote the book on prayers for the stolen and she said to me, you know, right is right
[9:01]Like it doesn't matter if anyone's gonna read the work you were gonna write, you know
[9:04]And I do believe storytelling saves my life
[9:08]You know in many different ways like reading stories listening to stories
[9:12]So it's not a surprise that in a moment of deep despair kind of her middle came to me
[9:18]So urgently and with so much to say
[9:21]I love that tell me about
[9:23]Some one of the stories or the books that got you through like a really difficult time
[9:28]You mean like books that like I'm reading?
[9:31]Yeah, are you serious?
[9:32]I've been so important to you
[9:34]What was the story that like took you from one
[9:37]Part of your life to another not that you know not that you wrote but like that you and why did you need it so much and what did it do for you?
[9:45]As a younger writer
[9:46]I think reading a lot of the African-American writers like James Baldwin and Tony Morrison and slave narratives in general
[9:53]We're really useful in me to understand like where my place was in the United States and how I'm part of this black dias
[10:00]that was really important for me as someone who always felt like an outsider in the United States,
[10:06]even though it was born and raised here. But you know, during the pandemic, there were some
[10:09]books that really surprised me and really kept me company like Vivian Gornick has this book called
[10:14]Odd Woman in the City. So great. And you know, and I was in New York City during the pandemic
[10:19]and the city was kind of like what we were missing was connection and that book is so much about
[10:24]connection. And you know, people meeting up and hanging out. And in some ways, like having
[10:31]someone write about that experience reminded me like, oh yeah, this is what makes the city so beautiful.
[10:36]Everyone was leaving and moving to a place in the backyard. And I was like, yeah, but there's
[10:41]something really great about having neighbors and be all piled up on top of each other too. So I
[10:47]would say that book was really wonderful. And I carried it around actually. It was like one of
[10:52]of the things, one of the books that I carried around with me. Like I was like, she's with me. And
[10:56]we're having this conversation about New York. Good tell us about how did you get into writing
[11:02]to begin with? Like, tell me about the first novel experience. How did that, how was that journey
[11:06]versus this one? I have a very, I think, non-traditional path to writing maybe everyone does. You know,
[11:13]but definitely I didn't imagine myself as a writer, as a young person. I only read Dead White
[11:17]Men and, you know, and I didn't imagine that I was ever going to find myself in a book and
[11:23]or tell story inside of a book. And then, you know, I went to the university and I started reading,
[11:29]you know, African American literature, Chicano literature, which was what was available at the time
[11:33]and some Caribbean literature, like Jamaica, Kincaid. And, you know, and I was like, oh, okay,
[11:40]maybe there is a place for Dominican story. And, but I wasn't convinced that I could do it,
[11:47]but I had like these amazing teachers and they encouraged me to go to these like writing
[11:51]residencies and fellowships. And it was like slow, but it was like, I think I became a writer
[11:56]because there were so many different people who would read a little something that I would write.
[12:00]You know, but when I applied to my MFA, I only had 20 pages of a novel. That's all I've ever written,
[12:04]like that's it, right? So, and I went to NYU, but those, those pages did a lot of work for me
[12:12]because anytime someone would read it, they were like, oh, you really could do this thing. Maybe
[12:16]you should try for this. And yeah, so I ended up going at MFA in that way. Someone was like,
[12:21]you know, you, you really could do this thing. You should apply an MFA and I decided to go. And
[12:25]my first teacher was a Jewish dad-acot, you know, and it was her first class she ever taught. So,
[12:30]we like kind of came up in a together in a strange way. And I guess like, yeah, like, I feel like
[12:38]it's funny because I think I was saying this yesterday, I had a launch event at my community book
[12:42]stores called Word Up Community Bookstore. And I was saying that, you know, the myth of the writer
[12:47]when I was a younger writer was that you're alone in your room and you're typing away and maybe
[12:52]you're in the woods and I went to talk into you and, you know, and I didn't grow up that way. I grew
[12:58]up in a crowded space where the door was always open and the kitchen was always working. And I
[13:06]like, being alone, like, yes, I could do it. I could be alone. I go to residencies. It's really
[13:10]useful. But I do feel like so much on my writing practice, the reason that I've gotten this far,
[13:15]in particular with this book, is because I had community in those moments of despair. You know,
[13:20]I had great friends, like one of the wonderful best writers of our generation, Emily Robito,
[13:25]who was my neighbor at the time. She's like, she goes, you're a great writer. Oh, you need
[13:30]this one editor to believe in other people. I would probably have given up. Like, I don't think I had
[13:35]it all inside of me. I think it was really that I had people that really believed in the work and
[13:40]the story. That's wonderful. Amazing. Did you actually talk to career counselors for this book?
