Behind The Stack

Quiara Alegria Hudes, The White Hot

• Brett Benner • Season 2 • Episode 61

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In this episode Brett sits down with Quiara Alegria Hudes to discuss her fiction debut, 'The White Hot'. They discuss childhood imagination and when writing started for her. Why Daphne Rubin Vega was the best choice for the audio recording, Siddhartha and story book archetypes, Jagged Little Pill, and the differences between being a novelist vs a playright.

Quiara's website:
https://www.quiara.com/

Quiara's instagram:
https://www.instagram.com/quiaraalegria/

The White Hot playlist:
https://open.spotify.com/show/21rEwC8CJyHViJI0fc4Iro?si=vVt_XOgsQSKHbQ5CtsLMLQ

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https://www.bookshop.org/shop/brettsbookstack

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https://www.instagram.com/bretts.book.stack

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Brett Benner:

Hey everybody, it's Brett Benner and welcome or welcome back to another episode of Behind the Stack, where today I am sitting down with Kiara Allegria Hudis for her brand new book, the White Hot, A little bit about Kiara. She is the Pulitzer Prize winning playwright of water by the Spoonful and the Musical in the Heights, which won the Tony Award for best musical and which she adapted for the screen, her memoir, my broken Language was long listed for the Andrew Carnegie Medal. Her essays have appeared in The New York Times, the Washington Post, the Cut, the Nation and American Theater Magazine. She's co-founder with her cousin Sean of the prison writing program, emancipated Stories. So I hope you enjoy this episode of Behind the Stack. I am just so thrilled to be having you sit down with me today to talk about your just gorgeous, gorgeous book, the White Hot. So thank you so much for being here.

Quiara Alegria Hudes:

I'm excited to, to chop it up.

Brett Benner:

So before we get into the book, I, I always love to to delve into, delve into the writer a little bit. So you were born in Philadelphia?

Quiara Alegria Hudes:

Yes.

Brett Benner:

And you had a Jewish father and a Puerto Rican mother. And you were raised in West Philly. Whereabouts in West Philly were you raised?

Quiara Alegria Hudes:

So I was raised on the 800 block of St. Bernard Street. It, it's about a block from 49th and Baltimore is like the biggest nearby intersection'cause it's a tiny wisp of a street. One little one way. One one lane street.

Brett Benner:

My sisters lived forever in Haverford. But it's funny, we'll get into this'cause I grew up in Pittsburgh, so, which oh, of course is a very integral part of the book. And Ohio Pao Pao meant something to me getting into that as well. And so I was like, wow, I know all these places, which was really cool. Now wait, were you an only child?

Quiara Alegria Hudes:

I was an only child until I was 11, and then I had siblings. So I have the experience of both, which is wonderful. I have the kind of. Um, play with myself, use my imagination, experience of being an only child, and then along came my little siblings and they were my baby dolls.

Brett Benner:

Yeah. One of the things that I loved reading about you is that you said from a very early age you were already writing plays. Yes. Do you remember, do you remember anything that you would've written or what it would even have been about?

Quiara Alegria Hudes:

Oh, yes. Plays. Poems, um, rock albums. I was filling up stadium arenas when I was five years old. You should know this. And, I dunno, I think, I think the earliest fully realized musical I wrote was called My Best Friend Died. Wow. The title song in it was My best Friend died. And as it, as you can imagine, it was full of drama.

Brett Benner:

Wow. Wow. You were ahead of it. I read what somewhere once that they said, I think it was one of those, like, you know, what is that book? Um, something about an umbrella. I don't remember. It was like a self-help book, but it, it talked about, If you wanna know what you should do, you should look back at the things you did as a child and that will inform what you should be doing now. So you were clearly informed right from the beginning with everything that you should have been doing later. So I love that. Yeah, I know

Quiara Alegria Hudes:

pen and paper was my, like GI Joe, it was my Barbie dolls like that. That was my toy. The the pen and paper.

Brett Benner:

So I assume then that you were a big reader as well.

