Ep. 399 Narrative Dignity with Quiara Alegría Hudes

Written By Stacks Assistant

Today on The Stacks, we are joined by author and Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Quiara Alegría Hudes to talk about her new novel, The White Hot. This book explores an exhausted young mother’s life-changing, “white hot” rage-induced decision to abandon her daughter, break her family’s cycle of generational trauma, and discover herself in the process. We chat about why she wanted to write about women leaving home, how she views the audience for her plays versus her books, and how she creates in the face of her own success.

The Stacks Book Club pick for November is We the Animals by Justin Torres. We will discuss the book on Wednesday, November 26th, with Mikey Friedman.

 
 

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TRANSCRIPT
*Due to the nature of podcast advertising, these timestamps are not 100% accurate and will vary.

Quiara Alegría Hudes 0:00

I have no reason to share a draft with anyone. The only reason I'll share a draft with someone early why is because I want them to be like, I like it. Bad idea. If that's why I'm sharing a draft. Don't share it, you know? I have to like it like, I have to be the one to fight for it. Like I just got pissed, like I just was working on a theater project, and I got some notes, and I did not like them, and I was pissed for days, like bad mood, like family, like keeping their distance from me because they were like mom's mad, but when someone who believes in what you're trying to do, it's this great feeling of camaraderie.

Traci Thomas 0:42

Welcome to The Stacks, a podcast about books and the people who read them. I'm your host, Traci Thomas, and today I am joined by author and Pulitzer Prize winning playwright Quiara Alegria Hudes to discuss her new novel The White Hot. The story is about April Soto, a young mother who makes the pivotal decision to walk away from her daughter and her entire life in a desperate search for her own freedom. Today, Quiara and I talk about her writing as a playwright, and how that compares to writing her first novel. We talk about the need to explore women's pleasure and anger and the syllabus of books that came to Quiara and helped her to write this novel. Just a reminder, our book club pick for November is We the Animals by Justin Torres. We will be discussing the book on Wednesday, November 26 with Mikey Friedman. Everything we talk about on each episode of the stacks is linked in our show notes. And if you like this podcast and you want more bookish content and community, please consider joining the stacks pack on patreon@patreon.com/thestacks and subscribing to my newsletter, Unstacked on Substack at tracithomas.substack.com each of these places offers amazing and unique perks like community conversation and virtual book clubs over on Patreon, and you get my writing and my hot takes on the latest literary and pop culture news over on substack. And in both these places, you do get a monthly bonus episode. But more importantly than all of that, Your support makes it possible for me to make this show free to all every single week. So if you're interested, head to patreon.com/thestacks to join The Stacks Pack and Traci Thomas.substack.com to subscribe to my newsletter. All right, now it is time for my conversation with Quiara Alegria Hudes.

Alright, everybody. I am very excited today I am joined by memoirist, playwright and now novelist Quiara Alegria Hudes to The Stacks today to talk about her brand new novel, The White Hot. Quiara, welcome to The Stacks.

Quiara Alegría Hudes 2:43

I'm excited. Let's chat.

Traci Thomas 2:44

I'm so excited you're here. I have a child whose first name starts with the letter Q, and he saw this book laying around and was like, Mom, Q. And I was like, I know!

Quiara Alegría Hudes 2:55

Q's a bit of a blessing as an initial.

Traci Thomas 2:57

I feel like it's there's like a handful of people who have it, and I feel like you all are in a very special club.

Quiara Alegría Hudes 3:05

Yes, he's gonna be Q all his life now.

Traci Thomas 3:08

Yeah, he's already Q. Do you go by Q? Is that what your friends call you?

Quiara Alegría Hudes 3:12

Some, yeah?

Traci Thomas 3:12

Some. Okay, enough about this. Let's talk about the book. We always start here in about 30 seconds or so, can you tell folks about The White Hot?

Quiara Alegría Hudes 3:21

Yeah, so it's about a young mother named April Soto who runs away from motherhood when her daughter's 10 years old and she doesn't see her for many years, and then on the daughter's 18th birthday, the mom sends her a letter, kind of a birthday present to the daughter she left behind, explaining, this is why I left you, and you don't have to forgive me. You don't have to love me, you don't have to even like me, but just hear me, because maybe you can learn a little bit from my experiences. So that letter she writes is the bulk of the of the book.

Traci Thomas 4:10

Yeah, and it's this super slim novel. And I guess where I want to start is, where did you get the idea for this book? Where did this come from?

Quiara Alegría Hudes 4:21

I think in some ways, I got the initial seed of it when I was in high school. I really didn't become a reader reader until high school, I didn't like books I read early, but I'd never found the books I liked, and suddenly in high school, I was reading literature that felt more meaningful to me, and that included the book Siddhartha by Herman Hesse. And I loved his pilgrimage that he went on. It's basically the Buddha story. I want you know. I was enraptured by this spiritual seeker, and he he becomes an ascetic. He renounces all worldly possessions. He's looking for God, and then he becomes a ferryman by the river, and he learns from the river. At the same time as I loved it, I was also something in my gut was like calling BS on a part of the story. That's like I knew the Buddha story. The Buddha had left behind a newborn baby to go find God. And part of me was just like, you know, I wish my mom and I wish my abuela, who were very spiritual women, could go, you know, stop doing the dishes right now, and go find God. Go sit by the river, you know, but they had domestic realities to tend to, and so I think the seed was honestly planted even that long ago.

