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Ten Questions for Melissa Coss Aquino

What inspired you to tell this story?

There is a long story and short version answer. In short, coming up in the Bronx I was taught to feel a lot of ways about myself, my mother and women who did not perform motherhood, female sexuality, and Latina identity in very specific ways deemed respectable. I felt compelled to tell the story of mothers and daughters who appear to fail to be good and right, but who love, protect and fight for each other in every way imaginable. What if we found a Holy Mother like that? A divine image of ourselves as right just how we are. The long version is about a whole vision I had walking down the Grand Concourse when I was 23 years old and had my first son in a baby carrier on my chest. It came after seeing a group of girls who looked to be getting into a fight with a young man.

What did you edit out of this book?

Dreams and scenes of chaos. The dreams came out as a result of final rounds of editing, and the general feeling in publishing about the use of dreams. The scenes of chaos were scenes I needed to write for myself, but they did not feel at all needed for the book. The dreams were released against my will, more or less, but the chaos fell away with each edit in my own hands. Only the vital chaos remained. Nothing gratuitous remained which was important to me, especially as pertained to mothers and how they are perceived and what we project onto them as flaws and failings.

How did you know you were done? What did you discover about yourself upon completion?

These questions bring so much emotion.

First, I want to say that I thought I was finished many, many, many times.  With each discovery that there was more to do, came feelings of weariness and fear. Can I finish? Will I ever finish? What the hell is finished anyway? But in the summer of 2020, when we were all locked inside, I was also grieving the loss of both of my parents. They died three months apart in early 2020. My mother’s death was at the height of Covid in NYC in April, I was still reeling from the loss of my father with whom I was very close. But the fact that my mother died alone, and in isolation, and we could not get her ashes till June really mirrored a lot of the ways she had been /felt isolated/abandoned in her life. It was a very difficult thing to accept, and it was after releasing her ashes, and accepting that I had to move forward, that I decided to simply spend the summer in the book and make a way out as a sort of pilgrimage to a different future for me, the memory of my parents and the book. I had to really get in and give it everything I had, and many things I had never had before. So I reached out to a wonderful writer/editor I knew and loved and asked her to keep me company on the journey. We arranged a contract and I basically asked her to be my book doula, as in I needed to make sure someone was watching out for me as I was entering and exiting this book at such an intense emotional moment for me.

After thirty years in my heart, including my ten summers of active writing to a finished manuscript that included five with my agent, the book was finished in five weeks in 2020 and I had a book deal by January 2021.

It was a long road and I learned many things about myself. The spiritual path the book took me on changed me fundamentally, and helped me to heal many aspects of my life and myself. On the personality level I learned two things I sort of new, but were deeply affirmed: One, I am mad dog persistent, and two, I have the patience of a rock. I can really and truly wait a thing out, ride its waves, and follow its snaky, twisted, trail. Once I commit, I am very difficult to dissuade.

What was your agenting process like?

I, like so many published authors, had another “first novel” that never got published. I had lots of interest and compliments about the writing, but it never materialized into an actual agent representing the work. I must have submitted to at least thirty agents, maybe more, and several in person pitches at conferences received invitations to submit. This process taught me not to take the rejection personally. It really is about a match, and these things can be very mysterious. I met an agent who told all of us she had rejected the Da Vinci Code and would do it again based on the fact that it just wasn’t her kind of book. Essentially the message was you have to believe in your book long enough to see it find the right match. So in my second round of looking for an agent, I was a little more experienced. I still acquired several rejections, but I sent it out less as I worked out how finished I really was, which as it turns out was not even close. I met Soumeya Roberts at a conference in the desert under the auspices of AROHO (A Room of Her Own). Circumstances created a very special encounter that allowed me to talk to her at length and she requested fifty pages. That was in 2015. We then shared a long journey of me finishing a PhD and her changing agencies, becoming a senior agent, having two babies, and yet, she kept supporting the manuscript while I kept working on it. It was in the fall of 2020 that she felt it was finally ready to go out to the houses. Overall, my experience is that there are many good agents, and a growing number of them are looking to represent authors from non-traditional backgrounds, but the match is really about the way your work resonates with them in a way they can then get behind and sell it. You don’t want an agent that can’t passionately represent your book. So this is another place where my “patience of a rock” came in handy.

What was the best money you ever spent as a writer?

