An Interview by Jennifer Maritza-McCauley
Anjanette Delgado is the full package. She’s an Emmy Award-winning screenwriter, she’s written for NBC, CNN, NPR, Telemundo, Vogue Magazine’s Latam edition, and Univision, and she is the author of the acclaimed novels The Heartbreak Pill and The Clairvoyant of Calle Ocho. She also teaches screenwriting at Miami-Dade College and is heavily involved in advocating social justice for Latinos.
While Delgado deftly juggles many genres and forms, she always comes back to themes of heartbreak, renewal, and hope in her work. She writes about the topics that interest and stir her, and believes other writers should too. Delgado says “…We just write what we feel. What calls us….the story [a writer] is called to tell from within is made possible by life experiences and influences….” Delgado’s writing is passionate, powerful and honest; it’s easy to see why readers connect to her work. She’s an influence the literary world needs.
Here we discuss the elements of a good story, the role of the Latina writer, and heartbreak, among other topics.
ORIGINS
Why did you choose to pursue creative writing professionally? Do you see creative writing as a calling?
DELGADO
Not sure. Labels make me nervous because I'm still learning so much about writing and the role it plays in my life. For example, I still don't think of myself as a professional writer. It's as if that label is reserved for the writers I admire and for those who've taught me the craft.
And that's another thing, I always think of it as a craft. As a teacher, I work hard to demystify the process for my students. I don't want them to think about it in any term that is too precious, such as "a calling," because I often see that paralyze instead of empower them. So, I'm a writer because I write, I work at my craft, and I never think of it beyond those terms. At least not so far.
ORIGINS
Your novels The Clairvoyant of Calle Ocho and The Heartbreak Pill are both set in Miami, Florida. Why does Miami inspire you and your work?
DELGADO
I think Miami is like me in that I came from so little and had the worst mindset and such a limited view of the world growing up and yet, through the love of books—but really, more broadly, of art—I learned to love people. And it transformed me because they loved me back. People and art transformed Miami when there was nothing but beaches and bars in South Beach and fueled it to where it's become this even more dynamic place. It isn't that Miami wasn't great before. It was just so undeveloped. And you certainly didn't think of it first when it came to art, did you? Beaches, fashion, and celebrity parties, yes. Art? Not so much. That has definitely changed in the 22 years I've lived here.
Still, just like Miami, I am a work in progress, growing and expanding beyond what others may or may not give me credit for, thanks to people who see a potential, a heart. They support and inspire me. They see things in my writing that I don't yet see myself. Miami is a dream. We've all created it. It was in our hearts all this time. It was a multicultural dream with energy and possibilities beyond the jet set mentality. Since my work is always at least a little about reinvention, can you imagine a better setting?
ORIGINS
You’ve said heartbreak is the theme that runs throughout all of your creative work. What is it about heartbreak that you find so compelling?
DELGADO
How much we dismiss it. It is such an intense emotion and yet we are so flip about it. Easy come, easy go. Next! Those are just a couple of the sayings we have to show we don't think it's that big a deal. We are so sure that everyone else just needs to get over it, we never see the long lasting effect of heartbreak in the totality of our lives.
ORIGINS
Do you think you’ll continue to write about heartbreak indefinitely?
DELGADO
Absolutely. The heartbreak of the things that happen to people. The other day, a student told me how she had gone to Finland with her boyfriend for a traditional Polar Bear Plunge in icy waters. When she got there, she jumped in while he stood on the edge of an ice cap, wanting to plunge but unable to. As she was telling me about how her heart stopped when her body hit the freezing waters, all I could see with my heart's eye was the boyfriend, afraid, on the edge, torn between living (plunging) and safety (on the ice cap's edge). It is such moments about which I could write an entire novel.
ORIGINS
You are a judge for the prestigious Flannery O'Connor Award for Short Fiction. What is your personal criteria for a great story?
DELGADO
Well, it's one thing to read for myself and another to read as a judge. As a writer, I know how much work and hope goes into each of these entries we're entrusted with. It's a big, but fun, responsibility. I look for a firm grasp on the story a writer wants to tell. Their use and command (and sometimes their restraint in the use) of narrative devices to create the most satisfying story possible. I look for a writer who is in charge of the tale and yet I don't want to be constantly aware that I'm reading a story. I want to think I'm being told about something that really happened. Then of course there is the strong voice and the great prose and the premise or perspective that is so wonderfully fresh. When all these things combine and the result is a strong, passionate connection with what I've just read, I think and feel I've read a great story. I feel a click.
ORIGINS
Your first novel The Heartbreak Pill was written in Spanish and your second novel The Clairvoyant of Calle Ocho was written in English as your MFA thesis. Which novel was the easiest to write? Do you feel more comfortable writing in Spanish or in English?
