Behind The Stack

Alejandro Heredia, Loca

• Brett Benner • Season 2 • Episode 22

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This week Brett sits down with author Alejandro Heredia to discuss his debut novel, 'Loca'. They talk about immigration, the book that made him a reader, creating characters not defined by race, gender or sexuality, and the importance of finding 'your people'.

Alejandro Heredia is a writer from the Bronx. He has received fellowships from LAMBDA Literary, Dominican Studies Institute, UNLV’s Black Mountain Institute, and elsewhere. He received an MFA in fiction from Hunter College. Loca is his debut novel.

Alejandro's website:

https://www.aleheredia.com/

Alejandro's instagram:

https://www.instagram.com/stories/aleherex/

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Brett Benner:

Hey everybody, it's brett and welcome or welcome back to another episode of behind the stack before we get started with today's interview There's a couple of new releases That I wanted to mention the first being stonyard devotional by charlotte wood This is such a fantastic book I actually read it last year because it was one of the finalists for the Booker Prize, and, um, it's beautiful. I just totally tapped in. So, would highly recommend that. Also out today, The Dollhouse Academy by Margarita Montemore. This is the follow up book to Una, Out of Order, which I really enjoyed. Um, this seems to be a thriller. Then, Jojo Moyes has a new book out, We All Live Here. And then lastly, this book looks really interesting to me. It's called Brother Bronte by Fernando Flores. And it's beautiful. briefly described as a stunning tale of survival and a biting critique of book bans and late capitalism. So check those all out, and I will put all those up on my bookshop. org page. And then my final book today is also today's guest, Alejandro Heredia for his debut novel Loco, which is just absolutely beautiful about two Dominican immigrants coming into adulthood in the Bronx in 1999. A little bit about Alejandro. He is a queer Afro Dominican writer from the Bronx. He has received fellowships from Lambda Literary, VONA, the Dominican Studies Institute, Kenyon Review, and Trinity College. In 2019, he was selected by Miriam Gurba as the winner of the Goldline Press Fiction Chapbook Contest. His chapbook of short stories, you're the only friend I need, explores themes of queer transnationalism, friendship, and unbelonging in the African diaspora. Heredia's work has been featured in Teen Vogue, Lambda Literary Review, The Offing, and elsewhere. He received an MFA in fiction from Hunter College. Heredia currently serves as Black Mountain Institute's Shearing Fellow at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. So enjoy this episode of Behind the Stack.

You

Brett Benner:

Alejandro, I am so excited to be sitting down to talk to you today about your debut novel, which is just absolutely beautiful. So welcome.

Alejandro Heredia:

Thank you. Thank you so much for having me Brett. I'm excited to be here

Brett Benner:

So before we start talking about the book, I just had some I had some questions about you That I'm just so curious about your parents were immigrants, correct?

Alejandro Heredia:

That's right

Brett Benner:

and were you, were you born in the States,

Alejandro Heredia:

I was born in the Dominican Republic, and I moved to the Bronx when I was seven years old. So, I remember very consciously what it was like to move to a new country, learn a new language, all that stuff. I came to, I came to New York specifically in 2001, um, like a week and a half after 9 11.

Brett Benner:

Wow. What a time to come. Do you have many memories of your time in the Dominican Republic as a child?

Alejandro Heredia:

I do. Yes. Um, I remember my upbringing. I mean, I had friends there. I lived with my grandparents cause my parents were here in the United States. they came to this country when I was like a couple months old, I think less than one year old. And so I grew up with my grandparents, my cousin and my older brother, we all grew up in the same house. yeah, I remember going to school. I remember. Hanging out with the boys outside of playing baseball. getting into all kinds of trouble. I, I remember it all vividly. We had a mango tree in the backyard. Um, so yeah.

Brett Benner:

Um, are your parents in the Bronx now as well?

Alejandro Heredia:

My mom, my mom is in the Bronx. My dad lives in Jersey. My grandparents in the Bronx. Um, most of my family lives still lives in the Bronx. Yeah.

Brett Benner:

and you just have the one brother?

Alejandro Heredia:

no, I have, so I have an older brother. I have two younger brothers and a younger sister. So I have a Oh, wow. Two siblings. Yeah. Yeah.

Brett Benner:

That's a big family.

