weekends on c-span2. saturday, american history and tv documents this story. on sunday, and tv brings you latest on nonfiction books and authors. >> committed to affordable internet. engaged in that. along with this television company support c-span2 is a public service. reflecting on her experiences growing up in puerto rico and miami be back she i think of as

a wisconsin author. i met her two years ago. she attended the wisconsin institute as a creative writer as a fellow for a year. that was right at the time the book was being published or acquired. it was all happening. i've been inking about this event for two years. it just so happens that we had a break in the middle. it is open, eloquent and they look at life and how secure. if you are a fan of educated or heavy, you know the passion that you will find inside these patient hundred pages. i encourage you to buy a copy of this book. but, it is such a pleasure to be here to hear directly from her today. please welcome her onto the stage.

[applause] >> hi. thank you all so much for being here. i especially want to thank you, connor. thank you for the wisconsin book festival and for everyone who made this possible. i am really happy to be back in madison. back in 2018, visiting a professor. every time i come back i am always welcome was so much hospitality and kindness. i want to send my gratitude for all of you for being here. everything that iq for books, actually remember our ordinary goal. talk about 12 right i don't want

a struggling writer but yes. i was in undergrad and kind of new to writing, but also just kind of really not sure what this story was of what i was trying to say. it took 12 years to finally get there. i realize the story that i was writing was not just a memoir. it was not just a story about me it was about my community and these girls that i call ordinary girls. and, i realized that i had a certain responsibility. i felt like i had a responsibility to tell a story that was not mine. that was about us and for us. the story of a very specific kind of girlhood.

into the housing projects. in miami beach when i was growing up. once i figured that part out, how it was not just my story, seeking a larger truth. so, i wanted to read to you some early chapters. i promise that i will not read for too long. and then we can have a conversation about the questions i guess, what you have to know is that it happens in puerto rico. the years 1985. it is the story of my parents marriage. and lots of secrets start coming up. at the time i really understand what was happening.

the first time she saw my father she was in high school. he was in college. she lied about her age. by the time she was 14, already leaving her to care for two of her sisters. 12-year-old and 1-year-old while she was at work. my father says he did not know my mother's real age that she told him she was 18 that he found out only when mercy caught them in red. my mother says he did not really find out until they were applying for their marriage license a week later when he finally got a look at her birthday. my father had been a college activist. protesting the occupation and studying literature. writing pohlman's about american

colonialism. my mother so young, so desperate to leave her abusive mother. in love with my father. would have done anything to keep him. sometimes when i write this story, i think of my mother as the villain. tricking my father. knowing the exact time my grandma mercy would come home from work leaving the bedroom door unlocked. forcing him to become a husband, father, when what he really wanted to read books and save the world. maybe i would not be here if grandma mercy had not threatened to have him thrown in jail. sometimes, it is my father who is a villain the brilliant college student who pretended not to know his real age as he slithered his way into her bed. how he decided to ignore the school uniform and left on the

chair of her bedroom. we are different people now. more than 25 years. no matter how much they have changed, my mother loved my father obsessively. silently. even in years after their divorce. my father is a womanizer. absent. and it was after three children, after leaving puerto rico for miami. left her for the last time she started smoking crack. it is not just my mother's love for my father that destroyed her. it was also her own mother. and her children.

my older brother, my little sister and me. especially me. by the time my mother was 22, she had three children. she had already been a mother for a third of her life. it was 1985. these were the. they can hear in a leopardskin loincloth looking like a virgin blaring from radios across united states. in one month, the space shuttle challenger would explode while all of america watched on television and entire classrooms full of kids, everyone eager to witness the first teacher ever launched into space. it applied several mascara apple red lipstick it and nail polish. she wore skintight jeans and no

matter where she was going, high heels. she dusted her cheeks with talcum powder after a bath. lotion to her arms and legs, perfumed her body. her hair. my mother loved lotion, perfume, makeup, clothing, shoes. the truth was i mother loved and enjoyed her body. she walked around her apartment naked. i was more used to seeing her naked body than my own. you should love your body, my mother would say. the woman's body is beautiful. no matter how big, how small, how old, how pregnant. this, my mother firmly believe. she would tell me over and over. she would teach me and my little sister about masturbation. giving us detailed instructions. she said that this was perfectly