Conferences, retreats and writer gatherings. My favorites are the IWWG summer conference and online offerings, (International Women’s Writing Guild) AROHO (A Room of Her Own) no longer has in person but has lot’s of online activity) VONA, (Voices of Our Nation has both in person and online). I also think any and all money spent on getting more time support like child care, or cleaning services ( even if only for a summer) can make a huge difference.


How many hours a day do you write? Break down your typical writing day.

No such thing. I have never had it, Most likely never will. I can do 1 hour one day and 4 another and 12 on a day when I am on fire and the stars align. I go with the flow and always prioritize my actual life, but from time to time I pack a bag and leave home and say I must write and it can’t wait. So a variety of structures is what works for me. That said, editing periods or getting to the finish line often demand a period of weeks or months that I decide I will follow a routine of sorts just to meet the guidelines and requirements, but also to get into that editing, cutting away/ finishing strictness of mind. It is good practice to exert discipline at several stages of the process of getting to a finished manuscript. I just think too many writers are too tied up in the idea that if they can’t keep a schedule it means they aren’t “writers”. If you’re a mother that can be deadly. I wrote on park benches and often let my kids nap in the stroller so I could keep writing. They were thrilled to discover we were still in the park when they woke up, and it gave me extra time as long as I packed lunch and snacks. They are grown men now, and I think it is also is worth noting that I did not write as much when they were little and that was ok. That worked for me. But I did start going to writing things like conferences by the time they were both in school.

What are your top three tips to help develop your writing muscle?

Like the go to the gym muscle you must use it or lose it. I have tons of journals! I am constantly writing to make sense of the world. I write like I breathe literally. It is kind of automatic at this point, but most of it is not for publication. It is like many tributaries of a single river. It makes me agile and relaxed in front of the page. I say I never get writer’s block because when I feel like I “can’t” work on my work in progress, I just go complain about it in my journals or copy entire passages from books I love, or do a tarot reading for one of my characters and write the whole thing down. Writing is a practice and an exercise and I think people get too caught up in thinking about it as a performance. But usually the performance is many years away. So write!

To say read is too simple. I read to receive content, to lose myself in story and to think about style and sound and language. Sometimes I will read a book twice to let myself travel freely.

I like to think about the way method actors work to stay in character as a kind of source practice for when I am deep into character development. I don’t become my characters, but I make a lot of space for them in my actual life. If I am writing about a specific setting or experience I will often try to go there and do some free writing there, even if it is a place I know well. I go to see it or feel it as my character does. It may never show up in the final draft, but it creates a mood. I will also create dense spaces of color and imagery where I write that feed the project and I don’t always know why or how, but I am very sensory. So pictures, art, smells, set ups in my writing space all help me build the muscle because I take all of my senses seriously and feed them constantly.


What does literary success look like to you?

Writing and finishing work and giving myself permission to roam freely through my imagination makes me feel successful. Once published, obviously there is a new level of validation but it can be very slippery, strange and unstable, not to mention short lived. So I feel it, but I understand it to be a long game ( see “patience of a rock” above). It is about the long life of a book and you can never really know what that will be. Reader interaction is my favorite! When readers share how the work has made them feel, think or see it feels like the work is complete. Like it landed. Also, I have been thrilled to see pictures of my book in a library. I have not yet gone to see it myself, but I think it will be very emotional because libraries were a kind of church for me as a child.


What other authors are you friends with, and how do they help you become a better writer?

For a long time I didn’t know many other writers, or only knew them in superficial ways. My life long friends are my friends for twenty, thirty, forty years, and we were not anything other than friends. Although I do think they make me a better writer and listen carefully to what I say as I work on a project, as well as often read my work and give feedback. But from about 2015 to now I began to meet and bond with writers in different conferences and retreats that have become friends, and most recently I have had the pleasure of forming bonds with a writer I loved as child, Brenda Wilkinson, who I went out in search of, and found in Georgia. Our emails, and our mutual interview at Charis Books in Atlanta, have brought me great joy. Finally, I have found myself surrounded by a group of Latina writers in pre and post publication that really feel like family regardless of how long we have known each other. I get so happy when I see their success or their books somewhere, or their posts on social media. It is a very distinct experience of feeling somehow less alone and understood in ways it is hard to explain.

Who are you writing for?

