Andrea Yaryura Clark, ON A NIGHT OF A THOUSAND STARS
[0:02]Hi, I'm Zivi Owens, the creator and host of the award-winning podcast that you're listening to right now.
[0:07]Thank you so much. Called moms don't have time to read books.
[0:10]It is a daily podcast, 365 days a year, and each day we talk to an author about all of the things related to their career,
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[0:22]I am now an author myself, although I wasn't when I started this podcast, and you can get my new memoir,
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[0:36]You can learn more about me at Zivi Owens.com, but really you're here to learn more about the authors, and that is what we're going to do.
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[0:58]Andrea Yariura Clark is the author of On a Night of a Thousand Stars.
[1:03]She grew up in Argentina amid the political turmoil of the 1970s until her family relocated to North America.
[1:09]After graduating from Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service, including a year of study at the University Dodd-Delt Salvador in Buenos Aires,
[1:17]and completing her MBA at York University in Toronto, Canada, she returned to Buenos Aires to reconnect with her roots.
[1:24]By the 1990s, many sons and daughters of the disappeared, the youngest victims of Argentina's military dictatorship in the 1970s, were coming of age and grappling with the fates of their families.
[1:34]She interviewed several of these children, and their experiences not widely known outside Argentina, which inspired her debut novel.
[1:41]Andrea lives in Brooklyn with her husband, two sons, and a spirited terrier.
[1:45]Welcome, Andrea. Thank you so much for coming.
[1:47]And moms don't have time to read books to discuss your novel on a night of a thousand stars.
[1:53]Thank you so much, Sivi, for having me. It's a total pleasure.
[1:57]Well, thank you for whisking me off on all of these adventures around the world.
[2:02]I actually went to Buenos Aires during business school on one of our retreats, or I don't even know what you call them,
[2:08]where a whole group of us go to another country.
[2:10]So I have like a visual of my own to compare some of the scenes too, which just made it that more interesting, but oh my gosh, even the food.
[2:19]I didn't even like lamb, and there's some scene in here, where everybody's like sitting around.
[2:24]Man, dude, I'm like, oh, that sounds amazing. Like I want to be in that scene right now.
[2:30]Well, I'm so happy transporting you there. I have to say that that was really one of the highlights.
[2:36]Can you say highlight of the pandemic, but I was able to be lost in that world. You know, just be transported to and food is a big part of my life and Argentine culture.
[2:47]So I think that's why it appears a lot in the book. I had to delete some scenes.
[2:55]Because it was just too much. But yeah, my heart, when I think of Argentina, I have to think about the food that I miss and the wine and just the gathering of family or friends for a lunch that will start at one and finish it for.
[3:10]coffee pastries and then maybe you go on to like, you know, you're a pebby tea. Anyways, you could spend all day. So it's just in a weekend, you know, maybe in the countryside. But yeah, so it was I was in my book, so to speak, I was believing that time again because I was there in the 1990s.
[3:28]I had grown up in Argentina, but I had left.
[3:31]We left sort of in time. So I'll tell you a little bit about the premise of the book.
[3:36]I was getting there, but go ahead.
[3:39]Yes.
[3:40]I was talking about food for the rest of the episode.
[3:44]But yeah, so what is your book about?
[3:46]So it's two stories, two threads.
[3:49]One takes place in the 1970s with the return of General Perón, who had been the president of Argentina in the 1950s and had been forced into exile.
[4:01]His government was overthrown. And so his return in 1973 is when my novel stars that period.
[4:09]And it's the story of two university students. It's a love story, basically. It gets the backdrop of ever increasing darkness in the country.
[4:18]And the second story, the story of a young woman in 1998 who returns to Argentina has the opportunity to go to Argentina back to Argentina with her Argentine parents.
[4:28]And she had met a friend, an old friend of her fathers from his university days. And this woman sparks a curiosity about her father.
[4:38]And so she has this opportunity to do a little digging around around her father's time as a student.
[4:46]And so goes on this sort of journey and doing that.
[4:50]And then we have her investigative chops, so to speak. And how, as soon as she goes on this trip home or to Argentina and starts asking everyone from family members to people that she goes on this not wild goose chase because it has results.
[5:05]But this investigation into their lives and who was this woman grace and how did this all happen and who are these people.
[5:13]to see her mind putting everything together as she's getting all these clues. So it's very fun. It's like not a mystery per se, but you know this like investigative element.
[5:23]And then to see it all actually unfolding at the same time. It was very neat the way you did it.
[5:28]It made for just very vibrant, like exciting read where you can't wait to get to both storylines again because they're so enmeshed.