DELGADO
Dear Jenn, you're joking. No novel is easy to write. But I would say that Clairvoyant was my bigger challenge. English is not my first language and it takes extra work to get a feel for how the things I am writing land in this second tongue of mine. On the other hand, I had fabulous author, Lynne Barrett, as my thesis director, so things worked out in the end, I hope.
ORIGINS
I’m curious about how language impacts story and what happens in your imagination when you make the choice to write in one language or another. Do your characters or their voices inform your choice to write in Spanish or English?
DELGADO
Well, I used to think I was bilingual, but I'm not. My first novel refused to be written in English and my second novel was harder to write because it was my MFA thesis and had to be written in English. My third is written half in English and half in Spanish and I can't make up my mind.
It's not that I don't understand the words or the culture. I do, and love writing articles, poems, essays, and short stories in English. But a novel is so personal, so intimate, you live with it for so long, day and night, that it needs to be written in the language of your soul, of your innermost thoughts and feelings, and for me that language is Spanish, the language in which I love.
ORIGINS
You were also born in Puerto Rico. Some writers say Puerto Ricans are underrepresented in Latino literature. Do you agree? Do you think Puerto Rican writers (or any writers of color) should be obligated to write about their own culture?
DELGADO
I don't. I don't think any group or topic in literature should be part of a legislated or engineered social plan. We just write what we feel. What calls us. That is not to say that we shouldn't encourage and be supportive as a society of those who are talented and want to write about their cultures, Puerto Rican culture in this case. I just don't think it needs to be a personal obligation. If educational, governmental, social, and philanthropic groups and institutions want to inspire or motivate it, there are a million social tools to do it. But it shouldn't be on the artist whose only obligation, I believe, is to his or her art. To the story he is called to tell from within as made possible by his life experiences and influences. Let's be good influences if we want to be. Let's just not think we should force it. And by the way, yes, I do think Puerto Ricans are underrepresented in literature because I'm Puerto Rican. If I were from Bangladesh, a much bigger group of people, I'd say, "What? Those Puerto Ricans are crazy. Just crazy."
ORIGINS
So do you think Puerto Ricans are perceived differently in the literary world because they’re from a smaller, lesser known culture?
DELGADO
Actually, what I mean is that whether we know it or not, we are incredibly overrepresented culturally in relation to our geographic and population size. There are so many of us creating. A friend of mine who is a well known scholar poses a great theory in her book Boricua Pop. Columbia University's Frances Negron Muntaner, Ph.D. says Puerto Ricans have created a cultural nation and sense of identity and substituted it for the actual political, economic and geographic nation which is a model of confusion and instability. I couldn't agree more. When people are constantly asked what they want to "be" and how they want to live and speak, and whether they "feel" more or less American, all for political gain, as if those things were up for discussion every day, you create a dearth of identity, a hunger for a sense of self. But being the resourceful people that we are, we've dealt with it by becoming creators of art, and through that art, I believe, succeeded in preserving our national soul, separate from whatever the politicians do.
ORIGINS
Are there emerging Latino or Puerto Rican writers we should know about?
DELGADO
Because I don't live in Puerto Rico and haven't lived there in decades, I don't feel qualified to paint a good picture of the present literary scene, but I do want to take the opportunity your question gives me to recommend some great Puerto Rican writers. There's, of course, Esmeralda Santiago and Rosario Ferré and Julia de Burgos and Manuel Zeno Gandia, but there's also Ana Lydia Vega and Luis Rafael Sanchez and Mayra Santos Febres. Then there is one of my favorite new literary voices: his name is Justin Torres and he was born in New York of a Puerto Rican father and an Irish-Italian mother. His book We the Animals is one of my favorite books of all time. Read it. You will be captivated from chapter one.
ORIGINS
You’re both a celebrated writer and an active literary citizen. Would you talk a bit about your social justice work and why you feel called as a writer to advocate for others?
DELGADO
Though I do speak out on issues I care about such as violence against women, racial justice and identity, and civil and human rights, I do not consider myself an activist. There are real activists doing the brave work I wouldn't know how to begin to do.
The only active advocacy I do happens in classrooms and workshops. I advocate for people to write their stories however they can and whenever they can and I work hard to empower my students to write, write, write and to read, read, read, and I can't imagine a better life than one fashioned around those things.
Anjanette Delgado is an award-winning author and Emmy Award-winning writer and television producer. She earned an MFA in creative writing from Florida International University and has written for Vogue, National Public Radio, and Urban Latino magazine. Her first novel, The Heartbreak Pill, won the Latino International Book Award for Best Romance in English. The Clairvoyant of Calle Ocho is Anjanette’s latest novel. She teaches writing at the Miami International Book Fair’s Florida Literacy Arts Center and lives in Miami with her husband, Daniel.