Quiara Alegria Hudes:

That came later. You know, it's weird. I, I learned to read at a very young age. I, I think I was like four when I learned to read and my dad just had some sort of notion. This made me some sort of incredible reader and so. Alice in Wonderland and the Hobbit and books that like I, I couldn't decipher as a 4-year-old. And so actually I did not love reading until I was in high school and I encountered real literature that I could understand. But what I did love when I was younger was the technology of a book, like pages, paper, turning that was to me. The coolest thing in the world. And so what I would do with it was, is I would write, I would write with books, and, and then the, the reading came later.

Brett Benner:

Wow. That's so fascinating. I know your aunt was an influence in your life too, because she, she wrote music. She would do all the music for the Big Apple circus. Correct. And so your original, your, your original BFA was in music? Yes.

Quiara Alegria Hudes:

Yeah.

Brett Benner:

Piano and, and music composition. And she taught you how to read music.

Quiara Alegria Hudes:

Yes. But before that, she taught me how she was not trying to teach me how to read too early. She was trying to teach me how to just let go and live in the experience of music. And I really think that was my training as a writer. It's like, this has no literal meaning. Um, you are going to just feel this. And she took me to like. Reggae concerts when I was too young and I was getting high off the secondhand smoke. She was also a punk rock musician and she would take me to her gigs at CBGB and um, and then I'd like turn her pages on the bandstand at the big Apple Circus while the clown Act was rehearsing. So it was a pretty immersive experience. I mean, I remember being. A preteen. I don't remember exactly how old or young, but I went, she took me to see EDA James in concert at like some noisy bar and eda James pointed me out and she said, you're too young to be here. You're too young for this music. And I still think, and I think it's so much in the White hot, which I know we're gonna talk about, but like I still connect as a writer and as a reader with stories. Not just on the level of meaning, but really it's like. Press play on a good album. I wanna be like overcome by like a sonic world and just kind of an emotional experience.

Brett Benner:

Yeah. Well there is a, two things that struck me so much about the book is, is its musicality in terms of the way that you write and there is a lyrical quality to it and, and it's poetic. So much of it, so much of the writing is so beautiful. And I'll tell you, like I read the book. Like three weeks ago I was on a flight and I, so I, it was the perfect thing'cause I kind of just locked in and did it as one experience, which was almost cathartic in its rawness. But to kind of refresh for this. I had the audiobook of it, and so

Quiara Alegria Hudes:

how is it? I haven't, oh my

Brett Benner:

God. Oh my God. First of all, I, you know, I know that you, it's Daphne Rubin Vega for our viewers and our listeners who is just so incredible anyway, and I know you guys have a longstanding relationship and she's done a lot of your plays, and so you have that kind of working relationship. It's amazing. It's amazing. And I find, and I really, I have to tell you like. I loved having this kind of duality of an experience of reading your words on the page, and then later hearing them come back to me with her urgency and her emotion, and it brought it to life in a different way. But one of the things that I did, I have to tell you when I was going through it. And, I was thinking just in terms of what you're talking about in terms of music and the experience and feeling like that is, I started to play, and he becomes, you know, there's a big part of this. We can get into Charles Mingus, the, that album while I just had it under while I, like on my computer while I had it. Daphne in my ears saying your words. Holy shit. It was incredible. And I would highly recommend this all immersive experience for anybody doing this is playing the Charles Mingus album underneath a very little, but, but yeah, she does an incredible job, as you would expect, and it's great and it's very much, it feels, it feels very theatrical. It almost feels in the reading, like, uh, it could be a, a one person show.

