Angie Cruz in Conversation With Nelly Rosario PDF

Angie Cruz in Conversation with Nelly Rosario
Author(s): Angie Cruz and Nelly Rosario

Source: Callaloo, Vol. 30, No. 3, Prose Fiction and Non-Fiction Prose: A Thirtieth Anniversary
Issue (Summer, 2007), pp. 743-753
Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/30139270 .
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A C
N R
Photo
by
Paolo
Piscitelli
(c)
2007
Photo
by
Jerry
Bauer
(c)
2007
ANGIE CRUZ IN CONVERSATION WITH NELLY ROSARIO
The
following
conversation took
place
in real and constructed time.
ANGIE CRUZ:
What
is
your
first
experience
with
Callaloo;
when was the first time
you
heard about it?
NELLY ROSARIO: All
hearsay,
calls for submissions.
CRUZ:
This
was when
you
were at Columbia or MIT?
ROSARIO:
[R.U.E.
-Resist the
Urge
to
Explain.
When
writing dialogue
in
fiction,
resist delib-
erate
exposition.]
CRUZ:
["I
will tell the truth because
writing
dies when we lie"
(I
am
paraphrasing
Gabriel
Garcia
Marquez,
via the
playwright,
Jose Rivera.]
Confession: I admit it . . . the fact that
you
went to MIT blows
my
mind. I'm
sorry,
no matter how much
you play
it
down,
it's
still a
big
deal. You can use both sides of the
brain,
moving
in and out of the left and
right
in
ways
that astonish me.
ROSARIO:
Thanks,
but it's not
playing
down-I
just
never
bought
into this idea of the
brain
being split
in two. I
just
follow what interests me. But about Callaloo . . . I
rarely
submitted because a novel in
progress
isn't
portable. Publishing
seemed
light years away
at the time. I'd
flip through
Callaloo back issues and liked that there were so
many
dif-
ferent
voices,
a nice
cross-section,
and of
course,
the themes. And
you, Lwhen
were
you
Callaloo-deflowered?
CRUZ: I remember
seeing
Callaloo when I was at
Binghamton,
an
undergrad.
It was on the
shelf of one of
my professors.
I loved the
spine,
its white with black
lettering,
and when I
pulled
it
out,
there was
always
that beautiful artwork on the
cover,
and
you're
like,
"iSo
this is where black writers
get published!"
I never sent
anything
to them-it was too
early
on for
me;
it was
intimidating.
* * *
CRUZ:
Many
of the writers I was
reading
in school were also
writing
for the
journal,
and I
enjoyed
the
interviews,
which reminded me that authors were human. But the first
connection I had with Callaloo aside from
just reading
the
journal
was when Lizabeth
Paravisini-Gebert and Consuelo
LOpez-Springfield
edited the Dominican Issue.
Callaloo 30.3
(2007)
743-753
CALLALOO
ROSARIO:
Yeah,
I remember
that,
Summer 2000. I was excited that it was so
hefty.
Not
just
some little
Brugal
tourist
pamphlet
or
something.
I still have the
issue,
still
going
through
it because there's so much material.
CRUZ: Even because to me that issue was radical.
Callaloo,
being
dedicated to the African
Diaspora, including
Dominicans,
was a
reality
check for all those Dominicans out there
calling
themselves Indios or white. Or on a more
positive
note,
the Dominican issue was
like a
homecoming.
Callaloo offered
us,
black-identified
Dominicans,
a
place
to
connect/
dialogue
with our extended
family throughout
the Americas.
Being
a
light-skinned
Latina,
it's
always
been
like,
"You're not
black;
you're
white." And then
you
have this
journal
for African-American
writers,
you
think "I
belong
in this world. And I've
always
known
I
belong
in
it,
in the African
Diasporic
world,
but in the
literary
world it's not so
clear,
especially
when
you're published
and
they're trying
to market
you,
and
marketing people
are
asking you questions
like "Are Dominicans black? What shelf do we
put you
on?"
