Jeanine Cummins, SPEAK TO ME OF HOME: A Novel
[0:00]Hi, this is Zibi Owens, and you're listening to Totally Book to Zibi.
[0:06]Formerly, momstone have time to read books.
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[0:44]Welcome back to Totally Book to Zibi.
[0:47]I am so excited to be here with Janine Cummins to talk about her latest novels, Speak
[0:51]to Me of Home.
[0:53]This is so exciting.
[0:54]Welcome, Janine.
[0:55]Thank you, Zibi.
[0:56]I'm so happy to be back.
[0:58]Yay!
[0:59]Just read you a little bit about Janine in case you don't know.
[1:02]Janine Cummins is the number one, New York Times best-selling author.
[1:06]We have to talk about how that feels of American dirt, which was an Oprah's book club
[1:11]and a Barnes & Noble book club selection, as well as a number one in the next pick.
[1:16]The novel has been translated into 37 languages, and I think I could name 37 languages,
[1:23]and sold more than three and a half million copies worldwide.
[1:26]Her other works include The Memoir, A Rippen Heaven, and The Novels, The Outside Boy,
[1:31]and The Crooked Branch.
[1:32]She lives in New York with her husband, two daughters, and their dogs.
[1:36]Welcome.
[1:37]Thank you.
[1:38]Oh my gosh.
[1:39]Okay.
[1:40]This book was so good.
[1:41]You were such a great writer.
[1:42]I know you know that I'm such a huge, huge fan of yours, but oh my gosh.
[1:47]Tell everybody what Speak to Me of Home is about.
[1:50]The hardest question, right?
[1:51]100,000 words distilled to like a couple sentences.
[1:55]Elevator pitch.
[1:56]Yes.
[1:57]I'm not good at this part, but it's three generations of a family, very similar to my own.
[2:03]Grandmother, Born and Race in Puerto Rico.
[2:06]Her child, the middle generation mother, Ruth, is back and forth, spends her childhood
[2:13]back and forth between Puerto Rico and St. Louis, which was my father's experience growing
[2:17]up.
[2:19]And then the third generation, Daisy and her siblings, who have like a hope of sort of
[2:26]returning to their roots and all the ways that these three generations love and misunderstand
[2:33]each other.
[2:34]Amazing.
[2:35]Where did this come from?
[2:37]And how did you decide this would be the next book?
[2:40]Well, I think in the wake of the publication of American Dart, which you may have heard
[2:47]was a little bit rocky.
[2:51]It took me a minute to figure out what I wanted to write again, whether I wanted to write
[2:56]again.
[2:59]And in that time, I think I started doing a little bit of sort of self exploration.
[3:06]There was much made of my ethnicity at that time.
[3:11]And I started asking myself questions about how I got here.
[3:17]How did I get here?
[3:18]How did I get to this moment where my identity is under a microscope?
[3:23]Am I doing something wrong?
[3:25]And that question led me into the exploration of my family history.
[3:33]So do you want, because not everybody may know what happened with American Dart that led
[3:38]you to explore your identity?
[3:39]Do you want to just, what's the nutshell version?
[3:42]I mean, there were so many things that created the controversy.
[3:46]But the publication of that novel was extremely controversial in ways that I did not anticipate.
[3:52]And much of the controversy was predicated on the fact that I wrote a novel wherein most
[4:01]of the characters were Mexican and Central American.
[4:05]And I am not, but I am Latina.
[4:10]And sort of asserting that I was Latina was problematic for some people.
[4:19]Not least of all, because I also identify as white.
[4:22]And I didn't understand that in 2020, I would still have to explain to people that Latinos
[4:27]come in different colors.
[4:30]These two things are not mutually exclusive, I can be both.
[4:33]But my identity has always been not simple.
[4:40]And so I started asking myself, you know, what is it about that, what is fascinating
[4:50]about it to people?
[4:52]What is interesting about it to me?
[4:54]Which of the three generations has the most sort of legitimate claim to the way they feel
[5:00]about their heritage or their identity, spoiler alert, all of them do?
[5:05]There is no wrong way to be who you are.
[5:11]And so that was the sort of exploration, I think, that was going on in the background.
[5:17]Well, that whole thing, so to speak, has changed how people write.
[5:23]And it has given sadly such a level of fear of exploring what it feels like to be in
[5:30]someone else's shoes.
