 Alright, so it's time. So for tonight's event, we have Juli Delgado-Lopera, who is an award-winning Colombian writer based in San Francisco. Woo-hoo, Colombia! They're the author of The New York Times' acclaimed novel, Fiebre Topical, that came out just this past March from the Feminist Press. Juli is also the author of Quiereme from Nomadic Press, and it came out in 2017, and Cuentamelo and Lut in 2017, which is an illustrated bilingual collection of oral histories by LGBT Latinx immigrants, which won a 2018 Lambda Literary Award and a 2018 Independent Publisher Book Award. So Juli is going to be in conversation with Miriam Gurba, who is a writer. She's the author of two short story collections and the true crime memoir, Meme, along with Roberto Lobato and David Balls. She's a founding member of Dignidad Literaria. Alright, so Miriam and Juli, take it away. I'm so excited to be doing this with one of my favorite writers and mine right now, so it's such a treat to be doing this with Miriam. And when we were talking about what to do, we were discussing just talking a lot about language and play of language, because that's something that we both do a lot in our work. All of Ceo de Tropical is based on Spanglish, and so we're going to be doing that a lot. Do you want to say anything before I start? I just wanted to say that I'm really, really excited for our conversation and for exploration, and this is the first time that I've done an event that centers Spanglish. You know what I mean? Like a public conversation, so I'm super excited about it. And then you were going to begin by giving us a reading, right? Yeah. Okay, yeah. So I'm going to take you all on a little reading, and I guess let's see. Okay, so we're going to be talking about Spanglish a lot. I thought that I was going to start, and it's going to be a very short reading, where if you have read the book, this is a chapter with the grandmother, the grandmother's story, and the grandmother is like 60, the parents are trying to get her a dude to marry her off. She doesn't like any dude, but all the dudes want her basically. And so what we're going to hear right now is the line of dudes that's in the house, like waiting for her to receive them. And by the way, I wore this thing for you all today just because, you know, rainbow and shit. It's also originally from the 80s for my trans mother. So you know, many, many layering things are happening simultaneously. So, if you have the book is in page 202, let's do it. Mirena, what you need to know is this. They shut up without any prior warning and sometimes stayed for days. They came from Arjona Barranquilla, Santa Marta, Corusal, from Mocopi, Distracción, San Martín, De Loba, Turbaco, Muchacho, Espérate. They would stop half that most of this as far or two on their faces, sometimes distracting a man's purse, a case of cigars, and if they were lucky, a nobby are still waiting for them in the backseat of the car, stunning themselves and stealing anything they could. There was Firoberto, the shiny shoemaker with an eye tick who salivated every time he talked about glue and shoes. Emanuel Jesús, more curbs than body, a rich serotonin, always interested in knowing if a girl Alba was any good at food massages and shooting shotguns. She wasn't. Eliezer arrived with three hunting dogs, a pierna de pernil and a notice secretly passed to Alba. I'm into you plus your chickens together. There I mentioned Miguel Ángel, the bald dude from Cali, serving the entire time he was there sweating profusely, refusing to leave the house until someone left with him. Álvaro Jesús José, Marianne Alberto, Ulises Carlos Pedro, they knew each other, hated each other, loved each other. They share the tight entrance space to the house while wasting no time and doing business transactions right there. Three horses, five cases of whiskey, two new supermarkets, boom, boom, boom. Some of them knew each other from their wife's 13 adventures and exchanged anecdotes about fathers wanting to give their daughters a way too soon, or some who inquire way too much about their lives. ¿Qué onda van a vivir? ¿Qué, how many times is she going to visit? Could be you have enough maids to care for her hair, her special feet, her special diet, her chocolate, they wanted a wife, period. Alba's mama barely able to keep up with all the coffee, pa'lito de queso, the line of the bathroom, the urine everywhere around the toilet, to the point that she demand that papi hire someone to send to all the men's needs. ¿Me distecar a empleada, o qué? Mama also wanted Alba to marry but found respectable outside the house absorbable. People were saying things right now. At first, mama held her head high, orgullosa, of course, that her oldest daughter could cause such commotion, that men travel for days to see her. ¿Pero que fue? ¿No fue tan cute? I spent time after a few days drunk from all the whiskey and the sun, cursing at the passers-by, cat-calling the vecinas, and even sister Jamila when she entered the Juan's house. ¡Ay, monjita! ¡Pero qué linda! ¡Só la monjita, carajo! But that wasn't the end of it. The worst, people setting up puesticos, salintas marindos, lemonade-sized fish, palenqueras handing out fruit salad for a few coins, street kids blasting music, all of it in front of their house. The city even sent a few volunteers to help the traffic. Mama's house wasn't during those times. You're going to kill me, Alba. Don't have them good enough for you. Jesucristo is my witness, Nina. Like, you are killing me. Go get me something, Bapodoo. Alba didn't bring her the date, Bapodoo. She let her cup and cup close her door, turned the radio all the way up, and when Maria La Divina from her radio novela started imploding for her life, Alba recited from memory the lines before Maria La Divina was finally killed. But then the weight of the house perched up on her side. Mierda. Todo en esta vida. A big mierda, right? She remember God, or God talked to her and told her to stop being such a selfish putan. Go get your Bapodoo to your mama. The damn be lawyer was the last man, the last man in that line. The only one who came back once, two, four times, ten times in order any woman would even think about not wanting him. Homeboy enjoyed a challenge, a little bump in the wedding road. Many women before had just thrown themselves like three bags of potatoes, secretly placing his hands on their crutches, licking fingers, letting him have their culo. Pero, Alba, la nai. The niña stopped stone cold, hugging that radio like a doll, never stopped standing to his touch, or his words, or his German horse. She only seemed to care about that stupid radio and this cattle. He saved himself for last precisely because he knew his blue blood was irresistible and Alba's blood was barely above average. But now his patients were thin. He had the health, but it felt like a dream like God had. Yes, he'd be able to brag about conquering the Juan de Muñequita to all the other losers. Yes, that somber aura attracting him, chasing a boner, that hot freaking weird on those Naguas, who bound those Naguas, Esupristo. What else was this to do for a rich boy in the 50s, but business meetings, whiskey, perfectly trim mustaches, impounding Naguas. That's right, cachaco. Nada. Yeah, I can hear you. No, I can't, but I feel you a little bit. Okay, should