Pink Think: “Whatever might happen, I’d believed in my parents’ dream: that Miami would make up for the long lost warmth, balconies, stars, and fishermen of Cartagena de Indias – the small Carribean port city where I’d been born.” – teenage protagonist Gabi from the novel Try to Remember
I had the pleasure recently of savoring Try To Remember, National Poetry Prize-winner Iris Gomez’ debut novel. The story resonated with me, as a first-generation immigrant to America from the Philippines. This is one of those books that made me linger with pleasure over the lyrical passages.
Book summary from Iris Gomez’ website: Culturally savvy Colombian teenager Gabriela de la Paz, newly arrived in Miami, is a devoted daughter who is trying to keep her volatile and mentally ill father from jeopardizing their family’s green card status and driving them all into exile in disgrace. But as her father slips deeper into darkness and her mother slips deeper into denial, it is Gabi alone who must face the impending family crisis and ultimately decide for herself whether love means more than loyalty.
Here’s a Q&A Iris graciously gave me (Thank you Iris!). Read to the end for a chance to win one of three copies. Update: This contest is now closed. Thanks to everyone who entered!
1. When did you first know or decide you were a writer?
As long as I can remember, I’ve gotten a thrill out of reading a great book. Maybe that’s what inspired me to start playing with words myself when I was a teenager. I used to use English, Spanish, and French class assignments to write long, complicated sentences composed of words that sounded beautiful to me. I also loved the challenge of creating poems that rhymed. Then, when I was chosen to be editor for my high school newspaper, I realized that writing could be a career option as well as interesting and fun.
2. How did you come up with the idea for this novel? Why did you choose to write about this time period?
The core inspiration was my desire to write a story about the “good” Latina who wants to be loyal to her family and yet is torn by external and internal forces that are pulling her away. This idea came from my own experience of growing up between two cultures with very different expectations of feminine success: could you love your family and yet be independent of them? I didn’t really know myself for a long time, and I think that although that is a quintessential coming-of-age question, it takes a particularly intense form in the context of a traditional Latino immigrant family like Gabi’s, especially one that is in crisis and desperately trying to hold on to its tried-and-true values while adjusting to those of mainstream U.S. society.
I chose the time period I did (late 60s/early 70s) because I was interested in the story of how Miami came of age too, and this was the time in Miami’s history when it began to grow from a largely undeveloped and predominantly Anglo-American, almost a backwaters, Southern city into the giant, international & multicultural cosmopolis one now finds.
3. How long did it take you to write “Try To Remember”? Describe your process from first draft to final version. Did you outline or “just write”?
Five years. I have a wonderful but challenging “day job” as an immigrant rights attorney, and I am also the mother of two, so it took me about three years to write the book and another two to revise & edit it into its publication state.
My process began with “just writing” pieces and scenes until I had enough text to understand for myself what was holding it all together, and then I wrote the outline for the whole book. Later on, I created trajectory charts for each of the main characters, since each of them is transformed in a different way by what happens in the course of the novel.
4. Some of the passages involving mental illness and Gabi’s father were vividly scary. How did you prepare yourself to write those scenes?
I was able to draw on the positive lessons I’ve learned from my own experiences in overcoming adversity and from the shared experiences of other people I’ve known or worked with who witnessed or suffered different forms of violence, from domestic violence to torture and persecution. The most important of these lessons, I believe, is the resilience of the human heart, and I tried to impart that to Gabi as the home situation with her father grew increasingly more frightening.
5. What is your daily writing routine?
My main writing “practice” is morning journaling. Sometimes this writing turns into actual text I later set aside time to develop into prose or poetry, but more than anything this is a spiritual exercise that frees me to think, feel, invent, and imagine without any censorship right onto the page.
6. How did you get your literary agent? What genre did you pitch this novel as?
I submitted a part of my manuscript for evaluation at a writing conference. I pitched it as women’s fiction, although I recognize that it has appeal for young adult audiences as well.
7. A lot of your passages have a melodic cadence to them, with lyrical metaphors. How did your poet background help you in writing this novel?
Lyrical writing comes naturally to me because of reading and writing a lot of poetry, at least in comparison with some of my fiction writer friends who’ve told me that they have to consciously apply themselves when “painting” a picture in passages they wish to be more evocative or poetic.
I also think that growing up bilingual has helped me write more lyrically, because I can hear things in the cadences of the two languages and become more attentive to the choices I have about how a sentence or paragraph should sound.
8. How did you make that switch from poet to novelist?
For me, it was largely a question of time. When I was just writing poetry, I could work on single poems or a few related poems in isolated bursts of time, but for me to be able to write a novel I knew would require a predictable and consistent chunk of regular time, particularly as the text grew and the characters evolved. So, it was only when my kids were old enough and my work situation permitted me a little more flexibility that I was able to plan on having enough of the kind of time my novel required.
9. Which do you like better, writing poetry or novels, and why?
What I love about fiction is that it enables me to explore a wider range of experiences and subject matter than I’ve been able to do in poetry, at least so far. On the other hand, there is something so great about writing a poem that doesn’t necessarily have to be about a topic but aims toward some elemental truth or beauty.
10. From your experience, how interested are publishers in multicultural fiction nowadays?
I have worked with a very knowledgeable and skilled multicultural team at my publishing house, but I don’t have enough experience with other big houses to comment generally. I do know that the changing demographics of the U.S. affects everything from voting power to consumption of goods – and that the publishing industry can be no exception.
11. What writing projects are you working on right now?
I have two projects in the works, another novel about a young Latina who is a little wilder than Gabi in TRY TO REMEMBER, and a nonfiction book that will explore the cultural links between the old colonial port cities of the original Spanish Imperial Maritime Road.
12. My 14 year old daughter loves to write poetry and would love to have her collection published someday. Any advice on how to break into poetry anthologies?
The most important message I would impart is to keep on writing, whether it gets published now or not. I would also look for opportunities to enroll in programs for young writers. For example, here in Boston I belong to Grub Street, Inc. which has a terrific program for teen writers. Once she feels ready to send out her work, she should spend a little time reading some of the poetry journals and deciding which ones seem like they would provide a comfortable home for her work. Lastly, depending on what kind of poetry she writes, she may want to try open mike readings at local venues, both to experience that kind of poetry event and to connect with other poets and the small press poetry community that many poets are part of.
13. What is the best writing advice you’ve ever gotten?
To thine own self be true.
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Update: This contest is now closed. Thanks to everyone who entered!
Book Giveaway: Thanks to Hatchette Book Group, I can pick as many as three winners for a copy of Try to Remember. To enter, leave a comment answering the question, “What do you miss most from home?” Rules: no PO Boxes, US and Canada only. Deadline: Sunday, May 9.
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