Traci Thomas 5:47

Wow. Okay, I want to before I, because I'm gonna ask you how the seed grew into this book, because that's like a very tiny seed in a very you know, you've lived a life between then and now, but I want to ask you a little bit about this, not finding books that you liked or not being into reading until you were in high school. Was it a teacher? Was it a class? Was it just Siddhartha? Or were there other books that happened to you in that time period that made you start thinking about reading and simultaneously, were you still interested in writing at this point, or were you interested in writing at this point? Or had that not even kind of crossed your mind?

Quiara Alegría Hudes 6:22

Well, I always loved writing, so I wrote from the time I was I learned to read and to write when I was, like, four. Okay, I have poems that I wrote from then, but I was reading like The Hobbit and Alice in Wonderland. And I don't know books that didn't really speak to me, but in high school, I had some great classes, and I also found like the feminist bookstore and the queer bookstore in Philly. And so I was reading James Baldwin for the first time, I was reading Allen Ginsburg for the first time. I was reading female writers for the first time. And that's when I said, Oh my god, like I could feel my consciousness opening, and my understanding of the nation I lived in and the city I lived in opening in really new ways. And it connected with me more directly, even than history class had, you know, I started to understand the landscape of Philadelphia, where I grew up, and where this book is set, is the fourth most segregated city in the nation. And history class only helped me understand that to a certain extent. It was really through black literature and queer literature and later latine literature, that I started to understand how we had arrived at that place.

Traci Thomas 7:39

Okay, so then the follow up question is, you're a writer. You've written plays, very beloved plays, plays that have won the Pulitzer Prize. You have written a memoir, and you now have just written the novel. So the question is, if you were reading these novels and these books, why did it take so long for you to decide to dip your toe into this part of writing, into the novel space?

Quiara Alegría Hudes 8:08

Okay, I'm so glad it did. I'm so glad that the novel that 25 year old me would have written is not out there, is not in the world. Yes, you know it's wonderful to be 48 and to be starting something and to still have a very kind of naive sense of wonder about that endeavor, but at the same time, I have the muscles of writing and creativity that I've built up over decades of practice, and so it's kind of magical. And I don't take it for granted. I think it's just for a moment that I that I get that kind of naive space with the book writing. Spirituality is a theme I've always connected with. My mom is a Santera of Django, and so I grew up in like ceremonies in my living room. And it's a it's a tricky theme to explore on stage. For a few reasons, people start getting literal. Did she literally, you know, have that experience? Or it's different on on the page, because it doesn't matter what literally happened. What matters is how a character experienced what happened. So there are some moments in The White Hot when April has a kind of divine experience and, and I think an atheist reader wouldn't feel alienated by that, because they're I'm not saying this is how God works. I'm saying that's how April experienced this moment in her life. You know?

Traci Thomas 9:40

Yeah, yeah. I mean, that is sort of, I have a background in theater. I was an actor. I studied acting in college, and because I sort of started reading critically through reading plays and thinking about plays and thinking about, you know, things on the stage when I read a novel, I think I bring a lot of that to it. I'm always thinking about audience. I'm always thinking about, how is this impacting audience? So I was really excited to get to talk to you, because I'm curious about how you are thinking about audience, as a person who writes for the stage and now is writing for a totally different reading experience, but it's still your writing. So people are consuming your work, but in such a different way. So I'm wondering how you were thinking about that.

Quiara Alegría Hudes 10:29

Okay, I love this question. I mean, this is, this is, you know, what fills up my mind most of the day

Traci Thomas 10:34

Me too! I'm obsessed with audience. It's my favorite thing to talk about, so I'm really excited.

Quiara Alegría Hudes 10:40

You know, it's interesting, like, let's just talk industry and economics. A theater ticket is expensive, yes, a book can be free if you go to the library. Right? So that in and of itself, I was like, let my stories, let me cast a wider net and see what other spaces my stories might fill, what other audiences I can find with readers who might not have the cultural knowledge? Oh, this play is happening, and it closes in two months. I better get there. I mean, how's the high school again? I know that unless they're packed into some scene, but they might be assigned on their high school reading list. You know, it just there's different pathways to different readers. Another thing I think about a lot is, you know, all, all of my plays, you know, I'm Philly Rican, and all of my plays kind of engage the community I grew up in, and they all have Latinx casts, and I've had these experiences, the reality of the regional theater scene in the United States is still like stubbornly white and wealthy. There have been steps and progress made, but 20 years of having Latino stories and actors in front of predominantly white audiences, it can create It's a strange experience. It's great in some ways, because I'm like, spreading the good news. It's like the gospel, like, here we go, but here we are. Right, exactly. But it also feels like sometimes it can really make make me think, are we just performing race? Are we just performing ethnicity? And that can be existentially dispiriting for myself, for the actors, you know, what are we doing here? And there's no element of performance here. So the downside of writing a book is I'm not creating jobs for these amazing actors. But the upside is, there's not the performative quality of identity in the same way. And so I've loved, I loved doing, dealing with that for The White Hot.

Traci Thomas 12:45

As a playwright, do you think of yourself as a job creator?

Quiara Alegría Hudes 12:49

Absolutely, it's my it's my favorite part of, one of them. But, you know, maybe so in the end, it's my favorite part of of the of the gig, and it's I proselytize, you know, it's just, I meet these amazing actors. Sometimes I get to work with them on repeat projects. For instance, Daphne Rubin Vega, she has mirrored many roles. She's originated many roles for me, and I'm so proud of this kind of body of work we've done together. So I love that my I was raised by my mom and my stepfather, who is a contractor in Philly, and so he would, he always told me, like, the workers always get paid first. I don't care if we don't have food on our table. You know, the workers always get paid first. And so I kind of have this, this ethos cake baked into into me.

