7. In L.A., Mexican and American cultures meet—sometimes they mingle, sometimes they clash. Just in the span of The Madonnas, Echo Park undergoes a cultural shift. What do you believe is the future of the neighborhood? Of the city?
When I was growing up, I remember watching a documentary about Sunset Boulevard, which runs right through the neighborhood, and the narrator said, “Echo Park is the most beautiful ghetto in America.” It didn’t start out that way. It was once a secluded enclave for Hollywood’s silent-film-era movie stars. Charlie Chaplin lived in a large Victorian mansion that overlooked Echo Park Lake; Tom Mix helped form the first Los Angeles movie studio there. Nearby is Dodger Stadium, which was built upon an old Mexican neighborhood called Chavez Ravine that was demolished by the city in order to lure the Dodgers from Brooklyn. Today, Latinos (largely Mexican), Vietnamese, and an influx of young urban gentrifiers live together in an area that is a mix of different cultures and identities, something that, for me, feels unique in a city like Los Angeles, where so many neighborhoods have stricter ethnic boundaries. I can’t predict what’s next for Echo Park or Los Angeles but I do know that transition comes in waves. Whatever that next wave is, Echo Park will maintain that aura of imperviousness to time that makes it so special for me.
8. There are several single mothers in the book—Felicia, Christina, and Angie—as well as many strong female characters. Are they reflections of women in your own life? What was it like to write from the female point of view?
Writing this book would have been lopsided and incomplete without the womens’ stories of Echo Park. Along with a rotating cast of stepfathers, I was raised by my mother and grandmother, two strong, opinionated women. Growing up in that environment made me more attuned and probably more sympathetic to a woman’s outlook on life and the various trials they face in a day. Whenever I write, the female characters often have a stronger and more assertive sense of who they are and where they want to go, two things that as a writer you always want your characters to have, and as a result I tend to enjoy writing from a woman’s perspective more. I didn’t plan for Madonnas’ two central characters (Aurora and Felicia) to be women but looking at the finished result, I don’t see any other way the book could have been structured.
9. How long did The Madonnas take to write? What was the hardest part? The easiest, or your favorite?
Writing the book took about nine months. Thinking beforehand about writing the book, and revising what I’d written after, took another three years. What I write evolves every day because the way I look at my work is different today from the way I looked at it yesterday. It’s having different perspectives on a piece of writing that allows the most beneficial work—revision—to take place. Revision is both the hardest and my most favorite part of the process, depending on the results I have to read at the end of the day.
10. In the Author’s Note, you state that in the early 1980s, you didn’t know you were Mexican. This is actually true. How did writing the fictional Author’s Note compare to writing your next book, which is a memoir about growing up with five stepfathers and being raised as a Native American? Do you identify yourself as Mexican now? How has your awareness of your heritage shifted over the years?
In memoir, the risk for a writer comes in daring not to lapse into lying or exaggeration to tell a more exciting story. The temptation is great when your facts may not adhere to a neat, fictional symmetry and memories can be as fleeting as vapor. The goal in my writing a memoir is not to exaggerate or sensationalize my experiences but to uncover as many truths as I can about my upbringing. What actions led to my having five stepfathers? Was it my mother’s intent to have such a disordered personal life? You must understand that for a number of years, many of my mother’s closest friends (and ex-boyfriends) had no idea she was Mexican and believed her when she said she was Native American. Also, can a reader who may have had their own dysfunctional home life find some solace or encouragement in reading about my own experiences? I want to write an engaging and entertaining book but not at the expense of discovering my own truths. To do otherwise would put me in the position of selling out my own creation and I have no interest in doing that.
When I was three years old, my Mexican father abandoned me. My mother decided to raise me as the biological son of another boyfriend/husband, an Indian in prison named Paul Skyhorse. As for “Brando,” my mother liked to joke that she was so enamored with the movie The Godfather she decided to name her unborn child Brando or Pacino. Pacino Skyhorse? I think she made the right call.
For many years, I didn’t know the truth about my past. I was raised as an Indian and was introduced to Indians who were part of the American Indian Movement in Los Angeles in the 1970s. My mother told people she was Indian even though she was Mexican. Then when I did know the truth, I lied about it because my mother felt it wasn’t anyone’s business. After she died, I kept up the lie because it was easier than a long-winded explanation of what the truth was. Now I embrace both Mexican and Indian identities as if I were an immigrant, someone who moves between the worlds of Indian and Mexican culture, but into the “American” world, too.
The Madonnas of Echo Park Page 24