ROSARIO:
zBlack?
Of course not.
Why
would
anyone
think such a
lovely thing
when
we've
got Sammy
Sosa,
Loida Maritza
Perez, Jose
Francisco Petia
GOmez, Josefina Baez,
Silvio
Torres-Saillant,
Aida
Cartagena
Portalatin,
Pedro
Martinez,
Jacqueline
Polanco,
Sergio Vargas, Manny
Ramirez...
CRUZ: I also
got
to know some of the Dominican writers abroad. Callaloo is
really good
about
linking
the here and there.
ROSARIO: It wouldn't
stay
relevant otherwise. The world
changes.
Labels
change.
When
I was
growing up
in
Brooklyn,
black
simply
meant African American.
Today,
"black" is
a more
expansive
label-as is "African American." Increased
immigration
of the Dias-
pora
to the U.S. is
teaching
this
country
to reconsider its
rigid
definitions of race. In
turn,
immigrants
are
learning
to redefine blackness as
having just
as well to do with
political
consciousness.
CRUZ:
Also,
the interconnectedness that we have with each other and the
multiplicity
of
our identities. I think about writers who are in Latin
America,
who are
extremely
urban,
and their work identifies culture to
hip-hop
or a
cityscape
in
ways
that . . . and
you juxta-
pose
them with Latin-American
writers-they
feel
very
far
away
from
us,
so the
way they
identify
is with African-American writers. And in some
ways
we are
mixing
and
sharing
and
developing
works that are
highly
influenced from each other.
ROSARIO:
We,
meaning...
CRUZ: We as Latinas
living
in these urban
landscapes. Especially
because we are both
from New York
City.
Now that we are in
Texas,
it feels
very
different,
but
being
from
New York
City,
I feel like I
grew up
in a black context. I was in a Dominican
community
but before us there were African
Americans,
and
right
across the street from
my
house
is where Malcolm X
got
shot,
and that
history
is there and
present.
So,
there is all this
744
CALLALOO
interconnectedness that Callaloo is
now,
and has been for a while in Central
America,
with
the Mexico issues and the Peruvian
issue,
they
are
showing
how we can't talk about one
thing
without the other.
ROSARIO: One of
my
favorite units in
grade-school
math was set
theory,
with its Venn
diagrams
(which
I've been
recently revisiting through my eight-year-old's
homework).
These
diagrams
articulate how I envision
myself
in relation to the world.
zWhere
do A and
B intersect?
zWhat's
similar
/
dissimilar about
A, B,
and C? So we're all
walking through
a
whole bunch of
circles,
and the sets are
always changing, depending
on
boundary
defini-
tions. In
(T)exas,
I'm now a
part
of the
(Y)ankee circle,
in addition to
already belonging
to
(B)lack, (M)other, (W)riter,
(F)aculty,
etc. circles.
CRUZ: In
Texas,
it seems New Yorker
trumps everything.
At the
supermarket
the cashier
will ask
me,
"Say
water." And when I
do,
they giggle
as if I had said the funniest
thing.
Had I been
younger,
I would've
gotten annoyed,
but in some
ways
it's
liberating. Being
Dominican is
totally
irrelevant in Texas. Unless someone has done mission work
there,
they
don't even know where DR is. I find
myself saying,
"It's an island in the Caribbean."
But in New
York,
everyone
knows what Dominican
is,
for the
good
and bad of it.
Here,
to be Dominican is not
something you
have to defend or talk about or
bring up.
In
my
writing,
in
particular,
I've let
go
of the need to
represent.
I have been
moving
around
way
too much in the
past
six
years
to feel tied to a fixed
place. Moving
around a lot liberates
the writer and liberates the characters. Not that I feel less Dominican or less
whatever,
but it
changes,
because different
things
become more relevant in different contexts. And
being
Latina,
whatever that means...
ROSARIO: You can forever
keep messing
with
groups
and circles
(and
messin' with
Texas).
They say
we Dominicans are fixated on
hybridity.
