 Good evening, everyone. Hello and welcome. I'm Lauren Shugard, director of events here at the Mechanics Institute. Thank you for joining us here for our program with Christina Garcia for her new book Vanishing Maps and also for a celebration of national Hispanic heritage policy. If you're new to the Mechanics Institute, and I see a lot of new faces out there, we were founded in 1854 and we're one of San Francisco's most final literary and cultural centers in the heart of the city. We feature our general interest library on the second and third floor. We have an international chess club right down the hallway and we have ongoing author and literary programs throughout the year, every day. And also Fridays, our cinema-lit film series. So please see our website at mi-library.org to see all the things that we offer. Also, for those of you who would like to take a free tour of the Institute, please come Wednesday at noon. And our librarians and staff will give you a wonderful introduction to the Mechanics Institute, the library, and everything that's going on here. And a little bit of history as well. After our conversation, we'll open up for a Q&A with you, our audience, and also we will have books for sale. And Christina will be here to sign books for you. Christina Garcia is the author of eight novels, including Dreaming in Human, The Agüero Sisters, Monkey Hunting, A Handbook to Luck, The Lady Matadors Hotel, King of Cuba, and Here in Berlin. Her work has been nominated for the National Book Award and translated into 15 languages. Her anthologies include The Vintage Book of Contemporary Mexican and Chicano and Chicano Literature, and for poetry, The lesser tragedy of death. In her new book, Vanishing Maps, we find a story of one of the most wonderful, colorful, dysfunctional, passionate, and lovable families. We see them 25 years later after Dreaming in Human, where all the characters and the members of the Del Pino family have been dispersed around the world to cities including Berlin, Moscow, Miami, Los Angeles, New York, and beyond, far from their native land, post-Cuban revolution, and even beyond the land of the living. So I'd like to talk about, first of all, the scene of where is home. All of your characters, as I mentioned, have been dispersed. They're either refugees. Are they foreigners? Are they immigrants? Are they exiles? How do we find them at this point in time? Also, what did you discover about the characters 25 years earlier? First of all, thank you so much for inviting me here. I've been hearing so much about Mechanics Institute, and I am long overdue for the sense of thank you so much. And thank you all for coming tonight. I know there's a whole University of San Francisco contingent here. Yay, thank you. Anyway, so home is, I think, for immigrants, for those who have been dislocated, you told me earlier tonight that you went from New York to resting Wisconsin. So dislocations happen across different kinds of borders. I think home is continually a moving target. I mean, home can mean different things at different times, depending on what's happening internally as well as externally. So I think there's this idealized, at least in the Cuban context, this idealized notion by some sectors of the entire community of what home meant pretty 1959. But a lot of those, a lot of that nostalgia has very little to do with the truth, I mean, factually. In fact, I don't know if it's in this book or where, but there's a joke, a little joke, that goes that if every Cuban who said he had a ranch back on the island actually produced it, that Cuba would be the size of Brazil. So that kind of level of distortion and longing, all of that makes a kind of a head east juice for married and unkind downfall ideas at home, I think. Certainly in this book, each of the characters have a special relationship to Cuba and also political attitudes. So there's the past, the context, and the wrestling with the past and the present. And I'm wondering if you could talk about how you picked the cities that you did to relocate them to. Right. Well, I think a lot of this old paradigm of Cubans and Cuban-Americans, I think it's pretty outdated by now. I mean, for the longest time, it was the Cubans who remained on the island by choice or by commitment, like, say, my grandmother, who was the inspiration for the Xenia character for dreaming in Cuba, or the exiles who, you know, vowed their fear of shaking their fists for the next 30 years about what had happened and what they had lost and the betrayals and so on. But history and and exile has continued spreading out. I think it a little bit as it's almost like a big bang theory of immigration. You know, this revolution happened and then everyone was set in motion. Of course, some ended up backing Miami or whatever, but there were all kinds of other events, seismic, political and historical events happening. The fall of the Soviet Union, the dissolution of the Eastern Bloc as it was known. All of this affected Cuba. Why? Because Cuba had a very, very close ties with the Soviet Union for many, many years. And so when things fell apart there in 1990, nobody was really thinking, well, what's been happened to Cuba? What happened to Cuba was a period of what they called the special period. They were basically a terrible, terrible hardship that unprecedented really hardship on the island. And so we all are more interconnected than we thought. And so Cuban studied in Moscow. They got PhDs in Prague. They fought in Angola. They were consultants in Vietnam. They were, the doctors were sent around to Latin America and other places. So nobody was ever still. All of these, all of this emotion-ness, if that's that phrase of mine, keeps going and that's what I became interested in. You know, these, these continual, you know, the gerent notion of immigration, the gerent ongoing notions of allegiance and where do I belong? What does it mean to be Cuban? What is this hyphen even doing here but really I need 14 hyphens, you know? And so I started tracking this family from dreaming in Cuba into this duplicate, and that for me, that book had been a discrete event or I didn't think I was ever gonna