Alejandro Heredia:

Yeah.

Brett Benner:

Any other writers?

Alejandro Heredia:

No. Oh my god, no. there are no other writers in my family. I remember growing up and I started reading books here in the, in the U S when I started reading books, people would look at me like I had two heads. They were like, what are you doing? You're reading books. You should be out talking to girls or whatever. And, that turned out to be not an interest of mine for many reasons, not just books, but, Yeah, no, I'm definitely the first writer in the family.

Brett Benner:

So this is a big deal.

Alejandro Heredia:

I think so. Yeah. I mean, I was just, it's funny. I just texted my cousins this morning. Cause we're, I'm trying to coordinate getting my mom to the launch party. My mom understands that I have a book coming out. But I don't know that it means the same thing to me as it does for my family per se. They just have a different understanding of it, even though they're very, very supportive of the book coming out and of me being a writer. I think they're kind of confused about what it is that I do all day. They're like, you don't have a job.

Brett Benner:

I remember I, cause I was an actor, um, before I, Started as a casting director and I, my mom always, I always get these questions, the same thing. They really didn't understand it or how it worked or even auditioning. And I remember my mom used to say things to me like, why don't you just go do a commercial? And I was like, okay, well let me call those people and tell them I'm ready.

Alejandro Heredia:

Yes. Well, yes, yes, yes, yes. Exactly. Um, yeah, I just had my, my partner's dad. Just gave me a motivational speech the other day and he was like, you know, you need to just call Oprah. Just call Oprah. Let her know that you have a book coming out. And I was like, yeah, right. Forgot it. Did not think about that.

Brett Benner:

Let me pull her up on speed dial to say, Hey, oh, I am so ready,

Alejandro Heredia:

girl. I know you're waiting.

Brett Benner:

So, wait, you, as a kid, you originally were not into reading, correct?

Alejandro Heredia:

I was not into reading, no. I hated reading. I thought it was very boring. And then something clicked in seventh grade. I started reading and then I just could not stop.

Brett Benner:

What was the entry book for you? What, do you remember?

Alejandro Heredia:

Yes, it was a children's book called Ink Heart.

Brett Benner:

Oh my god, I know. Wow. If you could explain it for our listeners and viewers.

Alejandro Heredia:

Yes. It's a novel. I mean, I'll try to summarize it. It's a novel about this father and daughter, and I believe they both have this ability, that gives them the power to bring to life whatever they read out loud from a book. it's a book series that really focuses on the power of storytelling and words and characters and, and how people can really relate to books when the characters come alive quite literally. So it was quite an interesting first book to really bring me into the world of books, cause it's a book all about the power of books and words.

Brett Benner:

Yeah, it's such a great series. so then how did you get into writing?

Alejandro Heredia:

Um, that's a good question. I don't know exactly when I made the transition from reading intensely to wanting to write. I remember the first piece of fiction that I wrote. It was for a history class. A teacher had us write about a fictional take on the first contact between Europeans. and Native Americans. Like what? Oh, wow. We were supposed to sort of imagine a sort of first contact story. And so it was supposed to be one page, um, was assigned from one day to another, come back the next day with a page of what you imagine this thing was like. And I ended up writing that night, like 14 pages. And I turned it in to my teacher. And he was like, Are you okay? Why did you write all of this? Um, well, I think that was the first moment where I thought, Oh, that was, that was interesting. I actually liked imagining, um, this world. Obviously, I was writing about something that was, quite devastating. But still, it was, it was interesting and useful for me to sort of write a scene, write character, write a story. And then from then on, I think at the end of, I always forget about this, but at the end of high school, I did, um, and I don't know if this is still around, but NaNoWriMo, the National Novel Writing Month, have you heard of this?

Brett Benner:

I've not heard of that.

Alejandro Heredia:

It's a, it's a crazy thing that people do where they sign up for this competition of sorts where you are, the goal is to write a novel in a month. And you get a little like digital certificate at the end. But really it's to feel good about yourself. I did that in my senior year of high school or junior year or something. And that was, again, that was fun and I did that. For me just because I found it pleasurable.

Brett Benner:

Did you print your digital, certificate?