I used to think I was writing for a certain group, namely Puerto Ricans from the Bronx, but the reception to Carmen and Grace in the UK has made a big impact on me. It made me realize that I write from that group and from the Bronx, but I never really know who I am writing for. I think I have always been writing for the reader who enters books with hope and faith and desire to be both entertained and enriched, touched somehow in that book magic way. Reading was vital to me for far longer than writing has been, and I think now that readers, deep readers, committed readers or curious new readers are who I write for. I hope to find readers who need/want what my writing offers. That said, I was really shaped by African American Women writers and then later discovered Latina writers, but my earliest books were traditional and all of them fed me. I want stories from everywhere about everyone and everything and I hope that my very specific books about Puerto Ricans from the Bronx can be that for others. Also, I think I write for myself. It is a very powerful instinct. A deep pull to extract something from within and look at it “out here.” It only becomes about readers way far down the line.


Melissa Coss Aquino (She/her) is a Puerto Rican writer from the Bronx. Her novel Carmen and Grace was published by William Morrow Harper Collins in 2023. She received her MFA from the City College of New York, CUNY, and her Ph.D. from the Graduate Center, CUNY in English. She is currently Associate Professor of English at Bronx Community College, CUNY. She is a proud IWWG, VONA, AROHO, and Hedgebrook alumna. Her work has appeared in several anthologies and journals including Centro, Caminos Reales, We’moon 2022, MomEgg Review, Callaloo, The Fairy Tale Review and others. 

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Regina Jamison | Mama’s Writing

Mama’s Writing is Raising Mothers’ monthly interview series, curated by Starr Davis.


What recent writing accomplishment(s) are you most proud of? Was this accomplishment shared and supported by your children?

I’m grateful when any of my work gets published whether it’s a novel, short story, essay, or a poem and my children are always my best cheerleaders which is fantastic. My novel, Choosing Grace, was a long process from birth to being out in the world and I’m proud of my determination to stick with it, but I’m also proud when I find homes for my poetry too.

Tell about a time mom-guilt emerged (or emerges) in the midst of your writing process.

I’m not sure if I have ever experienced “mom guilt”. When my kids were younger I wrote the first draft of my novel at night while they slept, but I got it done because my goal was simple – write one page a day. That mindset helped me a lot. It relieved the pressure in terms of production – one page is definitely doable, right and it sparked my creativity because of course most nights I’d write like 10 pages but I had reached my goal and if I didn’t write the next night, well I had already written a page for that night  since I had written ten pages previously. That was my logic! If I felt guilt, it was more inward like I was given this ability with words and I wasn’t utilizing what I was given, but that was on me. I never felt like my kids were hindering my writing because I enjoyed spending time with them learning and relearning things. It was as if I was a child again.

If you could go back and give yourself advice before becoming a mom, what would it be?

I would probably advise myself to be more focused – I’m a Pisces and we can be dreamers and procrastinators. Ha! I would also advise younger me to be more financially savvy. Don’t waste  money. Save it and buy a house. Nothing wrong with buying a home in your late twenties/ early thirties. It would be a good investment to have in your side pocket.

What topics, artistic channels, or forms have become present that were not there before in your writing since becoming a parent?

My oldest is a great and published writer of fan fiction, poetry, and short stories. Fan fiction is a form that didn’t exist when I began writing and if it was, I wasn’t aware of it. Also, now there are online journals that cater to various individuals and genres which was not the case when I began writing. It’s a good thing. More diversity. More opportunities. More insight.

Do you ever find yourself dealing with censorship as a mom-writer? Explain your thoughts on your children eventually becoming acquainted with your work.

My children are in their early twenties and I tend to read many of my poems to them for their opinions, but that doesn’t mean I share all my writing with them! My novel and my erotica stories have several provocative scenes and although I gave each of them an autographed copy of my novel, it was mainly for posterity and to let them know that they are able to follow and fulfill their dreams. I think moms, whether they write or not, tend to censor some things in their lives from their kids because, really, they don’t need to know EVERYTHING mama done did!

How has parenting bolstered or inhibited your creativity?

Parenting takes a lot of energy. Moreso when my kids were younger and needed more time, attention, and guidance. Most of my energy was spent doing those things because I was essentially a single parent. But parenting allows me to see the world through other’s eyes. To think about different viewpoints and concerns that might not necessarily be my own.

Was there a noticeable shift in your writing before and after parenthood? If yes, how so?