we dive into conversation? I think so. Let's do it. Okay, so I'm so, I'm so excited that you read an excerpt from Bapuru, because like that was such a, like Bapuru is with such like a pivotal part of my childhood. But Bapuru was also very gendered because my mom was the keeper of the Bapuru, you know what I mean? And she had the women are, so you have it in your medicine cabinet, you have it in the bathroom, but also in the bag, right? Just in case, you need the emergency Bapuru. And so when I was a little girl, and I aspire to womanhood, I aspire to three things. Someday I will carry a purse and in my purse I'm going to have Kleenex, Maxipad, and Bapuru. And I was like, that is like my dream, like I knew that that would be when I arrived. I also didn't know it was not called Bapuru. I remember when I first got to the States and in Miami, I went to Walgreens and asked for Bapuru. And I had no, and like the lady was just laughing at me until she finally, she was in Venezuela, a lady, and she finally said, you mean Vick? And I was like, what is Vick? It just did really good marketing. It just did really good marketing in America. We don't thought it was ours at all. So it's so fantastic. And I love, I love our linguistic interventions because I feel like our pronunciation really improves upon the language, right? There's Vicks, Bapuru, and then there's Bapuru. And it's like, what is clearly superior to the other? And it reminds me of one of my favorite improvements is when food for less becomes foo-foo-less. I love it. And it's also not only Bapuru, but it's Sramel Bapuru. There's like, I feel like everybody who has a Latino mom right now can see her pointing, can see the gesturing, you know, and that smell, what that does. I used to, I did a little performance once when at the end I would ask people if they wanted to come up and I would like rub Bapuru in the chest and everybody just came up and was like, just like thinking about their grandmother and their mom. And that was also one of my dreams. And I, and I did it. Now I, you can't touch anybody. Oh my God, me estoy imaginando like I am Bapuru Reiki. Like it is. So, um, so the question that I wanted to, um, to lead with has to do with cheesemen. So, um, so for me, cheesemen is everything. I'm like, like, like a super cheesemosa. And I'm, I wanted to ask how has cheesemen influenced you in terms of your literary content and also your aesthetic? I love that question. Thank you for leading me with that question. Yeah, no questions should be like that. I, um, well, I, you know, I really, what now that I think about why were there most primitive years for me in my writing, it was definitely around my grandmother and my aunt. And I don't know that necessarily when I was living, but I'm able to call it that, but that was basically what it was happening was a lot of just talking among them constantly. And women, at least in my family, they're always carrying secrets. They're always letting like a little bit of something go. And then you're chasing after, and it's like, pero solamente sabe ella. Don't tell these ones, right? So the way that storytelling happened in my family was this secret holding thing, this kind of like powerful piece that you have to put together. Because if you had to see a 31 thing, she'd tell you something. We had to see according to one other thing. She'd tell you something and my grandmother, Alba will say something different. And so you're kind of constantly piecing it together. And I grew up, my mom has five sisters, my grandmother had five sisters. And so I grew up around a big maturity and they all really sat around the dining table, smoking cigarettes and talking shit. Like as stereotypical and romantic as, which it probably is though, but everything like that. And that image is, it's very much true. I was a little kid and I am the oldest of the like grandchildren. And so I just grew up with them, just being nosada, and the silence. Okay, so I'm going to tell you the master of silence that my aunts are. They're masterful in silence and they're masterful storytellers. And so yeah, of course, like all the constant talking definitely had a huge impact. But I wouldn't know that until years later in my life. At the time I was just like, I mean, I really loved them, but it was, I didn't understand what they were doing. And they were also really inventive with their language. Like they would make up words and Spanish at the time. And then once we moved to Miami, it was funny because then it became a hierarchy of who knew more English. And then they were like either like, you know, make fun of each other, but they would just make up words. And like one of the, one example, for instance, is like if they wouldn't know something, Joder in Colombian Spanish is like, you're just being really annoying. And so I don't know my, I don't know what I'm saying, what a Jolation. But she didn't know how to say this is in Indian, basically. And she was just, Jolation, Jolation. And I was just like, I would sit in the corner, because I hated everything. And I was a teenager, you know, my family was Christian. And I just sit with my notebook writing stuff that they would say, because when we, we got to Miami, even kids, even more funny, because then they were playing with both languages. You know, so it wasn't only at the dining table, all of them, but like, they played with both languages. And so I think to me, she's made it more of the conversation between women that is constantly happening, the constant murmuring of women, and the, just the masterful, the masterful storytelling that happens around it. It's incredible. I totally agree with you. And that's how, that's how Cheezma has practiced in my family too. And it's often led by the thes, right? Like thes takes center stage and everybody just kind of has to defer to them because they're the master storytellers. They're there with their cigarettes, they're going for hours, they're inventing, like you said, they're constantly coining like new terms. And then one of the things that happens in my family, and I'm curious if it happens in yours, is like the Cheezma isn't even necessarily rooted in the present and the Cheezma isn't even necessarily the domain of the living. We get Cheezma transmitted from the dead. Do you know what I mean? Like ghosts will come tell you things and then speak through like the thes. And so you have Cheezma that's both of this world and then also ghostly. Because they never leave. People die never leave. And so they're still discussing what Susito did, even though Susito is not alone with us, but she is because I'm a focus, you're old somebody money. And he did this to this one, and she's still suffering after 20 years. She's still wearing black. Yes, you know, exactly, exactly. Yeah, it is a lifestyle. It is totally a lifestyle. Um, so I'm gonna switch gears a little bit and then move from Cheezma to Spanglish. And I was super thrilled when I read Fiebre because it's unapologetically Spanglish, right? There's no otherizing. There's no compartmentalization. This is a language unto itself, right? And so what I wanted to ask about your use of Spanglish is regarding the rhythm. Because the rhythm of Spanglish is neither the rhythm of English nor the rhythm of Spanish. It has its own rhythm and we find it and we sort