Alejandro Heredia:

I did not. No, I didn't have a printer at home. So I just kind of let it disappear. That's awesome. So for our listeners, for our viewers, do you have an elevator pitch for the book or kind of a summary that you could share? Yeah, Elevator Pitch Loca is about, it's a novel about two best friends, Sal and Charo, who are trying and failing miserably to build a new life for themselves, in the Bronx in 1999. It's a story about, immigration, queerness, and I think ultimately a story about, responsibility, the responsibilities that we have to ourselves, and just as importantly, the kinds of responsibility that we have to ourselves. To our community.

Brett Benner:

I have to read some of these blurbs that you've gotten for the book from, like, some of my favorite writers, and it's really, really impressive. Adam Haslett says the most generously written novel I have read in a very long time, and that generosity is a beautiful thing. Then, Loka asks, how do we find each other and love each other, see each other, save each other, and this novel answers again and again, like this. And that was from Alexander Chee, And then Rumaan Alam has said, a queer book, yes. A Dominican book. To a Spanglish book. Sure. And as such a quintessentially American novel, a beautiful one. I mean, you are just racking them in like incredible. So congrats just on those and, and, and the response that you've been having. It's really amazing.

Alejandro Heredia:

Thank you. Thank you. You know,, it is a privilege to be read at all. and it is, you know, an even bigger privilege to be read with so much generosity and intelligence. So I, I'm incredibly grateful.

Brett Benner:

So I'm curious, what led you to the decision of setting the book in 1999? Aside from it's a great print song.

Alejandro Heredia:

Yes. Um, that is a great print song. I really wanted to write a story about my parents, generation of immigrants. My parents immigrated to the Bronx in the mid 90s. And they were in the Bronx from, from then on. And I really wanted to capture that world. The kinds of relationships that people had, the kinds of buildings that they lived in, the kind of environments and, and, and the block, you know, I write a lot about grand concourse at one seven Oh, cause that's where, that's where I grew up, but that's also where my parents, that was my parents home when they first arrived, in New York. you know, a lot of this novel came out of a desire to just, like, freeze in amber, this world that I know won't be there forever, that already has changed a lot in the past 20 years.

Brett Benner:

Did you find any of it a challenge, or was it more liberating in a way?

Alejandro Heredia:

It was pretty liberating. It wasn't challenging because I came to this country in 2001 and, you know, between 1999 and 2001, there's not a, there's not a lot that's different. Um, so I, I knew a lot about the world already through my own experience. But I had also heard a lot about it through my mom. My mom is a big storyteller. She loved to tell stories, loves to tell stories about her, immigration experience. And she had always shared with me, you know, all the trials and tribulations that she had experienced when, when she first arrived in the Bronx. And so I already sort of had, an internal database to pull from. So it wasn't very challenging in that way.

Brett Benner:

Was there anyone in the queer community that you were able to pick their brain?

Alejandro Heredia:

Yes. I asked a few people, but my main source of information was William Johnson, who is, I see him as a mentor of mine. he currently works at Pan America. That's where we met. Cause I used to work there a couple of years ago. and while I was writing the novel, I, I think I already had a draft of it in there, but, while I was revising, I would ask William a lot of questions about like queer New York city life in the 1990s and one of the things that he. taught me, which to me should have been obvious, but that I just didn't know because I hadn't experienced. And, you know, he taught me that, you know, there were queer things happening in the Bronx in the 1990s. There were, there was actually a club, that was open that I think closing like 2006 or 2007. that he used to go to. And so it was, it sort of reoriented a lot of my. Vision for the novel and helped me focus some of the queer party scenes that happened in the novel, um, in, in the Bronx. Some of it does happen in Manhattan. And sort of traditionally queer spaces like the village. but, Vance, for example, he has, his house parties in the Bronx and that's for the queer people. so it was really important for me to have mentorship in that way. Cause I did not live through that at that time.

Brett Benner:

As you said in the beginning, it's really follows these two characters. they've divergent paths in some ways about their own experiences being two different immigrants in the Bronx, both of them kind of looking for their sense of identity, how they fit, how they forge their own paths. Did you know in construction that you wanted to kind of make these two separate stories because they come back together, certainly, and they're always kind of tethered together, but they are very two distinct narratives.