Quiara Alegria Hudes:

Okay. Well, I love that I have

Brett Benner:

to

Quiara Alegria Hudes:

like jump in here if we're talking about Daphne in the audio book. I haven't even heard it yet. But, um, she, we've collaborated for so long. Um, I know what she brings to my work and she is the most rock and roll person I've ever met in my life. And I don't mean rock and roll as like a marketable commodity, I mean as like a state of being of a soul. Mm-hmm. She is. Just kind of naturally wild child, kind of stylish, but like kind of a mess at the same time. And she's just got this raw spirit. She just, she's a misfit, and yet she's gorgeous. You know, she's all of, she's so rock and roll and, I really wanted her voice for April Soto because, You mentioned Mingus and, and what happens in the book? You know, April Soto's our, our main character in the book, she's 26 years old, she's never left Philadelphia. She lives in a household of all women. It's four generations. She's 26. She has a 10-year-old daughter. So she, you know, got pregnant when she was 16. Like she's never even really had a teenage experience. She has like such a small life. And what happens in the book is. She finds a bigger life to kind of fit her bigger self, and one of those things is she hears jazz for the first time. She hears Charles Mingus for the first time and she hears Jimi Hendrix for the first time. So I thought, I need a voice on this audio book. That can capture that visceral energy of Charlie Mingus, of Jimi Hendrix. Um, so yes, go by the audio book. Everyone listen to the audio book.

Brett Benner:

I wanna say to you too, congratulations.'cause I know the white hot got star reviews from both Kikis and Publishers Weekly. I just wanted to take a moment to, to list just a few of your awards and plot. Its because it's so amazing you, the Pulitzer Prize and Drama, the Tony Award For best musical, you've been a Pulitzer finalist and drama Twice you a Tony nomination. For Best Book of a Musical, you are an Andrew Carnegie medal Long list. Pennsylvania Governor's Award, the Olo Award for outstanding Achievement and playwriting. Lucille Ortel Award for outstanding Musical Out Outer Critic Circle Award for outstanding musical Best musical New York Magazine, book of 2021. NPR, national Book Review and more. It, it, the list goes on and on, and so kudos to your body of work. You know, the lead line was obviously, oh, she wrote the book of In the Heights, but then digging and how much. Work you have. It's, it's incredibly impressive. So, congratulations and I immediately ordered your biography'cause it looks so fantastic. So I can't wait to read that as well. Enjoy. One of the other things that I loved, it was in another interview that I saw Paula Vogel, who I know like was a mentor of yours at Brown, said that you are very much taking to page from August Wilson on. She focuses on her ancestors and creating the canon, the American landscape with a Puerto Rican voice, and I loved that so much. I thought that was so incredible. I

Quiara Alegria Hudes:

think it's really true. And, and actually there's a little nod to August Wilson in, in the white hot. This is really inside baseball. I don't even know if it's an Easter egg. It's so subtle and I, it was almost, um. Done subconsciously, but I realized it when I was editing. Oh, there's, there's a part where April, she takes her first walk in the woods. It's, it's her series of firsts, right? She has a kind of delayed coming of age when she's an adult. She goes into the woods for the first time. She's never been in the wilderness before. She sees her first shooting star. She's woefully unprepared. She's wearing her work clothes, so she's wearing sandals and skinny jeans and a sequin. Shirt from work so her feet are covered. Was like, she wasn't planning any of this. She just left home. Kind of in a temper tantrum, but here she is in the woods and she has to find some drinking water because she's gone off course and she's kind of lost. And um, she does find some drinking water. She says it tastes like, I can't remember what coin I use, but it tastes like some sort of like nickel, a shiny nickel. And I realized when I was rereading it, I said, oh, that's August Wilson. That's Joe Turner's come and gone. Um, because. You know, you're shining like new money at the end of Joe Turner's coming on, which is one of my touchstone favorite, favorite plays. And, um, yeah, I mean, I, I was very moved by August Wilson's project to create this century cycle, a hundred years of black life in Pittsburgh. And think, I think he did that very consciously as a choice. And I think he also did that as naturally as breathing in water because that was his world and that's what excited him. And so both of those things are, are true for me also. It's, you know, Phil Rican life. Uh, I didn't see it on the growing up, you know, so I'm kind of creating my own little niche on the bookshelf there. But it's really American life and it's, it's really Philadelphia life. It's really women's life. Um, the circles kind of ripple out from there.