Race
complex
aside,
maybe
that
doesn't have to be such a bad
thing. My parents say
that Dominican and Chinese folks are
like white
rice,
able to live
everywhere.
So I notice
groups
with
layered
commonalities.
Dominican is not
my capital-letter
definition as a
person;
I also
capitalize
name,
month
I was born in. Whatever set defines
me, wonderful,
I'm down. Labels are elastic-which
is
why
I'm
allergic
to
flag-waving,
which to me sometimes smells like
throwing up gang
signs
(and,
at its most
demonic, fascism). Shit,
I'm even
starting
to
question
the notion of
countries,
constructions based on war
spoils
and
geopolitics,
with
ever-shifting
boundar-
ies. So if
you
look at Callaloo and
try
to
map
its
set,
it can
only
be as
far-reaching
as the
African
Diaspora
allows for. Should the worldview of what it is to be of the
Diaspora
shift,
then too should
Callaloo,
if it's true to its mission. And that
ability
to flow is what I find
exciting, invigorating.
If Callaloo
stays
within too narrow a
circle,
it'll lose relevance. That
it's survived three decades
speaks
for itself.
CRUZ: The
great thing
about Callaloo is that
they
don't
expect
a certain kind of
writing
from
you. They're actually happy
to see writers from the
Diaspora writing
what
they
want
to write. It's a free
space,
which is
really great.
There's a lot of
experimental writing.
* * *
745
CALLALOO
ROSARIO: So
Angie, querida
water
sign,
if
you
had to burn a
book,
zwhich
would it be
and
why
and where?
CRUZ: I wouldn't burn it. I would
pulp
it and use it for
insulation,
which I am told is a
new trend with books that don't sell.
They
line
up
the walls with
books,
then
put
sheetrock
over them.
Crazy, zno?
The book that comes to
mind,
is the The Bell Curve.
(Can't
believe I
even remember the
title,
but there
you go.)
Came out in the
mid-nineties,
where Hernstein
&
Murray
write about the connections between race and
intelligence.
Ridiculous.
zAnd
you?
You must have a book in mind.
ROSARIO:
Actually,
no. The idea's
appalling
to me. I asked
only
because it's one of those
mundane
questions
I've been
wanting
to ask someone for some time. And I'm
glad you'd
prefer
to
put
the book to more
practical
uses.
Burning
a book
just brings
to mind so much
ugly history,
which is
why
I
dig
German
poet
Heinrich Heine's
inscription
on a concentra-
tion-camp
memorial: Wherever
they
burn books
they
will
also,
in the
end,
burn human
beings.
* * *
ROSARIO: You mention Callaloo's
openness
to
experimentation.
Yeah,
Callaloo's a conversa-
tion,
our
very
own
Babel,
where we all
speak
different
genres:
fiction,
poetry, screenwriting,
art,
and
yes,
criticism and academic
writing.
CRUZ: Well
you
wrote that fantastic
piece
on sancocho
recently
for Callaloo. I think that's
probably
one of
your
most academic works . . . and
your
fiction is so
controlled,
even
though
it seems
completely playful.
ROSARIO:
Soup
is so not academic. That's
why
I stewed it in that
pot.
That's
why
the
MLA
style
tastes
funny.
I like both formulas and
upsetting
forms.
CRUZ: When
you
visited Texas A&M to do a
talk,
I revisited
your
work,
especially Song
of
the Water
Saints,
and
thought, "My goodness,
the
way
she constructs her
sentences,
it's
almost like . . .
science!"
As if
you
made
up
a new
language,
the
way you
write in
English
but the
poetic
is in
Spanish,
so hard to do. And it's consistent.
ROSARIO: But
everyone
does make
up language
when
they speak-children
do
it,
and
you
and I do it all the time when we
hang.
I like to see how
people
work
language.
When I
was
looking
at
your manuscript
for
Soledad,
we
constantly
talked about this issue of code-
switching:
when to use
Spanish,
when to use
English.