[5:38]Anyway, it was very, very interesting culturally and from a reader standpoint, like, edge of your seat type of reading as well.
[5:46]Well, thank you. Tell me about I know that as you mentioned already your your family was from there, but you also have this whole background which you knew about families and kids and people who had disappear during that time of dictatorships or speak.
[6:05]So tell me a little more about that time what you knew from your own anecdotal like what that look like for you growing up and then why spend however long sort of fictionalizing it here. Tell me more about where that came from.
[6:22]Okay, yeah, so I moved back to Buenos Aires in the mid 1990s and well, it was around that time that there were some headlines about a former naval officer who confessed to some atrocities that they had denied so they got the dictatorship was over by the time I arrived.
[6:43]He came forward and confessed that some of these awful atrocities that they had committed had actually occurred. At the same time, I met a young man who was my peer who told me about his father having been assassinated during the 1970s and that really sparked my curiosity about the children, my generation whose parents had disappeared.
[7:06]We've fortunately left in time, my father could have been a target, he was a writer, a poet, his editor had been disappeared and he was also psychiatrist and therapists were being targeted.
[7:20]So I did not know that of course when we left and even up until the 90s when I was full fledged adults, my father never talked about it really.
[7:29]So like a lot of families aren't in Tina people were talking about it.
[7:33]But so my curiosity much like Paloma's was well she was intrigued about her father and I became intrigued about these children and so I went I was able to find out that they were meeting they were starting to meet at this human rights center.
[7:45]And so in the accepted me they let me sit in on their meetings and so I just thought these stories need to be documented at that point they were support group and then they became more activists.
[7:59]And so my initial plan had been to interview them what they did and then start documenting them on film.
[8:06]At my husband life to go over we moved to New York and I came back with an unfinished documentary this is in the early 2000s.
[8:14]But what happened was that the stories of these equals children stayed with me and I thought I would try some creative and fiction pieces I tried me a screenplay.
[8:26]And so all these different iterations that eventually led me to write fiction many years later when they still only me alone and had my children I was working.
[8:36]So I decided that I would try to write fiction this is my first attempt it's my first novel and it was you know it took me many years, but it was it was it was worthwhile.
[8:48]I thought that if I could least get on the page and have a few people look at it or even having children read it one day that was my approach very little bar.
[8:59]I mean that's the way to go because I feel I mean yes, I think I was a mother because you know we moved around for my husband's work so I had to leave my.
[9:07]You know my career aside for a while which is okay, but so this was a great opportunity for me to be able to do it, but I was like right in the school picking up the kids.
[9:15]You know the other activities, but I would carve out a little piece of time for myself and I was very quiet about it to be you know I didn't have an MFA or you know I had friends who were authors who later on became a great group of support group,
[9:29]give me advice on how you know to get the manuscript red introduce me to people, so I was very fortunate we were all moms together at our kids, we you know we had met through our kids so.
[9:41]I was very lucky also to have that support.
[9:45]It's lucky to have the support, but you're also really talented and also really open to it as well, I mean you could have just bypass that whole thing I love this idea of you quietly working on this you know when I started my podcast I was like.
[10:00]It's going to do this over here in my bedroom and not tell
[10:02]it you would.
[10:03]I feel like there's some risk right you're putting yourself
[10:06]out there or you don't want to be a failure or something.
[10:09]So you're like, I'm just going to like, you know,
[10:12]take this little thing.
[10:13]You do it.
[10:14]You get in my bedroom as well.
[10:16]Yes.
[10:17]I mean, my husband knew, but he wouldn't ask questions.
[10:20]He knew that I was up to something, but it was great.
[10:22]Kind of just like, and not feeling the pressure.
[10:25]I mean, I don't know how if you felt a lot of pressure.
[10:28]I mean, you were doing a podcast.
[10:29]I was really just, it was my own thing.
[10:31]I didn't have to share it with anybody if I didn't want to.
[10:33]But I think it was important just to have that time first.
[10:37]And then, yeah, then you slowly start telling people
[10:39]about it, right?
[10:40]That's what I did.
[10:41]And asking for huge favors, a friend.
[10:44]We did.
[10:46]I was so grateful to them too.
[10:47]Those initial rough rough drafts going through them.
[10:51]Yes.
[10:51]So did you write one storyline before the other?
[10:54]Like, how did you do that?
[10:56]That's a great question.
[10:57]Because I felt more comfortable with Paloma's story.
[11:02]That's the name of my protagonist in the 1998 story.
[11:06]I really initially was just her story with very brief flashbacks
[11:10]in the 1970s, because her stories remain the same.