normal. nothing to be ashamed of. my father only listen —-dash my mother knew all about madame a. my mother was puerto rican, but also american, she is like to remind us. she lived everything american. she shaved her legs in the shower and egg salad sandwiches served with potato chips for lunch i was supposed to like

them, but i had no interest in this. her dresses or the cells they sent from miami. i did not want to be barbie for halloween like my mother suggested. i wanted to be a ninja. i wanted to beat up 10,000 men like bruce lee. i wanted to catch frogs and play with "star wars" action figures. to fight with life sabers and build spaceships. i did not have a crush from the never ending story like my brother said teasing me. writing the luck dragon.

i wanted to be fierce and powerful jones. the woman warrior. i wanted her to be the one that save the princess. the one that the princess wants in the end. years later, during that first kiss, that first throbbing with my legs, it would be within older girl, we would steal my mother cigarettes, take them out back behind our building and light them up. she would blow her smoke past my face, stick her tongue in my mouth and slide her hand inside my shorts. how she would know just what to do without me having to tell her, this was everything. this much, so unafraid, getting everything she wanted and how willing i was to give it to her. i will pause there. thank you, so much.

[applause] >> i guess that we can take some questions. [laughter] i will take some questions if you want to have a conversation. there is a microphone over on that wall. thank you so much. >> first of all, i want to say thank you so much for sharing your story with us i read the book a couple years ago when it was published. i am really thrilled that you are here today to discuss it. >> thank you. >> i have some question. i have not read it in a while.

i apologize. you talk a lot about your grandmother in the book about her african heritage and blackness in puerto rican culture. i would like to hear your thoughts, as a child in puerto rico, whether you're blackness or the fact that your mother's whiteness without blackness set you more apart from your peers and some other children. what your experiences were with that peanut thank you for that question. i am afraid that the answer is kind of complicated. so, my father and my father's family is black. my mother and her family, my mother is white and her family is white.

the earliest conversations that we had about race were so violent. because my white grandmother was very, very racist. violently so. so, i am a child that i heard, my mother's mother, grandma mercy who was proud of being racist, off of her grandchildren , her own grandchildren. so, it was painful. that was the earliest conversations that had anything to do with race. and then my black grandmother, the person that was already's there, who basically raised us, wasn't one that was kinda resisting that and countering

that and talk to us about race in a way that is loving and acceptable and joyful. often talking about how the world would see us as a family. we are a black family. and then i started having recognition. we were out in the world. my black grandmother. sometimes people strangers thought that she was my nanny. that infuriated me. much more than my grandmother. the woman that was raising me. who had raised my father and my uncle who were black. i wanted people to see that blackness as beautiful. grew up feeling like the world did not see me as part of my

black family because i did not look like them. the world did not see me like part of my mother's white family because i did not look like them. i kinda felt like an alien in my own family because i did not look like anyone. i looked a little bit like my father in a little bit like my sister. i felt like i didn't fit anywhere. after leaving puerto rico, i realized different contacts in the united states, how people sell puerto ricans and how blackness in the united states, blackness and puerto rico sort of racist. it has a lot to do with colonialism. puerto ricans who are black retreated and a lot of it had to

do with racism. a lot of it had to deal with what happened, there is still this kind of myth that exists that is puerto ricans are a mix of european, african and that may be true in some puerto ricans are, some puerto ricans are just black and some are just white. i think that that myth exists. serving anti-blackness. kind of the race our blackness. i did not have a lot of this language until i got older. my boy left, my black boy left who was raising us, she just knew how the world treated her and how the world treated us when we are a family.

my white grandmother just hated the fact that my mother fell in love with the black man who had his children. my mother did not really know how to raise black children in the world. now is a grown woman, i feel like, certainly as a light-skinned woman, that i have a certain amount of privilege in the world treats me in a way that is different than my cousins in puerto rico that are visibly blackbeard i tried to talk to people about this. because i am aware of this. light-skinned black woman. even people in my own family are treated differently. part of it feels like it is a way that we think of blackness

in puerto rico and how we think of blackness in the united states. all of it feels kind of like a trap. it feels a lot like something that has to be, you know, thought about and worked through. a lot of work has to be done to undo that. it is predominantly black puerto rican women activists who are voicing, you know, voicing what happens. it is finally acknowledging their blackness. it is a process that i don't know if it will get better in my lifetime. that is a whole another. thank you for your question.