At the same
time,
that
question
does
make
you incredibly well-equipped,
with a wider
palette
at
your fingertips.
CRUZ:
Recently
I was
looking
at some old
work,
especially
because I've been
spending
all this time in
Europe,
and the new cities
seep
into
you; you
don't want
it,
you
are resist-
ing
because
you
want to
stay
true,
whatever true is.
But,
of
course,
you
are
changing
in
746
CALLALOO
ways
that are
terrifying.
A whole new set of
identity
issues to
grapple
with. I was
looking
at some of the work that I
produced
in France and
Italy,
and I was
like,
what have I done
this
year,
what did I do last
year,
and I realized I did all this
writing
in
Italy
but I shelved
it. And it was work that "didn't count." A
year
later,
when I reread
it,
I
thought, "zWho
was this
person
who wrote this
work,
and
why
did I trash it so
easily?"
I threw it
away,
because I
thought,
"This isn't what
Angie
Cruz is
supposed
to be
doing."
I know that I
should be free to write
any
which
way
I
want-tone,
story,
etc.-because if
not,
we're
lying
to ourselves. At the same
time,
when I was
reading
it,
I
said,
"This feels like it was written
by
a white
man,
or an Italian
man,
or
perhaps
a French
woman,
but not a Dominicana from
the
Heights."
And then I'm
thinking, zWhy
do I still have that
censorship problem?
If it's
coming naturally
from
me,
then it's
exactly
what I should be
doing.
That was a
wake-up
call. Or a
maturity
call.
then i awoke and
dug
that
if
i dreamed natural dreams
of being
a natural woman
doing
what a woman does
when she's natural
i would have a revolution
-Nikki
Giovanni,
from
"Revolutionary
Dreams"
ROSARIO: Who
yuh playin'
Mas
for?
as the Trinis
say. Writing's
all carnival
anyway,
dress-
up
and
nudity
all in one. I like that
you're
not afraid to
figuratively
do both in
your
work,
how
you
allow
yourself
to "blow out"
pages
first and
get
out ideas. It's been an
amazing
and
inspiring process
to watch
your progress
in the
ten-plus years
I've known
you,
how
we've
grown
as writers
y
hermanas in that time.
So, then,
zwhat exactly
is
"Angie
Cruz
supposed
to be
doing"
now that the alarm clock's
gone
off?
zWhat's
her ideal voice?
CRUZ: That's
just
the
problem, Nelly:
there is no ideal voice. There's so
much,
obviously
once
you're published,
for me at least. I wrote
Soledad,
and
people
wanted more
Soledad,
and
they
would
say, "zWhy
don't
you
have more Flaca?" and
"zwhy
don't
you
do more
of this?" When I wrote Let it Rain
Coffee, they
were
like,
"This is so
heavy, compared
to
Soledad." The reaction I
get
is
"you
should write more like this" and
"you
should do more
of
this,"
and
you keep thinking,
"Well,
no. I can't write that book
again.
Or
maybe
I
can,
but
I'm not interested in
writing
that book
again,
I'm interested in
writing
other
things."
ROSARIO: I feel less
loyalty
to readers than to the
integrity
of the
story,
above
expectation.
When the
writing gets
too
easy,
I don't trust
it,
lose interest. It's
good
to be brave and
try
putting
out a different beat. So
you're right: you
don't want to
keep writing
the same
story
keep writing
the same
story keep writing
the same
story keep writing
the same
story.
CRUZ: I hear
you
about
staying
fresh,
but
mujer,
when one is
exposing
oneself,
trying
something
new for the first
time,
the
second-guessing
hits me like a truck. I've written
tons and tons of
pages
of all sorts of
things,
but when I'm about to show someone what
I'm
doing,
I'm
like,
"i0h
no!
zIs
this even
good? zAm
I allowed to write this
way?" zWhy
747
CALLALOO
am I
having
that
thought?