I’ve always written about a variety of concerns and topics, but becoming a parent made me think more about family, environment, and social injustice. As a parent in general there’s a lot to worry about, but as a parent of children who are Black and living in a racist society,  things can get very real very fast. Even before they made it into the world I questioned whether having a child in a country that hates children, especially little brown children, was a kind thing to do. That question weighed on me. But I homeschooled my children for several years, taught them my values, taught them their history, and now they are well informed and adjusted young adults.

How has the internet influenced you as both a writer and parent?

The internet has provided me with writing opportunities that I probably would not have known about otherwise. It has allowed me to become part of various creative spaces via readings, workshops, residencies. It has allowed me to share information and opportunities with others. It keeps me up to date re: the creative accomplishments and endeavors of others. And as such, it can serve as a motivator and reminder for me to continue to get my work out there. I don’t, however, let it lord over me. I definitely tune out when needed.

How have other mother figures you have encountered in your community influenced your parenting? Your writing?

I find other mothers, especially Black Queer mothers like myself, very inspiring. Even if I don’t know them personally. Their presence on social media provides glimpses into how they nurture their families and their craft, and serves as proof that we are out there doing and conquering.

How do you balance motherhood/parenting and finding the space to write?

Finding a balance between mothering/ parenting, working,  writing, and me time can be tough. For me, there is no steady or consistent formula. Sometimes I need to engage in more mothering time, at other times it’s more writing time, and sometimes I just need to sit back, kick my feet up, and relax. So what takes precedence is always shifting because change is constant.

Who are your writer-mama heroes?

One of my writer mama heroes is J. P. Howard. She is an inspiration because she’s seems to always, always be moving on to that next thing. She reminds me to keep striving. Another writer mama hero of mine is Radhiya Ayobani because her poetry is the bomb- diggity! And the energy she exudes is rainbows and light.


Regina Jamison is a Lambda Literary 2014 Fellow. She received her MFA from the City College of New York. Her poetry has appeared in several literary journals among them are, Switchgrass Review, Sinister Wisdom: Black Lesbians We Are the Revolution, Five Two One Magazine, Magma Literary Journal: Deaf Issue, The Americas Poetry Festival of New York Anthology 2016, Promethean Literary Journal, Off the Rocks: An Anthology of GLBT Writing Vols. 14 & 15, and Poetry in Performance Journal Vol. 43. Online, her poetry has appeared in La Libreta Journal Issue 5, Cloud Women Quarterly Journal Vol. 18, Castle of Our Skin: Black Poet Miniature Challenge, Gnashing Teeth Journal, Silver Birch Press – Me as a Child Series, The Lake Literary Journal, and Mom Egg Review. Her poems will also appear in the upcoming issue of the Black Joy Unbound Anthology and BAM 42 Stories. You can read her essays in the Bronx Memoir Project Vol. 5 Anthology and on the Bella Media Channel. Her short stories have appeared in In This Together: Stories of Romance & Survival During the Pandemic, Girls Who Bite: Vampire Lesbian Anthology, Zane’s Purple Panties, and the Lambda Literary Anthology: Gaslight. She was a Guest Editor for Gnashing Teeth Publishing’s anthology, SHE: Seen. Heard. Engaged. Her first novel, Choosing Grace, was published with Bella Books.

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Ten Questions for Malaka Gharib

RAISING MOTHERS:     What inspired you to tell this story? 

MALAKA GHARIB:     I wanted to know: how did spending my childhood summers with my dad’s family in Egypt shape my worldview and personality? I grew up going to Cairo every year from my home in Los Angeles from the age of 9 to 23.

I spent a couple of years exploring that question and I came away with new understandings that surprised me. I learned that my father did the best he could to include me in his new chapter of life in another country. And that I learned a lot about relationships – that it takes love but also effort. Writing a book is like free therapy.

RAISING MOTHERS:     What did you edit out of this book?

MALAKA GHARIB:     You can’t include every detail of your life in a book, otherwise that wouldn’t be a story – it would just be a diary! The specific anecdotes I chose to tell, for example, the first time I smoked hookah with my cousin or the time I was sexually assaulted on a beach, serve to illustrate challenges I faced as a young person and how I overcame them. Every story must have a purpose. If you know the point you’re trying to make first, it makes it easier to figure out which stories to include and omit.

Because even if you didn’t sell as many copies as you’d hoped, you’ll always know in your heart that it was meaningful to you that you did it.

 

RAISING MOTHERS:     How did you know you were done? What did you discover about yourself upon completion?