[13:46]Yeah. You know, I actually did all of the, I did all the forms as cut out from it. Oh,
[13:51]I went through a lot of processes and bureaucracy. Oh, you had me. So, as far as, oh, my gosh. Yeah,
[13:58]you can't go very far without a social security number. But like, I did do a lot of the career
[14:03]counseling exams. And, and I played, I kept thinking about like how far can you go, you know, and,
[14:09]and, and thinking about like how difficult it is to be the bureaucratic elements of our lives.
[14:15]I mean, I grew up as a translator for a lot of my family members moving through these systems.
[14:22]So I have a lot of familiarity with documents and have seen how difficult somebody's question,
[14:27]especially security questions. Like, they're ridiculously culturally biased, right? And it was so fun to
[14:34]play with them, you know, and like give it a satirical like, you know, slant in a literary work.
[14:42]After all these years where you're just kind of performing a thing, you know, and actually having
[14:47]a character just be honest with the thing. And in some, and then of course it critiques the thing,
[14:53]right? The thing that I'm actually doing is critiquing how a lot of these machines keep us out
[15:00]allowing us in. Interesting. Oh my gosh. What do you like to do when you're not writing?
[15:05]Oh, you're not working. When you, when you have like, if you had a free day, what would a dream
[15:09]day be? You know, honestly, I do a lot of not writing. Like, oh, what my life is like in general,
[15:18]you know, I read I walk, I meet friends for lunch, you know, I mean, for different books,
[15:23]I did different kinds of things to like, I always like to balance like with this particular book
[15:28]because I wrote it so much in pandemic. I got into elaborate cooking, like a lot of other people.
[15:33]I have a 14 year old. So I entertain like some of his interests. But yeah, I mean, it's funny
[15:41]because I was thinking like, do I have a hobby right now? I don't have a hobby right now. But I
[15:44]used to draw a lot and paint a lot and I'm thinking of returning to that, you know, I'm a teacher.
[15:49]So I mentor a lot of students and spend a lot of time talking to young writers about their work.
[15:54]I am on the board of my local bookstore and I brainstorm with them about how to keep them alive
[15:59]and going. Yeah. So that's pretty much my life outside of traveling all the time.
[16:04]What are the secrets to thrive? Like, what are you helping with the, with the bookstore? It seems like
[16:10]what are what are, yeah, not impossible. But I just feel like odds are stacked up against so many
[16:16]pieces of players in the whole literary ecosystem right now. I, as people, but maybe this is,
[16:22]this is true. I do think that's true. I mean, this particular bookstore is like 60 volunteer is
[16:27]run by 16 volunteers and very few paid employees. And I think that it's done a really good job
[16:33]assisting themselves throughout the pandemic. But in particular, Washington Heights being like
[16:37]the only bookstore in this neighborhood, it, what's been really interesting. And this is how
[16:42]I got involved in seeing how it flexed a kind of fluidity for the demands of the neighborhood.
[16:48]So there was a moment where they were giving away, like they have a food relief program during
[16:54]the pandemic and they became a COVID testing type. And they combined that with book and literature,
[16:59]right? So suddenly like they're testing people and people are getting free books. Like my book,
[17:03]Dominique, Ghana was one of the books that they were getting for free when they went to get tested
[17:08]for COVID or food relief boxes would have a book inside of it, right? So. And I think that's
[17:14]really interesting to think about how do we get books to new audiences, right? It was really fun.
[17:20]But I do think that encouraging, I mean, part of the secret is really like telling people that
[17:25]these resources are there. So like a lot of people don't know that there's a bookstore in the
[17:29]community. They'll just shop on Amazon and they don't know that they could just order online
[17:34]from the local bookstore all over the country. There's a bookstore near you that you could order
[17:39]online and you could support and sustain. And I think most people don't know that.
[17:44]Or I think they value the speed at which they could do something else. And that takes a couple
[17:49]extra steps. So which true. I know it seems ridiculous. But I think that's the rationale. I think
[17:56]people are like, well, do I go online? They don't have my stuff stored. What's my password?