[5:32]And that act of empathy, writing from someone else's perspective, maybe you're not their
[5:38]same race, maybe you're not their same gender, maybe you're from a different city or a different
[5:42]town.
[5:43]I think that exercise is super valuable to do to put yourself in someone else's shoes.
[5:48]So anyway, unfortunately, it has caused a movement where we can only write from our own
[5:57]shoes and our own experience, which I find quite limiting, but it is limiting, but it's
[6:03]also temporary because fiction cannot exist within the confines of that locked box.
[6:09]So it's not sustainable.
[6:11]And I do think that this is just a moment in time and probably a reckoning that needed
[6:15]to happen, because certain voices were always elevated over other voices.
[6:22]And there was a legitimate backlog of frustration among writers of color who felt overlooked
[6:30]and undervalued and underpaid and was a very complicated moment that I found myself in
[6:37]the crosshairs of that really was not actually about me.
[6:41]Well, as you know, at the time I was such a huge, huge fan of American dirt, and I wrote
[6:47]a whole thing in your defense because I was like, but this book is so amazing.
[6:52]Not that I didn't understand the broader implications, but I felt that was one of the
[6:58]best books I've ever read, and you are such a talented author.
[7:01]And that is why it was so excited when you had a new book out, and so excited to delve
[7:06]into the pages and meet the characters and, you know, feel the heart rate when something
[7:11]happens to our daughter, Daisy, and even the pain of throwing a party in the park and
[7:17]not understanding in this culture that people drop their kids off at parties versus stay
[7:21]in joy.
[7:22]Like all these little moments, big, small, are so powerful.
[7:26]So when you decided to write this book and have this book be next, which did you know
[7:33]there would be, like, how did you structure it?
[7:36]What was the thing where you're like, there's going to be an accent, or there's going
[7:38]to be this, or how can I tell the story?
[7:41]Like, how did you even approach it?
[7:42]Because there's so much in this book.
[7:44]Yeah, I think my first entry into the book was my grandmother Maria.
[7:48]So the character of Rafaela in the book is based very much on my grandmother Maria.
[7:53]So she, they're completely different characters.
[7:56]Rafaela is a much nicer lady than my grandmother was.
[8:02]She's more adventurous, but you know, Maria was a difficult woman, but she also had
[8:09]a very, very difficult life.
[8:12]And it wasn't until I had children of my own that I started questioning like, why was
[8:16]she the way she was?
[8:20]The circumstances of Rafaela's life are exactly the same circumstances that my grandmother
[8:26]experienced in her young adulthood in her childhood.
[8:29]She grew up that beloved oldest daughter of a very elite family in Puerto Rico.
[8:36]They were very well to do.
[8:38]They had live in servants.
[8:39]They were, you know, the cream of the crop, so to speak.
[8:43]And when she was 16, she, her dad lost everything.
[8:48]And she was shipped out to Trinidad to get a job on a naval base.
[8:53]And she spent the entire rest of her life angry about it.
[8:56]You know, and then she met my Irish grandfather on the naval base there, and they got married.
[9:04]They had eight children.
[9:06]My dad was the oldest, and they were back and forth between St. Louis and Puerto Rico for
[9:13]the first, I don't know, maybe 10 years of my dad's life.
[9:16]He went to elementary school there.
[9:19]I think he was born in Missouri, but he made his first trip to Puerto Rico and he was three
[9:23]months old.
[9:26]And Maria spent the rest of her life sort of affronted by the way people treated her.
[9:36]And not least of all, because she was like, don't you know who I am?
[9:40]No, I am.
[9:42]And of course, in St. Louis, they treated her like a Puerto Rican.
[9:45]And she was like, but I'm not one of those Puerto Ricans.
[9:49]So my dad and his siblings ingested a lot of self-loathing growing up, a lot of shame.
[9:58]So I wanted to unpack.
[10:00]act all of that.
[10:01]They never talked about it.
[10:02]My dad never talked about what his childhood was like.
[10:04]I knew it was bad, but he never discussed it.
[10:08]And I found myself, and my siblings and I have always
[10:13]been so proud to be Puerto Rican, so proud.
[10:16]And then I understand also that we don't really know
[10:20]what it means to be Puerto Rican.
[10:22]We did not grow up in a Puerto Rican community.