return to it. But then various reasons I decided to adapt dreaming in Cuba for the stage. And so I had to be 25 years later. I went back and read the novel again. And I took it several times to make a play out of it. And that's when I knocked the book to one devil. What did happen to Ivanito, the little boy who was kidnapped by his crazy, you know, aunt, bakery owning aunt in Brooklyn? What happened to him? What happened to Piaz with her artistic ambition? What happened to everybody? And so that's how this book was born, just out of my own curiosity and of ending my assumptions about what I thought was a done deal. Right, and it's also, it really shows the trajectory of all the characters when you mention about Ivanito being actually adopted and brought to the United States, brought to New York. And then you have Ortiz, who's, you know, she's totally an anti-human, and she has this fanatical passion for this at least zero Gonzales parallel to how Gonzales, the boy who was found as a refugee and found in this little boat, you know, that boat, and the whole issue of where does he belong? Does he belong in the United States or does he belong to Ortiz, his uncle or the uncle or what's a father was back in Cuba. So this issue of displacement and displacement really comes to, comes to the forefront in a lot of your book. You know, Ivanito says, you know, you just sort of quote that he says, the political and the personal are inseparable. They have basically been torn up by their roots. Their lives just happened by one upheaval for another. So it's a revolution, a moment of revolution, migration and also just location. These themes seem to follow all the characters throughout the book. But with Ivanito, he's also, he's haunted by the past, by his relationship with his mother and what his mother represents and where he is in Berlin. And what you could talk about, his conflict and how that manifests. Had to do a step that you wouldn't read from the book as well. Okay, sure. Well, as I mentioned a moment ago that Ivanito Villabelle was just a boy, not even an adolescent, and his aunt, Lordez, from Brooklyn who has a bakery there from which he has vowed to fight communism with her crawlers and cupcakes. She happens to be in Cuba going back for a visit and the Marien exodus breaks out which begins in the Provence. There's a mass exodus. In the end, over 100,000 people left the island. And she uses that opportunity to kicknap her nephew and sort of put them in with all the other people who are wanting to leave the island. So everything's left kind of up in the air at the end of the book. There's quite a bit of ambiguity. But we do know that Ivanito was kidnapped. So what happened to him? Talk about it. We're talking about going from Brooklyn to Racine with us and well, imagine going from Seaside, Cuba to the heart of Brooklyn in 1970 of Mellay. It was, so I had to think about what happened to him. What did happen to him? How did his cousin, Pilar, who was older and also living in Brooklyn in the dark, how did this all come about? And so, I had to, even though I made up these characters, I had to figure out what you were calling the trajectories 20 years later, what had happened to them. So Ivanito ends up, he studied Russian in Cuba, which was unusual in the 60s and 70s. So he studied Russian. He went to Brooklyn, his Pilar, his punk cousin sort of took him under her wing, his, okay, the pronouns. And anyway, a long story short, I don't know if you're right there, he ends up going to Moscow. And from Moscow ends up in Berlin. Essentially, he's a brilliant translator, fluent in four languages, that's what he does. But what he really loves to do is, and he's really good at it, is he's a drag queen, specializing in Cuban divas from the 1950s forward. In fact, we were playing some of the music from Olga Villa earlier, and I'll tell you a little later, La Lube. And so this is what he is. He's an amalgam of his history on Cuba, sort of the punk musical transition he went through with his cousin, and then his travels into what felt like home to him as well, which was Moscow. I mean, that was a long explanation, but. He went to Berlin. And then he ends up in Berlin after the fall of the wall because, as far as the artists ended up, that's where, you know, Berlin in the 90s was almost like Berlin in the 20s, like the Weimar era. It was possible. You could absolutely reinvent yourself there. It was this whole center of the city that was rubble that people started squatting in buildings and doing little businesses and exact performance pieces. And it was a wild time, and that's what he was a part of, and that's where he ended up settling. Would you like to share a reading of that? Okay. Sorry, yes, of course, I'm going to plus words. Um, he, so he's in Berlin and he's about to go, or, you know, when the book opens, he's about to go on stage as his revision, Olga Vio, 50's Stephen Diva, who specializes in super-sultry boleros. But anyway, and while he's getting ready, who shows up in the costumes by his dead mother? Um, who's been dead for 20 years, but she doesn't speak, and it's very mysterious, and she's in this kind of weird little, you know, synosure, so he's been wondering for a few weeks, what was that? And so this is what happens next. It was weeks before Ivanito saw his mother again, this time in a cracked mirror at the gay bath house off Nolan Dorff Fox. He was naked, except for his spiked cuffs, matching dog collar and black leather boots, slung with chains, its toes metal-chipped. Nobody recognized him here, and he liked it that way. Here he was simply another pretty boy, a choice fit of an anonymous bottom, tall and delicate-boned with shoulder-length hair and strong, inviting ears. As his mother covered in the mirror, she seemed oblivious to the surroundings, taking no notice of the trio of men cavorting nearby. The burliest with the medieval scabbard took down his spine. Mommy's face serenely bobbed atop a kaleidoscopic haze of pastels. She reminded me of a documentary he'd once seen on a squeeze. Then she oozed out of the mirror and granted him her guns and a natural pink. The color distributed, but he refrained