Traci Thomas 13:38

Yeah, I love that so much, I guess I just have never thought about a playwright in that way. But you're totally correct. We'll stay in we'll stay in the theater, and then we'll go back to the seeds of this book, since we're here. So one of the things that I talk with authors a lot about is sort of like the the sort of so lowness of writing a book. Like, yes, you have an editor, yes, you have a marketing team, but a lot of that stuff doesn't come into play until sort of after the book is done, after the deal is made, and a lot of it happens to you alone in your writing space. And I know from years of experience in the theater that the theater is very different from that. You might write a play and then you get it in a workshop, and the director's like, that's got to go or the actor can't deliver the line. And so you change it, and maybe the producers are like, this scene is not good, like, we're not going to go forward unless you change this. And so you're getting constant, real time feedback from from outside sources. Or maybe you hear a line and you're like, that's that's not what I wanted. Like, I don't whatever I put down, it's just not working anymore. And you're getting constant real time feedback, and you're changing things as they go. So I'm wondering what that is like for you, how that how these different ways of writing impact you as a writer, if you take in anything from either kind of world into the other, like taken things you learn from the theater into writing the novel, or taken things from the novel that you're thinking I might implement this in my next play, and how that sort of collaboration does or doesn't impact you as a writer.

Quiara Alegría Hudes 15:09

I mean, there's a politic answer to that, but there's like, slightly gossipy answer to that

Traci Thomas 15:16

I want that one!

Quiara Alegría Hudes 15:17

All right, so here's the tea okay, you've read the book. It starts, the kind of turning point at the beginning of the book is this dinner table scene, right? The dinner table scene is like caked into the DNA of theater. I've seen some really good ones.

Traci Thomas 15:34

My favorite. The best.

Quiara Alegría Hudes 15:37

It was like August Osage County was on stage.

Traci Thomas 15:40

That's the best one. So I was in New York at that time, in college, and I remember seeing that show I talk about all the time, because Toni Morrison has some scenes in her books that could be Broadway shows in and of themselves, just like could be act twos like August Osage County

Quiara Alegría Hudes 15:57

Absolutely. I mean, so there's the, there's a famous dinner table scene from August Osage County, with the daughter screams "eat the fish, bitch!" at the end of the scene. And I was like, Okay, first of all, Tracy Letts is Puerto Rican. Second of all, I want to make a big, messy dinner scene. And so I did write that out as a dialogue scene first, that dinner scene. And, you know, plates get smashed and food gets thrown. And these were all stage directions originally. Now, the tea part of that is that this actually was a failed musical, this book. So, and I hate to say that, because I want to be on here selling people on the book and not saying it was a failed anything. But, you know, I in the vein of things happened for the right reason. I really do think I found its best form in a book. But originally it was going to be the jukebox musical of Jagged Little Pill Alanis Morrissette's seminal rock album.

Traci Thomas 17:01

Oh my god, and my first ever CD I purchased that and Chuck Berry's Greatest Hits. Same trip, okay, to Tower Records.

Quiara Alegría Hudes 17:09

I love it.

Traci Thomas 17:09

I grew up in the Bay Area. So it was the one in Emeryville.

Quiara Alegría Hudes 17:14

Oh my gosh, memories. So yeah. And so that was one of the first scenes I wrote while I was listening to this, these Alanis songs and Alanis, you know, if you know that album, she's, first of all, she's like, pissed off, you know, I'm here to remind you. Like she's pissed at her exes. She's also, like, horny. She's really got this playful, curious spirituality about her. And I was excited. So as a woman of a certain age, I remember when I had that saturation of emotion. I don't anymore, I kind of aged out of it a little bit. And I was like, I want to write a character. I want to conjure up, you know, younger me who felt things at 101% all the time. And so I conjured up this character, April Soto, and wrote a few scenes, and then realized that me and the director had totally different visions. So I took my story and I was like, I'm going to develop it in a different way. Yeah. So that's, that's the tea like, you don't think, you never, you don't always know what, how the inspiration is going to evolve into different structures, different forms. You know

Traci Thomas 18:46

I love it. I have to say, as a person who loves a musical, loves a book, loves a play, you know, I love these things. This is correct as a novel like this feels I can't I actually, as I was reading it, because I was thinking about who you were, you know, knowing I was going to talk to you, and I was like, I can't imagine this on the stage. I'm sure there's a way to make it be on the stage. But there's something so intimate about this book that it just feels right to be me alone with April, or if I was listening me alone with April/Daphne, like, I can't imagine even, like, playing the audio book out loud in a room, I feel like I'd have to have it like in my ears. So I do think it's like, you did find the right place for it. Not that I wouldn't love that musical.

Quiara Alegría Hudes 19:37

yeah, the book is kind of extreme close up. It really does feel like she is whispering right in Noelle's ear. So the mother is April, the daughter is Noelle, and it feels like she is, like, whispering so close. It's like, okay, mom, like the breath on the neck's a little hot, like, take a step back kind of thing.

Traci Thomas 19:58

Yeah. Yes. Totally. It feels so close. How do you think about voice because this is, you know, what we would call a voicey novel, right? It's written, it's a letter like, it's the it's the voiceiest of voicey. But I know for playwrights, that's really important, you have to get the right voice for each character. Sometimes in novels, you know, you can have a pretty strong novel where the dialogue like isn't great, you can't have a good play with bad dialogue. So I'm wondering how you are thinking about voice, how you're kind of cultivating that skill set for yourself.

