March 28, 2023 • 24 mins
In 2018, Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Quiara Alegria Hudes decided to take a break from the theater world. Tired of a white, male-dominated landscape, Quiara turned inward, leaning on her memories and stories of the women in her family. The result was Quiara’s first memoir: “My Broken Language.” In 2022, Quiara returned to the stage with the play adaptation of her memoir. On this episode of Latino USA, we talk to Quiara about her memoir, her play, and how grief and joy intertwine in the stories she is bringing to the stage.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
It's hard for me to remember that I never wept
for one of my cousins. I didn't know how to grieve.
I think the process of writing them down and memorializing them,
breathing new life into their stories, that has been my
process of grief thirty years later, and it is a
(00:21):
joyous one.
Speaker 2 (00:26):
From Fudro Media and PRX, It's Latino, Usa. I'm Marie
Rosa today, My Broken Language. A conversation with Bulletzer Prize
winning playwright Kierra Allegria Hudies about adapting her memoir for
the stage. Kierra Allegriia Hudis has been writing for this
(00:54):
stage for over twenty years.
Speaker 1 (00:56):
I got my first paycheck for being a playwright in
two thousand and two, so I'm really reflecting on what
I'll call my professional life as a writer.
Speaker 3 (01:05):
Kiada's work is personal.
Speaker 2 (01:07):
Many of her plays draw from her family's experience growing
up in West Philadelphia in the late nineteen eighties and nineties.
Her play Water by the Spoonful, which looks at themes
of war, trauma, and addiction, won the twenty twelve Pulitzer Prize.
(01:29):
But Kiada's work is also about centering joy.
Speaker 3 (01:34):
Like sup for Washington Heights.
Speaker 1 (01:36):
Up at the break a day, I wake up and
I got the slow Punkah Gotta.
Speaker 3 (01:39):
Chase the Wake.
Speaker 2 (01:40):
Kieta worked alongside lean Manuel Miranda to write the book
for the musical in the Heights, and later wrote the
script for the film adaptation. In the fall of twenty eighteen,
Kiera announced that she would take.
Speaker 3 (01:56):
A break from theater.
Speaker 2 (01:58):
Tired of a white, male dominated landscape, Kiada felt the
structures and dynamics of the theater world limited her explorations
of female wisdom, self determination, and pleasure. As Kiada turned inward,
she leaned on her memories of the women in her family.
The result was Kida's first memoir, My Broken Language.
Speaker 1 (02:22):
It was a book about my childhood, long before I
was a professional writer, and in particular about the women,
their spirits and their bodies, their grief, their senses of humor,
the different languages that they spoke, the different body languages
that they kind of enveloped me in. It was about
(02:43):
all of that growing up in a Phila Rican family.
Speaker 2 (02:46):
Then in fall of twenty twenty two, Kiada returned to
the theater, making her off Broadway directorial debut with the
play adaptation of her intimate memoir, which ran off Broadway
until last November. Today, we talked to Kiada about her memoir,
her play, and how grief and joy intertwining the stories
(03:09):
she's bringing to the stage.
Speaker 3 (03:17):
Hi YadA, Hi, welcome back to Latino, USA.
Speaker 1 (03:22):
Thank you, Thank you for welcoming me back.
Speaker 3 (03:24):
I want to know how you're doing, Like, how are
you feeling?
Speaker 1 (03:27):
I feel great. I feel so so filled with gratitude.
You know. I feel very reflective because I think the
play adaptation of My Broken Language. I do think in
many ways it is the culmination, the apex of twenty
years of my work. And then I woke up this
(03:47):
morning and felt like my life was a blank page
in the best of ways. I know blank pages can
be intimidating to authors, but to me, it's just a
sense of freedom and possibility.
Speaker 2 (03:59):
When you started out writing My Broken Language, did you
know what it was going to become? I remember speaking
to you kind of at the beginning, and you were
still processing it. Then it ends up actually being a
phenomenal memoir and now a phenomenal off Broadway show. But
(04:19):
when you were first starting talk about the cloudiness, the
part where you were like, I'm not necessarily sure because
it was your first book.