Brett Benner:

Yeah, it's funny'cause I was thinking about earlier when you said in, in terms of reading at a young age, that you couldn't, it was a, I think the word used is something like, I, you couldn't connect or, and I wonder, had there been, you know, stories that you identified, if that would've pulled you in. You know what I mean? And I keep thinking of the importance of seeing yourself on a page and finding yourself.'cause I've always said to people, like, they're like, well, I'm not much of a reader. And, and my response is that it's always been like, you just haven't found the thing that. Interest to you, you haven't found the thing that can pull you in. That's what I believe. And I believe anybody could be a reader if they have a key to something that says, what, what is their life or what, where do they find themselves? To me, you've given such a good kind of intro to the book. And one of the things that, the only other thing I guess I would add, and one of the things I wanna get into is that this woman, April in a, in a just a moment. Kind of walks out of her life and, and leaves her, her daughter, which is the, you know, kind of the central point of the book. Going back to what I was saying to you before about the audio versus reading it, I had, highlighted all these sections in the book when I was reading of just stuff that I thought was so beautiful and the way that you wrote things. So beautiful. And interestingly, when I was listening to it. I would be like, oh my God, that sounds so amazing. I have to write that down. Let me find that section of the book. And it points that I had already highlighted so they were consistent. And I was like, well, at least I, at least, I at least it really resonated. But one of those, the, the, the first thing was she's talking about the white hot and what the white hot is. She talks about the white hot being her armor and also her undoing. Can you talk a little bit about that particular thing, the white hot. I, I think it's, I, because I find that word in that, kind of the white hot, it's such an interesting thing that I think so many people grapple with in, in different ways. But, what brings it on for people? I certainly know as a parent, I've certainly been there, you know, I've certainly seen that, but if you could talk about it for April and what that is

Quiara Alegria Hudes:

Love, the quote that you chose. That it's, she thinks of it as her, her armor and her undoing. You know, she grew up in, in North Philly, she was always getting in school yard fights, kind of gifted young student, but always getting in trouble. And, it's just this anger would wash over her and she couldn't control it. And so she'd always end up in the principal's office and it would feel like electricity, almost like lightning striking her. And so she thinks of it as her white hot, you know, people say about anger that you're seeing red, but for her it was this experience of almost like blinding mm, white light in her eyes. Um, and she'd kind of lose reality. And then after a fight, she'd have this experience of like, total, the pendulum swing in the opposite direction, like complete crash. So ashamed, so embarrassed. Realizing she might have hurt someone realizing she got hurt and she hadn't even noticed. And she comes from this family. She lives, as I mentioned, this, four generations. It's her daughter, her, her mother, and her grandmother. They came from Puerto Rico. She's the first generation born here, and they're unequipped to deal with their frustrations, with their stress, with their anger. And they have been the recipients of violence, and they have not known how to respond and how to protect themselves. And so it's this white hot, this armor. She's protecting herself. She's protecting her heart, she's protecting her integrity. But she protects too hard, you know? And, and so I. She's an adult now, and she's not quite like having these scraps on the school yard anymore. But the problem is her daughter's starting to, and she sees her daughter fighting. She sees her daughter getting in trouble for being so smart too. And she's realizes like, my daughter's 10, she's about to inherit this same cycle. It's fine for me, but I don't want that to be her future. You know? And so she just freaks out. She takes off, she hits the road, and she has to figure out what kind of life. If I could choose a life, what would I choose? And if I could choose my daughter's life, what would I choose? And as we know from the first few pages of the book, so it's not a spoiler, she chooses to leave her daughter. That's the choice she makes. And then she, the whole book is a, the letter she writes to her daughter when her daughter turns 18. They haven't seen each other in years saying, you don't, you don't have to forgive me for this choice I made. I'm not even asking your forgiveness. Just hear me out. As a woman, I've learned a few things. You're about to be a woman. Maybe some of what I learned will be useful for you. Including the white hot, like here's where our anger comes from. You ready for this kid? And she tells her daughter.