>> hi. >> thank you for your work and your voice and being here. i have two questions. pacing through your work by music and the music of your life the other question is, i heard through the grapevine that you are working on a novel. i am curious, do you shift between nonfiction and fiction. or can it be a day to day thing. is the process different for different, thank you. >> thank you for your question. >> the first question, if you read the book, you know that i studied music as a kid.

having a career in music in some way. i still very much obsessed with writing music even though i don't write music. i tried to approach the work in a similar way. i'm a church is studying music. i try to approach the writing in a way that feels similar. thinking of lyrics and time signatures and melody and harmony and things like that. it feels a lot like the competition. i am thinking about writing sentences and writing about that pacing a lot more about sound than just action. >> i am always thinking about music.

i usually have music in the background as i am writing. picking what i can kind of ignore and the rhythm is kind of there. helping to bring something forth sometimes i need something that is very loud to kind of change how i am feeling. always changing. i also write often in the same room. the same music. sometimes you are listening to opera, sometimes classical and sometimes old-school miami freestyle. so, that changes depending on the day. sometimes, they years themselves have an impact on what i am writing. i was writing a chapter called

girls monsters that move very fast. and it's very different than the chapter i am reading from. it moves through time and space in action in a way that feels like you are kind of propelled forward. trying to keep reading and catching up and it feels very chaotic. that was intentional. i wanted the reader to feel like they were in a place where the music was loud and things were moving fast. being very aware of the music we're listening to you during that time. was filled with violence. when we were teenage girls, we did not have the language to even criticize or think about that. even when we were singing this song's how much of our daily

life existed with the violence. i wanted the writer to see these things emerging here especially the music. i hope that that was helpful. .... ....

>> but for the most part to carry the's characters through this time and then to become a similar process to be a method actor but put yourself in the

mindset and all of that feels like play. even if i have to appeal of a character. when i am writing nonfiction. i have a lot more responsibility i am really - - writing about real people. but also to keep my story connected to the larger world and to let myself off the hook so to look at the memories i am writing about and think about how the truth is different depending on who you are. my truth is very different than the people i am writing about. so i have a responsibility to stay honest and focus on the

larger truth and emotional truth. but that does not feel like playing. that feels more like work. and then to kind of feel like i have a certain responsibility the responsibility of the fiction writer is different. you have a responsibility to yourself and to the art. into your community as well. and then you don't have to deal with the truth. necessarily. thank you for your questions. i'm happy to take more

questions. >> i have a follow-up when you write a memoir for the people in your life and how that works. how it your story and everyone has their own story that i can just imagine that could be complicated. >> thank you for your question. it is very complicated. so part of it feels like a negotiation and then to speak for anyone else.

there was a lot of tech out of this book is the people i was writing about our real people and then to consistently ask myself history is this and why am i writing it? what is the point? most of the people i wrote about except two of them who were not alive today and i don't ask for permission but i do change their names so they are not recognizable and you cannot google them. and i do tell them i am writing about them.

and they do that because i want to hold myself accountable to the truth and be responsible knowing that what im writing is not just serving my purpose but also consider with everyone else's story. especially because a lot of what i'm writing about took place and i was kids in it has to do with sexual violence. i thought about the stories i was writing and talking about fictional violence because especially in our communities with girls who are black and brown and working-class communities are silence and not listen to or believed. i wanted to talk about that and also go back to the systems that are silence.

they were ready to talk about it themselves. and then to talk first person plural to say and then to implicate myself and why am sharing them and why it's important to say these out loud. i felt like i was telling on us and telling our secrets layperson asked permission was my father he didn't look very well at this book i wanted to make sure it was okay with him that i shared some of this in

my father said yes. just tell the truth. that the relationship with my mother was complicated because as you read from the book so that felt like a violence. i asked myself what would the world look like people with disabilities and that felt like more violent so this woman who has complicated and abusive and then other ways i am just like her. that was something very important to do.