Speaker 1 (04:28):
I think things that have been very clear to me,
and things I've been sure on I'm no longer curious about,
so I wouldn't really want to follow that as a
writing thread. It's things I don't understand, things where there's
a lot of mystery that draws me into a process.
I remember when I got inspired to write a book
about my matriarchs in Philly. It was because we were
(04:51):
watching an old home movie. It was the year that
Batata Rosa came out. I remember that album just took us.
It took North Philly by storm. To me, it's like
bad Bunny right now. I mean it was just all
you would hear on the commercials, out of the bodega,
(05:12):
out of the car windows passing by, out of the
kitchen windows that were open, you know, and it was
dancing music. And so that was the sound of that
summer to me. All my big cousins who were like
my goddesses, I mean, they were so cool, you know.
They taught me how to be a girl, They taught
me how to be a young woman, and they were
(05:35):
great dancers, and they had so much personality and individuality
in their moves and it just brought back hanging out
at ourila's house. The joy was overwhelming. They're always Volume eleven,
Volume twelve, and it was nineteen ninety one, and I
was like, what was going on in our family that year?
(05:55):
And I remembered the amount of grief was overwhelming, that
you we lost loved ones decades before their time, and
it was hard in cities for people who came up
in the eighties and nineties. There was just a lot
of loss and there was a lot of struggle. I'm
talking about things like infant mortality rate. I'm talking about
(06:17):
things like dire poverty, inequal access to healthcare, HIV AIDS, epidemic,
misinformation surrounding that, stigmatization surrounding that. I'm talking about addiction
and the war on drugs. So that that all affected
my family. And when I remembered, oh, shoot, nineteen ninety one,
(06:41):
we spent a lot of money at the florist getting
funeral wreaths. How could that be the year that we
danced with that much joy? And that question, that mystery
was unclear to me, and that's what I wanted to
lean into a process to get some clarity there. And
it excited me. The juxtaposition of those two extreme feelings.
Speaker 2 (07:07):
I remember when we first started talking about your work,
and you centered it so much on the experience of
loss right and what was happening in Philly, with losing
friends and family to drugs and losing friends and family
to an epidemic aids, And it's kind of like, here,
(07:28):
we are in a pandemic and there is so much
loss of life happening all around us. How are you
processing this moment of kind of joy and possibility with
the fact that there's also so much loss happening.
Speaker 1 (07:44):
I think it took me this many decades. Let's say
it's been three decades now, and even a little bit
more since I was a girl in West Philly and
North Philly and the loss started rolling in and I
didn't know how to grieve. I had people in the
family that grieved by crying very loud. I had people
(08:08):
in the family that grieve by getting drunk. I had
people in the family that grieve by getting kind of catatonic.
It's hard for me to remember that I never wept
for one of my cousins. I didn't know how to grieve,
and I think the process of writing them down and
memorializing them, breathing new life into their stories. That has
(08:34):
been my process of grief thirty years later, and it
is a joyous one, I think, especially when I look
at something like HIV AIDS. In the eighties and nineties
in North Philly, there was very little information and there
was a lot of misinformation. So when I sat down
(08:56):
to write this book and I was like, let me
do some research. Let me find some statistics. How did
HIV AIDS actually affect the Puerto Rican community in Philadelphia
during these decades. I couldn't find anything. There was no research.
So I said, let me hire some university students who
are more adept at research than I am. Let me
(09:17):
send them to some libraries and do some deep dives.
They couldn't find anything. I mean, I'm talking breadcrumbs hardly
any I started to realize that, you know, how can
you agree when there's no information to when the archival
materials are lacking. And I'm not alone now I see
other people of my generation have started to create those archives.
(09:43):
How do we process grief? I think very slowly and
very carefully, and with a lot of compassion, and with
a plethora of contributing voices. So it's not like, oh,
we need a book about what HIV AIDS was to
Philly Reekins in those decades and then we're done.