[10:25]We were very, my grandmother lived in a white community.
[10:28]There were no mixed communities in St. Louis
[10:31]that in the 50s when they were living there.
[10:35]So it was just like a very difficult thing for her.
[10:37]And all she wanted was for her children to pass.
[10:40]And then she succeeded, largely.
[10:43]Her children grew up to be kind of white people.
[10:47]They all married white people.
[10:49]They had us.
[10:50]And to varying degrees, we are all like, so proud.
[10:54]And wanting to return to the roots.
[10:55]And we're like, we're Puerto Rican.
[10:56]And sometimes our parents are like, are you?
[11:00]Are you though?
[11:03]So I wanted to explore all of that.
[11:05]And I wanted to give my grandmother a do-over.
[11:07]I wondered how would her life have been different, better,
[11:12]happier if she'd had more support,
[11:14]if she had experienced less racism,
[11:18]if she had felt welcomed in St. Louis,
[11:22]how would my dad and his siblings have been different
[11:25]if they were not made to feel ashamed of their ethnicity
[11:29]when they were growing up?
[11:32]I mean, it really was like a fundamental cornerstone
[11:38]of how our family was built was this experience.
[11:41]And one that we'd never really talk about.
[11:43]So I wanted to get into it.
[11:46]And I wanted to understand too how my feelings are so different
[11:53]from my fathers.
[11:54]And his were so different from his mothers.
[11:57]And the interplay between those things.
[12:00]And how we ended up here.
[12:03]Many of the anecdotes in the story are true.
[12:07]Many of them.
[12:08]Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you.
[12:10]Yeah.
[12:11]So my grandfather joined a country club in St. Louis,
[12:16]hoping to help my grandmother make friends.
[12:19]And they would not give her a locker in the ladies' locker room
[12:25]because it was a whites-only club.
[12:27]So the compromise was that they gave her a locker in the staff room.
[12:32]And this was the thing I didn't know about until I was an adult.
[12:37]And of course, I grew up Generation X on the East Coast.
[12:40]So my immediate reaction is like, why did they stand for it?
[12:44]They went to that country club for years.
[12:47]And my poor grandmother would go downstairs to the staff room
[12:50]and get into her bathing suit.
[12:53]And I wonder if she was mad.
[12:57]No wonder she was a bad mother.
[12:59]I would have been too.
[13:00]She was what she suffered at that time.
[13:06]It was not a thing that anyone talked about or acknowledged.
[13:11]She just got through it.
[13:13]So the thing that I love about fiction
[13:19]may be more than anything else is that it
[13:22]has this magical way of providing a framework
[13:27]to difficult conversations, because you're unlikely
[13:32]to sit down over a glass of wine with your girlfriends
[13:35]and just tackle racism, just out of the blue.
[13:40]But if you've all read the same novel and racism is at its core,
[13:47]suddenly you can start to have these conversations
[13:50]about the people in the novel he've come to care about,
[13:54]without really having to make a political claim,
[13:58]without really having to show your hand.
[14:01]But you can start to get at the humanity of these issues
[14:06]and maybe find common ground.
[14:09]This is what I love about a good novel.
[14:12]So true.
[14:14]That's what talking about books is all about.
[14:16]Yeah, it's a way to talk about life in general.
[14:18]Yes.
[14:19]We're not actually talking about books right now.
[14:21]This is all a facade.
[14:23]That's right.
[14:24]I tell you about it.
[14:25]It's how to find ways to live and make
[14:27]sense of the world.
[14:28]And we look to fiction and memoir and everything
[14:31]to help our guide posts in a way.
[14:35]Absolutely.
[14:36]And that is one of the reasons why I am so worried
[14:40]about the current trend towards censorship from both sides.
[14:47]But really, from the far right, the absolute spike
[14:51]in book bands is terrifying.
[14:54]And what I keep saying to books are never the problem.
[14:57]Never ever.
[14:58]Even the books that we find like mine camp is not the problem.
[15:04]The problem is ignorance.
[15:07]Books are the cure.
[15:10]So even the books that we find problematic or scary or bad
[15:15]for whatever reason, we should be reading them.
[15:18]And then we should be talking about them.
[15:21]The conversations that can open from reading any book,
[15:27]whether it's problematic or offensive or not,
[15:32]those conversations are where progress can happen,
[15:35]like the books are the answer.