Brett Benner:

There's also a mantra that she continually says almost as if to stave off what she knows is inevitably coming, which is she keeps saying, dead inside. Dead inside, dead inside. Which, which also is, I'm not gonna give any spoilers, but has a incredible kind of arc with even that mantra that comes later in the book. She talked about this earlier. Kind of escape route is through the forest, which felt almost, story and almost felt like a fairy tale. And, going from this kind of. Urban jungle that she's lived her whole life to literal jungle of, of nature. And there was a quote that I love where she said the first theater was a forest packed with monologues of midnight survival. I love that. And just the images that conveyed. But the creatures in the forest, the danger, the the absolute beauty and also the unpredictability and not knowing. What's gonna happen next? I thought was just so phenomenal.

Quiara Alegria Hudes:

Thank you. I mean, it is storybook. So I, I was working with a kind of archetypal tale, which is Siddhartha. It's a book I read in high school. It's a book April Reads when she's in high school. And I think it's like classic assigned literature for those who don't know what, it's basically the Buddha story written by Herman Hessa, you know? April reads it and she's like, this is beautiful. The Buddha, like Siddhartha goes, he's walking by the river, like he's learning from the trees and she's enraptured by his tale of Enlightenment, but she's also pissed and calls BS on this. How easy he left, you know, he left his newborn baby, he left his wife so he could go find enlightenment. And when I read Siddhartha when I was in high school, I was like, I wish my mom could just like leave us. My mom was a very spiritual person. I wish she could just leave her domestic reality behind and go into the woods and find God. But she had, while she was doing the dishes, you know, like she didn't get, so I was, I was working with is kind of my love letter too, and like rebellion against the Siddhartha story. Um, and so yeah, that's there is that. Archetypal storybook thing where it's like he goes into the woods, he renounces the material world and and she does that too. Wow. And, and it ends by a river, which Siddhartha also, he becomes the assistant to the Ferryman at the end and he crosses the river, and the river becomes his teacher. And so I, and um, the white hot by the Skoki River and in Philly, and she has her own moment of enlightenment.

Brett Benner:

I was gonna ask you about this earlier. So your mom is a, is a, a kumi priestess, correct? Yes. And was that from your childhood, right from the beginning, or did, was that something she discovered later in your life?

Quiara Alegria Hudes:

That was later so that, that started maybe around like when I was in late grade school, early middle school. Um, but she was a deeply spiritual woman all my life. Like she. Would tell me her way of teaching me Spanish in an English household, um, was by telling me quote unquote ghost stories from her childhood. But not, not like Casper, the friendly ghost kind of thing. Like, here's what happened when a dead person came to me in my town of Puerto Rico where I grew up. You know, here's how I. Addressed to that, and I was terrified. Like she would tell me these stories about talking to spirits when she was a kid. So this has been, she sees the world differently than I do, and so I was the kind of like beneficiary, my world expanded by hearing about how she sees it. Every time she would pray it would be like in a different language or using different. I mean, we wanna talk about gender pronouns. Like there were different gender pronouns for God, like in all the different prayers growing up. You know, it was so multi-faith. Um, just her roots and her practice. And then she was crowned jungle. Around like when I was pre-adolescent. And so that ceremonial practice became part of our lives. I was went to Quaker meeting because she ran a lot of youth programs around the country for teenagers of color, through American Friend Service Committee. So it was a very interfaith. Childhood, which I loved. And one of the things I've loved about moving into books from playwriting is I can write about the spirit in a different way on the page because I'm not trying to present what's happening. I'm trying to present someone's experience of it.

Brett Benner:

Mm-hmm.

Quiara Alegria Hudes:

If I present what's happening on stage and what's happening is someone getting touched by God, then the audience is folding their arms going, but I don't believe in that, so what am I supposed to do? But if I'm writing on the page about April Soto had this experience, she felt like she was levitating. Whether or not she was actually levitating is actually not the point. Her experience of that is what the point is. Then you're allowed to still be atheist or cynical reading it, and you can still take away the meaning that she had this experience.

Brett Benner:

Right. You're able to empathize. You're able to, if, if, if, if it's all worked, you're with that character anyway. I also think it's such a different thing with a play. You write the words, you have a belief, you'd understand the arc of these characters if come from you, and yet it becomes such a shared experience when an actor and a director become involved and they're bringing their own. Ideas, visions, personalities also to those things where writing is such a, it's truly just yours until it becomes a shared experience with the reader in terms of the way they experience, it's, uh. It's interesting.