[11:14]When I eventually landed an agent who turned out
[11:18]to be the best one, that's the other thing I would say
[11:20]is don't give up.
[11:21]I were several agents who were always very nice,
[11:25]but would pass on the manuscript.
[11:28]But with some of them, it's a really nice feedback.
[11:30]But when she took me on and she was able to get,
[11:35]gave me her notes, said, we really need to dive.
[11:37]You need to make a deeper dive into the 1970s.
[11:40]And it's interesting that I was sort of avoiding that.
[11:43]And I think because we grew up in Argentina
[11:45]and those of us who grew up outside of Argentina
[11:48]as well with the silence around our families
[11:51]that weren't talking about it.
[11:52]So I feel like I was doing the same
[11:55]and not able to look at that chapter.
[12:00]Luckily, by then, in the 2000s,
[12:02]we had these great books by journalists
[12:06]who had other stories in Argentina.
[12:08]So that was what I did.
[12:11]I did a lot of research.
[12:12]And I wrote the 1970s as if they were a separate novel.
[12:17]Because that's on my agent, Johanna and Johanna
[12:19]and Johanna Castillo, she's wonderful.
[12:20]Said, this is a different novel.
[12:22]It's just a just write it separately.
[12:25]And so I did that.
[12:26]And then I, when I was ready,
[12:30]I tried alternating them.
[12:32]And it sort of, they all fell into place.
[12:34]I had to work around that a little bit,
[12:36]but they naturally aligned.
[12:39]It was really great.
[12:40]But yeah, the 1970s came later.
[12:42]So interesting.
[12:44]Wow.
[12:44]I wonder what it would have been like
[12:45]it's two different books, you know?
[12:48]Yeah, I mean, I don't know, but I had to say
[12:50]that it gave me really the possibility
[12:53]to learn much more about our history.
[12:57]And it brought back memories of my time there as a child.
[13:02]It gave me an opportunity to talk to family, friends.
[13:05]And so it was really a kind of a different journey
[13:08]for me too as a child from the 1970s in Buenos Aires.
[13:12]I kind of love this.
[13:14]Paloma one relationship situation.
[13:18]Tell me a little bit about that
[13:20]because you have from the start, the sort of flirtation
[13:23]and all of that.
[13:24]Tell me about like building that up and everything.
[13:27]So Paloma and the young man, she meets Franco
[13:30]because she has her first boyfriend as one
[13:32]and then Franco comes around.
[13:34]He's, yeah, he is an activist.
[13:36]And he not to give too much away,
[13:39]but she is, when what she's doing her,
[13:41]she appears at the Human Rights Center.
[13:43]She sneaks into a file room
[13:45]where there's she finds some file cabinets
[13:47]and he catches her.
[13:48]But she wheezes her way out of it.
[13:50]And they, and there's some sort of, yeah,
[13:54]attraction from her about this interesting young man
[13:57]who then introduces her to all these other people
[14:00]who she learns have had a very different operating
[14:03]from hers.
[14:04]She lives a very sheltered life, the life of privilege
[14:07]in New York, which she's uncomfortable with.
[14:09]But she still recognizes that.
[14:10]And so she, you know, she's only
[14:13]gonna be in Buenos Aires for a short period of time,
[14:15]but she's attracted to him.
[14:16]And so anyway, they run into each other again
[14:18]another time and she takes the first step.
[14:21]As he says, like he is not used to having a woman
[14:24]ask him out for a drink or coffee, it's true.
[14:28]Aren't you thinking, I mean, maybe that has changed,
[14:30]but definitely in the 90s, it was still like that.
[14:33]That women necessarily take the first step.
[14:36]Who would you cast as Paloma in a movie?
[14:42]That's a great question.
[14:44]If I could, if it didn't matter how old they are now,
[14:49]but like in any time and they're acting career,
[14:52]I would say someone will like a Penelope cruise, maybe.
[14:58]Did you know, I don't know if you know,
[14:59]Anya Taylor Joy, she's actually an Indian English.
[15:04]So she could be wonderful too.
[15:07]Wow.
[15:08]So it's been a couple months as we were discussing earlier,
[15:11]as that was apologizing, since your butt came out,
[15:13]what has been the reaction?
[15:15]What has been something surprising or most rewarding
[15:19]about people falling into this novel
[15:22]and what they've learned and what you've gotten out
[15:24]of their reactions?
[15:26]Well, I love that it has gotten the conversation started
[15:30]with some Argentinians that I knew,
[15:33]that it would not have told me before
[15:36]about their own family's experience.