from overreacting. He wanted to keep her present long enough to find out why she returned from the dead. Even if he signaled for his mother to wait for him as he charged into his street clothes, bundling up in a down jacket and fashionable rabbit for a hat since 1999. Then he beckoned Mommy to follow him out into frigid pre-Domberland. Together, they hurried down Fulverstrasse, past Linden trees thinly sheaved with frost. On the opposite sidewalk, a disheveled woman strove off sightedly, one barefoot in the gutter, the other on the curb. Are you hungry for me to go see them? Can't hungry? Bratwurst. If I knew though, it was deep in the back. His mother was nearly 20 years dead and this was her first word. And under the perfect German accent, what happened, that Bratwurst was exactly what he wanted to. Could Mommy read his mind as he believed as a boy? And what in the hell had she learned German? Did people spontaneously become multilingual as dead? He led his mother to a popular 24-hour schnub in this and they got in line behind the city's hacker, Demi Mont, who were stamping their feet to stay warm. Nobody seems to notice her at all. But she was everyone but him. If I need to order three Bratwursts and offer one to his mother. Mommy had smoked it all, sausage, rolls, spicy mustard, into her billowing nests. The issue is in your burp. Impressive, he thought, devouring his first Bratwurst and attacking the second. His hands were greasy from the mess. His mother declined to nap him. Did his mom's? Home. Mommy's voice is barely audible. Home. Mommy don't wanna know. What did she mean by home? Home to his Charlottenburg apartment less than a mile away. Home to their tumble down the house back on Padma Street. Oh, it's home with his mother in the realm of the dead. Overhead, a flock of gray-lined geese was flying south mysteriously in winter. He shouldn't have left a month ago. Ivanito broke into a run until he too felt like he was fine. Mommy sailed beside him as he pumped his arms. His feet barely touching the ground. The cold air freezing his lungs. She laughed as they ran like she used to when they raced through Havana's parks chasing pigeons and dreams. Or so she cried. His mother effortlessly floated up the four flights of stairs to his apartment and Ivanito ushered her in. A maze of dying. A maze of dying, gladioli, suffused the rooms with a rotting scent. Mommy settled, undulating on a littering sofa and took a look around. She gaited like a tourist at the shells crowded with books about house furniture. His eclectic collection of antiques. Ivanito put Mozart's violin on chair number three on the turntable. Oh, God, it's a culture response. He began an offer to be swayed to the music as if it were danceable. In another life, Ivanito might have become a classical musician. I think the violin is dangerous, your vending's. Instead, I think he became a translator, fluent in Spanish, Russian, English, and German. Ivanito translated these languages and also their cultures, their histories, their erotics, their losses. Shape-shifting from one lexicon to the next. Por favor of mine, he said softly. Can you stay a while? I have a million questions. Ivanito poured her generous tumbler of rum and another one for himself. She belted hers back without ceremony and held up her glass for a refill. Things couldn't be stranger yet. I felt oddly familiar with him. What would it take to take him to a ceremony? He said, oh, his mother's voice was gentle, and it's most maternal. She leaned toward him and Ivanito surrendered to the lost pleasure of her grace. A somber effect, he could see through his scalp, loving him to sleep. And he opened his eyes an hour later, and Ivanito was gone. Ivanito forced himself not to cry. How many times could she abandon him in one lifetime? Years ago, his mother had been laid to rest in a white gown and turban and draped with a lexicon, religious beats. A son, as somebody a priest, played the holy bat-bat drums. Paul Bearers carried her coffin to the cemetery outside Santa Teresa de Mar. Everyone seemed to forget that Ivanito was there, lost and grieving in his ill-fitting funeral suit. He had planned to drop a gift into mommy's grave, a duckling stolen from the duckling who died too. From his locked desk drawer, Ivanito extracted a diary his mother had left him. Plum color, the fading gold stars, it was the only thing of hers he owned. He flipped through the blank yellow pages. She kept it in the false bottom of her hairdresser's toolkit, beneath the pink pasta curlers and the hairdryer that blew out the electricity in his grandmother's seaside house. Ivanito had taken this diary everywhere from the long journey to New York, then to Moscow, and finally to Berlin. It occurred to him that terror inhabited mommy's diary, the terror of erasure. Had she hoped that he might build these pages with his own history, write over the invisible palimpsest of her own, or perhaps she'd long for their voices to merge to grow louder and more insistent together? He never wrote a word. After her death, Ivanito often defended his mother against those who accused her of feigning madness defying the revolution, and worst of all, attempting to kill him at his father. Skies were cloudy and devoid of stars, only the street lamps, and they were so long empty, frozen boulevards of Berlin. Ivanito was as exhausted as he'd ever felt. As he prepared for bed, he caught a glimpse of himself in the dim light of the closet-drawn mirror. There, blowing softly around his head, was a halo. And that's a little bit of Ivanito. So that's a very gentle first exchange, and one of the first exchanges with his mother. But that halo becomes almost a burden for him, because it's like an antenna to the netherworld and to her world of the dead, and they're kind of their communication symbol. So there's a lot of things that happen with that halo along the way through the novel. I also wanted to talk to you about the theme of Vanishing Maps, the actual idea of borders and the directions, which define where we go, because without borders, you could get lost, with only directions you could get lost. And, you know, some, I think most of the