Quiara Alegría Hudes 20:31

I think of it like music. So when, when you were saying before, you know that the novelist is alone when they're writing? I mean, first of all, I love that. I love to be alone. I was trained as a musician. So growing up, I, you know, it was me and the piano for hours and hours and hours every day. So it feels like a one to one shift to go to write novels. And I think of voices, music like I was. The novel references musicians. It references, you know, it started with the seed of Alanis Morissette, but really it went very far from there. And actually, the musicians who I was listening to were mostly Charles Mingus, a little bit of Jimi Hendrix. And you just hear the world through different ears. And, you know, that's what I crave when I'm reading something, when I'm in an audience, I want to see the world I know through totally different eyes. I love that dual experience of but you're talking about me. How did you know? And also, I've never been stood a day in your shoes. You know? I love that dichotomy that can that can grab you in a book. So yeah, for me, April's voice, it's, it's got that Mingus thing, that Charles Mingus thing, where it's like improvisational, kind of wild and thorny and a little combative, spiky, luscious, but also yearning, like I hear When Mingus plays the bass. There's a lot of yearning. questing. It's searching. And so it felt natural for April to just have as strong a music as the musicians that she's listening to on her trip.

Traci Thomas 22:30

And you were listening to these musicians as you were writing the book, like the ones that appear in the book, or not so much.

Quiara Alegría Hudes 22:37

Yeah, I was, I was listening to them, and I wanted the book to feel really that experience of when you hear a whole album, like that emotional journey where it's not you're not engaging necessarily, on a cerebral level at first, you're engaging on just like taking this journey through emotions and textures, you know, like a volcanic drum solo and then, like a chill piano song, like that, sort of kind of wave, ride the wave.

Traci Thomas 23:06

I love that. Since we're here, I always ask people about how they write. So you've mentioned being alone, you've mentioned listening to this music. Do you have snacks and beverages? Do you have a favorite place you like to do it? Do you have other rituals that go around your writing process? And are any of them different for this novel versus the plays or the memoir?

Quiara Alegría Hudes 23:27

Every everything I write is different, so I kind of fall back on some default habits, but then I have to develop new habits that are true to what I'm what I'm working on for this one. Oh my gosh. It was so different. So I started writing, writing it as a musical in 2012 and within a year, that kind of fell through. But April Soto stayed with me, and then she just lived on napkins or on like sheets of paper or pages of books. I would just jot down notes. She'd come to me in little snippets, and I would just throw them in a box. And then 10 years later, after that, I was like, I think, I think I'm ready. I think I'm ready. So I took out this box, typed them all out, printed it all I had, like, 250 pages of, like, scribbles. It was nuts, and my job was to kind of assemble them and put them in some sort of semblance of an order. So it was really funny. And people would, friends would come by my writing space, and they would see that assembly. It looked like a like a criminal, like you're like a forensic criminal board, yeah, like that, you know. So that was my it was scraps. And that feels so right for April Soto, that is scraps, and it was jagged and and then lots of ginger, fresh ginger tea with honey and lemon. Lots, lots, lots.

Traci Thomas 24:50

Okay, I love that. We're gonna go all the way back to where we started, which was you had this teeny, tiny seed of the book, and you've kind of talked about how it evolved. Through the musical, and then you have this box of notes that you've left, and it's 250 pages. And then once you actually decide to sit down and tell April's story, when was that and how long did it take you to actually write the novel? Like, like, once you were like, This is what's happening.

Quiara Alegría Hudes 25:18

Once I kind of grabbed everything out of the box and said, I'm going to actually write this now. It's about a year and a half. It's short because she's writing a letter, so it has to be believable that she could pull this off. Yeah, you know, so I was always had to kind of do a reality check about, is this believable? Yeah, so it wasn't, it wasn't a tremendous amount of time, because it because of the brevity of the book.

Traci Thomas 25:42

Yeah, do you write quickly? Did you feel like this was a quick project for you or or a longer one? Or what was, what was it comparatively like for you?

Quiara Alegría Hudes 25:53

I really like letting things simmer. So when I think about that simmering process, I'm really slow. I'm working on a play now that I started in 2016 I haven't been actively writing it for all that time, but I grow and I change, and I get wiser, and the things that sparked my curiosity at the beginning I understand on a more nuanced level with time. So I haven't done a really rushed, like I'm inspired. Here's my pitch. Great. It's sold. Let's, let's start writing that. That kind of scares me. You know, I haven't done that. And the thing, the other thing that's fun about it is, I knew I wanted to write a kind of take on Siddhartha, and also an argument against Siddhartha in one but then all these other influences started coming, I started thinking about, what is this thing of like, we love when men leave in in culture and stories. It's like, you know, I watched Mad Men like, Don Draper leaves his family, and like he's hot for it like he's sexy for leaving his family, you know. So it's kind of digging a little deeper on that during those years. And then what happened that I think really opened the door to me sitting and writing. It was I've had this moment. I don't know if you've ever had this in reading, where it's like you become a different reader, like the universe sends you through some logic, a syllabus that it's like we know what you need now. And that happened to me. It was the most amazing reading experience of my life, really. So in about one year, I read book after book after book that changed me so and a lot of them were books that were long overdue to read. So Frankenstein, Elena Ferrante, Jamaica Kincaid Autobiography of my mother, Sula, which was a late read for me. And I'm reading all of these. They're like female pariahs. Maybe not Frankenstein, but I have a takeaway on it that is. But you know, I'm reading these female pariahs, and they've abandoned their children. They're living childless lives. They've self aborted in the case of Xuela from Autobiography of my mother by Jamaica Kincaid. And they're scorned, they're outcast, and they're beautiful creatures, and they're living these experimental lives in agency. And when those books found me, that's when I knew I I want to write a female pariah. I want to write an outcast. I want to write a woman who does something unforgivable and has the self possession to own her life, even, even with that quote, unquote sin, you know, so Can she abandon her daughter, and can we still find merit in her narrative?