Alejandro Heredia:

Yeah, I knew that I wanted to write a novel about friendship from the beginning. And so it was always clear to me that the novel had to be about Sal and Charo, and that they needed to have their own thing going on, as best friends often do. Um, as friends often do. but I didn't always have an idea of what the structure of the novel would be like. And that was something that I struggled with quite a bit. At the beginning of the novel seemed to focus a lot on Sal and the novel structured very differently. And then through the editorial process, I was able to move some things around. I added those extra scenes of Charo's past, which I think really rounded out her character and allowed us to understand where she's coming from, her own immigration story, and her past and how that informs the choices that she makes in the novel, because she makes some, some pretty, I think severe choices, throughout the book. So it took some time to, to find, some footing with her character, but From the feedback that I'm getting, some people seem to like her more than they like Sal. So,

Brett Benner:

oh, that's so interesting. And I'm not giving anything away, but I, I understand some of that in a way because her choices feel, I don't want to say logical, but I'm also thinking about it as somebody who's coming at it in 2025 and looking at these choices versus 1999. And so I think that informs things as well. I want to start with Sal a little bit. You talk about he's a, he's an immigrant, he's a gay immigrant. the, the specificity, and this is kind of somewhat from just from your text, the specificity of being Dominican and that difference from say Mexicans or Central Americans. Are these conversations you've had that he's had in your own mind? Are these things that came up for you? And did you find any of your own journey in regards to your sexuality and acceptance of who you are informed who Sal was?

Alejandro Heredia:

Yeah. I mean, I'm sure in some ways, some of me seeped into some of the questions that Sal's asking himself around, his queerness. I mean, we have different experiences. I immigrated to New York when I was seven. And so in so many ways, I'm, I'm just a very American person. and Sal immigrated and he was 19 years old. And I think it's different when you are, a fully, almost a fully formed adult, and then coming to a new country, your relationship to the other country, your relationship to the new country, all of that is, is quite different than, than my own experience. But certainly I had a, there were some questions that I had about my own experience in my own life that I was sort of teasing out. Through that character and through, through that character's experiences. I was particularly interested in this question that, a lot of immigrants are told about hard work. That section that you just read about from the novel is Sal asking himself, or saying to himself, I was told this story from my, by my mother that if I worked very, very hard, I would be successful. Things were kind of just, uh, open up before me and I would be fine in this country. But I'm being introduced and being challenged to think about my story in all these different ways. And it's getting really hard to figure it out because the story is more complicated than I thought. It was, um, to me, that was really important to write. And I, I think some people might see that as me sort of tackling what people call, uh, intersectionality. That's like the word that, that is, that's the hot button word that's used. That's the word that is used, being used to describe my book, I think in early reviews, but that's not what I was trying to do there. I was trying to make a point about storytelling and the fact that we all tell each other, each other and ourselves stories about our lives. And the more that we live, the more that hopefully life will challenge those stories and complicate those stories

Brett Benner:

yeah. And I don't feel it as much about intersectionality as I do, just, just identity in general and finding yourself.

Alejandro Heredia:

Yeah.

Brett Benner:

And, That time in a young person's life, which everyone goes through, which they're trying to figure out who I am, where I fit, where I fit in my family, in my community, in my work life, what am I going to be, where am I going to go, It's a time of great opportunity, but it's also a time of huge introspection and, growth. You'll have to help me with the pronunciation of this name. Is it, uh, Yadiel. Yeah. Yes. Yadiel yeah. Yes. Yeah. Yadiel the L is a great character in the book who, is the boyhood friend of Sal's. He grows up with him. He, he lives life very largely, he's flamboyant, he very much, lives on the edge. Where did the inspiration for this character come from? I thought he was such an interesting character and a great catalyst, obviously, for so much of the book.

Alejandro Heredia:

Yeah. I mean, I think the inspiration for Yadiel I think this character came out of, seeing in my own life people who express their queerness with such little trepidation, with so much bravery, with so little care for what people on the bus might think, people on the train might think, people at the park might think, whatever. I was not that person. I was very, as a teenager, as a young adult, I was very hyper vigilant. very afraid, very anxious. But I was always very inspired by people who were not like me in that way. so I wanted to, to write a different interpretation or a different version of queerness and my own in this character. Just based on on reality on people that I that I've known in my life, including, my cousin, Jr, who I dedicate the book to, he was somebody who just did not care and was, quote, unquote, you know, flamboyant or or very expressively queer everywhere he went and did not really. Stop himself from from expressing himself.