Speaker 2 (10:04):
No.
Speaker 1 (10:05):
I often think there's as many bodyquas stories as there
are body quas period. You know, I want my story
to be one little grain of sand in a vast
ocean that has a multiplicity, and that is the grief
us doing the work together.
Speaker 2 (10:27):
Your mom said to you, She looked at you in
the kitchen at one point and said, Nihita, just go
and write the stories. I love the fact that I
was quoting your mom to my daughter not too long ago.
I was like, well, you know, you have to write
those stories. You have to write them. Yes, And I'm like,
(10:47):
what did Kiada's mothers say to her, And what was
the tone that Kiyada said, Okay, Mom, I'll go and write,
because I think a lot of mothers would like to
know what that is to unlock their daughter's creative, to
unlock their daughter's belief in themselves.
Speaker 1 (11:03):
It's like, you know, sometimes when you're driving in the
front seat with someone, it's easier to talk because you're
not making eye contact. You're both looking at the road ahead.
So we were in the kitchen and we were rinsing
the rice, so we were looking at the rice. We
weren't looking at each other, and so she just kind
of very softly, was like, why did you never pursue
(11:24):
the writing? I was like, what do you mean pursue?
I always wrote, I love writing writings. Writing's my jam.
Writing's fun. Writing's fun. She was like, no, I mean
for real, for real. I was in my twenties and
was working as a musician at the time. The question
kind of shocked me because I didn't know any other
Latina writers. Like it wasn't something that even struck me
(11:47):
as a path to pursue. For me, it was just
a way to enjoy life, and that was it. It
was super gentle. She said, you have a platform, you
had a good education, You could write some of these
worries and that was it. I mean, it was super simple.
She said, you were always a writer. She made us
(12:09):
a little bit of a please. She said, you know,
our elders aren't getting any younger. When their stories go,
they're gone. I now can see with hindsight that my
mom she arrived in Philly when she was about eleven
or twelve. They had to work so hard to just
(12:31):
build a community that was functional. There weren't community centers,
there weren't after school services, there weren't equal health care services.
They had a lot of work to do. When they
arrived in Philly. They built a community. I was born
into that community. I inherited the fruits of their labor.
(12:53):
When I say they, I'm talking about the founding mothers
of Philadelphia. They had to be warriors. They had to
be joy warrior. And me, my sister, my cousins, we
inherited all the benefits of the work that they did.
I had more free time. I didn't have to do
that work. I had time to tell the story. It
(13:13):
just struck a chord because I thought, not only does
this feel right and authentic to me, but it actually
gives me a sense of responsibility. I am accountable to
how I'm spending my adult life. And these people, my elders,
they did a damn lot of work, and I'm not
going to coast on that. I'm gonna shine a light
on that.
Speaker 2 (13:38):
You end up writing a trilogy of plays, also about
your life, about war, about aids, about drugs. You end
up winning the Pulitzer Prize. But I always found it
interesting that for you, the writing was playwriting. It didn't
start with writing a memoir or a novel. You knew
(14:00):
that you wanted to do something on stage. How did
you know that?
Speaker 1 (14:05):
One part of it is that my aunt Linda Hughdes
composed the score for the Big Apple Circus every year
for seventeen years.
Speaker 3 (14:12):
Okay, I did not know that.
Speaker 1 (14:14):
Yes, yes, so she composed a new original score every year.
That's why I became a musician, because she taught me
how to play. She taught me how to read music.
She taught me musical calligraphy, so I learned how to
copy her scores. She sponsored my piano lessons, and then
I would come and hang out with her in New York.
It was very exciting because I was leaving Philadelphia for
weekends and I would turn pages on the bandstand or
(14:36):
just watch her rehearse with the band as the clowns
and acrobats and different circus artists were rehearsing. And so
it was the rough magic of circus, which was a
form of theater. So I think theater just felt like
home to me. And at the same time I was
growing up, my mom was a Santerea. She was crown jungle.