Traci Thomas 28:52

You're speaking my language here. My favorite kind of novel is, is unlikeable, unforgivable woman, you know, and I say unlikable, sort of in air quotes, in the ways that people dismiss that kind of character. I mean, Sula is probably my favorite Toni Morrison novel, and certainly at the tip top of my list, we're going to talk about Frankenstein. We have to take a break. So actually, let's take a break, and then let's come back and talk about Frankenstein, because I'm very excited about this. Okay, we are back. When we first logged into this conversation, you were like, I'm so bummed I didn't get to listen to your Frankenstein episode. And I said, Oh, do you love Frankenstein? And you said, well, Frankenstein was a huge inspiration or part of the writing of this book, so please, as a brand new, first time Frankenstein reader as of a few weeks ago, and maybe Mary Shelley's newest, biggest fan. I want to hear all your Frankenstein stuff.

Quiara Alegría Hudes 29:52

Okay, so I did listen to your book club episode, okay, but I'm gonna refer to the creation as the monster.

Traci Thomas 30:00

Okay, I like calling him the monster, but apparently that means you're a bad person if you do, like that you side with Victor or something. And I'm like, No, babe, he's the monster, because that's what you guys told me he's called

Quiara Alegría Hudes 30:09

yeah, I mean, I'm reclaiming that. I first of all just reading Frankenstein, like, who does not relate to the monster? Like, I didn't choose to be here. I'm here. Like, you know, I just find that so relatable. Of like, why did you make me and now I'm stuck with this, yeah, and you can't help me. You don't have the key or tools to help me, because it's my life and not yours. So I just really relate to the monster. And I find the parts of the book where I just lose it and I cry is and it happens a few times where he's saying, Do not absolve me. Do Not Forgive me. Just listen to me. It's to me, the most brilliant text we have on criminal justice. You know, my husband's a public defender he's never read Frankenstein. I'm trying to get him to read it, because I'm like, read it and tell me that it's not completely about criminal justice. And so there's a little easter egg, and that's what April's doing. She's saying she's sending this. She's not interested in innocence. She's interested in narrative dignity. She's being honest about her flaws. And so there was even a little Frankenstein easter egg in there where she says, Do you know, don't, don't forgive me. Just listen to me. You're about to be a woman. You may not like what I did, but it might You might, might help you. There's a scene where she talks about like being promiscuous when she was a teenager. That's a really excruciating scene to write. Oh, my God. It felt like tearing someone's soul out. And she said, is like I lost my virginity when I was 13. She's telling her daughter this, you know, I was Yeah, I had so many partners when I was 14. When I was 15, did it feel good? No, it might have even been a form of self harm, and she's being so frank with her daughter about it, it's excruciating, but she's saying, but she's also saying, learn from this. What is your relationship with your body? Do you know what pleasure feels like? You know? I want you to prioritize. What does pleasure feel like? The honest you know? So anyway, that's, that's my Frankenstein spiel. But I love the book.

Traci Thomas 32:24

I love the book, and I love your spiel. And of course, now that you're saying that, I'm like, seeing it so clearly, of course, and my, some of my favorite parts of Frankenstein are the same thing. I just love how the monster is, like, look, I did bad stuff. Like, of course I did, but also like, I feel bad about it, like, I don't think that I was right. I think this was the only option I had given the situation and and to the sort of criminal justice point which, when I wrote, when I was reading the book, I just started writing a list of all the different things, like, culturally that you could map onto it. And that was on there. We didn't get to it in the episode. But just like, we didn't get to climate change, or, like, like, we didn't get to all of the things that I, you know, an hour is so short for a book like that, but, yeah, but I feel like that to that, like, criminal justice point, or, like, just because you've done something wrong or even unforgivable, does not mean that you're a bad person or that you don't know that, like that, you don't know that what you've done is wrong or like that, what you've done hurt other people. And I think that Frankenstein and April deal with this question, or like deal with the feelings of that, like knowing both that I did what I had to do, and also it was not the best thing to do for everyone else, but also I'm not not doing it is, is just like that feels so deeply relatable and human and and like elemental for the human experience, right? That, like, who hasn't done something wrong that they knew was wrong, but also was the only right answer for them as a person?

Quiara Alegría Hudes 34:11

Yeah, and, and this notion that we live with, that we carry that going forward, you know, we know, she leaves her daughter from the beginning, so this isn't a spoiler, but she says, like, I have to look in the unvarnished mirror every day, and I do, like that. That's my work.

Traci Thomas 34:28

Yeah, I want to pivot a little bit and talk, because you just touched on the pleasure piece of April's story and her sort of, you know, dealing with that. And then the other flip side of that is this anger, this white hot, which is the title of the book, and it comes from this sort of rage that is inside of her. And so I'm curious about the sort of duality of both the pleasure and the rage. And what was interesting about that for you as a storyteller?