of improvise as we're speaking it. And I wanted to know about how you find, how you establish and how you sustain the rhythm of Spanglish on the page, because it's really different in terms of spoken Spanglish. Is that, is that okay? Yeah, no, I love this so much. Let me turn on the light, sorry. Sorry, things have timers. Okay. I, yeah, I mean, rhythm is huge. I mean, rhythm is everything. And I'm so glad that you pointed it out because basically what I did with the book was if it sounds right, like a lot of the, that's what propelled the book is phonetics, basically, is how things are sounding together. And I, so the process of writing the book, I would have a really long list of words that I like. And so I still do this often where I hear a word and I write it down not because it has any meaning, but because it sounds good. Like I just love how it sounds. And so I would write it down and then I had a list of words always next to me. And when I was going, when I was going to start writing, I would just pull from it and see where that word would take me. I want to say that I listen to a lot of music while writing the book. And I listen to a lot of merengue, especially when I was writing the book and the music is super important for me. I also realized that when I got to Miami, the Cubans in Miami were speaking a very different kind of Spanish. And the Cubans in Miami lay the land of the land basically for me a lot. And then I learned different from the Mexicans in California. The Cubans in Miami bring Caribbean Spanish, which is extremely rhythmical. So my grandmother is from the coast of Colombia, from Cartagena. So she is, she speaks also similar, more similar to Cubans. And that side of my family also speaks a little bit like that. And so then I was watching Cubans turn with that little rhythm, that musicality, stuff in English, you know. It's brilliant. It's brilliant. It was the first English sentence that I understood that I heard and I was like, it's coming back literally translated. And they all understand what they're saying. Spanish doesn't make sense, okay? Spanish doesn't make sense. But it's amazing. And so I really started hearing the rhythm in it. And I feel that I, well, one, I love music. Like music has a huge impact in my creative process, basically. And so, and I realized that the people that I love that are the best storytellers have a lot of rhythm in them. They know how to start, they know how to punctuate, they know how to create silence. And so that's the rhythm of storytelling and being able to do that. And I always, I was always like, how do I replicate like that relationship between orality and textuality has always been really like important to me. And like, how do I replicate some of these rhythms that I'm listening to people speak that are amazing storytellers? We all know them. We all have them in our community. People will know how to tell a story. How do you translate that into the page? And so it was just a lot about paying attention. And like, I mean, I feel, I think about my grandmother so much, because she was always making shit up to just make me laugh, you know, and it was just like, yeah, she would just be like, she would say, like, Fembroke Pines, which is a place close by where we live, she would call it Fembroke Pines, Félez was Pélez, Juana was Juama, Rovistugo was Rovistugo. And so I wrote all of these things down and she would just sit there and make shit up to make me laugh. But there was always a sense of like, continuation with the rhythm, like a sense of like holding language in a different way. And I just feel like it sounds amazing, like I just really love listening to people talk, especially like older women, I feel are like the best storytellers. And they're my favorite demographic of people. No, I'm totally with you. I'm totally with you. And like, I was wondering also, when you're in the process of writing, do you write aloud? And by that, I mean, are you reading your work back to yourself as you're writing it? That's part of my editorial process, because I can hear the rhythm in my head, I can hear the music, but I then need to read it aloud to confirm that the music that I'm sort of that I'm writing is translating once it's spoken. Do you do you engage in like any processes like that during the writing process? I do. I do. I do. So not all the time, like when I'm finishing a sentence, like, I feel like, oh, this does, but then if I really love that and it's doing what I want, I just like, I do the little jam. I'm like, oh, my God, you know, because you just feel and in the thing is like, it may not mean anything. You know, and again, I go back to really letting you know that what really propelled the book was found, like me, what really, really propelled the book was found. So of course I was subbing myself and reading it. Sometimes I would think like, who's going to read this shit? Like, who's going to read? Like it's just funny to me, you know, and I like it again because it gives me a linguistic legitimacy, you know, like writing this book with those of her means to just like hear how I, how I think and how I talk to other people and just like, mm, that we have as Latinos like seeing it, you know, and it just gave me some linguistic legitimacy, but I was like, nobody's going to read this. But we did and we are. And so, and so moving on to editing. So what was the editorial process like for you? And I'm very curious about this because writing in Spanish, I will often work with editors who solely edit in English. And then I have to do that extra legwork of making sure that the Spanish is appropriately copy edited, because I seldom have, I'm seldom provided with editors who can move fluidly through Spanish text. And then also I frequently have to negotiate and frequently have to advocate for Spanish words not to be italicized and not to be like visually otherized in some way. And so I was wondering if you've had to advocate in similar ways and what the editorial process has been for you? Yeah, I mean, I feel like that's what you're describing basically the default of how the industry deals with Spanish. And I always feel that they just haven't really caught up with what people are doing, because we're not inventing this, you know, we are definitely not inventing the people having been doing this for over a century. And so I, you know, I think it took me a while to even place the book precisely because of that, because I was reaching out to agents and trying to, you know, get it out. And the response was always some kind of like coded, what I call coded xenophobia. You know, just kind of like coded like, oh, I don't know where to place it. I don't know if the audience is gonna like it. This is really risky. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Like it's risky. Or just like asking about the Spanish. And so like it was really, it was really sad and disappointing to me that the comments were not around the crafts of the book, or rather just people getting hung up, which is what happened in many writing workshops to me. And then finally, the only reason why I even landed with the feminist class was because when my editor read it, she really loved it. I was like, the Spanglish is non-negotiable. Like she didn't even say anything. But from the beginning, I was like, this is non-negotiable. She's like, that's my favorite part. She just really got it. And the reason also why she got it, and I don't know if she's in here, but if you are, Lauren, I love you. Because she brings translations from Latin America into the US. She speaks a little Spanish, and so she understands it. And I think that the fact that she has so much investment in Latin American literature, she had just a wider sense of what's possible. But I do think that people, the industry really underestimates its audience, which is always assumed as all white audience first. But even then, it underestimates the white audience that it assumes, you know, because people want to read something different. But the fear is what drives, the fear of just trying to experiment with something else. Absolutely. And then, so there was a question that I just tweeted for fun the other day. And then you were like, oh, let's talk about this during the book talk. And so I'm going to bring it up. And it has to do with energy, right? And it's sort of a play on Ariana Grande having described her man as having big dick energy. And there are people who have mom energy, and then there are people who have thea energy, right? And so I wanted to ask you, how do you distinguish between mom energy versus thea energy? And then, and then do you identify with either of those? Or is there another sort of subset of sort of energies with which you identify? This is the most important question of the night, everybody. This is like crap to be damned. This is important, okay? Mom energy, so like mama energy is like, you're caring for people, you know, when people arrive for the plays, you're like, do you need something? You're there, you're there, you're you know, you're the, you're the person like somebody pulls down and you're there, you're taking care of their kids, you know, you go and wipe somebody else's kids ass, even though you're not their mother, you're a cancer, which I'm not. And then there's the thea, who is like, with a, with a secret that the whole entire thing is ash, but she still holds it, and it's like, so there are kind of a little, but she doesn't do anything. So apparently I am, like she's witnessing, she is smoking, she's witnessing the care of everybody else, and she's commenting on it. And she's commenting on the performance of everybody. She's the one that holds the darkest secrets, you know, but she's not a caring, I mean, I'm, I mean, I have a caring sense, but I don't, I'm not a child, I'm not a children person. And I'm way more of a thea like that in my family. I feel like the thea, the thea is caring, but she cares for the weirdos. Do you know what I mean? Like she's the weirdo nurturer. She is. The thea is the weirdo, and the thea is like, I don't know, she just, she's having fun, she's the one you do, you see, you know, in Siembre, Borracha, like drunk over there, and she's like, you know, calling her machuca si papito en la pataña. You know, like that's the thea. Mama's not, it's not gonna do that, you know. Mama's on us, but she's loyal, she's suffering, her crush, she's holding her right there forever. That's Latina Mom for you. Thea is just like, you know, she's winking at the young dude. Yeah, my favorite thea story is I'm, one of my theas, we were in Mexico, and she was complaining. She thought she was having a heart attack. She's like, oh my god, I'm having a heart attack. She was lying down. She almost had us call an ambulance, but she realized her pants were too tight. And she felt better, the cardiac arrest went away. So that is thea energy, you know what I mean? I mean, it is. I have another, one of my theas, when we left Colombia, I was asking my mom about everybody where everybody was at the airport. And she was like, to the other minute, she couldn't come. Her heart couldn't take it. She had to be hospitalized. She had to be hospitalized. I mean, it's horrible that we left, but I was like, really? Where she is? The performance of suffering, my god, you know. I love it. I love it. I live for it. I live, I live for it. Um, okay. So, um, let's see. The next question that I have has to do with matriarchy, because Fiebre Center's matriarchy. And again, that's something that I that we rarely see in novels, right? Um, but matriarchy is not presented as like this sort of feminized paradise. Matriarchy is problematic. And so I was curious, just to hear you comment on, um, on the way you conceived of, of, of matriarchy as far as its presentation in, um, in your novel, uh, the influence that matriarchy has had upon you, because you mentioned that you were raised within matriarchy. And I, and if you could comment or, or tell us about sort of any, uh, literary works that have influenced you in terms of their representation of matriarchy. Okay. Yeah. I mean, matriarchy has a huge influence in me as a writer, as a creative person. Um, I feel that, um, my love for like, just even like feminine things and the things, you know, being a trans person has to do with just being surrounded by so many women in my life and just knowing that they're the shit at the end of the day. Um, and I, you know, I did grew up with tons of women. Um, I, we had, I had like one cousin who was a dude and then my dad, you know, that was like in your father, you don't really see it as a man. So it's like, there was no man, you know, in my life, I went to an older Catholic school. So, you know, when my mom was like, why are you a lesbian? I'm like, why not? I mean, why is this a surprise girl? I've never seen a man in my life. Um, and so, you know, I, I thought I had a very idealized notion of the matriarchy. I, you know, I became a feminist and then like, I was just in love with having grown up around so many women and then becoming an adult, I started seeing all the cracks around stuff that I didn't even notice as a kid, right? All the subjects around it, all the secret stuff, all the way that there's a lot of toxicity. Um, and when I was writing, you know, when I was writing the book, I wanted to just have like fully developed characters like of women. Um, and I wanted to have a matriarchy who's also, that's also really fucked up and where they're all horrible to each other, you know, and I wanted to really explore the relationship between women and what that is. And, um, without, I mean, there's the manner there, but they're just sort of like, you know, they come in and out, they're dead, they laugh. Um, they're in the back room getting drunk or something. Um, which is also very much an experience in my life where they were just never really present. They were always like a, like an, an aside. And it was always a surprise that they were there. It's like, oh, there's my grandpa. He's been there for 10 hours. You know, and so, like, it, it was, it was, it was interesting to me to be able to look at a matriarchy, not from an idealized, like, you know, feminist way, but just from like, these are like people who are all fucked up, who are all very complex, and they're all coming together with their longies and also under the circumference of matriarchy, which is where create a lot of the circumstances for them as well. And so, yeah, I mean, I, I feel that I, I didn't necessarily seek out to be like, I'm going to explore matriarchy, but then the characters, when they started blowing up and becoming