Of
course,
when I'm
writing
I'm
free,
it's
just
me and the
page
and
nobody
has to see
it;
but when
you get
out
there,
even if we don't want
to,
at least
with
me,
I feel that I'm
always
asked to
represent
in some
way.
Or I am
asking myself.
ROSARIO:
[Apassive
construction occurs when the one
performing
the action is not the
grammati-
cal
subject of
the
sentence.]
Funny
that
you
should
say
"I'm allowed" or "I'm
being
asked"
in the
passive
voice. It's a formless
drooling
blob, then,
that makes demands on the writer.
And there's
something
to be said about the
legacy
of
dictatorship
in all of this
personal
censorship.
About
my writing, my
father often cautioned me with tales of
journalists
who
got
in trouble for what
they
wrote: "The fish dies
by
its mouth."
CRUZ: That's what's so fun about
writing
fiction.
Thinking
about
it,
sometimes I watch the
news and
say, "zWhat
kind of world do we live in?
Who
are these
people making
these
crazy
decisions and
why
are we
living
in it?
LAnd
what can we do?" Fiction is one of those
last
places
where the world is bound between these
pages,
and
you
can sit with it for a while
and
imagine humanity
in a
completely
different
way.
Without all the
gloss
of
image
. . . It's
a
place
to dream and it's a
place
to look at
yourself through
the
characters;
again,
it's like
the
person you
are
connecting
with,
it's
connecting
with the issues that
you
have within
yourself.
This idea of
permission
and
working,
I think about
it,
and I
say "eyou
know what?
Of
course,
I want to write without
censoring myself."
We're
lucky:
If
you
look at a lot of '80s
Chicano
writers,
you
can tell that there was a burden or need to write certain stories.
ROSARIO: All stories have been
written, sure,
but it's
just
the
angle.
I don't want to shoot
from the
top-down anymore;
I want to shoot from the
bottom-up,
which is
why
I've been
trying
to write in
first-person
or what
Emily
Raboteau called
"narrowing."
I want to
give
voice to characters who see the world a little
skewed,
who see the world in a
way
their
bios don't let on. That makes for a lot of
fun,
because with
people,
I'm
always finding
exceptions.
I like the
unlikely partnerships,
the
unlikely thoughts.
* * *
ROSARIO:
Angie, zwhat's
been
your
favorite color 'n book
recently?
CRUZ: Green. But I wasn't even aware of it until I looked around and
everything
was
green.
The
landscape, my
house,
the sheets on the bed. As for books:
Half Of
Yellow Sun
by
Adiche,
The Inheritance
of
Loss
by
Desai,
and Cristina Garcia's most recent book was a
great
read,
Handbook
of
Luck.
* * *
CRUZ: I don't want to write the war in
my
next novel. I want to
imagine peace.
748
CALLALOO
ROSARIO:
Impossible, Angie. Mujer, you're
Dominican.
CRUZ: Unlearn the violence in
my language
in
my
actions.
My
Italian husband tells me
that I am violent when I
speak
because
English
is violent. We use words like "investment"
when we talk about love. Or "work" when we discuss
passion. Maybe
it's in code-switch-
ing
that we can invent a
language
for
peace. LYou're writing
about
war,
no?
ROSARIO: Virtual war. The
way
the world seems to be
doing things
more and more virtu-
ally
is both
interesting
and
disturbing
to
me,
how it's
severing relationships, accountability,
courage, sincerity,
um, sex,
and a host of other matters of the human heart. I
mean,
even
this conversation is
happening
in fractured
time,
through phone
and e-mail. I wish we
could've transcribed the real face-to-face conversations
you
and I've had
throughout
the
years, say, eating your hubby's amazing
food at
your
house or
sitting
in the
park
while
my daughter
runs around. The unreal conversation we recorded in real time over the
phone
was
way
too lecture-voiced for me.
zWhat's
a conversation without shared
food,
without the rest of the senses?
* * *
ROSARIO: I have to
say
that I admire
your energy
and how much
you
advocate for others'
work,
creating
that
space
wherever
you
can,
nudging open
doors a bit more for others.