Quiara Alegría Hudes 34:57

okay, well, let's talk pleasure. So I mentioned these books that found me. And when Sula found me, I said, Okay, let me. Let me reread some, some other Toni Morrison that I haven't looked at for a while. So I reread Beloved. And I had told, you know, these books are so rich that they can forget little gems that are in there. And there's this scene in beloved where it's it's a sensual scene. They're making out in the cornfield, and you just see the corn husk. It is so hot. It is so sexy. You just see the corn husks like swaying to the rhythm of the hidden bodies in there. And everyone knows what they're doing, by the way the corn husks are swaying. And I'm just like, oh my god, sex and corn on the cob, all right? And so I was like, I wanted to, I wanted April to have she was promiscuous as as a teenager. She had a child when she was 16, and she basically, like, never experienced what it was like to be a teenager. She had to drop out of high school. She's very smart. I was like, I want her to get it on, like, I want her to have, like, really good sex, have a great orgasm, you know? So I kind of manipulated back from that point. Well, who's she going to be? Who's it going to be with? So, yeah, she, she finds some pleasure, and then the relationship gets complicated after that.

Traci Thomas 36:19

Do you think you'll take another stab at the novel. Did you like writing a novel?

Quiara Alegría Hudes 36:23

Love, love. So one of the other things, it's not just the form, it's also one other thing that was important for me, which is all of my plays. I kind of worked on this project of writing stories that come out of my community in Philly, and there's an ethical obligation there, when you're working with even if, even though they were fictional, I would often do interviews in the community, it'd be based on a news story or based like a composite of a few characters. And so there's these ethical obligations where you have to, you have to create full characters, but you really do have to honor and respect what someone shared with you from their life. April's totally made up, and I'm already working on the next book. And the characters totally made up, and I don't have that ethical obligation to steward with respectfully their story. I can just go to town with them, and it's very liberating in terms of what I where I can go narratively. So heck yes, working on number two.

Traci Thomas 37:28

okay, I want to ask you this other maybe related, it's related in my mind, question, but I don't know if it's related to you. How does success impact your creativity? Because you've had quite a successful career, and I feel like everything you put out into the world is great and people love and you're acclaimed in all in all the places. How is it for you to go back to the page? Or how do you manage to go back to the page and start something new?

Quiara Alegría Hudes 37:57

I don't know if it's success or age, but certainly more as time has passed in my I hate to call it a career. It is a career, but it's like in my love life of writing, I just care less. I think it's more age than success, though, like I am the first born daughter, first born here in the United States. I mean, my parents are from Puerto Rico, so it's technically the United States, but yes, I've spent my life trying to make good on their tremendous journey. I have spent my life being the good girl, like I don't have time for that shit anymore. I want to be free as an artist. I still have to remind myself that at 48 years old, but I've gotten a lot better at it, and I don't think that's the success. I think that's actually just maturity and time. And also, the thing about success is, whatever is the success out in the world is not the same to me as what's a success for me artistically, like I have stuff. Edward Albee, the playwright, said this. He's like, some of your best stuff will go totally unnoticed, and some of your So, so stuff will get all the attention. And I, you know, I don't want to name names. I'm proud of them all, but I can kind of see, okay, it's not a one to one experience. I just have to do work that I feel. I got it, I got it. Like, I made it to that place where it says how I feel.

Traci Thomas 39:18

Yeah, totally. I want to ask you about what you just said about, like, the freedom. How do you know for you when, when you've made it, like, how do you know when your work, or, what is it that you're feeling when you are really, like, tapped into your creativity and like you Chiara are firing on all cylinders for the things that you want to make. What is that like for you? That freedom? What does that feel like?

Quiara Alegría Hudes 39:46

It's the most amazing feeling, I mean, being tapped in you know, it's good when you're doing nothing. And so much of my writing life is doing nothing, like I'm just sitting here in this chair for a few hours doing nothing. Thing, not that much time is actually spent with a pen in hand, with, you know, tapping at the keyboard, relatively speaking, but you're doing nothing, and it's so alive. It's so alive. It's a universe in your mind, in your heart, that's the feeling that's like the good feeling, a chase like, make it go deeper, make it complicate what I already knew. You know, it's that feeling of building out a universe.

Traci Thomas 40:26

Yeah. So conversely, what is like the hardest part for you, what is the hardest part for you in writing the novel, what was the thing that was like? The fuck is this?

Quiara Alegría Hudes 40:40

I don't know that I had a hard part for this one. I've had hard parts before. You know I can, I can tell you what's hard about theater. What's hard about theater is talk about it. The clay is is still drying, and here comes the audience, and it's previews, and you have to rewrite, and scene seven isn't working, and you don't know why, and all of this ego stuff is happening, like, I just want them to like my play. I just want them to like my play, but your plays not done yet, and you have to figure out what is my play in order to keep making it better. I mean, it's just so stressful. It's so stressful to be taking that final lap towards the finish line creatively while you're already having the ego stuff, I want them to like me. I want them to like me with with books. It's spaced out in a much more kind of sane way. I finish my process then I've got months and months before anyone reads it, when I can just start to metabolize, what did I create and why? And I'm not worried about, do they like it? Do they like it? Because no one's reading it. So it kind of eliminates that question. So I love that. And, yeah, I don't know what was hard for April. I think she had is such a volatile character and feels so deeply that I just brought a lot of joy to her. It wasn't hard for me.