bigger, I was like, oh, this is definitely a story that is just sold between a lot of women. And, you know, the secrets and everything that happens in between. And I just wanted to see them, I just wanted to give it like a huge stage to that, you know, and to just like the toxicity of matriarchy and also the beauty of it, and also all the fucked up things and the layering of that, you know. I feel that because we assume that it's like a resistance to matriarchy, that it has to be romanticized and beautiful, and everything has to be like, okay, because it's all women. And in reality, it's just not. Yeah. And then I'm going to ask a question that a lot of folks have asked me. And so I'm going to pass it on to you as well. And it has to do with being creative in the present. So there is such, I mean, there's such an incredible amount of chaos happening right now globally in the United States here in California. And we're in such a state of crisis that time itself seems to have turned sideways for all of us. And in order to write, so many of us require a sense of stability and solidity. So under under these current circumstances, are you able to be creative? Are you able to write? Are you able to produce? Or is that something that that is on hold for you right now? People are always, I that question comes up over and over. Yeah. I mean, I can see like we are in a really, in a really overwhelming moment, because there's also a lot of hope for me with what's happening with the protest, a lot of hope for me. I will have to say also to that question that I grew up in Colombia in the mind. I'm a person who grew up and during the Civil War basically, in a country that there were car bombs when I was a kid. And I had people close to me that were kidnapped and I was next to a building when he was blown up. And so as hard as it is to talk about because I hate and people reduce Colombia to only that. But I did grow up under in a place that has such an insane amount of chaos because there was war. And of course I'm a very privileged person under the circumstances. So I didn't have the level of like violence that happened in the countryside in Colombia. But I grew up around it. And so I do think that there's a way that chaos just, I mean, I'm going to tell you something. I remember when the whole when the pandemic started happening, the first thing I told myself when the showroom place happened, the first thing I told my partner was like, so I have to bring my passport. The military people going to come for me. Like I was ready to go Colombia style, like the military going to come for you. You have to see your passport. This is like, you know, with my wig to pass as a girl. Yeah. So very much like that was like, that's my brain. And so I am writing right now. I think that and many times has been extremely hard. At the beginning, it was way harder. And I'm starting to feel that by now there's a sense that I'm getting used to a lot of it. And I'm getting used to existing with same structures for better or for worse or whatever that means. I'm not sure what that means. But I'm also starting to connect more with my work because when I do, I see what it deals for me. Right. So the day that I sit down and write, even if it's just one paragraph, I know how I feel in the evening and I know how I feel the next day. I can sense it and I can feel it. And so I'm trying to search more for that feeling and do that more for myself because it is an act of love for me. You know, and sometimes what comes out is like, you know, it's shit and I don't like it or whatever. But I'm trying really hard to make space for it because I know how I feel. And it's like an amazing feeling. You know, it's one, I'm just connected to like, you know, the the universe and the God is, which I'm not. Is this the sense of like, myself, like I'm here and this is what I do. I process the world by writing and the writer. And if I don't write, then like, I'm not able to engage with the world connect. Yeah, I'm right there with you. Like, I, I, the way that I process the world is through writing and I, and there are times where people will equate that to therapy, but it's not therapeutic. It's, it's a more, it's something much more fundamental. It is the way that I exist in the world. It's how I make sense of it. If you take that away from me, you remove my tool for making sense of the world. And that's not necessarily therapy. That's something almost spiritual. Do you know what I mean? So should we move on to questions now? Because I've noticed some are cats. Yeah. Okay. So why don't we have folks, do we want to have folks just drop their questions back in? Because I was noticing that people were a lot of people are clear of questions if you want to like, post it again. Thank you. Okay. On the subject of family and storytelling. I just dropped those back in for you. Okay, cool. That's the only two of the rest are kind of like, a lot of compliments, but I'm sure some more questions will flow in. All right. Will you want to take that one about family and storytelling and support? I'm just talking about family and storytelling. I'm wondering if Jen and family are supporting their writing. I mean, not monetarily, but with their love. Yeah, like my mom and my sister are like such huge supporters. And my, a lot of my aunts are too, they, you know, like my, most of my family doesn't can read English. And so they're like, and they thought that it was in Spanish because the name is the other topic. And then they're like, Oh, but it's in English. And so, um, yeah, they're huge. Like my, my closest family is my mom and my sister. And they're incredibly supportive. And like, they love that I do this. They don't understand exactly how I raised my mom. The other day, they told me, they told me, my son, she was imagining things. She was like, keep imagining things. It does that feel really well. And I was like, I might have to write this down because how do you come up with that? Oh my God, that's fantastic. And then what happens to Garmin? Um, I don't know. You told me what happens to her. I don't know if she didn't want to respond anymore. She stopped right there. Um, yeah, I don't know. We'll see. Maybe in like 15 years, it will be a year because part two here is Garmin. Garmin sends a commune or something. And then PTSD related to Columbia, the pandemic, et cetera. Um, I mean, I, um, I had a little moment again with the military style thing. I was in Columbia for two months in November, December, and there were really big national protests there. And our folks knew about it. Really huge to have in Hopkins since the 70s. We had, uh, one night we had curfew and, uh, there was the entire city was militarized and it was extremely, extremely scary. And I had like a panic attack and it was really hard. And so it was one day here where the whole thing felt like that. Like I was waiting for like, you know, the military to come. Um, but other than that, like, I don't know. Like, I feel that Columbia made me a real bitch and like a person who just like goes for shit and it's not scared of a lot of stuff. Um, and I love my roots and, you know, it's an incredibly ceramic country and it's an incredibly ceramic thing. And at the same time, like, I love the place where I'm from. Um, yeah. There was, uh, have you all thought