Women in Literature & Letters
(WILL)
was where I saw
your powers
in full effect. Most
grad
students in MFA
programs
don't do what
you
did then with the resources
you
had
available at NYU. And
(I'll
deliberately expose)
the
organization you
co-founded
helped
bring together amazing
women writers of
color,
both established and
aspiring.
I think back
to
my
time in
grad
school and realize
that,
for
me,
WILL filled a lot of the cultural voids
at Columbia. It was
through
WILL that I met wonderful Caribbean writers like Lorna
Goodison,
Edwidge
Danticat,
and Dolores Prida.
CRUZ: It's not so difficult to
open
doors or windows for others. Not if
you
think in abun-
dance and believe the universe will take care of
you.
Think about
Charles,
who has
given
his life over to Callaloo. So
many
writers honor him for
opening
those doors and even
more so for
creating community.
ROSARIO: There's a certain
generosity
that comes with
writing-not only
in
putting
out
ideas,
but also in
allowing
other
people
that same forum. You
speak
of
Charles,
whose
energy always
astounds
me,
but I also remember
you
on the floor of
your apartment
in
Washington Heights, licking
stacks of
stamps
and
envelopes
to send out invites to WILL
events;
organizing workshops
with, like,
no
money
but
powers
of
persuasion
and faith
and
connections;
a
Walking
Human-Resources
Department,
I
always joke
about how
you
hook
people up,
often without
thinking
twice. You've
taught
me that activism's also a
part
of
teaching
and
writing,
an
obligation
to serve in the
way
so
many people
have done for
me,
people
who had faith and
pushed
me
forward,
when I had dreams but no idea what
749
CALLALOO
was
going
on half the
time; "OK,
talk to this
person"
or "send this here." Naive
altruism,
maybe,
but I do think
"marginalized
writers" are as
responsible
for
keeping
our literature
breathing
as the
publishing industry
is,
if not more.
CRUZ: I think that as
immigrants
we have a
very particular psyche,
in the
way
that we
came
here,
or at least the
way my family
came
here-you
know,
they
came here and
they
felt
lucky
to be in the U.S. and
they
worked
really
hard and tried not to create
any prob-
lems and
they
tried to save as much as
possible
to
go
back,
which
they
never
will,
not in
the
way
that
they imagined,
and in some
ways
there's this
pride
in that "we were able to
do this on our
own,
we don't owe
anybody anything."
ROSARIO: Claro.
CRUZ: I think as
immigrants
we do suffer from that a little
bit,
but it's not
necessarily
a
bad
thing,
because it
gives you
an
ambition,
an
independence,
a self-initiative that
maybe
other
people might
not have because
they're
still
waiting
for
something
to
happen
or are
heavy
with disillusionment. As
immigrants,
we know that we can't
wait,
because if we
don't
grab
it,
it's not
going
to
happen.
But then there's this idea that
everyone
has to be
trying
to make their own shit
happen
(that
doesn't
work,
either-not all the
time),
when
really,
if
you
look at the
way
that a lot of writers have risen in the
U.S.,
it's
through
their
friends
/
community.
If
you
look at a lot of the writers who are
published, they
went to the
same
schools,
they
went
through
the same
programs, they helped
each
other;
they
arrived
in a certain
way
because of each other. It's a club. It's real. It's not that
you
can't be
part
of
that club
through
hard
work,
but there's a club. I've been
really
blessed in a lot of
ways
because I
got
a lot of
help
in the
beginning
of
my
career from fantastic
people.
I remember
when Cristina Garcia was asked to do a book review. She didn't have time-this was
way
before Soledad was
published.
So I
got
the call from the
Washington
Post. For
me,
it was
huge.
I had never done one before.
Basically,
she
taught
me that if
you
can't do
it,
recommend
somebody
else:
you
can
open
doors that
way
for writers who don't have access.
ROSARIO:
And,
of
course,
there are those who want to
pick mangoes
too low off the
tree.