MALAKA GHARIB:     I knew I was done when I learned a major lesson about myself: That I had spent so much of my childhood dreading those summers in Egypt, and just when I had begun to appreciate it, it was all taken away from me. My dad and stepmom got a divorce, and I had graduated from college with no more summer holidays off to go visit my family. That’s just how childhood is – it ends eventually, and what you get is what you get. When I came to that realization, I knew that I had hit on what I had been trying to explore in my many months of writing.

RAISING MOTHERS:     What was your agenting process like?

MALAKA GHARIB:     I messaged my agent Daniel Greenberg and told him that I had an inkling of an idea that I wanted to explore in a book – my summers in Egypt – and he actually sold it to a publisher before I even wrote it. 

So then the pressure was on to write the book and actually make something I was happy with and also my family would be OK with. My publisher Ten Speed Press and my agent were kind enough to let me finish my manuscript and have my stepmom and dad read it before I signed my contract!


RAISING MOTHERS:    
What was the best money you ever spent as a writer?

MALAKA GHARIB:     Most of my advance money for this book went to creating a support team in addition to my awesome editor at the publishing house. With the funds, I paid for the consultancy of my sensitivity editor Rhonda Ragab, my visual editor Ben de la Cruz and even a few read-throughs with the screenwriter Seth Worley to make sure that the book had strong characters and a story arc. Because I invested in the craft of my book, I was confident that I would come away with a good story.

RAISING MOTHERS:     How many hours a day do you write? Break down your typical writing day. 

MALAKA GHARIB:     I’ve been on family leave because I gave birth to a baby in February, and I promised myself I’d use my free time to spend with him, without a screen in front of my face. But in general most of my ideas for comics or stories are formed in my imagination first and I will chew and think about it for days while I’m going on walks, cooking, doing laundry, breastfeeding. And then it will all come out in one go when I have a moment to write it down or pitch it. 

Right now, for example, I’m trying to come up with a zine about how to live a more romantic life. I already have a running list of ideas in my head: Put a vase of flowers in your bathroom, use real napkins when you eat dinner. But nothing’s been put to paper yet.

RAISING MOTHERS:     What are your top three tips to help develop your writing muscle?

MALAKA GHARIB:     Writing helps you understand what you’re trying to say. Write until you figure out where you’re going. 

It’s OK to have an idea all in your noggin at first – but there comes a point where you’ll have to sit down and write the whole thing out. 

If you don’t feel in the mood to write, give yourself a creative appetizer to get you in the mood. Freewrite for 10 minutes. Make a comic. Write a short poem or make a tiny zine. That usually gets me in the spirit! 

You can’t include every detail of your life in a book, otherwise that wouldn’t be a story – it would just be a diary!

RAISING MOTHERS:     What does literary success look like to you?

MALAKA GHARIB:     Being happy with what you’ve written. Because even if you didn’t sell as many copies as you’d hoped, you’ll always know in your heart that it was meaningful to you that you did it.

RAISING MOTHERS:     What other authors are you friends with, and how do they help you become a better writer?

MALAKA GHARIB:     I’m friends with lots of cartoonists on social media, if that counts! I’ve learned a lot from my fellow cartoonist Kristen Radtke (author of Seek You: A Journey Through American Loneliness). She taught me a lot about the writer business and how to balance a day job with a robust creative writing life – and how to make sure that we as women are fairly compensated for our work. 

RAISING MOTHERS:     Who are you writing for?

MALAKA GHARIB:     Always myself. I write to understand what I’m going through, and when I share it with others, it’s always in the hope that they might relate, then I won’t feel so alone. 


Malaka Gharib (she/her) is a journalist, cartoonist and graphic novelist. She is the author of “I Was Their American Dream,” winner of the 2020 Arab American Book Award, and “It Won’t Always Be Like This.” By day, she works as an editor on NPR’s Life Kit podcast.

Her comics and writing have been published in NPR, the Los Angeles Times, Catapult, The Nib, The Believer Magazine and The New Yorker. She has been profiled in The Washington Post and The New York Times. She lives in Nashville, Tenn.

Thanks for reading! Childcare costs $20/hour in most cities. If you enjoy Raising Mothers, join us as a sustaining member to help RM remain ad-free. Invest in amplifying the voices of Black, Asian, Latine(x), Indigenous and other parents of color at our many intersections. Tiers start at $5/month.

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