Photo by Norma I. Quintana
Cristina García is the bestselling author of five novels: Dreaming in Cuban, The Agüero Sisters, Monkey Hunting, A Handbook to Luck, and The Lady Matador’s Hotel (coming in September 2010). Her book of poetry, The Lesser Tragedy of Death is also due out in 2010.
García's work has been nominated for a National Book Award and translated into a dozen languages. She is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Whiting Writers' Award, a Hodder Fellowship at Princeton University, and an NEA grant, among others.
Born in Havana and raised in New York, Garcia reaches deep into Cuban family life. Without slogans or stereotypes, she explores in her work the impact of the revolution on Cubans, at home and in the U.S. Her personal storytelling style and powerful imagery combine for a unique and memorable reading experience that gets better with each new book.
I recently had the great opportunity to meet up with Cristina Garcia and discuss her work and her life – and her two new books scheduled for release in 2010! Please take a few more minutes and read the interview below.
To learn more about Cristina Garcia and her work, visit her official website: www.cristinagarcianovelist.com.
Q. You have two books coming out in 2010, one novel and one work of poetry. Can you share a little bit about each work and what readers can expect?
Sure. The book of poetry, The Lesser Tragedy of Death, is exceedingly personal—a kind of faux biography about my younger brother, who’s been battling drug addiction from the time he was twelve. For me it was a way to chronicle these anguishing stories and break the familial silence and shame around them. My brother’s tale is a complex one and my complicity in it also comes under unsparing scrutiny.
My fifth novel, The Lady Matador’s Hotel, will be published in September by Scribner. It’s set, for the most part, in a luxury hotel in an unnamed Central American capital on the eve of that country’s presidential elections. It’s a country with a long, sordid history of civil war (think: Guatemala) and the lives of the main characters grow increasingly intertwined over the course of a week. They include: a Japanese-Mexican matadora, in town for a historic battle of lady matadors; a Korean textiles manufacturer who has a pregnant, underage mistress ensconced in the honeymoon suite; an ex-guerrilla who’s now a waitress in the hotel coffee shop; and many others.
Q. I always thought of you as a poet more than a novelist – the magic, the imagery, the culture. When you sit down to write, do you consider genre at all? Which do you prefer?
This may sound odd but as a writer, I’m more naturally a novelist but as a reader, I’m more naturally a poet. For me, one couldn’t exist without the other. I’m finding, though, that the excruciatingly personal is best dealt with (for me, anyway) through the distillation and intensity of poetry. There’s no place to hide in a poem. It’s much less forgiving than a novel.
Q. You have a very interesting writing ritual. Can you discuss what you do before you begin writing?
It’s all about the poetry again! I read an hour or two of poetry—sometimes randomly, sometimes with a somewhat purposeful randomness—before I even think about putting any of my own words to paper. For me this is part of an inviolate ritual I do while writing the first draft of my novels, and often well into more advanced drafts.
Q. For readers less familiar with your work, where should they begin reading your works?
For Angelenos, I’d recommend starting with the last novel, A Handbook to Luck. A lot of it is set in L.A. as well as Las Vegas, and deals with the multiplicity of migrations here through the particulars of my characters’ journeys and dislocations from Iran, El Salvador, and, of course, Cuba. It’s a book that is all about calculating the odds and mishaps of moving from one place to another.
Q. What book are you reading right now? And what writers do you feel deserve more attention than they currently receive?
I’m in the middle of re-reading Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, which is more fantastic each time I do so. I’m preparing to teach a spring course on the classics of the Golden Age of children’s literature, which began in 1865 with the publication of Lewis Carroll’s masterpiece.
I feel that our society’s hunger for the latest, the newest, the most cutting edge is blinding us to the slow beauty of many great classics. I’m a big fan of Giuseppe de Lampedusa’s The Leopard, for example, but my graduate students nearly staged a riot when I made them read it.
Q. As a daughter of Cuban exiles, you grew up with two very distinct cultures. What advice do you have for children or parents caught between two cultures?
Embrace them both. It’s not a question of either/or, better/worse, win/lose. We live in such a dichotomous culture sometimes that we find it difficult to reconcile what seems, on the surface, irreconcilable. I’d also insist on keeping another language alive at home, if at all possible. My daughter is beautifully fluent in Spanish and has now taken to correcting my misuse of the subjunctive.
Q. You were a journalist before becoming a novelist. How has your experience in nonfiction affected your fiction writing?
It’s a fairly dim memory at this point! But the most salient aspect of journalism that continues to help me is an ability to research, digest, and translate a lot of background information for my characters. Whether it’s the natural world of Cuba, the history of the Chinese migration to the island, or the fine points of Texas hold ‘em, I can still absorb and distill what I need to pretty quickly. Fortunately, I’m no longer beholden to sleep-depriving deadlines.
Q. What’s next for Cristina Garcia?
I’m collaborating with the composer Richard Danielpour on an opera libretto set in 1920s Cuba. I’m also in the research phase for a new novel on the last days of the world’s longest reigning dictator (guess who?!). Finally, my daughter will be going off to college next fall and I’m headed to northern New Mexico, where my husband and I just bought a little ranch. Now if only I can keep the coyotes from luring away my sweet dog . . .
For more great interviews, check out the Author Interview Series from Frank Mundo, the LA Books Examiner.
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