characters are trying to find their way, and some, they're seeking something, and they're looking for some kind of closure or some kind of coming together through this, through the process of a story. But if you could talk about the theme of this kind of disappearance of borders, the merging of place and time and life and death, and even the twin sisters that find each other at the tango dance, they're two separate beings, but they also realize they're also ones. Could you talk about the theme of Vanishing and Vanishing Maps? Yeah, thank you. I didn't know what I was writing for the longest time. It was such a mess, and I know there are writers here in the audience, so you know what I'm talking about. But kind of in the middle of the morass, so one of these depressing days where I didn't know which way to go, I came across, and it became the epigraph for the book, I came across this quote by Glinter Grass, a German writer, some of you may know him from the Tintrom and other works, but he writes, no border holds forever. And I don't know what it was, no border holds forever. Those four words felt like a kind of magical potion or a magic word to get into the kingdom or something. In other words, I didn't have to figure it all out. The point was that it was, as I was trying to say earlier, continually influx these ideas of borders, of boundaries, of even transgressions. All of this is continually altering, just the way language is altering, just the way they're aligned. These borders are, first of all, artificial to get with, perforated, secondly, porous, and then what was once firm is no longer. And I think it's the case with all of us in certain ways, we keep morphing into other people, other allegiances, other senses of belonging, and this is, I think all of our compounded when you're an immigrant or a compliment immigrant family and when you're trying to negotiate more than one culture and within the cultures, all the differences and diversities and dangers that exist. There's always tripwires, tripwires are also boundaries. So I just gave up the idea of trying to define it and made that it's a continual change and indefinitability of a point in a way. It's a very powerful theme. And also, I wanted to also point out that the Cuban Revolution is one catalyst, but there's so many catalysts in the book that also refers to this as you're dealing with the fall of the Berlin Wall. And believe me, I had to go back and when did that happen? I had to go on the internet and just, yes, the Cuban Revolution, 1959, Berlin, fall of Berlin Wall was in 1989. And then of course, the breakup of the Soviet block country was like the timeline and also these huge, almost cataclysmic events that then effect the nations and the citizens and the people and the individuals. I mean, as we see, Russia and the Ukraine, and just going right through a border of a sovereign country and how it affects the whole world and also the citizens and us too. But very powerful. And of course, most of you know that Christine was also a journalist in her earlier career. And you could just talk about them, how you place these seminal events throughout the novel and the places where the characters have landed as they're new homes are also so tied into those events. Right, yeah, no, my background is really in studying political science and history and economics. That's what I did, I didn't get an MFA. And so, and also as a journalist, you're always, you don't always have much time to do it, but it's who, what, where, you know, you're kind of figuring out what are the, what are the constellation points that are necessary to tell the story. And so I think for me, there is no individual story or a little history story without the big age history. And unfortunately, the big age history largely ignores the countless little histories that are being lived out because of what has been raining down on them. So from the very beginning, from dreaming in Cuban, my interest was in examining, closely examining and making space for the lives of people who were affected by occurrences, cataclysmic, seismic dislocated, you know, all of that and how it trickled down on them and their relationships and their particularities of their lives, you know, to get transistor against sister who left to stay behind what resemblance ensued was forgiven as possible under the circumstances, it wasn't a matter of life and death. And you know, to this day, I still, I love the two things, I mean, your history and poetry and I never read the history book about writing almost like little, little, little slits or little possibilities when I read the, like the way the bombing of the Berlin Zoo happened like three or four times. Back to me, there's so much more story there. So suddenly the crocodiles are loose in Berlin and frightening the housewives who were just trying to get some water on the corner, you know, like, so everything for me is right with possibilities. We're in the untold stories of the larger stories that we're told. How do we push back with the intimacy and the intricacies of real lived lives, not the official histories that bury us alive? Well, speaking of also your love of poetry, politics and poetry, the book is just filled with such gorgeous poetic descriptions. And also these absolutely hilarious situations, also a hilarious situation in a zoo where a zoo, the young boy, is actually almost flinging himself into the polar bear cage and then a whole comedy of errors and transpires from that. It's not even here to sit with polar bears. They're wearing some of his clothes so if that really gets them going, yeah. I also wanted to talk to you about your use of natural realism because it plays such a juicy part of the storyline, especially with Imanito and his ghostly phantoms of the mother coming in and out of at the most unexpected moments. But I wanted to ask you about how you conjure up some of those scenes for the story. I think it's too fun to resist, really. I don't go around looking to every six pages, I need something surreal to happen. I mean, it's not like that. Every single scene that is off the charts, you can call it natural realistic or definitely pushing