>> writing nonfiction and real people the questions you have to ask yourself in my hurting people? what is it i'm trying to say and in the end of myself and i'm trying to say without using someone else's story thank you for your questions. >> [inaudible]

>> thank you for the question so in 2019 it was reviewed in "the new york times" in one of the critiques was a lot of the moments that showed how i got my life together were glossed over. what my response to that critique. that was very very deliberate. i have resisted the urge to make this a story of resilience and survival. because i am still living this life every day is a struggle.

that was the performance of pain and then to come to be happy. rather than providing those moments of happiness and resilience. i wanted to resist the resilience narrative because what it does is it changes the focus of the story and then left at the end of the book like this is such a great story of survival. this is not a story of survival writer who is asking you to think of systems of oppression and asking you to think about the system that keeps people in poverty and the system that makes it those

who are victims of sexual assault or silence are not listen to. and that these things happen. let's go back to the beginning and think about that. the last chapter sexual violence and then to think about the ways that that are treated by a educational systems and then just wanted people to think about why a book like this is even written.

but it wanted to be a novel. if not that shows the main character finally happy that i wanted this to be an examination and that was a purposeful choice. >> . >> that's a great question. how do you know when your book is done and for me but then i have to keep working listen to tear agent but then you have

to complete one more draft then you have to write that one or two more times and it is never done. so for me the one question that i ask myself now that everything is polished and edited have a come here what items come here to say? and sometimes that happens in one draft. and then it needs a little polish sometimes it takes 17 drafts and it needs a lot of work because i haven't, what i said and asking to say. and then i give myself a few weeks and then after having read other things sometimes that gives me perspective.

and then finally i feel the satisfaction. but this took 12 years and some of the chapters were one week in some over the end course of the entire 12 years. and it is a lot more clear. i answers the question.

>> what have you learned? >> i learned that empathy and i learned a lot more about myself and how to think about my mother and her life and decisions and her agency and lack of agency i think that writing the book gave me the humility and the insight and the impact on —- to forgive myself and to forgive my mother but it prepared me to be the kind of woman who can

forgive someone like my mother again and again every time i have an interaction with my mother every single time i go to visit her i have to be prepared to forgive her before i walk in the door. survey time i pick up the phone and call her i have to be prepared to forgive her before she picks up the phone. otherwise it is a pull on me and my emotional health but otherwise i don't like myself. but interrogating my memories but also my relationship with other people made it so that i can do that and be a person who forgives.

>> . >> and out to set yourself emotionally? >> yes the question is what do i do to protect myself? i think self-care something that we talked about a lot now. on social media and sometimes in our groups and activist groups and friend groups. self-care for me is therapy. i have been in therapy for a while. before work before anything

else, friendship with my mental health right now takes precedence. is something that i have to do right now. so when i wake up, the first thing i do is meditate, exercise, i prioritize that. but also related to a therapy journal and it is examining and thinking all of the things i have to do to be well before i go out into the world to interact with people that's how it take care of myself but self-care is also the journey that i feel i will never be done with. for someone who suffers from mental illness and the pressure and ptsd. prioritizing my mental health

when i am interacting with my mother is something i have to do. and that forgiveness is part of that. thank you for that question. >> have you ever been told that you cannot write or they tell you to try writing about certain subjects or topics that are not politically correct? >> i'm not sure what you mean by not politically correct? >> if you wrote a draft of something you submit to a publisher or editor do they

ever tell you to change it or avoid it because it addresses a certain topic? do you know what i mean? >> when i am writing when i submit something in the manuscript, it's something of usually thought about for a long time. but that's not usually the reason why. i have been told that usually not the reason. does that have to do something

else. and then to take some time to work through this argument. but it hasn't been politically correct. that was the case, that something i would push back on. >> [inaudible] >> i don't have a single approach. and with the peace and the

essay. with the time period in what is trying to say. but always thinking about a larger purpose and a larger story and when i was writing this specifically i was thinking about other ways people like my mother and like myself that when we talk about mental illness or when mental illnesses talked about back in the day we were expected to be quiet about. now we can talk about that so other ways that we have been silenced and why it's important to talk about it and especially how much i needed it when we were 13 and 14 years old and feelings were vital and i was ill.