Traci Thomas 41:57

I love that. And just to clarify for people who don't understand what Quiara was just saying about the audience being there. So in the theater, you write the play, you do the rehearsals, whatever, and then you have a period where the show is in previews, which means audiences are coming in, but the actors, the director, the writer, they're still fixing the show. They're still making changes to make sure that it lands right for the vision. Because unlike, you know, a lot of other mediums of entertainment, books, movies, there is this live component. And so things need to be changed. People like, you know, the lights, cues have to work. Everything has to work. So there are times where a whole scene might get cut, or a song in a musical, or something might get changed, or a few lines here and there the staging, or whatever. And so there's this period where the piece of theater is still malleable and still being actively changed, and then the show gets frozen, and then the show opens, and then people see it. So if you see a show in previews, what you see might not be what someone sees a month into the run.

Quiara Alegría Hudes 43:00

I have to, have to cut in here. Thank you for explaining that. You know, maybe one of the reasons it wasn't hard, I just love writing, but maybe one of the reasons it didn't feel hard is because it's new. And I don't, I've I've read, I love reading, but I don't, as a writer, I don't know all my tricks. So my tricks, so my tricks haven't gotten old and stale. Sure, I'm writing fiction, and I don't really. I never took a fiction workshop or a fiction class or anything. So I just don't really know what the rules are. Sure, you know. And so I don't have that. Once you start to learn the rules, I think it can become a downer, and you've got these scripts in your head going, but it should be this. It should be that. I don't have that. So, you know, maybe three or four, maybe even my second novel will be harder, because I'll already know a little bit of what the rules are and what industry I'm going into, and I'll, you know, be retreading some of my muscles that don't make sense for that book. And I'll have to, it might be more confusing, but there's something really kind of wondrous about being in that naive place of creation.

Traci Thomas 44:07

I love. You're speaking to my heart. This is I, I'm, like, an extremely project based person. I think, you know, I think most people who go into the theater like that, we like, like, okay, the show's closing. Like, another thing. I have another thing to work on, and I think that sort of speaks to that impulse too, of like, wanting to try something new, wanting to do something new, and to not know and to figure it out. Because, like, that's part of the create, like the creativity is fueled by the not knowing, and like getting to be fresh and I relate to that deeply. One of the things that I talk about a lot, not necessarily on the podcast, but with authors, you know, when we do events and things and authors that I'm friends with offline is about, sort of, the author's relationship to criticism and feedback versus from my background in the theater, like you were saying you're, you're dealing with your ego and your work at the same time, often very publicly, like, often a director might turn to you and be like, that's bad, like, No. Or, you know, there might be fights or these, like conversations that are very contentious, that are happening in the moment of creation. And I think a lot about how authors you write your book, or you write big chunks of your book, and then you send it off to your editor, and then three weeks later, they respond with like, tidy notes. And it's like, okay, well, let's talk about this. And it's just to me, feels so foreign from any creative work that I've ever done in my life, the way that authors talk about writing books and their relationships with edits. So I'm wondering if that part of it was at all like, were you ever like, hey, just tell it to me straight. Like, I don't need notes. Just, just, can you just tell me if this sentence sucks or not, or, like, if you ever felt like or maybe the opposite, where you were like, This is a great way to receive notes, like, months removed in this, like, you know, listed format or whatever.

Quiara Alegría Hudes 46:05

I mean, one of the things I've learned this is where you had asked about, like, success and how it affects my writing. So certainly, like experience, I have learned with time I have no reason to share a draft with anyone. The only reason I'll share a draft with someone early why is because I want someone to be like, I like it. Bad idea. If that's why I'm sharing a draft. Don't share it, you know? Like, yeah, I have to like it. Like, I have to be the one to fight for it. And so I'm really, I've become more and more shy about sharing early pages over my career, and like, I just got pissed. Like I just was working on a theater project, and I got some notes, and I did not like them, and I was pissed for days, like bad mood, like family, like keeping their distance from me because they were like, mom's mad. And I was pissed, because I felt like, okay, this person actually just didn't like what I was trying to do. They weren't giving me a note that if I took it, it would make the thing better. They didn't like what I was trying to do. And so okay, that hurts, that bruises, right? But, but when someone who believes in what you're trying to do, it's this great feeling of camaraderie, right? So for for The White Hot I am really lucky to work with Chris Jackson, who's my editor and publisher. I gave him the whole thing. He was like, send me 50 pages whenever they're ready. I was like, no, no, no, no, you're reading April, like, full on. And he was like, Okay, this feels, this feels farther along than most first drafts I read. And I think in part, that's because I was being so private. I had done a ton of rewriting already, but he found places to kind of crack the shell open. So that was great, you know. And by the end of our editing process, he'd say, you know, that this paragraph, I think it's 93% there, and I'd be like, got it, I agree, you know. So that could be really exciting. One of the things he really pushed me on was, how is it that April, who really didn't get to pursue her formal education, How can she write this eloquent letter? So we worked, we spent a lot of time circling that, that very logistic and literal question, and so I had to come up with some, some narrative responses. We learned that she's gotten her GED. We learned that she's done some reading. And these are just very subtle in there, but that's the result of editing and him pushing me.

Traci Thomas 48:31

Yeah, a speaking of April reading. April has this, this list that she gets from a librarian, and I won't tell you all what's on it. That's for you, but it's about she asks the librarian, like, hey. So do you guys have any books about women who leave their kids? It's just like super cas. And you refer to these, this list of books, these women as sister branches. And I just love that. What a perfect, what a perfect way to describe these various books that that tackle women leaving their children in sort of very different ways. Where did you come up with sister branches?

Quiara Alegría Hudes 49:16

I have no idea. I think it just popped into my head. But now that I'm saying it, I'm like, is that a thing that librarians say?