the bounds of realities are an extension of what's already happening. They're an extension of character, they're an extension of the preoccupations of all of these characters. And I'm wondering, well, is this really happening in the polar bear enclosure? Or is this someone having a psychotic break? Or is this a figment of your imagination? I mean, you could almost argue for any of these probabilities and they're all partly right, I think. I think in moments of stress, of heat, of dislocation, you know, to all kinds of things. And we're a culture that doesn't value our dreams enough, but there are other cultures where you wake up in the morning and the first thing someone asks you is, what did you dream? What are you dreaming? And so for me, I think the natural realism is a definite psychological, emotional extension of each and every character. And it reminds me a little bit of a... I see a Marquez in his character, he said, natural realism, I don't make anything up. This is what it's like. It's like in Colombia or wherever. But he also said that to suspend the disbelief, you have to be absolutely some sorely specific. So it's not enough to have flying elephants. It has to be like 43 purple spotted elephants. That one's only out of the elephants. So it's the specificity and it's the sensory, it's the texture that enables you, that invites you to lift off of whatever's going on in the page. So, you know, also your characters, you're really dealing with three or four generations of the family and four generations. And so you see the layers of this family and how they interact and where they are. And eventually there's going to be a reunion. So you're going to have to find the book to really find out what happens at this reunion and how they actually come together. But one of the most touching relationships which brings together the past and the present is the grandmother Celia Sevilla's reuniting with her lover of 66 years ago. Just to use this letter from him. That would be perfect. Junior Cuban, saying he was in her 60s then, kind of walks into the ocean, heartbroken after a series of terrible disappointments. And so it's literally left ambiguous as to whether she's committing suicide or trying to get her wounds or whatever. And over the years, a lot of people say, well, what happened to Celia? I don't know. Come start me crying. You know, whatever. People didn't want her to die. She's not dead. She's 90 years old. And she's not because she's still health. She's in Cuba. And then she gets some letters. 1934. She has a flaming hot affair with his married spenders for four days. It lasts four days. And then he goes back to the Spanish of the war to his wife and they never see each other again. She writes him letters. He doesn't send them except for one. Anyway, the wife finally dies. He gets in touch with her. And she's like, who do you think you are? Coming after all of these years, et cetera. Well, I will tell you what happened. So this is their meeting in Granada where Gustavo Sieta de Agna's lives and where he has been telling her to come visit him. The only thing I think he needs to know, so 66 years have elapsed and there's a Pope by Garcia Lorca. They're both their favorite poets. Then they get to get to know them and that sort of works its way through this text. We'll see if I can manage. I can. Maybe I'll stand up. Well, it's a coordinated person. Can you carry me okay? I'm told I have to kind of swallow this thing so that I can audible. Okay. So, yeah, I'll say the poem during Granada and this is their first meeting at the airport. So which lover's meeting Granada after 66 years? It's a long draft. Delia spotted him first. He was wearing a bone-colored suit and leaning loosely on his cane as if it were decorative. Bit of topery. A spray of red carnations goaded luminously from his drafts. Gustavo was bald and elegant, but didn't remotely resemble the man she remembered. His left eye looked milky, too. A cataract? Celia waited, watching him as her past and present converged. Gustavo continued to scan the arriving passengers and finally settled on her. His expression flabbed almost imperceptibly, but his eyes remained joyful. Celia spitted green dress with cinched at the waist and she felt no less relic. Ben, I can't get over it. How long had she dreamed of this moment? But in her dream, she and Gustavo were the same age as they'd been in 1934. Supple-skinned. Indefatigable. Loves it. Youth was an immortal god and they had been gods together. Yet this old man didn't just police up neither. His face was baby-smooth, almost pearlescent, and she had to stop herself from stroking. One boy, Gustavo dropped his cane with a clatter and moved toward her, arms wide, carnations drooping. His gait was confident to the lurking. He stood before Celia, unlinking as a child, searching for who she'd once been inside of who she was now. He cupped her chin with a papery hand, fingers gnarled, knuckles shining as if he'd polished them for the occasion. You haven't changed a bit. Gustavo moved toward her with lips redolent and he could lift his hand kissed. Celia full on the mount, the tip of his tongue scurrying hers oblivious to the sea of rushing, irritable travelers around him. Ben, I can't get over it. We begin with a lie. Celia was startled and quietly delighted. Celia almost kissed, registered sizely in her body in its crevices and hidden rivers. Who knew she was still capable of such heat? It always began with the tongue. She thought that was miraculous of muscles. A part of her didn't want to waste another minute in small tongue, preferred to lock themselves up in a hotel room for four more days. That would add up to eight days of bliss in one fine time. How many people could claim even that? It's no lie, Gustavo said, simply glancing at the carnations now scattered on the full marble floor. His teeth were natural white. Were they dentures? Would he need to remove them at night and brush them like a precious accessory, drop them in a glass, busy with cleaning tablets? What other graceful details awaited them? What they needed, urgently, was an armoire in which to store all the telltale signs of old age. Joint