Quiara Alegria Hudes:

Yeah. No, part of why I, I wrote most of you know, 98% of this book is the letter. That's why it's short.'cause it's the letter she writes her daughter when her daughter turns 18. But part of the, the choice to write a letter is to put it in whatever person is she's talked, she's addressing you, you, you. Mm-hmm. I guess that's second person. You, you, you, and it's this feeling of like, I'm whispering in your ear. I'm right here with you. It's a one-to-one experience. Whereas of course on stage where I worked for 20 years and I'm still working, you have to speak to the back row. It's not whispering in someone's ear. It's I'm, I'm on stage and the back row might be 150 feet away from me and they have to connect with what I'm doing. So it's very different scale of experience.

Brett Benner:

Yeah. Do you view yourself now in light of your upbringing as a spiritual person?

Quiara Alegria Hudes:

Yes. Yes, absolutely. I mean, I don't have, I'm not gifted in the way that my mom is. Um, but yes, I am spiritual and religious, multi-faith. I mean, I still go to Quaker meeting. every once in a while I have, I still have my altar and my, I'm not wearing them now. So, yeah, it's, it's a part of the practice. It's part of my life.

Brett Benner:

Mm-hmm. I love that. So later in the book, she meets this man, Kamal, and, um, they kind of forge this connection, but this is where the, the music part, we talked in the very beginning about Mingus and Jimi Hendrix, and this just. Incredible sequence, which is, it's such a love letter to musicians and music and, and, and knowing your background. It's so beautiful. I wrote,, this one quote down that when she says about hearing Mingus for the first time, she said, listen, feels like too small of a word. For what she was experiencing. And I, I loved that so much.

Quiara Alegria Hudes:

Like swim would be too small a word. If you get stuck in the undertow and you can't find the surface of the water and you can't come up for a breath, like swimming is not like the right word. And that is when you hear an album. One of the fun things about writing, she meets this man Kamal in the woods, who goes to the woods to meditate. They hit it off. She goes back to his place and he's an audio file and he's like, I gotta play. You don't know mgu. You don't know Jimi Hendrix. Like, he's gotta play his favorite albums. And so we get through, by the way,

Brett Benner:

just the fact that he's playing albums, let's just say that It's not like a cd. He's old school. He is putting on an album with an album whole thing. So he's, which is

Quiara Alegria Hudes:

snobby about it, you know? Yes.

Brett Benner:

Which is how it's like, is Yes.

Quiara Alegria Hudes:

It's like kind of a, a expensive hobby of his now, you know, part of the fun of writing that is this is April's first time and. We all have that experience. It's like the first time you heard an album that became meaningful for you forever. So we get to encounter this stuff with April for the first time, even though we have likely heard Jimi Hendrix, we have likely heard Charles Mingus and, and so it overwhelms her because here's this. Young woman, she's never heard it be, she's never heard jazz. And, and, and her first jazz is Mingus. And Mingus is like, it's raucous. It's pretty wild. He's grappling and, and some of it's like really nasty and thorny and it's just, it's, it almost sounds like a fight in sonic form. And it's beautiful and she hears it and she almost is like. First of all, she's embarrassed at how limited her knowledge is. She realizes for the first time, damn, I never even heard this before. Apparently this is stuff everyone knows, but she also kind of retrospectively is like, oh my God, this music would've been really helpful when I was a kid. And the only way I knew how to deal with my anger was to lash out. Well look at Mingus like he's lashing out. You know, on the bass, he's having the drummer lash out. He's having the pianist lash out, and then they resolve it and it's got dignity. And they should have just played this for me in high school, rather than sending me to detention all the time. It would've been more helpful, you know, and it's hot too. It's sexy and it kind of like helps, you know, set the mood for, for the two of them as a couple too.

Brett Benner:

Do you listen to music while you write?