(14:59):
So I was surrounded by these living room ceremonies that
blew my mind. They were gorgeous, they were so culturally rich.
I wouldn't say that was like theater two. I don't
want to denigrate it. Yet it was a live in
person experience that was transformative. It transported me to different
places spiritually and emotionally. So I think between the circus
(15:22):
and living in an Arisha household, that is kind of
where the genesis of my of my playwriting.
Speaker 2 (15:28):
The adaptation of your book My Broken Language. The play
is so making your life, our lives so visible on stage.
Everything about the stage design, everything about the set is
like you're living in how do.
Speaker 3 (15:49):
You call it? Philly? Rico, Phill know, you take us.
Speaker 2 (15:53):
There, and yet what you're saying is like, well, but
basically we were kind of invisible.
Speaker 1 (15:59):
As I've grew grew up in Philly because I'm mixed,
so I come from a mixed background. I was always
between neighborhoods half white Jewish, half brown Puerto Rican, so
I could really see the segregation depending on what neighborhood
I was in. It's the fourth most segregated city in
the nation, and so the invisibility that I witnessed in
(16:20):
North Philly would get me so so mad as a teenager.
And yet there was also something a little bit magical
about being out of the spotlight. There was so much
cultural innovation. We did not get watered down, we did
not get diluted. And so even as I was mad
(16:41):
about that invisibility, there was something about it that I
thought had value, kind of being off the grid a
little bit in terms of the play, there was a vibe.
I was going for, a really strong vibe. And I
say this because it makes me think about my abuela
and her approach to being her approach to being humble,
(17:03):
to being a caretaker of the community. And her vibe
was like, leave the door unlocked, come in, have a seat.
There will always be a plate for you, she told me.
When you cook, she taught me how to cook. When
you cook, you always put a plate aside, because you
never know who's going to come through the door, and
you have to have a plate ready for them. So
that's the vibe I wanted to have in the theater.
(17:23):
A stranger walks into the theater, sees the set, even
before the play has begun and goes, oh, I'm welcome here.
I wanted the vibe to be pull up a chair
at our kitchen table. We have some stories to share
with you. We're so glad you're home.
Speaker 3 (17:42):
I mean, seeing the play is very emotional.
Speaker 2 (17:45):
I think everybody who I've spoken to who has seen
the play has just come away with what an emotional
experience it is. But there is also this weight, right
because it is so proundly emotional. How did you handle
that on a nightly basis? Also being the director.
Speaker 1 (18:03):
It was so fun. I didn't feel like I was
wearing a separate playwriting hat and directing hat. I just
felt I'm creating a piece. I mean. One of the
nice things about being directors you choose the cast. So
I got to choose the cast, which got us off
to a great start. Because the cast was spectacular.
Speaker 2 (18:19):
My cousin blessed La and Yap Spanish heres.
Speaker 1 (18:26):
So we had a blast. And because they were all
playing the same character. It's not that one person played
me quote unquote as a character, but they all played
the same character. It was a diverse cast of Latina
actors and that really forced our hand, which is like
don't talk like me, don't talk like her, talk like you.
(18:47):
And the proposition we're making to the audience is that
we are all each other. Right. It was a little
bit of a philosophical thing, but it felt embodied and natural.
And they just passed a little name plate geeky necklace
around amongst them, so you could tell, oh, she's geeky now,
Oh she's geeky now. So honestly, it did not feel
like a risk. Sometimes it felt like playing. It felt
like being playful, and that was the right place to be.
(19:16):
The reason I wanted to take the book and turn
it into a play was in particular the themes of
spirit and the themes of body, because these were things
I hadn't seen a lot of in theater, and I
think they're beautiful themes. And I think there's a lot
of humor, there's a lot of life. There's a lot
of drama in them. If people don't talk about God
in the theater, you know, it's like that's only for
(19:37):
self help podcasts or something. It's like, no, these are
epic stories, man. The play ended with a very long monologue,
like a seventeen minute monologue, just describing the bodies so the.
Speaker 4 (19:49):
Women were closed by and Natre's Mary.