i needed professional help i needed to be medicated i needed something because i was desperate to die and how i needed some type of literature to reflect my reality so now i think someone like me who is struggling with mental illness and that myspace was reflected in the world. so i didn't find literature there are people like my mother or people like me. so i think about kids who suffer from mental illness in stories and books to see themselves represented they are represented as complete human beings and if they have

choices and to be represented where the characters and books that are typical who are heroes and whites this gendered heterosexual. so i think about that leader who talked about depression as what it was not as a romantic sad girl figure but something that was deadly in could've potentially killed me and they needed a book where people survived and people are complicated and not just mentally ill that with all

these other full lives. >> i'm curious about your father. >> my father is he is very smart and intelligent artist.

he is a man who loves to read and when i say he is an artist, he paints and as a poet and writes poetry and sometimes will write me upon and text it to me because that is how he woke up this morning. it's very complicated. he was withdrawn when i was growing up someone who is not raising me my grandmother for the most part was but so it's about women and girls. one of the story to focus on women and girls.

and those are the ones who saved me. so that felt like the one that needed to be in the book. if i ever write a book about my father i think it might be a novel. [laughter] he said just tell the truth. [laughter] then he bought the book for his friends and gave it to everyone. he doesn't care he's just proud. and also a man that it wasn't just only for me that now

after retiring he is writing poetry and painting and reading and living the life you imagined you live. and living the life he wanted to live. and you for that question. my father is also very handsome. very good-looking. [laughter] and everyone i have ever met talks about how good he does. that's my dad.

>> the supersecret young adult novel maybe we will hear back about in two weeks twitter or social all social media so i am very excited it's very different. i wrote it during the frenzy. we had ten minutes. . . . .

one of the later chapter there's called returning. miami 2008. it is halloween and my stepmom and her daughter partied at my stepsister's house, three bedrooms, a pool, everybody out on the pool deck. so many vampires. mistress in the dark, for different which is. i count for women in black costumes from the party supply store. a sexy leopard, clearly wearing something from fredericks of hollywood. come with your kids. another one on the way. her two girls, six and eight. i am the only one who does not have kids. when she sees me, she takes a

step back laughing and laughing. girl, you look crazy as hell mac. she checks out my blue ring pop. sticking out the back pocket of my baggy jeans. she covers her mouth. her eyes wide. checking over every single detail of my costume. where did you get those doorknocker's, she asked. i hand her a lollipop. they are also wearing cap costumes. leopardprint years. black noses, whiskers painted all on with black eyeliner. a black cat, a kitten in her belly. her son is that man sitting around the pool deck with the other kids flipping his batman cape. people i don't even know come around checking me out, trying to figure out my costume. everyone asking me what are you supposed to be. my stepson shouts my name across

the way. it is how he always greets me. he comes over and gives me a bear hug. i introduced him. he looks me up and down. is he supposed to be a rapper? they laugh. i laugh, to. he does not get it. he does not know me as a teenager. they get it. they knew me the moment that they saw me. i am wearing baggy jeans, a baggy white t-shirt. an old chain around my neck. i put in my 17th piercing. tiny gold hoops. i am wearing dark lip liner. how many coats of mascara. i painted on a fake black guy and put fake blood under my nose. i stuffed my pockets. i am me, i say.

thank you. [applause] thank you so much for being here i will take questions. >> thank you. thank you to all of you for coming tonight. as i mentioned at the beginning, there are books for sale. she will be on hand to sign and personalize your book. >> the wisconsin book festival continues. next, an author talks about the summons. >> hi, i am molly. i am the owner of a wine store here in madison. thank you for coming to this book festival on this afternoon. revolutions in air. thank you to the madison public library foundation and all of our sponsors. if you have not