Quiara Alegria Hudes:

Yes. Though the definition of write might, it depends on, on how technical we're getting about what it means to write, but for me, writing involves the act of like having a pen or pencil in hand or typing and. Like literally doing nothing and walking, like those are the activities. And so music is very much part of like sitting around doing nothing and very much part of walking. It becomes part of the practice. And then I kind of pin hone in on an album or some songs, and then that starts to inform the structure too, where it's like, okay, I've, you know. The drums just went crazy. I just had my wild, big, aggressive solo, like what kind of song would come next on the album? I need to like take it down a notch kind of thing. So it helps inform my narrative structures too.

Brett Benner:

Well, I'm also just wondering in, in terms of a,'cause it talking about, like when I'm hearing you say is it's an organic experience of if you're walking, you're listening to music and all these things begin to kind of pull and your, your mind begins to. Uh, you know, flood with ideas or thoughts that you then begin to coalesce and put down. Yes. So, I'm curious in conjunction with that, but also a little separate, what was the impetus for the white hot?

Quiara Alegria Hudes:

Okay, so it was two things really. It started, it started in 2012. when, it's funny'cause I was, it's, I was listening to Jagged little Pill and, hmm. That music doesn't, didn't really end up informing too much of the book's aesthetics, but it was that kind of like match that lit the, the spark, um, that lit the firework or whatever. Because I was listening to it, it's like Alanis morrisette, you know, there's a lot of rage, right? She's angry as hell. She was like, kind of like slutty, right? There was the lyric about, I'll go down. Did she go down on you in a theater? Like Yeah, it it, she was a hot mess and was. Virtuo with the lyric writing around it. And then there's a song that it's like she's curious about God and it's kind of funny and has a really light touch. Like those things coexisting. She's very playful in some of the songs. Mm-hmm. Love song. It's like I'm head over feet, you know, it's, it's playful. And so I was like, I want a character like that. I want a character who's a hot mess, who's pissed. Who is gonna call you out and is gonna name names and like might come and wreck your home, likes to pray and has a good sense of humor and can have a light touch about things. So that, that was the impetus. And, and actually I don't think reading the Ex, the White hot is the experience of listening to jagged little pill, but there's still some little vestiges in there. Right? I was like, I'm gonna have, I wanted to write an anti-hero. I was like, she is, she's gonna steal a car. The first draft, my editor was like, really? Is she really stealing the cars? Like she's gonna steal the car, gonna break into a home. She might wreck the home. She breaks into TBD. No spoilers here, but, and so some of those are right out of Alanis Morissette songs. You know, there's, she, she has a song called My House. I don't think it's on the jagged little. She breaks into a home. It's in her fantasy. I think it's in her imagination, whereas it's in my real narrative. So that was 2012. And, and I actually start imagining, um. Alanis Mo said, has this song, thank you. It's not on, it's not on Jagged Little Hill.

Brett Benner:

Yes.

Quiara Alegria Hudes:

This kind of spiritual, like living gratitude. You know, Oprah wakes up and she says, I'm grateful to be alive. Kind of like the gratitude thing. And I was, I was thinking about this world and I start imagining April sil though I started imagining her journey and what does it look like when she gets mad? And I'm imagining this moment that this, this stuck with the book. This is the first thing in the book. I really, really knew. They're fighting around the dinner table. They're all women. Not a man in sight in this house. The didn't food gets thrown, plates get thrown. And then what does the elder do? They're, they just don't know how to handle their anger. What does the, the elder do in the home? She, she grabs a broom. She starts trying to sweep up dinner and it's very hard to sweep cooked rice off a floor.'cause it just gets like dummy and glbb. And so I imagine our protagonist watching this and being like, I'm gonna fricking lose my mind like. Sweeping is violence and she gotta get out of there. She got, she gotta get outta there like the house is burning down kind of thing. And then really that this realization, she's watching her elders sweep this kind of, the grotesque domesticity of it. She's like, she has this realization for generations. The women in my family have been sweeping themselves, their, their trauma, their beauty, their desires. That's, this is what I've been trained to do. And my daughter is 10 and my daughter's about to pick up that room. That room is about to be my daughter's future as she takes off. It's like that do or die moment. So that was, that's early, early on 2012. And then everything start, that's kind of the sun and then all the planets of the rest of the narrative start to revolve around that. right. In a book. More enjoyable than doing say a play. The, the, the coolest thing in the world about being a playwright is you're creating jobs. And this is kind of the pragmatist in me, like I really. If I have a day where I wake up and I'm like, what am I doing? Why am I doing this? I could just look back and be like, I created a lot of good jobs for actors where when I started, like there were still a lot of made roles. There were still a lot of, you know, drug dealer number one roles, and I was like, no, I'm gonna create meaty. Human beings for these actors. And so I, I'm really proud of that. I love that you, you, you created, you create jobs, you create a community with the actors and the collaborators. The, the thing about writing books is like the timeline. A play comes and goes and no one. Mm-hmm. You know, it's like, oh, that play's not happening anymore. So there's no way for people to see it. Books stick around, they last forever. And so it's okay if someone doesn't pick up this book for 20 years and finds meaning in, in it, then like things are gonna happen with it that I'm not gonna be aware of and like I love that.