about using software to translate the copy for other readers online? Do you want to talk about that? Do you want to talk about that? About using software to talk about the copy? I mean, so weird about that. Like how do you translate Spanglish? Do you know what I mean? Because then you're going to flatten it all into one language and it's going to lose its integrity to me. That I mean, it's, it's an odd gesture. Like I've had some of my Spanglish work translated, but what happened is that the translators have then played with inverting the English to Spanish. Do you know what I mean? Like, which then, um, turns it into something new. It turns into a new dialect through that inversion, which I think is, is really fun. I mean, I, um, I mean, I can't close out everything, but there's some big things coming here. So I am thinking I'm, I'm to have a lot of translation stuff in my head right now, a lot of fear today, but also what I will say is that Spanglish in the US, politically and the community that is around it is very much like working class, Latinos is very much like immigrant class. So there's a lot of class stuff that it's related to using Spanglish here as a political act as well. In Latin America, many times the people who speak English are higher class. And so even doing that inversion, it loses kind of like a street left with like the street slang that it carries, right? Because like, like a lot, like a lot of like fresas speak like in English, you know, like the Gómez los in Colombia, but not everybody. All the things are changing because, you know, not just like, I just said, because that's how they say it in Mexico. Um, so it is also, I think like it just doesn't like literally the group of people that even speak like that. So there's a lot, I mean, I'm thinking a lot about this question. About translation. Yes. And then Bob, I see you've covered Ostertag. Um, the world is changing so fast. Is it a problem for your writing now that you don't know what the world will be like on the worksheet right now? Finally we'll get published or is it not something that you think about? You can go ahead. Where is it? Robert Ostertag, the world is changing so fast. Is it a problem for your writing now that you don't know what the world will be like when the words you write not finally get published? Try not to think about that because like sometimes existence just, there's like an apocalyptic feeling in the air. Like I just have to write in the present because it's what I need to do. So I don't think too hard about what kind of life the work is going to have, especially if it's, if it's like a larger work. If it's something small like an essay, I might consider, okay, how is this essay going to be relevant next week when it's published? Yes, because I'm writing more for the moment. But if I'm working on memoir or something like that, no. Like you were saying, like this is my way of processing my past. And so I'm doing this for me. And if it takes me a year, if it takes me 10 years, ni modo, you know what I mean? That's just, that's just how shit happens. Yeah, I agree with that. My question is what are we doing? Jenny Gurney, how much do you edit after you write? I love every sentence we think here it is typical both English and Spanish. So many analogies and so much for them. Does it just come out like that? No. I mean, I mean, here's the thing is like, I feel like people sometimes think that English doesn't have a lot of craft behind it, but it does. I really feel the writing in slang takes way more work than just not, you know, because you really have to pay attention to how things are crafted, very much pay attention to how the sentence works, sentence structure, like everything. So like, no, I mean, of course, like, I mean, a lot of the magic happens in the moment or what I wouldn't be doing, right? Like there's a huge magic that happens when you sit down to work and there's all this beauty and the revision was like, you know, I spend a year revising the novel and playing with other words. And again, I always had my list of words on the side, which I encourage all writers to do like stuff that really that you love and you hear just write it down because you don't know. But there was a there was a very long editing process and in it because like I would read and I was like, you know what? And, you know, especially there's a lot of like catch up on the rain and those words were used also to propel the rhythm of the story. And so there were many times where I had to like figure out like if it was the right moment to put it in or not. Yeah. Yeah, there's this false sense that we improvise the whole thing and like something might have been improvised in that moment. But there's an incredible amount of revision that goes into my work as well. And I think that like what you were saying about slang is very true because I mean, I found that the more specificity you have in your work, the more the more you have to pay attention to craft, you have to become a better craftsperson. Yeah. You mentioned music as part of your process. Do you have a go-to album of artists? Oh my god. I don't need to make, I have a fear to playlist you all that I was going to play during the party that I was going to be going on across this country. That did not happen. So I may share, I may share it somewhere. Maybe I'll do something like that. But I, a lot of like old merengue, old cumbias, old porros, old salsa. Salsa is like it. Salsa is so much it for me with this book. It was like, there was a lot, a lot of salsa in it and a lot of merengue in it. Because I also, the other thing that I did, which may or may not help some people in their creative process. And I still do to this day, I dance before writing. So I just like, I, it's a way that I get my body ready to do what we need to do. And so I'm like, okay, here it is. And so I put it on, I put the things on or I don't. And I just go for it here for like a good three or four minutes. And then like, kind of like you're getting ready, your body. And I feel like to the point of Miriam to this being something spiritual, and I don't want to make it all incredibly woo-woo. And like, this is a ritual or something. But it makes me, it makes me feel special. And sometimes it's not, especially when I'm like out of it, if I'm really not feeling if I just read the news or I had a weird day or something, like, definitely dancing gets me into that, like, and your body's in that rhythm mode, you know? Yes. Yeah, I, I, I write with my body too. And like, like, when I write, it's not pretty. Like I tend to rock back and forth when I write. And then if I do get really excited about something I've written, I tend to start clapping and snapping. And like, there's a lot of rocking back and forth and like shaking if I'm super enthusiastic. So writing for me is like an embodied event. It's not here. It's all of this. All of this is writing, you know what I mean? Yeah, I love that. There's another one. Have you ever received negative criticism, pushback, lockage for the use of spanglish in your work? I mean, yeah, I mean, not just in work, but like in daily life. Do you know what I mean? I do you want, do you want to talk about specific instances? I mean, I, it's, it's, I did a TED talk on it, basically, because it's that I, like, I was a very