Speaker 5 (19:53):
They will Dagan have Nagan and someonet exposed.
Speaker 1 (19:58):
It was so fun talking about different forms of fatness,
how different fatness played out on different kinds of bodies.
Speaker 4 (20:06):
Ches eroded cheap, they were my grand Canyon mom side jiggles,
my night yet grow full.
Speaker 1 (20:17):
You know, our bodies weren't are normal, and it was
just so fun to create a scene where I could
just assert that all the different ways our bodies looked
were normal and we could just laugh about it. And
this is why we created in one transition a dance
where they were just going to pinch each other's butts.
(20:39):
I was like, how did you Awula touch your butt?
Let's see it. We made a whole dance out of
it because I was like, we're allowed to do this
in a healthy way. We put the butt pinched dance
right after a grief scene, so you could really we
really hugged the corner type where she's grieving Mighty Lou
and then all of a sudden they're pinching each other's
(21:00):
asses and making the cooing sounds. It's like, how did
your Auela speak to you when she would do that?
You know, so it was like Madi's Auela would grauch
like like she was gonna bite her, you know, and
somewhat I was like, oh, you know. So we made
the coups, we pinched the butts, we we processed through comedy,
(21:21):
through the comedy of our real particularity, weirdness. It was
fun to talk about how different all our bodies were.
It was so fun to do all that.
Speaker 3 (21:34):
To wrap it up, what is the project of Kiara?
Speaker 2 (21:39):
Like when you say that you are leaving a record
of your language, is of your stories, of your moments.
I mean, you've done so much Kiara. Do you feel
overwhelmed by that at all? By this sense of like
kind of where we started out, like, well, there's a
blank page.
Speaker 1 (22:00):
One of the things As a director, because this was
my first time directing, I kept talking to the actors
about this triangle that I wanted them to continually stay
alive in as an artist between control, freedom and community.
If you have too much control as an actor and
really as an artist, there's no breath, there's no life,
(22:24):
there's no surprise. If you have too much freedom, you
lose the thread. You play the wrong notes, you say
the wrong words, If you don't have enough community, then
you're just a silo. So we had to stay alive
in the community. The control and the freedom, we had
to find the right balance. For me, directing the piece
(22:47):
was my act of community. It's that sense of freedom
for me. I have the freedom, I can write whatever
I want. Will I take it? Will I really take
the freedom and be bold?
Speaker 3 (23:05):
Kiera, thank you so much for joining me on Latino USA.
Speaker 1 (23:08):
Thank you.
Speaker 3 (23:12):
That was Kiara Alegria Hudis.
Speaker 2 (23:14):
Her memoir is titled My Broken Language. This episode was
produced by Julia Rochan, edited by Marta Martinez. It was
mixed by Stephane Lebau and Gabriel le Biez. The Latino
(23:37):
USA team includes Andrea Ropes Cruzado, Daisy Contreras, Mike Sargent,
Victoria Estrada, Renaldo Leanos Junior, and Patricia Sulbrand, with help
from Raoul Perez. Our editorial director is Fernandes Santos. Our
director of engineering is Stephanie Lebau. Our senior engineer is
Julia Caruso. Our associate engineer is jj Carubin. Our market
(24:00):
manager is Luis Luna. Our New York Women's Foundation Fellow
is Elizabeth Loenton Torres. Our theme music was composed by
Zan Ruinhos. I'm your host and executive producer marieo Hosa.
Join us on our next episode. In the meantime, find
us on all of your social media and remember Monte
Vay Yes Jao.
Speaker 5 (24:19):
Latino USA is made possible in part by the Ford Foundation,
working with visionaries on the front lines of social change worldwide,
the Heising Simons Foundation unlocking knowledge, opportunity and possibilities More
at hsfoundation dot org and the John D. And Catherine T.
(24:40):
MacArthur Foundation
It's hard for me to remember that I never wept
for one of my cousins. I didn't know how to grieve.