Brett Benner:

Yeah. One of the things, just by doing this, I know this is gonna sound so obvious, but one of the things about doing this podcast and just kind of reading more intentionally is you do, we talk, we collective, we talk a lot about. You know, why representation is so important, but it, but it really is because I also think it, not only does it show you another person, another life, another thing that you not hadn't even thought about, but it also really connects by the universality of the whole experience. I look at April and think not just how many women, but how many people have gotten to that point of like, where am I and what's happening and, and, and the ability to say. I've gotta take a hold of something for a specific reason, or to save someone, in this case, her daughter, to save her daughter and herself. It's, it's really beautiful. I'm really excited for you. The reactions to the book are, are universally, incredible. I'm so,, excited for people to discover her and her journey, which is. Frankly mythic to me, so congratulations. And I absolutely. I love this cover.

Quiara Alegria Hudes:

It is so beautiful. They, it's, it's kind of good, like you remember, um, scratch and Sniff stickers. It's got a kind of like,

Brett Benner:

oh my God.

Quiara Alegria Hudes:

Scratch it and sniff it and it

Brett Benner:

Oh, kind of you mean the texture of the book off the jacket. You know what I love so much. I, I love that leg so much because it's not perfect. Yes, that's it. The little

Quiara Alegria Hudes:

cellulite dimple here, and I just think, I literally think my mom's leg, my mom's leg didn't actually look like this, but there's something about that. That cellulite there that I'm just like, it's a safe place. It's a safe place to land. And then we have a little kind of cherub, like baby reaching up towards the sky. So yeah, it's, it's a beautiful item.

Brett Benner:

it's a sexy cover. It's also a rock cover and it's just, it's unvarnished. That's how I'd say it. It's an unvarnished cover and I, and it's, it's so perfectly encapsulates. What's inside, but please, people buy independent if you are able to buy independent. Again, a big plug for the audio book and the incredible Daphne Rubin Vega. This has been so fantastic and, and, I so appreciate your time. You've really written something that's just absolutely stunning.

Quiara Alegria Hudes:

Thanks, Brett. I appreciate it. And, and you know, extra points for extra credit for being able to listen to Mingus as you read it. That's, that's incredible.

Brett Benner:

Well, I have to say, I, I, it was, it was low, so it was very much like, every now and then it would pop in and I'd be like, okay, gotta turn this down a little bit. But yeah, you should, throw together a like a playlist for this thing

Quiara Alegria Hudes:

we have, we have a playlist. Oh, you

Brett Benner:

do. Totally do. And I'll include it. In the show notes for this, that would be great. So people can just lose themselves. Thank you again so much, Kiara. And yes, I have included in the show notes, the Spotify playlist for the White Hot. If you like today's episode or other episodes of Behind the Stack, please consider liking and subscribing. Another thing that would be incredibly helpful to me as we almost wrap up this second season is if you could give the show five stars and if you have the time, possibly a review. All of these things are really helpful, so the show continues to be found by other people, and I can continue to bring you all conversations like this one. Thank you so much and I will see you all next week.