talkative kid in Colombia and currently talkative and very smart kid. And then I got to the stage and I was in awe that people just make fun of me for saying something. And like, I would watch, I remember once I'm clearly being at the grocery store and my mom, like, her eyes just like water because this dude just talked to her like super calm ascendingly, because she couldn't say a word. And she was just like, I'm so freaking smart. And she is, you know, but it's incredible that like when she uses her like, you know, her, her English and her, and now she speaks more English because now I would be here for 15 years in the States. But it's incredible how your abilities get questioned because you have an accent or because you speak in two languages. Like I, when I got this, I got to public school in Florida also. I went from private older Catholic school in Bota to public school in Florida, which is shocking. Okay, you think we are so world go to Florida, you know, like go to public school in Florida. Okay. Um, yeah, it was horrible. I would stand up and I wrote my essay for English class, all phonetically Spanish. So when I would have to go up and read them, I would just read across and I didn't have to but the anxiety of having to talk in English was horrible. And on top of that, I remember I had to take ESL tests constantly to see if they were replacing me in those classes, but I knew from my friends that they didn't do anything in those classes, they would be like, yeah, come and join us in the quad, we don't do anything. And I was not a kid who didn't want to do anything. I always been a nerd. And so I practiced everything on my pronunciation so that when I had to go and take a test, they wouldn't place me in the ESL classes. And then the literature has been like in my career, it's been like, you know, always, but now I know how to just be like, to now the people who just don't get it and the attention to the folks who are like excited about my work. And that interest into talking to me or giving feedback about my craft and not about their anxiety. Yeah, like I think that like, I mean, I circumvented that kind of criticism because I didn't go through like an MFA program, I don't have an MFA and so I didn't have to endure like the experiences that I hear a lot of people of color, especially BIPOC migrant folks, talk about when they describe using language other than English in their work, like I didn't have to go through that kind of critique. So I'm I tended to get that kind of critique more from editors or from random readers who want to give me unsolicited advice about how to make myself more marketable, but like, look at me, if I wanted to make myself more marketable, I would look like this. But like, but I mean, Spanish, Spanish historically has been a dangerous language for us to speak in the United States. And like, it's been something that like Anglos have used in order to otherize us, to demean us and to degrade us. And I'll give an example, like, my parents made it on my parents made a deliberate choice to socialize us in both English and Spanish, my mother only talked to us in Spanish, my father only talked to us in English. And so as children, we believe that the whole world had access to two languages, we didn't think that we were unusual at all. And so it took us a while to to figure out that not everybody had our gifts. And so we would just speak to adults in whatever language we felt like speaking to them in that moment. And then would be perplexed when we'd speak Spanish to like an Anglo adult, and they wouldn't answer, they just look at us with like amusement or even fear. And as an example, as an example, like how insidious and degrading some responses can be, my little brother took some sort of IQ test as a child, he was maybe like four or five years old, and so it was a verbal test. And the test was administered in English, but my brother insisted on only answering in Spanish. And as a result of that, he was identified as mentally retarded, right? He's not. He went on to like, not be placed in special ed classes, he was placed in like mainstream classes. But there's this association, there's this degradation that people feel like they can engage in because of Spanish. And there's a long history of it in the United States. Yeah, yeah. Let's continue. Have you thought about theater in audiobooks? Yes, audiobook contacted me, I was going to do it, and then this happened. So I, yeah, it's in the work. I, there's a contract and I should go and read it. So, you know, when it happens, I'm apologize about it, but you know, like, I didn't want to go like right now, maybe I'll go because now it feels like people are taking different safety protocols. But at the beginning, it was like, well, if you feel comfortable, and I was like, I don't feel comfortable going into an office. So let's see, there's another one from Erika. I'm almost done with the book and I love it. Maybe this is to the question, but I was curious about how other Colombians and Latinos in Miami have received the book there. You know, it's been really beautiful. I don't know a lot of Colombians in the Bay Area. I have like, probably maybe like six Colombian friends that are close to me here. And it's been the most beautiful thing that I get all my homies on Instagram sending me messages about, you know, and like, a lot of New York. So when I've done stuff with people in New York, a lot of Colombians are like, you know, the last time I did something in New York, he was like, we were on the chat just going like, yeah, Colombia, Colombia, Colombia. Because it's like, it's incredible for me, like, the feeling that I get when I have another Colombian person read it and be like, they understand every single thing of this land, right? Because like, there's not only Spanish, but now you have to know that Spanish is different when it's spoken by Mexicans, when it's spoken by Cubans, when it's spoken by Puerto Ricans, when it's spoken by Dominicans. And so we all do Spanish differently. And I've been influenced both by the Miami Spanish, which is against Cuban Spanish, and then the Mexican Spanish in California. So I have this like, mix of things too. So it's been really wonderful to just see the Colombians that have reached out to me that they love it, because it's at the intersection of like, a lot of things that they recognize. And a lot of the sayings in the book are just sayings that you say in Colombia. So Primera La Primaria, Colombiano. Cachaco, which a lot of my Latino friends here didn't know what it means. It's a way of calling somebody from Bogotá, which is a song. So, you know, it's like, there's a lot of little wings to just like Colombian people because we know. So can you talk about how queerness relates to Spanglish for you? Well, the way that queerness relates to Spanglish is I feel like they're both like other forms or other phenomena. You know, and so definitely that's a way that they're related. Also, like my Spanglish of the Miami was one thing, my family was another thing. And then there was the moment that I arrived in San Francisco, I was adopted again by the, you know, Cuban trans women who gave me the same. And then I would spend most of my nights on esta noche watching my best friend back then, Reyna, be a drag queen there. And so what happens at, you