I think the process of writing them down and memorializing them,
breathing new life into their stories, that has been my
process of grief thirty years later, and it is a
(00:21):
joyous one.
Speaker 2 (00:26):
From Fudro Media and PRX, It's Latino, Usa. I'm Marie
Rosa today, My Broken Language. A conversation with Bulletzer Prize
winning playwright Kierra Allegria Hudies about adapting her memoir for
the stage. Kierra Allegriia Hudis has been writing for this
(00:54):
stage for over twenty years.
Speaker 1 (00:56):
I got my first paycheck for being a playwright in
two thousand and two, so I'm really reflecting on what
I'll call my professional life as a writer.
Speaker 3 (01:05):
Kiada's work is personal.
Speaker 2 (01:07):
Many of her plays draw from her family's experience growing
up in West Philadelphia in the late nineteen eighties and nineties.
Her play Water by the Spoonful, which looks at themes
of war, trauma, and addiction, won the twenty twelve Pulitzer Prize.
(01:29):
But Kiada's work is also about centering joy.
Speaker 3 (01:34):
Like sup for Washington Heights.
Speaker 1 (01:36):
Up at the break a day, I wake up and
I got the slow Punkah Gotta.
Speaker 3 (01:39):
Chase the Wake.
Speaker 2 (01:40):
Kieta worked alongside lean Manuel Miranda to write the book
for the musical in the Heights, and later wrote the
script for the film adaptation. In the fall of twenty eighteen,
Kiera announced that she would take.
Speaker 3 (01:56):
A break from theater.
Speaker 2 (01:58):
Tired of a white, male dominated landscape, Kiada felt the
structures and dynamics of the theater world limited her explorations
of female wisdom, self determination, and pleasure. As Kiada turned inward,
she leaned on her memories of the women in her family.
The result was Kida's first memoir, My Broken Language.
Speaker 1 (02:22):
It was a book about my childhood, long before I
was a professional writer, and in particular about the women,
their spirits and their bodies, their grief, their senses of humor,
the different languages that they spoke, the different body languages
that they kind of enveloped me in. It was about
(02:43):
all of that growing up in a Phila Rican family.
Speaker 2 (02:46):
Then in fall of twenty twenty two, Kiada returned to
the theater, making her off Broadway directorial debut with the
play adaptation of her intimate memoir, which ran off Broadway
until last November. Today, we talked to Kiada about her memoir,
her play, and how grief and joy intertwining the stories
(03:09):
she's bringing to the stage.
Speaker 3 (03:17):
Hi YadA, Hi, welcome back to Latino, USA.
Speaker 1 (03:22):
Thank you, Thank you for welcoming me back.
Speaker 3 (03:24):
I want to know how you're doing, Like, how are
you feeling?
Speaker 1 (03:27):
I feel great. I feel so so filled with gratitude.
You know. I feel very reflective because I think the
play adaptation of My Broken Language. I do think in
many ways it is the culmination, the apex of twenty
years of my work. And then I woke up this
(03:47):
morning and felt like my life was a blank page
in the best of ways. I know blank pages can
be intimidating to authors, but to me, it's just a
sense of freedom and possibility.
Speaker 2 (03:59):
When you started out writing My Broken Language, did you
know what it was going to become? I remember speaking
to you kind of at the beginning, and you were
still processing it. Then it ends up actually being a
phenomenal memoir and now a phenomenal off Broadway show. But
(04:19):
when you were first starting talk about the cloudiness, the
part where you were like, I'm not necessarily sure because
it was your first book.
Speaker 1 (04:28):
I think things that have been very clear to me,
and things I've been sure on I'm no longer curious about,
so I wouldn't really want to follow that as a
writing thread. It's things I don't understand, things where there's
a lot of mystery that draws me into a process.
I remember when I got inspired to write a book
about my matriarchs in Philly. It was because we were
(04:51):
watching an old home movie. It was the year that
Batata Rosa came out. I remember that album just took us.