Brett Benner:

I love that. I and I was exactly like you But I and I also it's an interesting thing too because it's also a generational thing I think sometimes because I look at my son who is he's 21 And just the views and the way that he is with his friends and their views about sexuality and gender. It's all, so much more accepting and so much more, not a big deal. Um, with everyone, it's just, you are who you are, and this is what, you know, we're going through. And, um, which I think is, is so incredibly amazing. And I think it speaks to, what this book talks about, which is, family and found family and the power of community and why it's so important right now, that we all double down and, be there for each other. Sal goes to an astrologist at one point named West because he's feeling lost. And I wanted to read just a little bit, um, which the astrologist says to him, you know, for some people it's astrology, church, drugs. It's fine if God is dead and all that, but we need something between us and the world for our people. It's always been each other. And our people, Sal says, like he's savoring new words, who are your people? That's the thing to ask yourself. I loved that so much because, you know, there's this whole, like we said, conversation about family and community, but at the end of the day, I love that term, our people, because I know I've used that a lot, our people and who are your people. And, and even to say very casually, you know, they're not my people, or when you understand that, and, because I think sometimes the word family or the saying word community, limits, the boundaries of what that can actually mean. Yeah. And I think it's confining. Do you agree?

Alejandro Heredia:

Yeah. I mean, I, I think as, as, as a writer, I'm in the business of being really rigorous about language and about trying to, uh, push. The way that I'm using language and the way that I'm hearing language being used in the culture. I come from a community organizing background. it's what I did for 10, 12 years in college, after I graduated college in a professional setting. And so I, I believe deeply in community organizing. And I also see the ways in which even that word community has been co opted. By, forces who are not actually interested in community, um, who are not actually interested in, uh, in collectivity. they're interested in. Your pocket and in your attention and in how much profit they can make off of you. And so I, you know, I feel the same, sometimes the same way about the, you know, the language of chosen family, you know, why, why do we need to replicate the sort of the biological family stuff? So it's sort of, figure out how we might belong beyond the traditional family setting. And so that's sort of the language that I landed on in the novel, this language of who, who are your people? And then, you know, not only the novel doesn't just ask who are your people? It also asks, how are you responsible to your people? How do you show up to your people? are your people, the people who you get along with all the time? Can you disagree with your people? Can you have a falling out? Right? Can you have an argument? Can you fail the people that you love? And can you try to atone for said failures? These are all these questions that I, that I wanted to ask and explore throughout the novel that I think both Sal and Charo are asking themselves in very different ways. Sal's asking himself this question in light of great tragedy that he experienced in the Dominican Republic before he migrated. And Charo was trying to figure it out because she has a daughter that she's responsible to. that she loves deeply, all the while feeling estranged and, oppressed by the domestic responsibilities that are expected of her just because she's a, a young woman.

Brett Benner:

And those kind of gendered stereotypes of, of what she should be and what she should do. She's incredibly brave and, you know, I think both these characters are fighting very much against. Loneliness and feeling isolation in different ways, even in the midst of being surrounded by people who are, familiar to them and that I think is such a very real thing. Who did you start with? which character to you came first?

Alejandro Heredia:

So the novel, It began in my mind with Sal and Chadol speaking, to each other. So I think that's maybe why the novel sort of came out the way that it did ultimately about being about both of them. Um, I can't remember what they were, what that scene ended up being that I sort of first imagined. But I often, when I think of a character, it's usually through hearing them talking. Sometimes a conversation with others, sometimes like an inner monologue, whatever they might say to themselves. And with this novel, it was, it was Sal Charo talking to each other, so. They kind of came at the same time. Yeah.

Brett Benner:

And as you're writing and hearing that, how does that process work for you? Do you kind of spitball? Do you kind of just let them speak through you and write or how does that come out?

Alejandro Heredia:

So it's a lot of notes. I have a lot of notes on my phone. When I'm on the bus, when I come out of the shower, when I'm doing dishes, whatever, things will just come to me and then I just have to write it down. So much of writing for me comes out of daydreaming. Which means that I have to give my, my brain leisure time, uh, which means that I need to, you know, put down the podcast and put down the television show or put down the YouTube video or whatever, or social media, whatever it is to allow my brain to kind of wander and do its own thing. So it's a lot of notes at the beginning, a lot of fragmented things, but really, So much of writing, I figure out while I'm doing it. Um, I don't always know where I'm going. I don't always know how things are going to end up or how, how our character is going to be until I'm literally sitting in front of my computer writing down the scene or writing down the dialogue.