know, at a Mexican Latino gay bar where it's mostly monolingual speakers and some people who grew up here and then drag queens don't give a fuck about anything, anything, right? Because they're on stage and they're drunk and they're campy, you know? So I got also from drag queens mainly and a lot of queer Latinos in San Francisco. This other now queer and way of Korean Spanglish, right? When I was like, yes, papi, mira perra, like all these different ways. And then like, you know, trans women here were expressing things and like, you know, the uses of loca, the uses of just all these are different words. So definitely queerness has had a huge impact in how my Spanglish has evolved. And, and I mean, esta noche, which is was just so huge. You know, when you're in it, did you go? Yes. When you're in it, you didn't even think that anything was going to be history, you know? When I was there, I was like, this is just such a shithole. It was such a shithole. It was, you know, but it was also where I learned to dance Mexican cumbia. That's where I learned to dance Mexican cumbia. But it was amazing. I mean, I saw the queens would just do this amazing work of blending in everything. And they were so unfiltered because nobody cared about getting anything right. It was just about place when they like, drag queens have to be entertaining. They want to play with language. They're also being bitches and being mean. And so they want to be, yeah, they're just trying to figure out how to like make language fun. So I learned a lot from being. The queen there was una que se vestía como de campesina, but she looked like Robin Williams and I was just like, I love you. I love you so much. Okay. And then with it being pride month, my question relates to queerness. How did y'all navigate the arduous process of coming to terms with your individual queer identities? What helped you become confident? This is coming from a person who's experiencing identity and sexuality struggles. Can you repeat that again? Good. How did you navigate the arduous process of coming to terms with your individual queer identities? What helped you become confident? And this is coming from somebody who's experiencing a struggle with their sexuality. Do you want to take it? I mean, like for me, I mean, a lot of the confidence that I have when it comes to like the way that I express my gender and the way that I express my sexuality has been earned like through both personal but also like collective liberation. I've experienced a lot of trauma. I've experienced like a lot of physical salt in my life, a lot of sexual salt in my life. And that type of trauma can have various effects on a person. And like on some femmes, the effect is to make you fearless. It just kind of conditions the fear out of you because it becomes such a routine, like violence becomes so routine in your life that you almost feel as if you've risen above it. And so for me, I sort of got traumatized into my feminism and traumatized into my confidence, which is not something that I necessarily advise for people, but that's where some of that comes from in my case. Thank you for sharing that. I mean, I would also just say that I also have like really, really traumatic and horrible history around my queerness because I come from an extremely religious family and I don't have a relationship with a lot of my family, putting really close members of my family. But what I would say is like, find your tribe, dude, like find the people who really hear you, you know, like at the time and when I keep talking about my queer mom is like, I found her at a time where I didn't have a relationship with my birth mom. And the queer community has a very long history of creating houses amongst ourselves. And that is still something that it continues to happen, which is that we have chosen families. And that is a lineage that you're part of your queer, you're part of a lineage of people who have been doing this for a really long time, where we come together and we hold each other like family. And it's even better because you're choosing each other. It's not some bloodshed, you know, it's like you're choosing to be there with each other. And so what I would say is like what has saved me are the people who actually see me for who I am. And, you know, that I'm able to like open up and connect with them. And so find your tribe and the people that like really see you and connect with them and support them as well. And, you know, you you're part of a big lineage of people who have been doing this for a really long time, you know, I wanted to add to that that I I also had have had a similar experience where like I chose a queer elder. And Tatiana de la Tierra was my chosen queer elder because she lived in Long Beach like the last years of her life or lived in Long Beach. And when I met her, I was in awe. And I was like, Oh, my fucking God, like, I want to age into this type of queerness. Like, I want to shout about my papaya from the rooftops, you know what I mean? And so I practically apprenticed myself to her. I was like, I will do anything you want. I will sit at your feet. I will change your kitty litter. I will fix your fridge. Just teach me to be like you. And then she was like, Well, I will put you to work, bitch. And she did it. You know what I mean? And then she she kind of gave a piece of herself to me. You know what I mean? That's like what we do. We just give a piece of ourselves to that next generation. So we do mine. Yeah. All right. Okay, I think I think I think that's it. I think we have. I think that that's that's some of it. I wanted to just mention something very briefly to everybody, which is that I'm going to be the people who are interested in purchasing the book, or dealing with stuff with the book. I'm going to be doing a postcard project starting in July with the feminist press with the unamazing cartoonist in New York called Katie Freakup. And so here are some of the postcards that you can get by mail. Since I can go signing anybody's, anybody's book, we're going to be doing a postcard thing. If you buy your book after July 13, and from a local bookstore and you send me your receipt, you're going to be able to get one of these and I have a little stamp and I want to write you a note and stuff. So if you're interested at all, you can follow me on Instagram. And then I'll be posting stuff about the project very simply in the next two weeks, just to support also the local bookstores. And yeah, that's my plug. Gracias Juli, medium. This was amazing. I was laughing so loud in the background. I have a lot of Colombian family in Miami and in Florida and I actually was reading the book going to a wedding at a Christian church in Fort Lauderdale area. And it was, yeah, amazing, amazing, amazing. I can't wait to keep reading stuff that you write. And I'm another Colombian in San Francisco area too. Hey, Joanna, amazing. Las chicas del can. And for everybody in the audience, thank you for coming to our wonderful author talk. What's up, Anissa? We'll close with a little music. Oh, you have a lot of information that will come to you by email about a lot of the subjects that we touched in today and resources in our digital library. And see you again in another wonderful event. Bye, everybody. Thank you for the music. Bye, everybody. Las chicas.