[15:39]There seems to have always been someone with it.
[15:41]So people say it was just part of the country
[15:44]was affected by it, but the entire,
[15:46]all of society was affected by this dictatorship.
[15:49]So some people have come forward that I've known
[15:51]for a long time and told me,
[15:52]share their stories with me for the American readers.
[15:56]So many of the politics were not knowing about this history,
[15:59]and I tell them they don't have to.
[16:02]I mean, even in Argentina, children are not really being taught.
[16:07]They don't know all the names, they'll learn the names
[16:09]of all the precedents and dictators,
[16:11]but they don't go into in depth
[16:15]into what happened at the time.
[16:18]But it's been wonderful to hear also from readers
[16:22]that my book has spurred them on to do more research
[16:26]and to learn more about that time.
[16:28]They keep saying, oh, they're going to Google,
[16:30]or I've been like, you know,
[16:31]and then what other books can I read?
[16:32]So that's great, that's been really nice to hear.
[16:35]And others have said how much it resonates
[16:37]with what's happening today, you know?
[16:40]That history beats itself
[16:41]in one different parts of the world, sadly, unfortunately.
[16:45]I mean, I literally can't believe the stuff
[16:47]that it's going on, right?
[16:48]It's hard, like how are it,
[16:50]it's just hard to wrap your head around and then sort of
[16:54]like get up and have your day as normal
[16:57]when the stuff is going on.
[16:58]I mean, it's truly, anyway, it's very unsettling.
[17:03]And all the other things, but anyway.
[17:07]Well, now that you have sort of masterfully written
[17:11]this novel and it may have started out quietly,
[17:14]but now there is attention on you and your skills
[17:19]and all the rest, are you working on another novel?
[17:22]Do you feel a lot of pressure?
[17:24]Like, what is it like for you now?
[17:27]I am working on another novel,
[17:28]and I'm so glad that it was suggested to me
[17:31]that I think of a second one,
[17:33]because I thought that was all I had in me, Zibi.
[17:36]I didn't go picking, I want to be a writer.
[17:38]No, it was just like, oh, I have this story.
[17:40]How am I gonna get it told?
[17:41]How am I?
[17:41]So I got okay, I've wrote the book, I'm done,
[17:44]but in doing my research,
[17:46]when I started to work in 1970s,
[17:48]I came across something else that made me just my,
[17:54]made me so upset to find out that that had also happened,
[17:58]that during this time, the 1970s, 80s,
[18:02]that I held onto that and I've sort of come up with
[18:05]another story, it's sort of a sequel,
[18:09]it'll follow another family.
[18:12]And it based around true events,
[18:14]so it'll be the later part of the dictatorship.
[18:16]So that's hopefully, that is what I'm working on
[18:17]and it's great to have this project
[18:20]as I also do my book tour and events.
[18:23]It's, I don't know, it's just nice.
[18:24]It's, again, for me, that quiet time.
[18:27]I'm sharing it with you and a couple of people know
[18:29]that I am doing this, so we'll see,
[18:32]we'll see when we tell anybody.
[18:34]I love it.
[18:34]I'll keep it very quiet.
[18:40]But it's nice to be back in that space again, I have to say.
[18:44]And it's just, at this point, it's just like,
[18:46]I'm telling myself the story, that's what it this is.
[18:50]Again, no pressure, let's see what happens,
[18:52]just get on the page.
[18:53]Oh, pressure.
[18:54]There aren't that many things,
[18:56]I feel like we do these days with the craziness
[18:59]and the pace of modern life, that you do without,
[19:03]that you can't do while being distracted and interrupted.
[19:07]But I think that's some of what's so powerful about writing.
[19:10]It's like, yeah, I might have to carve out time.
[19:13]Like I'm gonna take these two hours.
[19:14]And I, you know, but while you're in it,
[19:16]your brain is just so engaged and like your imagination,
[19:22]so it work that you can't possibly multi-task
[19:26]while you're doing it.
[19:27]Right, exactly.
[19:28]So in rejuvenating really,
[19:31]because like, multi-sasking is so draining
[19:34]when you think about it.
[19:35]So I feel like when you can take these times
[19:38]of engaging with your brain and imagination and stories,
[19:42]then how can you not re-enter life a little bit fortified?
[19:46]Yeah, absolutely right.
[19:48]But don't you find that sometimes your best ideas come
[19:50]when you've left your desk and your computer
[19:52]when you're writing and then suddenly pop something,
[19:55]you know, when you're like cooking
[19:56]or like driving your kid to his like soccer practice
[19:59]and like, oh my gosh.