It took North Philly by storm. To me, it's like
bad Bunny right now. I mean it was just all
you would hear on the commercials, out of the bodega,
(05:12):
out of the car windows passing by, out of the
kitchen windows that were open, you know, and it was
dancing music. And so that was the sound of that
summer to me. All my big cousins who were like
my goddesses, I mean, they were so cool, you know.
They taught me how to be a girl, They taught
me how to be a young woman, and they were
(05:35):
great dancers, and they had so much personality and individuality
in their moves and it just brought back hanging out
at ourila's house. The joy was overwhelming. They're always Volume eleven,
Volume twelve, and it was nineteen ninety one, and I
was like, what was going on in our family that year?
(05:55):
And I remembered the amount of grief was overwhelming, that
you we lost loved ones decades before their time, and
it was hard in cities for people who came up
in the eighties and nineties. There was just a lot
of loss and there was a lot of struggle. I'm
talking about things like infant mortality rate. I'm talking about
(06:17):
things like dire poverty, inequal access to healthcare, HIV AIDS, epidemic,
misinformation surrounding that, stigmatization surrounding that. I'm talking about addiction
and the war on drugs. So that that all affected
my family. And when I remembered, oh, shoot, nineteen ninety one,
(06:41):
we spent a lot of money at the florist getting
funeral wreaths. How could that be the year that we
danced with that much joy? And that question, that mystery
was unclear to me, and that's what I wanted to
lean into a process to get some clarity there. And
it excited me. The juxtaposition of those two extreme feelings.
Speaker 2 (07:07):
I remember when we first started talking about your work,
and you centered it so much on the experience of
loss right and what was happening in Philly, with losing
friends and family to drugs and losing friends and family
to an epidemic aids, And it's kind of like, here,
(07:28):
we are in a pandemic and there is so much
loss of life happening all around us. How are you
processing this moment of kind of joy and possibility with
the fact that there's also so much loss happening.
Speaker 1 (07:44):
I think it took me this many decades. Let's say
it's been three decades now, and even a little bit
more since I was a girl in West Philly and
North Philly and the loss started rolling in and I
didn't know how to grieve. I had people in the
family that grieved by crying very loud. I had people
(08:08):
in the family that grieve by getting drunk. I had
people in the family that grieve by getting kind of catatonic.
It's hard for me to remember that I never wept
for one of my cousins. I didn't know how to grieve,
and I think the process of writing them down and
memorializing them, breathing new life into their stories. That has
(08:34):
been my process of grief thirty years later, and it
is a joyous one, I think, especially when I look
at something like HIV AIDS. In the eighties and nineties
in North Philly, there was very little information and there
was a lot of misinformation. So when I sat down
(08:56):
to write this book and I was like, let me
do some research. Let me find some statistics. How did
HIV AIDS actually affect the Puerto Rican community in Philadelphia
during these decades. I couldn't find anything. There was no research.
So I said, let me hire some university students who
are more adept at research than I am. Let me
(09:17):
send them to some libraries and do some deep dives.
They couldn't find anything. I mean, I'm talking breadcrumbs hardly
any I started to realize that, you know, how can
you agree when there's no information to when the archival
materials are lacking. And I'm not alone now I see
other people of my generation have started to create those archives.
(09:43):
How do we process grief? I think very slowly and
very carefully, and with a lot of compassion, and with
a plethora of contributing voices. So it's not like, oh,
we need a book about what HIV AIDS was to
Philly Reekins in those decades and then we're done.
Speaker 2 (10:04):
No.
Speaker 1 (10:05):
I often think there's as many bodyquas stories as there
are body quas period. You know, I want my story
to be one little grain of sand in a vast
ocean that has a multiplicity, and that is the grief
us doing the work together.
Speaker 2 (10:27):
Your mom said to you, She looked at you in
the kitchen at one point and said, Nihita, just go
and write the stories. I love the fact that I
was quoting your mom to my daughter not too long ago.
I was like, well, you know, you have to write
those stories. You have to write them. Yes, And I'm like,
(10:47):
what did Kiada's mothers say to her, And what was
the tone that Kiyada said, Okay, Mom, I'll go and write,
because I think a lot of mothers would like to
know what that is to unlock their daughter's creative, to
unlock their daughter's belief in themselves.