CRUZ: That's true as well. But
really
if
you're
not
doing great
work,
you
could recommend
everyone
until
you're
blue,
and it doesn't mean that
they're going
to
get
ahead.
Really,
I
think in the end it's the work that takes
you
where
you
need to
go.
ROSARIO: I'm
100%
with
you
on that. To be
honest,
the label
"marginalized" gives
me
pause,
because it leans on a
hyper-preoccupation
with white folks' exclusion. I want to
work from a
position
of
strength,
not weakness. And
leaning
on a sense of
oppression
just
doesn't work for me. Of course there will be
walls,
but I'm
trying
to choose the
path
of least resistance to
my gifts,
the
places
I feel most nurture and hold dear what I have
to
offer,
the
people
who elevate rather than lower. The
strength
that
develops
from that
kind of
support
becomes
part
of what
changes
the world and creates new
spaces.
And
750
CALLALOO
you prove
that we all have the
ability
to do that for each
other,
even in the smallest
ways:
a forwarded
email,
a word of
encouragement,
a look-see at a
manuscript,
a shout-out.
* * *
CRUZ:
zWhat
have
you
been
reading,
what is on
your
bed stand that
you've
been think-
ing
about,
that
you've
been drawn to?
ROSARIO: Student
manuscripts.
CRUZ:
OK,
you've
been
teaching
too much.
ROSARIO:
Actually, every
nanosecond or
so,
I'm
trying
to read Roberto Bolario's
Savage
Detectives on the recommendation of a
poet
friend,
Sheila Maldonado
(who's
causing
a
ripple
effect).
Totally up my alley,
that Bolario:
working language
and
playing
and
being
wicked and
going
buck-wild. We've been
having
so much fun with that
book,
and it's tak-
ing
me a
long
time-a book to be devoured but not read
quickly.
And then there's architect
Antoni Gaudis
biography by Gijs
Van
Hensbergen,
which is research.
CRUZ: Because
your
new novel has a lot to do with
Gaudi,
no?
ROSARIO: The
setting
is. The narrative's a roundabout conversation with his work. The
biography might
be a total
yawner
to someone else. But I'm
steeped
in it because I was
able to see Gaudf's work in
person
this
summer,
no
longer
abstraction for me. A lot of it
can be
overintellectualized,
and
you
can see how in architecture there's a lot of
that,
just
as with
writing
and literature. I like some
theory
with
my
coffee,
but also don't like to
get
so lost in
meaning
behind
meaning
behind
meaning.
CRUZ: But in the end
writing
stories is about entertainment. I came to
writing through
reading
because I fell in love with the head
trip
/
adventure where books were able to take
me.
"kWhy
aren't we more
passionate
when we talk about books?!
izWhy
don't we
just
let ourselves
go?!"
ROSARIO: Entertainment is
great,
but-
CRUZ: And not entertainment in the
way
of
pornography.
But,
you
know,
igood
stories!
Especially
when I teach I
say, "zHow
do I
get my
students to understand what a
good story
is?" A
good story
is one that has to
stay
with
you,
that
you
can retell in some
way.
ROSARIO: True . . . the HBO Rome series I
just
finished is
totally
vile,
and I feel toxic watch-
ing.
First time I
got
hooked on a
telenovela,
and it was damn
good
and about time.
751
CALLALOO
CRUZ:
zHow's
that
going, you
and the
page?
ROSARIO: Me and the
page
are
just talking.
CRUZ: I know
you're having
a
really good
moment,
just writing.
ROSARIO:
Yes,
Texas is messin' with
me,
the first time in a while that I've been able to
engage
the work without the noise. New York's
hyper-stimulating.
It's
nice,
but
my
mind
was cluttered.
Also,
really interesting
moments are
happening
in
my
interactions with
people
here-a lot of the
questions
in the novel are
working
their
way
into
my waking
life,
and some are
being
answered in their
own,
strange ways.
It's a
blessing
to be
here,
to
have
space,
access to
land,
to
breathe,
and to be able to sit on
my deck(i!)
and
pump
out
part
of a
chapter
at six in the
morning.