[15:38]So I just, I worry about this trend and authoritarianism,
[15:46]trend and censorship, which is not only coming from the far right.
[15:52]As you talked about at the beginning of this conversation,
[15:57]many, many, many people in our industry
[16:00]now are afraid to say what they think.
[16:02]If it diverges at all from the party line,
[16:06]they're not saying it because it's too risky.
[16:09]And that is really frightening.
[16:12]We are supposed to be the bastions of free speech, right?
[16:15]It's not happening right now.
[16:19]Well, the way you articulated that is so great.
[16:22]It's, without books, what do we have left,
[16:25]without people's stories, without the diversity of thought,
[16:29]without all of the different perspectives?
[16:31]How can we all coexist?
[16:33]Right, so I totally agree with that.
[16:36]Yes, I know you would.
[16:42]I mean, what author is going to be like?
[16:43]No, I'm actually all for book bands.
[16:45]I think I mean, let's just strike them from the list everywhere
[16:49]for you.
[16:52]Back to the book for a second.
[16:54]Is this one of the things that happened to you?
[16:56]Not to say like, did this happen to that happen?
[16:58]But in the home, English, Spanish was not allowed.
[17:04]After Benita was having trouble in school
[17:07]and they said, OK, forget it.
[17:09]It's your fault.
[17:10]And no more Spanish.
[17:13]And there was a sense of loss in that as well.
[17:16]Because in that decision came this sort of loss of culture,
[17:19]loss of identity, loss of so much, so much so that when
[17:24]you do, the family would try to have conversations later.
[17:26]And Spanish would be so difficult as a result.
[17:29]And then it made them feel less a part of things.
[17:32]Yes.
[17:32]Talk about that moment, because I feel like in a way
[17:34]that was a pivotal moment for the family.
[17:38]It was, and that was a moment, again, from my own childhood.
[17:41]So I did not expect feel emotional answering this question.
[17:46]But Spanish was my first language.
[17:49]I was born in Spain and to a Puerto Rican father.
[17:52]So my mother is white.
[17:54]But they saw the opportunity to have bilingual kids,
[17:59]and they took it.
[18:00]So we spoke Spanish first.
[18:05]And when we came to the United States,
[18:08]we moved to California.
[18:09]And it was the 70s.
[18:10]And people were different than, and a little mean.
[18:14]They're still mean sometimes.
[18:15]But my brother was in, I guess, first or second grade.
[18:21]He's three years older than me.
[18:22]And he had a hard time in school.
[18:24]And his teacher called him stupid.
[18:27]And he was grade level in every way.
[18:32]But he did not speak good English.
[18:35]And so my dad got into it with the family story
[18:40]goes that he called the teacher stupid,
[18:43]because he couldn't recite her colors in Spanish.
[18:47]And apparently, her name was Mrs. Garcia,
[18:50]which is an extra level of irony to the story.
[18:54]But yeah, he pulled my brother out of that school.
[18:57]And then they came home and said, no more Spanish at home.
[19:01]We have to kick it up into English here.
[19:04]And we lost our language, all three of us.
[19:08]And to this day, my brother, who at one point in his life,
[19:11]could not speak English, doesn't have a word of Spanish, not a word.
[19:16]So I've spent the last 10 years of my life studying Spanish.
[19:20]I am conversationally adept.
[19:26]At this point, I will never say fluent.
[19:28]I'm not fluent.
[19:29]But I can hold my own in a conversation with Spanish.
[19:32]But I'm aware that my Spanish is broken.
[19:36]And so one of the things that happened in the wake of American dirt
[19:39]was that I was ridiculed for my broken Spanish.
[19:42]And to be someone who, like the two bookends of my life,
[19:47]early in my life, I was sort of in a position
[19:50]where I was made to feel ashamed or humiliated for not speaking English.
[19:55]And then 40 years later, to be made to feel humiliated.
[20:00]I didn't speak Spanish well enough.
[20:05]That also was like a major entryway into this book for me.
[20:08]I was like, how can both of these things be true in one life?
[20:13]And in fact, I think they're true very frequently in one life.
[20:17]Like I think that this is a thing that many Latino people
[20:21]contend with and many people who are bicultural
[20:25]or grow up with an identity that is not
[20:29]simple.