Brett Benner:

It's almost like in a way it's almost improvisational.

Alejandro Heredia:

Yes. Yeah. It feels that way. Yeah. It feels that way. And then, you know, that's the first draft after that, you know, I spent five years revising this novel. And so, um, after, you know, I think seven, eight months of the writing the first draft. So, it's a lot of the work comes after, but at least in the first draft, it really is about improvising and following one's instincts.

Brett Benner:

Now, was she, Charo is inspired by anyone in your life?

Alejandro Heredia:

No, I don't think so. I mean, there were questions that I had about my mother's experience and about the experiences of women like my mother, like my aunts, and cousins, maybe, women who came to this country in the late eighties, early nineties, mid nineties. Who, came to this country and lived very lonely lives. I was curious because, and I think this was my mom's experience at the beginning. I mean, my mom had, her sister was here. She had a few cousins. But I think my mom felt really lonely when she first got here the first few years and Charo's story was inspired by the question, well, what if my mom or women like my mother would have had friends, a group of friends, who were To get her through the challenges of being a young mother, of being a young immigrant, of You know, exploring all these personal and existential questions that come up.

Brett Benner:

I love the community, the family, the people, that you create and, especially in terms of gender identity, but, what I loved so much is the way that you introduced, not just these characters, but ancillary ones like Amy, for example, and the way you did it is, it's almost, Gender blind and color blind. where you're reading about these people, and then something gets revealed later on that tells you what's going on. Who they are in terms of a sense of some sort of identity. And I love that so much. The first time I ever had something like that, this is such a weird thing was when I was a kid and I read Stephen King's It.

Yeah. And

Brett Benner:

I remember reading Stephen King's It and the one character, I don't remember his name, maybe it was Sam, who was the friend who was black. But Stephen King never said that and you were just going on and going on and then it was like you were well into the book and there's this incident that happens that reveals that he is Black. And I remember as a kid at the time that floored me because first of all, it's so effective because it's, Thank you. Bringing you into something that it doesn't matter, right? You're just attached to the person. So Eliminates anything else that you might immediately attach to it at first. So I think it's beautiful and great that you did that

Alejandro Heredia:

Yeah, no, thank you for noticing that that is something that I did very intentionally With with different characters. I did it with with Ella. I did it with Amy. I did it, you know, with a few characters here and there. Um, you know, I don't want to misquote Morrison, but I remember reading an interview of hers. talking specifically about introducing characters and when you say the race of the character, when you don't say the race of the character. And I remember her saying something along the lines of, and I'm summarizing here, you know, when you, when you say the race of the character, you say, both everything, And you also say nothing, right? You might say everything about, you know, racial background and where they're coming from and et cetera, all the sort of surface things. But when you say this character is, Dominican, or you say this character is black American, and when you say whatever ethnicity, the character is, uh, it's also not saying anything about this person. person specificity, right? Um, and that's sort of what I was trying to play with a little bit. Allowing the, the reader to sort of engage with the character before knowing that they're not the specific gender that they think the character is or the specific race that they think the character is. No, I want you to experience the character for who she is. And then later on, if it becomes relevant, then it becomes relevant, right? It's kind of, you know, it's fucking with the reader a little bit, but I think, we can all, uh, we can all learn, including myself, to detach ourselves a little bit from this obsession with identity that we have, in our contemporary moment.

Brett Benner:

Yeah. And it's done so beautifully. Well, Alejandro, this was such a delight. I'm so happy for you. The book is just beautiful. Congratulations, it's really terrific. I really appreciate you being here today.

Alejandro Heredia:

Yeah. Thank you for, for your generous reading of the novel, your questions. I feel like I'm learning more about the book. As, um, as I was hearing your questions,

Brett Benner:

So, go buy the book. It's out today. You can also find a link in my bookshop. org page, which will also have the book up there. But also, buy independent if you can. So, thanks so much, and we'll talk soon.