[20:00]want to pull over to the side and write down.
[20:01]I mean, my mind, it just can't retain that much.
[20:04]So you have to write it down.
[20:06]But so that's why for me, it's always
[20:09]better to work in the morning, right in the morning,
[20:11]because it seems like then still percolates
[20:14]as I go on with my day and do whatever
[20:16]I have to get done.
[20:17]And that's when sometimes problems get resolved.
[20:21]I went to bed last night with this great,
[20:24]I had some really interesting ideas going.
[20:26]And I was really excited about it and talking about it.
[20:28]I was like, all right, I have to get a sleep.
[20:29]And then I woke up to where I was like, my brain
[20:31]kept going.
[20:31]Like, I have answers to some of these things.
[20:33]Like, it didn't stop just because I slept, which is great.
[20:38]So it's needed.
[20:39]But yes, it's satisfying when that happens.
[20:41]You don't take the moment, so of the quiet,
[20:46]then you can't get the other stuff.
[20:47]I don't know if this is sounding very hokey,
[20:48]but I hope you know what I mean.
[20:50]Yeah, I do.
[20:52]And what are your kids think about this,
[20:54]that you spent all your, you know, you were so in it
[20:57]with the kids and all the activities and the moms
[20:59]and all of this and that suddenly here you are a novelist?
[21:02]Well, they're very, they've been very proud of me.
[21:05]I feel like they, they now understand a little bit
[21:08]about what I was doing, you know.
[21:10]They would tell their friends, again,
[21:13]this will come here eight years.
[21:14]So they were young, really young.
[21:16]They would just say, oh yeah, my mom is working, you know.
[21:18]Like, I think once you're what I was doing,
[21:22]I had my little project.
[21:23]So it's been, it's been really nice to share, you know,
[21:27]the final that I didn't want anybody reading it.
[21:30]Like, when Angela was actually the final copy was out.
[21:34]Cause one of my oldest sons was like, what can I read
[21:37]in my, my friends know that you have a book coming out.
[21:40]I want to read it before it comes out.
[21:41]I said, no, no, no, just wait until the real thing comes out.
[21:45]So yeah, it's, that's been, that's been really nice.
[21:48]And of course, during the pandemic,
[21:50]we all had our little spaces.
[21:53]So that was also nice for me.
[21:55]Although I was terribly, they couldn't go to school.
[21:57]They, they did a Zoom that, that first year,
[22:00]basically the whole year.
[22:01]But we would all take breaks at the same time.
[22:03]I felt like it was a student.
[22:04]Like I was in school too.
[22:05]It was kind of fun.
[22:06]And cause they weren't class all day.
[22:08]I felt like I had, so I was really productive.
[22:12]We were all at our desk.
[22:13]So that was very helpful.
[22:15]Cause I was editing stage too, you know,
[22:17]when they were at home online.
[22:19]Wow.
[22:20]Well, you're a really great writer.
[22:22]I mean, seriously, you're, I mean,
[22:24]the historical stuff is great.
[22:26]But also just being in Paloma's head.
[22:29]And I'd like how you did the first person
[22:31]and the third person.
[22:33]And I don't, it was just so interesting,
[22:36]the whole way through.
[22:37]So I don't know.
[22:38]I'm very impressed.
[22:38]And it's a great, great book.
[22:40]And you should be very proud.
[22:42]So I'm delighted to have had a chance
[22:44]to chat with you about it and to have met you in person
[22:46]at your launch party, which was so nice.
[22:48]So yeah, I'm just so excited for you.
[22:51]It's really inspiring and awesome.
[22:53]Thank you, Sivi.
[22:54]It's been so fun to talk to you.
[22:56]I really appreciate it.
[22:57]Thank you.
[22:58]And you're in New York, right?
[22:59]We should, our pads need to start crossing more.
[23:03]Well, so yes, we have a couple of friends in common.
[23:06]Yeah, so I would love that.
[23:07]Rachel Horwitz, we were Hendrix.
[23:10]I love that.
[23:11]They're both amazing.
[23:12]Awesome.
[23:13]All right.
[23:14]Okay.
[23:15]Sivi.
[23:17]Thank you, Andrea.
[23:17]Have a great day and thank you to the guests again.
[23:20]Okay, bye bye.
[23:23]Thanks for listening to this episode of Moms.
[23:25]Don't have time to read books.
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[23:38]Thanks so much to Steve and Ryan at Textures Sound
[23:41]for the Sound Editing.
[23:42]And thank you to Morning Moon Productions
[23:44]for providing this fantastic intro and outro music.