platements and reading glasses and continence pads, blood pressure medications, orthopedic inserts, enemas, and acid, compression sockets, old lusty remedies for their bleakened bodies, rullies, sags, and pouches, arthritic creaks and drooping declimities, acres of wrinkles, meshwork of barricose veins. Only moonlight and artful camouflage could save them. Celia ignored the pain in her neck from the immobilizing flights. Her ankles were swollen, her stomach, the acidic and cold air had settled in her knees. She hardly slept. Only the sporadic dosing that left her frazzled at the lingerie boutique at the Madrid airport when Celia caught a connecting flight to Granada, she squirged on a loosey red push-up rock with matching panties. If that wasn't optimism, what was? The checkout clerk had curiously reviewed her selections, but Celia refused to submit any transgenerational camaraderie. Vele, quiero vele. No. No one. You're shaking your head. He looked at me as though with a hint of worry. Oh, I was just thinking of other things. I stand before you, oh, just 66 years, and you're distracted. I must look like hell. Celia laughed. They held each other's gaze for a long, long and ignoring the loudspeakers announcing flights to Marrakesh, Nairobi, Sao Paulo, Calcutta, Underdebted, whose thousand-curably jealous wife made him swear that he wouldn't contact Celia again. But that, as I've been doing, broke every promise. Vako la luna, I keep that in mind. Let's both enjoy her beautiful lies, Celia said, her flotation, her missing, and promise each other this, that in the time we have left, we'll always choose a good story over the truth. Unless the truth is the better story. But how will we know the difference? We won't. That's what I'm telling you. Ganyu, she can't explain everything to you. Tell me why. Gustavo insisted. You think what's wrong? Celia turned her head the better to hear him. Her left ear felt clogged as if stuck with cotton, irresidual from the ear-popping flights. She felt her head didn't come along, too. Nothing I'd gotten to see, though, with extra sugar wouldn't fix. How about truth? But it doesn't matter. Celia said, you wanted us to rehash the past. Give us that. She was hearing that now, wasn't she? Their memories were crumbs, subject to birds to breezes. They had no time to grow old all over again. A little flamingo, a gypsy moon, a night to sing, to dance, to bring themselves back into the heart of love. And it'd be bad in me, but it'll end in me. I want you to believe everything I tell you. Gustavo was resolute. He slept a pair of wire-in glasses from his jacket and put them on. His eyes grew enormous behind the lenses, like the tree frogs. The better to trap her, wasn't it? Everything you tell me, true or not, Celia was impatient to stop this nonsense before it went any further. There was no time to waste. After the tremendous effort to get here, she feared losing her nerve. And I remember that first kiss. And I need you to forgive me. How Catholic of you, so you said, Bruce Lee. How far is Yael Halper from here? I'm serious, Celia. How far? What far? But I'm not ready for us to be torched yet. I'm here. Isn't that forgiveness enough? I just curiosity. I've traveled a long way. Celia was hungry and cranky and her head dropped from the lap of caffeine and encircled the scenes. Progress is always circular. Como, Gustavía Prata. Celia didn't remember Gustavo ever being this stubbornly careless. It was not an appealing feature. You know the most crucial thing I learned when I traveled with Gustavo drunk on? Maybe if she remained silent. If they both remained silent. If their mouths were no longer diverted by the impositions of language, their bodies would take the lead. I think I stopped that. Once again, you'll have to buy the book to see who takes the lead in the next chapter of Celia and Gustavo. Actually, I wanted to also talk to you about the fact that dreaming in human was made into a play which you adapted at Central Works in Berkeley and wanted to hear about your other project, fantastical project that you're looking at right now. You will be open up to the audience. I'm sure. Yeah, I actually went to Central Works in Berkeley. It's a little bit of a home for me. I hadn't written any plays before and they produced three of my adaptations of my own novels. So I wanted to branch out. I am, those of you, I don't know if anyone's here from San Francisco State, but I got a little bit of these teachers there and she was a graduate student when I was teaching mills years ago. I had a book called The President and the Frog which completely upends this whole idea of the Calvillo, the strongman novel. And it essentially is about the man who ultimately became the president worldwide who was in prison for many years, brutalized in prison and who survived in part by talking to a frog in his jail cell, this tiny little frog. Hey, I was enchanted by the book. It's beautifully written. I've read it multiple times and I was just thinking it would make a great play. And I've been working on it for a while, but it's very, very tough because those of you who, if you write theater, I hope you do. It's a whole different thing. The hog is running, conflict test is continual and there's no room. There isn't all that much room. There's no interiority, essentially. Everything has to be done in deed or in word for it to kind of, that's what tells it forward. But essentially, there isn't that much conflict between the president and the frog because the frogs like each other. So they're not fighting. There aren't really any problems and some kind of creating problems. And I'm like, that's not the point. That wasn't what happened. So I don't ultimately honestly know what's going to happen to the president and the frog. It may just regain as the gorgeous novel it is without my man-playing their relationship. So that's where I'm now with that. I'll ask you. Since you brought your characters dreaming in Cuban to vanishing maps, do you have any visions about taking them further into the next phase of their lives after their reunion and after they're coming together? Oh my goodness. What I've been floating lately