[18:02]And that is true. And I find that frustrating too. And you know, and I, but I do think that one of
[18:08]the things I've been learning with time and I think this really was true in the pandemic is
[18:13]the value of when things weren't working so well, right? Like of having local businesses
[18:20]that were actually open and providing stuff for you. And the truth is, you could order a book
[18:26]and pick it up. And that means you have to walk a few blocks. And it's so good for you. You don't
[18:31]have to get a shift. They could get into their story immediately. You could just walk over. You could
[18:35]call for it. And walking and taking out walk and it's actually really good for you. So the benefits
[18:41]outweigh any kind of like this, this culture for speed, which is one of the reasons I think my book
[18:47]also is doing something really interesting with time, which I hadn't thought about before. But
[18:54]now that it's out, I realize that what it's done is it forces people to sit down and listen to a
[18:58]person for five hours, right? Tell their story and all its nuances. And we're so rushed that rarely
[19:07]do we give anyone the amount of time necessary to unpack what they're thinking, what they're feeling.
[19:14]And there's so much value in this, I will go. I mean, the book has this word that I use
[19:19]as called the so God, which is the undrouting, which you could cry it out or you could talk it out.
[19:24]And sometimes that takes days and weeks. And when we think about things that happen to us like loss,
[19:31]you know, the ways we grieve, it's almost like we have to do it so quickly and move on.
[19:36]But what this book forces you to do is not to move on. It's really just to stay with it and really
[19:41]think and you know, in last, you know, there's a lot of humor in the book as you know. And the humor
[19:49]is, you know, it also connected to the ways that we can cope, but also how even in the challenging
[19:56]moments destroy. So we laugh not.
[20:00]cry. Yeah, you know, so true. I knew there was like something really wrong with the world when I was
[20:08]in some sort, not even a hardware store, some place that had all these random things, but my
[20:13]my husband needed like a wrench or something like that or some, some item houseware type. Anyway,
[20:18]he had it in his hand and then he took his phone out in the other hand and I was like,
[20:22]what are you doing? And he's like, well, I'm ordering this on Amazon to be shipped. And I was like,
[20:26]it's literally in your hand. You're holding the, why are you going to order it? And he's like,
[20:31]well, how am I going to carry it? I don't really want it. We were on a trip or something. And I was
[20:36]just like, this is so crazy. I was like, all the steps now that are going to have to happen to get
[20:40]this hammer or whatever from the factory into the box, the box into the car out of the car,
[20:47]how many hands are going to touch this box and logistics involved to get it so that we open our door
[20:53]and there it is. It just seems like beyond inefficient. It seems efficient for the end user,
[20:58]but actually, it's completely inefficient in terms of inefficient. And especially because we're
[21:04]not thinking that we're connected to every aspect of this, right? Yes. No, we don't think about
[21:09]as if we're not connected, but everything we do has an impact and environmental impact,
[21:13]the climate impact, you know, a physical impact. And, you know, again, like this book is so
[21:20]much about community, right? So how she moves to the community, she goes to the everything store
[21:26]and the everything store. In fact, there isn't everything store in a lot of communities, right?
[21:30]But you wouldn't discover it if you're always ordering a Home Depot, you know what I mean?
[21:33]I'm getting a shift. But there is a, and you have people that are informed and have been doing
[21:38]this for a long time and give you free advice about things. And you don't even realize all
[21:42]these resources that exist everywhere you go, right? And it's true, like, it seems efficient,
[21:48]but actually it's incredibly inefficient. Sometimes things get lost and then they don't even
[21:51]arrive and then you have to spend more time trying to resolve that problem. And, but again,
[21:56]this is about narratives that we tell ourselves of what's fast, what's easy and what we value
[22:01]on necessarily fast or easy. But even more, it's like the emptiness of it because we're not connecting,
[22:07]we're not connecting. We're not connecting to nature. We're not connecting to people.
[22:12]So true. Yeah. In addition to the walking to the bookstore, which is another ancillary benefit,
[22:17]it's also chatting with the people and seeing what other people are reading and walking in and
[22:21]meeting somebody and then who do you bump into on the street? And like, anytime I walk out my door,
[22:26]something happens, right? Something, I meet somebody. I, this, but if you're just here like
[22:32]slicing open Amazon back to Saltay, you know, what's going to happen to you? So anyway,
[22:37]I know this is off topic, but I think about this a lot actually, especially in terms of book stories
[22:42]and somebody once jokes, I was chatting with about it. They're like, or maybe with somebody who
[22:46]works in a bookstore, it's just like, really, you need this like, by the end of the day, you're
[22:51]really going to start reading this particular, you can't wait to start this book. It's going to
[22:55]sit on your bedside for months. So why do you need it tomorrow by 9 p.m? Couldn't you wait a week?
