In her hands were 10,000 yesterdays.

My Broken Language: A Theater Jawn (A play based on the memoir)

By Quiara Alegría Hudes

I loved everything about this lyrical coming-of-age tribute to childhood, memory, and the women Quiara grew up with and loved. I zipped through this in a day a few weeks ago. But in the spring of 2024, I saw Quiara and a cast read an excerpt at The Center for Fiction. And afterwards, instead of doing a traditional Q&A as planned, she changed her mind and led a manifestation healing ceremony with her bruja plant, descendant of the one from her grandfather's farm in Puerto Rico. Anyone who wanted to participate got in line and pulled a leaf from the perennial succulent themselves. Though the plant is known to be resilient mine, never grew into something more (though it tried for weeks!)—and I still think about that 'failure' a lot. What it means.

Anyway. Loved it. Loved the recommended song choices (including one below) that enhanced my reading. Short, fierce, soulful, devastating, true. 

"In her hands were 10,000 yesterdays." - From Abuela's rice recipe

(p. 33)

"Those books were definitive experiences. Their impact on me felt unquantifiable yet real as Abuela's palm cupping dry rice. They were recipes for my life's inner feast."

(p. 38)

All intimacy was exchanged as if in a foreign language, via gestures and quick, mistaken glances on the train.

Sonora 

By Hannah Lillith Assadi

I've wondered if I'd ever write here again and it doesn't make any sense to—I'd imagined by this point I would've translated this effort to another, more modern medium as Blogspot becomes more and more irrelevant.

Now that I am in a months-long spree of clearing out my apartment and donating many of my books (only deciding to keep what I love or is useful longterm), I'm returning to the marked pages and words I meant to note before I make my donation to the neighborhood free library stand.

Sonora made me quite sad, actually. And while by this point I don't really remember much of it, I do remember that. Still, there were a few descriptors that stood out.

"Laura turned to me. She had amber eyes. They alighted from her deeply tanned face like a beautiful curse. Her hair was streaked magenta. "I'm Laura," she said. She pronounced it the Spanish way, though no one else ever did. We sat there quietly observing the others. Laura hummed a tune dreamily as if I weren't there at all."

(p. 11)

"Like faces, the smell of a person cannot be replicated. The smell of a fire in my hair from a particular party, the smell of a friend's perfume rubbed into my shirt. The smell of lipstick and chalk soaking the dressing rooms at dance rehearsals. The smell of a lover in your fingernails the morning after. The smell of my mother: orange peel, suntan lotion, faint vanilla. The smell of Laura: lavender laundry detergent, danger, linger of red wine, sweat, cigarette. The smell of Eli: the smell of seventeen, of the beach at night, coconut, white blossom, salt, stars. The smell of Dylan: vodka, fire, dirt in autumn, February in the desert. The smell of my father: Ralph Lauren Safari, cumin, tobacco, spearmint, musk, red meat. Home." 

(p. 64)

"I felt happiest in my exchanges at bodegas over the purchase of a coffee or cigarettes or when observing the break-dancers twirl and the mariachis croon. All intimacy was exchanged as if in a foreign language, via gestures and quick, mistaken glances on the train."
(p. 102)