is retirement and I'm telling you it's been hard and people are pushing back and yesterday I was driving in the car with a not-so-generated friend of mine who's also a birdwatcher. We go on these birdwatching expeditions and we went out to drink tea. So we had lots of time. I was driving on the way back yesterday and so I mentioned retirement. Something I haven't before and there she is, 80 to, she goes, you can't retire. Like, like, flogging me. But maybe I don't want you. I mean, look at these beautiful red hoods. Is, is pleasure not enough? Like, what is, no! I'm flogging on. This, this gentle birdwatcher turned on me like a red-tailed hawk, you know? So, um, that's not really an answer, is it? So, but I don't know, I'm trying with the idea that maybe, you know, like, I look into it, you know, in the beginning of dreaming and then just look at them and I have some ideas and I hope these interesting stories that I'm also interested in other things and I'm happy to be a, like, a humble beginner at stuff, you know? Pottery, birdwatching, anything. I'm hoping to suggest to these guys. Travel. Of course. That was the only thing I was going to ask you, if you just had spent time in the various cities where everyone resides. Pretty much everywhere except Moscow. Yeah, because obviously, I came to Moscow these days, but I had been to Russia since St. Petersburg a number of years ago and, um, and so Ivanito was there, and one of the cousins was raised there, so, um, I don't know, I feel a little bit, it's a huge, like, first great reading love for Russian novels, so I feel like, okay, I can read some of this one, but all the other cities, yes. And then I spent a lot of time in Berlin. I just spent a month in Berlin in May and in 2013, set three months there, it's just one of my favorite cities that I know how familiar you are with the city, but it is endlessly fascinating. So, um, and you can write about, and beyond. Isn't that part too much? Well, your love affair with Berlin is very evident, and also I want to recommend here in Berlin, which is a wonderful book as well, stories that are focused on each character telling their point of view about their life in Berlin, and it's a fantastic, fantastic novel as well. We want to open up the audience for questions, so, um, do we have another microphone there? Yeah. All right, well then, if you have a question, we want to raise your hand and we'll call on you in a minute. Stand up so we can hear you. Hi. I admire so much your use of the well-placed detail, but one that just freaked me out was the gorgeous the main piece for the end that was in the first book. The kidnapper, right? And then it turns out that it's also a intelligence base in Cuba. Yes. But that is serendipity of what happened first. Serendipity, yes. I couldn't believe it when I came across it, actually. Um, I don't even know how to describe this, because I'm not a spook. But, um, but yeah, Lorna who is so hyper-charged political, she gets involved in the whole Eliana Gonzales case, you know, Gonzales case in this book, you know, she is forever, you know, um, I mean, she would, you get the idea. But anyway, a listening station in Cuba for trying to get U.S. intelligence was called Lorna this. That was their main gathering site. Yes. I came across it and nearly flipped out and of course I had to use it. I was like, this is a great book. She has just been so well played for the second book. I didn't know about it. That's wonderful. Anyone who has been bought it, thank you so much. Any other questions? Any other questions? Hey there, my name is Nico and I have a craft question when you are policing your transnational characters. It is an English-dominant novel but when the transnational characters are switching into their other languages such as German and Russian and Spanish, how do you link those choices? Such a good question. I really stress out over this when I'm writing it because I want to remind people what's going on and is in another language but I don't want it to feel marginalized as I'm doing that. So it's kind of a tightrope walk for me and yet I also think excluding an entirely feels of kind of a major you know, obviously. I'm not writing books in Russian or Spanish or German but I feel like I owe so much. I feel like I owe that much to acknowledge the impact of these languages and their cultures and their histories on what I'm writing. I absolutely inform what the English sounds like on the page too. I've always thought, especially because before it was more that I was writing in English about things happening in Spanish and so I really paid very close attention to the rhythm of the English and felt like I needed it to do more than usual. It needed to accommodate the Spanish rhythmically. I don't have that facility with German or Russian so I'm a little bit hamstrung but I appreciate the question and please know I think about it constantly. Yes, I do too. So when you're writing dialogue like for King of Hugo which I saw in Love does that what you just described when you're writing a novel does that come into play even more for your factors? Yeah, good question. The theatrical the adaptation for the theater just it just takes it out of me in a completely different way. I feel like it's an exercise in distillation and compression even more. I think of that for novels but compared to novels which feel like these unruly and spooling beasts you know theater is a lot less forgiving and so I may have gone on three or four pages in a description of something that then has to be in utterance by the Delcastre character and I have to get that and I have to get so much more across and in fact I ultimately changed the story from the novel to the theater I mean the trajectory is very different and that took me a while because you put so much into getting it or hoping to get it to your satisfaction in the novel and then you tear it apart and reassemble it for theater and you have to be willing to do that and maybe I'm more willing to do that for myself which is why I'm having such a hard time I've got to leave this book because I don't want to do it to her she's like good friend and I want to keep having