[23:01]Could you not read something else? So I don't know. I feel like maybe there needs to be a campaign
[23:08]for bookstores as a whole. And it's like, it's just this like, really, you're like, when are you
[23:13]going to be reading this or something that that encourages people to go back into the stores and
[23:18]rethink how they've made all these decisions. I don't know, maybe you could start it.
[23:24]Yeah, well, I'm not going to start a business. I love writing so much, but not even a business.
[23:30]And I'm so glad I could still do it, even though I thought I would give up. But you know, it's
[23:34]like your podcast. It talks a campaign. Yeah, campaign. Your podcast is called Moms. Don't have
[23:42]time to read, right? Yeah. Yeah. And I was thinking about it because I'm a mom and I was thinking
[23:47]about how reading has changed for me since I became a mother. And I think that it changes the way
[23:52]you write a book too, right? So the reason I wrote this book in 12 sessions, I also think it's
[23:57]because the way I consume books now are in 30 seconds, in 30 minute sessions, right? It's when I'm
[24:02]commuting. It's when I actually have a little downtown before sleep. And in some ways, I was like,
[24:07]yeah, this book is perfect for moms to don't have time to read. It's true. All in these tiny,
[24:12]like these small sessions that you actually could read one, yeah, they read another. And you know,
[24:16]in 12 weeks, it'll be done because that's how long the book is. 12 days. Yeah. Yeah. If you do it
[24:22]every day, that's perfect. Yes, you're absolutely right. And also people like to feel accomplished.
[24:27]Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Great that they could do a whole thing, like a whole chapter, a whole section.
[24:32]And they feel good about themselves. And then they want to read it again. So there you go.
[24:36]What's your next project? You know, I have a lot of projects. I'm working on right now.
[24:40]One is about a young street photographer. And another one is set in Italy. So it's hard for me to
[24:46]figure out like where it's funny because I was thinking I was working more on the street photographer
[24:51]project, but now that got it home. I'm talking so much about got it home. I might start
[24:58]working on the Italian project because it's dealing with immigrants and labor as well. But again,
[25:03]like right now, I'm on tour. And I really want to be present on tour. I'm not trying to be the writer
[25:07]and also the author, right? Being the author requires a lot of energy. And being the writer requires
[25:14]a different kind of energy. And one thing I've learned the hard way is that I could really just do
[25:19]one thing at a time. Well, I could do a lot. I'm a great, well, you know, I think women have been made
[25:24]to think that we're great multitaskers, like moms, especially, right? And that we could do it all.
[25:31]But I think that that myth is, or we should rephrase it and say we can't do it all well. Somebody
[25:37]pays a child pays a partner pays a jobs pay like a writing pays bodies our bodies. And I'm really
[25:45]trying to do like be present for this book after I work so hard on it. What, you know, as much
[25:51]as possible? Go do that. That's amazing. Yeah. Forget the other projects. We'll see what happens.
[25:56]I mean, they live there, right? Yeah. But really, now I'm like, oh, yeah, all that stuff I was doing
[26:02]in 2015. I see it come through the book now, right? Like, so living life is also writing,
[26:08]right? Yep. Yep. It's an important important ingredient. You need the ingredients before you can make
[26:13]the cake. That was my genius statement of the day. So there you go.
[26:18]Anyway, Angie, thank you so much for coming on. Thank you for all of your work. And
[26:25]honestly, the role model of resilience is just unparalleled. So it's amazing.
[26:29]Thank you so much. Okay. Have a great day. Okay, you too. Okay. Thanks for listening to this
[26:35]episode of Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books. Don't forget to follow me on Instagram,
[26:40]adsubi Owens, and ad moms don't have time to read books. Also sign up for my newsletter
[26:44]adsubiowens.com and sign up for my virtual book club and meet lots of authors on Zoom every
[26:49]other week. Thanks so much to Steve and Ryan. Heck, texture sound for the sound editing.
[26:54]And thank you to Morning Moon Productions for providing this fantastic intro and now
[26:57]trim music.