CRUZ: It's so
amazing
how
landscape changes
the work.
ROSARIO:
Oh,
the work has lots of insects in it now.
CRUZ:
Well,
the schools
may
not be so
diverse,
but there's a lot of
biodiversity.
I find
myself
more relaxed in Texas and
my
work slowed down a lot.
ROSARIO:
Yeah,
you've
had
triple-whammy
life
changes
in the
past
two
years: marriage,
pregnancy,
relocation from NY to TX.
LHow's
that for
your writing?
You talked about
Europe
and how it influenced
you.
CRUZ: One of the
biggest
influences is
learning
Italian. When I'm in
Italy, very
few
people
speak English,
so I have to
speak
Italian. And of course that affects
your rhythm.
And I'd
lost a lot of
Spanish,
so
recently
when I went to the Dominican
Republic,
I was
mixing
my
Italian with
Spanish.
And of course
my
characters think in
Spanish,
but now
they're
sounding
a little Italian even
though they're
in the Dominican
Republic.
A mess. All these
constant
changes, they
make it a little difficult to find a tone. You were
talking
about tone
and
lighting. Really
difficult,
because I can't find the music in
my story,
and I'm like
"zwhy
can't I
get
it
right?"
I think there're too
many
influences
now,
too
many
directions. But I
think it's
good
too,
because I feel like I'm
playing
on a wider
plane
as a writer. I'm
grow-
ing,
but it's
going
slower. When
you're taking
on more
terrain,
and I think this is one of
the benefits of
reading
all the
European
novels because
they
are so
psychological
in
ways
that other works that I had been
reading
were more visceral and
physical,
and sometimes
you keep
out the
psychological
or
philosophical.
More of that is
coming
in,
the internal life
of
my
characters is
coming
out,
and
you
need to slow down to make that
happen. They
don't arrive as
fast,
because
you
have all that stuff
going
on,
and I think that's
great.
I'm
happy
that is
happening
in
my
work. But it's also
happening
because
you
look out the
window and there's
something scurrying
across the
yard.
Nature chills.
So,
I chill.
752
CALLALOO
ROSARIO:
Everything's
alive around
you. [Daughter screaming
in
background,
a
spider
eating
a
fly's leg.]
CRUZ: The air is thick and it's hot and
you
move slower.
People say
hello to
you
on the
street. In
ways,
I felt like when I was
working
in New
York,
you're
on a train and
you're
not
looking
at
people sitting
next to
you
all the time. You have to
think,
"I'm
going
to look
at
people sitting
next to me
today"-you
make that conscious choice.
ROSARIO: After I
gave
birth,
in
fact,
I found
myself connecting
to
people
and
respect-
ing my
characters much more. It's
easy
to write a 2-D
villain,
not
bring
out the asshole's
humanity. Post-partum,
I was
like,
"Everyone
has had someone who went
through
what
I did to have this child." So I'm interested to find out how the
experience
of
giving
birth
will manifest in
your writing.
CRUZ: I
already
feel a
change.
I do
everything
the moment I think of it or else it won't
get
done. And that has affected
my
work. If I think I should work on
it,
then I work on it
right away.
There's no
space
for
procrastination.
ROSARIO:
[Extending
talk-show
mid] Entonces,
Angie, what
comes after Let It Rain
Cof-
fee?
CRUZ: You know writers hate that
question.
There is so much on
my plate.
Some short
stories,
the film
adaptation
for
Soledad,
and of
course,
a new novel.
OK,
there are two novels
I am
working
on
simultaneously,
and
maybe they
will become one. Or neither will make
it to the end. I am not worried. The
point
is I'm
working
in
my green
room that I'll soon
be
sharing
with a
baby boy.
And I
might
have to start
everything
from scratch.
-October,
2007
753

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Angie Cruz in Conversation with Nelly Rosario

Author(s): Angie Cruz and Nelly Rosario

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