Anjanette Delgado (Santurce, 1967) writes about sexile, uprootedness, and social justice. Winner of an Emmy Award for her human-interest journalism, she is the author of the novels The Heartbreak Pill (Atria, 2008) and The Clairvoyant of Calle Ocho (Penguin Random House, 2014). She has written poetry, fiction, and essays for The New York Times (Modern Love, Opinion), NPR, Kenyon Review, Prairie Schooner, Hostos Review (CUNY), Tupelo Quarterly, Women’s Review of Books, and Distrópika, among many other journals and anthologies. She edited the anthology Home in Florida: Latinx Writers and the Literature of Uprootedness (University of Florida Press, 2021), which won a gold medal in collective fiction at the Latino International Book Awards in 2022, and her work has been translated into English, French, German, and Arabic. Anjanette holds a BA in Journalism and Mass Communications (CoPu) from the University of Puerto Rico, Río Piedras Campus, and an MFA in Creative Writing from Florida International University. Her most recent book, a hybrid of poetry and nonfiction titled El Sexilio, has just been published in Puerto Rico by Editorial LaCriba (November 2024).
Delgado: Something I find almost impossible is telling a story across two timelines and two voices. Give me a (figurative) guitar and something will come out; ask me to conduct the orchestra and I quit. Your novels, however, move back and forth in time effortlessly — and any reference to a recent, rather explicit popular Cuban song is purely coincidental—making cold cases come alive. How did you arrive at this narrative tool? When did you know you wanted to solve mysteries long considered lost? And that you would need to build your own time machine? What challenges does this bring?
Dovalpage: I’m thinking about that explicit song and I can’t stop laughing. I first used the dual timeline in Last Seen in Havana, and it turned out to be extremely useful. It is, indeed, a kind of time machine that creates greater empathy between the reader and the characters. In the case of Last Seen in Havana, I kept thinking: if readers don’t know Mercedes’s mother, why would they care whether she finds her or not? Similarly, in The Novel Detective, I believe the reader will be more invested in discovering what really happened to Yoyi and Felipe if they have some sense of who they were while they were alive. The greatest challenge is not confusing the reader, and being absolutely clear about the chronology. And by the way, I’m sure that if you start using this technique, you’ll do it beautifully. You certainly have plenty of material!
Delgado: Thank you for the faith!
Now, another remarkable thing about The Novel Detective is that it feels less like a novel and more like a cartography of Havana: its places, its sorrows, its joys, and above all, its people. What rule do you set for yourself to know when there is enough detail? Your descriptions feel like action… before I realize it, you’ve described the entire island. Is that intentional? Are you trying to remember, or to help others remember?
Dovalpage: It’s funny, but I didn’t think too much about the level of detail I was offering. I didn’t even think that I was remembering, though of course I was. The 1980 chapters, especially, came out in bursts, almost without having to think about them, with no effort. They wrote themselves. Later on, during the revision process, there were moments when I felt I had given “too much information,” but since my readers in English would not necessarily be very familiar with Havana, I decided to keep most of those explanations. I remember that when I described the building of La Manzana de Gómez in the 1980s, I felt as if I were there: I could smell the bathrooms (not very pleasant, by the way) and see the “tunnels of love” where couples hid to neck. It was like living it all over again, seeing that place through my fourteen-year-old eyes.
Delgado: I know what you mean. I, too, felt as if had been there without ever having visited—even smelled the bathrooms, and agree it was not pretty! I think it’s partly because of something lovely that happens with the Teresita who narrates those 1980s chapters: reading her feels very vivid, and like getting to know you as a child. What was it like for you to recover that little girl and bring her onto the page? What did you choose not to tell us about her?
Dovalpage: It was great fun to create Teresita because there is so much of her in me: how nerdy she was, how pampered and overprotected she was, how curious she was (and curiosity, after all, is essential for a writer). All of that is true. The setting is also real; my mother was the technical director of the La Central pharmacy, and like Teresita, I would curl up in a small space on the second floor that allowed me to observe everything happening in the dispensary and beyond. Writing about Teresita was, in a way, like recognizing myself, reconnecting with my teenage self through the magic of writing. I don’t think I left anything out, at least not intentionally. I did, however, change a few details, like giving her a father who lives in the United States, which were necessary for the development of the plot.
Delgado: Finally… give us the scoop. You’re working on a third novel that would complete a kind of trilogy? Can you share a preview with us?
Dovalpage: I am working on a novel set in Galicia, where my paternal grandparents were from. Moraima, the daughter of a Galician father and a Cuban mother who teaches at a high school in Los Angeles, receives a package from Galicia containing a newspaper clipping and several photographs of her as a child. So far, everything seems normal. But as she continues going through the photos, she finds one of a gravestone bearing her name. And of course, she decides to travel there to find out what it all means…Muchas gracias, amiguis, for this interview and for all your help in this “long and winding road” of literature!
Delgado: Au contraire, my Cuban Poirot. Being your amiguis and your fan is what being part of a literary community is really about. I’m so happy to be able to bring out a little of the true you for readers here to enjoy. The Novel Detective is literary and high-minded, but also down to earth and fun! What better combination is there?
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