Traci Thomas 49:22

Maybe I don't know if you're a librarian, let us know,

Quiara Alegría Hudes 49:25

But yeah, we follow her into the library. She's in Pittsburgh. She's run away from home, and she's not admitting to herself. We the reader, know if she's left her daughter, then we are tracking her journey of leaving, and she hasn't yet admitted that that's what she's doing to herself. And so it's almost the first time she verbalizes it on her journey, she says to this librarian who kind of the library can sniff out. Okay, this she's not familiar with this place. Let me see if she needs a new con, you know, a conversation or some attention, and she works up the courage. And April asks the librarian, yeah, do you have any books about a mother who leaves their child? And that's the first time we hear we really clock in the novel. This is what's on her mind, and the fact that there's a list in response, I think blows April's mind. She's going what I thought I was alone in the world, but Joni Mitchell put her daughter up for adoption, and there's a biography about her, and like Medea, and you know, there's a few on the list. And to know, not only is she not alone, but these people have stories on library bookshelves. That's an important place to be. She knows that

Traci Thomas 50:49

Like a legitimate place, it's for legitimate people.

Quiara Alegría Hudes 50:51

It's like their stories matter too. Let me check that out.

Traci Thomas 50:56

Yeah, okay. I just have like, two more questions for you, maybe three. One is something I ask everybody, which is, what's a word you can never spell correctly. Spell correctly on the first try?

Quiara Alegría Hudes 51:04

Schuylkill. Schuylkill River in Philadelphia.

Traci Thomas 51:07

I've never even heard that word.

Quiara Alegría Hudes 51:09

Are proper nouns allowed in this in this response, because I typed it a million times. Okay, so Siddhartha finds his River. He becomes a ferry man, and the river teaches him, and he kind of gets enlightenment through the river. And so I was like, I want to have a scene that parallels that. So she's going to walk along the Schuylkill River, which is behind the art museum in Philadelphia. And it's like, I couldn't spell it for you right now, if I tried, S, c, h, u, y, l, k, y l, l, or something like that. Yeah, there's some why unexpected y's in there and ch's and K's and so, yeah,

Traci Thomas 51:43

okay, okay, for people who love this book, what are some other books that you would recommend to them that are in conversation, besides Siddhartha with The White Hot

Quiara Alegría Hudes 51:54

Yeah, so I would recommend Frankenstein, Obviously, Frankenstein

Traci Thomas 52:01

For any book, it's in conversation with Frankenstein. Anything ever written since 1818, is in conversation with Frankenstein.

Quiara Alegría Hudes 52:07

Well, I mentioned, I already mentioned, Elena Ferrante and Jamaica Kincaid and Toni Morrison. So let me, let me think of some that are not that The Door by Magda Szabo was another book that influences a lot of stunning, stunning books. I read, a book called Bad Girls by Camila Sosa Villada, that's phenomenal. And it's her, it's about her life as a travesty, which is her word. She says at the beginning, I'm not using the word trans here. I find that word clinical. I find it forensic. I'm a travesty. And she tells these stories about her life. And Forbidden Notebook by Alba de Cespedes, which is a really, really cool book. So those, those are three I would recommend.

Traci Thomas 52:56

Okay, I'm excited to check them out. And then here's my last question for you, if you could have one person dead or alive read this book, who would you want it to be?

Quiara Alegría Hudes 53:05

Oh, my God, you've you've flummoxed me. I mean, I think about people in in my family, and this book is not really, really, really, I want to emphasize it is not based on anyone, okay. But after I wrote it, my mom called me. She said, You know, it made me think of all the women in our community who ran away. And I was like, damn, let's talk about that. And she reminded me I had forgotten, because their kids were raised by other women then instead in the community. But I'm thinking of, I'm thinking of my aunt Margie, who's passed, and she's not with us anymore. And, no, she she kept some of her kids and did not raise other ones. And I would be so curious to have her read it and say, let's talk. What does that what does that experience actually like?

Traci Thomas 53:57

I love that. All right, everybody, as you're listening to this, The White Hot is out in the world, wherever you get your books. As I mentioned before, I listened to some of the audiobook, though, I mostly read it off the page. I think I listened to like, five minutes just to hear Daphne Rubin Vega, because, you know, I'm a theater girl, Mimi's my dream role. Okay, that was the role I was meant to play, that I never got to play. Aged out, but I wanted to hear her read it, and she does a fantastic job. But Quiara, thank you so much for being here.

Quiara Alegría Hudes 54:26

Really fun to talk.

Traci Thomas 54:27

This was awesome. Thank you and everyone else, we will see you in The Stacks. All right, y'all that does it for us today. Thank you so much for listening, and thank you again to Quiara for being our guest. I'd also like to say a huge thank you to Peter Dyer for helping to make this episode possible. Our book club pick for November is We the Animals by Justin Torres, and we will discuss the book on Wednesday, November 26 with Mikey Friedman. If you love this podcast, if you want inside access to it, head to patreon.com/thestacks to join The Stacks Pack, and you can check out my newsletter at Tracithomas.substack.com be sure you're subscribed to The Stacks wherever you listen to your podcasts, and if you're listening through Apple Podcasts or Spotify, please leave us a rating and a review for more from The Stacks. Follow us on social media @thestackspod on Instagram, threads, Tiktok and now YouTube, and you can always check out our website at thestackspodcast.com. This episode of the stacks was edited by Christian Duenas, with production assistance from Sahara Clement. Our graphic designer is Robin McCreight, and our theme music is from Tagirius. The Stacks is created and produced by me, Traci Thomas.

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