[20:30]I think it's quite, I think there's a lot in here
[20:34]that people will relate to, whether or not they are Puerto Rican,
[20:38]whether or not they are Latino, whether or not they are
[20:40]bicultural.
[20:41]I think there are ways in which women in particular
[20:44]are always made to feel as though no matter what they're
[20:47]doing, they're doing it wrong.
[20:49]And that is at the crux of this story, I think.
[20:54]Like you can't win in a way.
[20:57]Where is the hope though?
[21:00]The hope is that at the end of the day, it doesn't matter.
[21:04]Because what really matters is the lives
[21:07]we build together, the love that we have for each other,
[21:11]and the coming home to ourselves at a certain age
[21:15]may be where we understand that it doesn't matter at all,
[21:19]what way other people perceive us because we know who we are.
[21:23]And that I think is where the hope is.
[21:25]I think Rafaela learns that in spades
[21:30]throughout the telling of this story,
[21:32]Ruth comes to that at some point.
[21:36]And with Daisy, she's young.
[21:38]She's like, she's on her way.
[21:40]But I think the three women in the story
[21:42]are all trying to come to the point with each other
[21:45]where they understand each other.
[21:46]And they discover through the hardships that they bear,
[21:51]that all of the peripheral worries that they have
[21:55]about the ways that they perform their identities
[21:59]or feel or inhabit their identities
[22:02]are really absolutely secondary to their identity as a family.
[22:12]Rafaela's position as matriarch
[22:18]is the most important identity that she has.
[22:21]Ruth's position as daughter and mother,
[22:23]those are the things that matter most.
[22:26]And we feel that so much in the love for family,
[22:30]in the fear, in what do you do when you can't reach your child
[22:35]in an emergency?
[22:37]I mean, some of these are the most baseline,
[22:40]unifying feelings there are, like to be a parent,
[22:43]to love someone, to have that fear circulating.
[22:48]And you make us feel that way.
[22:50]You put us right there.
[22:52]And I'm very sorry.
[22:55]I know.
[22:56]Stop.
[22:57]Thanks a lot.
[22:59]I think it's a hallmark of all my books accidentally,
[23:02]because I've had a lot of trauma in my life, which we don't
[23:05]need to get into.
[23:06]But I have had a lot.
[23:07]And I've had that experience more than once in my life
[23:14]where you're bopping along on a regular day,
[23:16]and there's a portal, and you go through it,
[23:18]and suddenly your life will never be the same.
[23:22]That sort of devastating moment, where everything that matters
[23:25]can change in an instant, seems to accidentally
[23:31]be at the heart of every novel that I've written every,
[23:35]and my memoir, which is about this very thing.
[23:38]So I think that's always going to be there
[23:41]in the fiction that I am creating,
[23:43]because it's so deeply a part of who I am as a writer.
[23:47]And isn't that the thing that everyone in the world
[23:49]needs the most help with?
[23:51]That's why your fiction is so powerful.
[23:54]We all go through life, and at any moment know
[23:57]if it hasn't happened to us yet, that it can,
[24:00]that from one moment to the next, life can change completely.
[24:04]And yet we have to walk around and pretend like that's
[24:07]not the case, whether something happens to us or someone
[24:10]we love.
[24:11]So how do we hold that and still go out and email
[24:16]and do whatever we have to do in a day?
[24:18]Rum helps.
[24:19]Hahaha.
[24:23]Jeanine, thank you so much.
[24:25]Thank you for coming on.
[24:26]Thank you for speaking to me at home.
[24:28]Thank you for being such a warrior and not staying quiet.
[24:33]There are so many people who would have just said, I am out.
[24:37]I am done with this industry.
[24:38]I'm not publishing again.
[24:40]I'm not subjecting myself to all this.
[24:42]And you are back in with a beautiful new book,
[24:46]like you deserve a standing ovation.
[24:48]Thank you so much.
[24:48]And I am so proud of you.
[24:49]Thank you.
[24:50]Thank you.
[24:51]It's been a pleasure.
[24:52]Thank you for listening to Totally Booked with Zibi,
[24:55]formerly momstone have time to read books.
[24:58]If you loved the show, tell a friend, leave a review,
[25:01]follow me on Instagram at Zibi Owens, and spread the word.
[25:05]Thanks so much.
[25:06]Oh, and buy the books.