those with her but you have to be willing to tear it apart and reassemble it and resurrect in new iterations did I answer your question? not really try it again because I'm like it's interesting though if you're casting a play I'll cast it so if you have actors who are bilingual Spanish and English but you wrote the play in English because the cadence of their voice and how they sound that was what I was asking right oh my goodness actually do you want to tell the story about coming into the king of Cuba cast and trying to teach them how to do a cuban accent and what what happened? well I wrote it correctly Christina invited me to come in and talk about her cuban's talk because cubans have a very specific regional accent basically consonants don't exist I mean that's about it everything is an out and the mouth is open really wide and all of a sudden anyway we had this really ridiculous workshop where we were all scratching our mouths a lot and then I guess about two or three days into rehearsals after that everybody is what happened everybody was like their tongues dangling out and everybody looked like the Rolling Stone logo it was kind of a useless experience but because the sound is almost impossible to replicate in English unless you are willing to go a little bit into more of black English and then that becomes problematic for a variety of reasons so it's it's a very tough thing to do actually yeah so thank you so much actually it means to be on the side so what we end up doing a lot then is just trying to do no accents speaking in English occasionally having the Spanish but having the Spanish accent be neutral because everyone in the room speaks Spanish with their own cadence what their own history is like I work a lot with an actor Steven Ortiz and his accent is distinctly Mexican descent which is it's very tough to do that I have a play going up now in going up Irving next year in Washington D.C. which is an adaptation of Chekhov's Three Sisters it's called The Palazzo Sisters it's set in Miami in the 1980s and they've got actors from around the Caribbean descent, Mexico, whatever and so that the director has hired an accent coach an addiction coach so that everyone is going to sound Cuban but not everybody in that play is Cuban no, I mean the characters are but the actors are not but not even all the characters oh yeah you're right I'm just translating this play I'm so glad you're here because how can I answer any of these questions you're right I mean Miami is not just Cubans but so a dialect coach or an accent coach for all the different Spanishers that are being used but the hardest one is still still Cuban I think no one can no one can do the Cuban accent that one's a really hard one to do but thus, Achi was saying that we don't have enough Gonyons in it Gonyons in the script so we're going to pepper it up yeah thank you but I think also the use of Spanish it was a character speaking it gives such a fabric a texture, a feel we're just with that one but we're in their skin and we're in there in their emotions as well you want to feel like even and also I was just going to say in theater we have to deal with accents and English but it's the rhythm as you said the Cabans you don't have to do these stereotypes of the kind of accents which can be really off-putting but really about the rhythm of the language and that can be more effective for the actors to be able to work with the musicality of the language musicality is the word that's in my mind if you have musicality is key on the stage, on the page everywhere in this room any other questions William Bennett I didn't even see you it's another thing in the house I just wanted to if you could talk about your choice to use the the photographs those sections in the book were the vignettes the photos William Bennett choice I know everybody who was born this way is analogous to that so sort of an interest first throughout the book are descriptions of photographs as told by Yad Wende who is the cousin who is the artist who is Lourdes the crazy vinker Yonars a strange daughter she's a sculptor in LA so she begins with her mother one time and she was bequeathed to sell his letters anyway I wanted to do something analogous in vanishing maps something that would give us an intimacy, a voice something personal something that you just didn't want to shoehorn in as a flashback or backstory but that was she's an artist so it seemed a good idea to be describing something visual giving us some of her history episodically and rather than just having the pictures there having her describe it and having us as readers come up with images that she described so it was it was really just a point of I was hoping it would be a point of intimacy between this character and the reader just the way Celia's letters went out for readers very effective and also on page 127 is a very important photo but I'll let you discover that I forgot what that was exactly no one could tell me but I'm across it but it was some kind of I wasn't a U.S. citizen and so we need the country and come back in the country with some special paths and so there I am flowering at 14 which is I've always scowling so there I am scowling for all of you it's great well I want to thank Christina Garcia for her wonderful book and presentation tonight and reading this and also I hope that as we're we're getting closer to the 2024 elections that we can we can learn and gain something from your wonderful stories and also from your characters who are so they're just they're so opinionated they're so passionate they're so buoyant and resilient and I hope some of that buoyancy and resiliency even with all the different political opinions that are out in this now will give us a little resilience as we go forward with all of our political divisions and hopefully bring us together as an American family thank you so much Laura thank you Christina for having us and your wonderful questions and bravo for two Elizabeth will be there and to help you to sign your books and one of the last points I want to make I think Laura should make a film of your book thank you thank you all if you want to leave a comment do that too