Speaker 1 (11:03):
It's like, you know, sometimes when you're driving in the
front seat with someone, it's easier to talk because you're
not making eye contact. You're both looking at the road ahead.
So we were in the kitchen and we were rinsing
the rice, so we were looking at the rice. We
weren't looking at each other, and so she just kind
of very softly, was like, why did you never pursue
(11:24):
the writing? I was like, what do you mean pursue?
I always wrote, I love writing writings. Writing's my jam.
Writing's fun. Writing's fun. She was like, no, I mean
for real, for real. I was in my twenties and
was working as a musician at the time. The question
kind of shocked me because I didn't know any other
Latina writers. Like it wasn't something that even struck me
(11:47):
as a path to pursue. For me, it was just
a way to enjoy life, and that was it. It
was super gentle. She said, you have a platform, you
had a good education, You could write some of these
worries and that was it. I mean, it was super simple.
She said, you were always a writer. She made us
(12:09):
a little bit of a please. She said, you know,
our elders aren't getting any younger. When their stories go,
they're gone. I now can see with hindsight that my
mom she arrived in Philly when she was about eleven
or twelve. They had to work so hard to just
(12:31):
build a community that was functional. There weren't community centers,
there weren't after school services, there weren't equal health care services.
They had a lot of work to do. When they
arrived in Philly. They built a community. I was born
into that community. I inherited the fruits of their labor.
(12:53):
When I say they, I'm talking about the founding mothers
of Philadelphia. They had to be warriors. They had to
be joy warrior. And me, my sister, my cousins, we
inherited all the benefits of the work that they did.
I had more free time. I didn't have to do
that work. I had time to tell the story. It
(13:13):
just struck a chord because I thought, not only does
this feel right and authentic to me, but it actually
gives me a sense of responsibility. I am accountable to
how I'm spending my adult life. And these people, my elders,
they did a damn lot of work, and I'm not
going to coast on that. I'm gonna shine a light
on that.
Speaker 2 (13:38):
You end up writing a trilogy of plays, also about
your life, about war, about aids, about drugs. You end
up winning the Pulitzer Prize. But I always found it
interesting that for you, the writing was playwriting. It didn't
start with writing a memoir or a novel. You knew
(14:00):
that you wanted to do something on stage. How did
you know that?
Speaker 1 (14:05):
One part of it is that my aunt Linda Hughdes
composed the score for the Big Apple Circus every year
for seventeen years.
Speaker 3 (14:12):
Okay, I did not know that.
Speaker 1 (14:14):
Yes, yes, so she composed a new original score every year.
That's why I became a musician, because she taught me
how to play. She taught me how to read music.
She taught me musical calligraphy, so I learned how to
copy her scores. She sponsored my piano lessons, and then
I would come and hang out with her in New York.
It was very exciting because I was leaving Philadelphia for
weekends and I would turn pages on the bandstand or
(14:36):
just watch her rehearse with the band as the clowns
and acrobats and different circus artists were rehearsing. And so
it was the rough magic of circus, which was a
form of theater. So I think theater just felt like
home to me. And at the same time I was
growing up, my mom was a Santerea. She was crown jungle.
(14:59):
So I was surrounded by these living room ceremonies that
blew my mind. They were gorgeous, they were so culturally rich.
I wouldn't say that was like theater two. I don't
want to denigrate it. Yet it was a live in
person experience that was transformative. It transported me to different
places spiritually and emotionally. So I think between the circus
(15:22):
and living in an Arisha household, that is kind of
where the genesis of my of my playwriting.
Speaker 2 (15:28):
The adaptation of your book My Broken Language. The play
is so making your life, our lives so visible on stage.
Everything about the stage design, everything about the set is
like you're living in how do.
Speaker 3 (15:49):
You call it? Philly? Rico, Phill know, you take us.
Speaker 2 (15:53):
There, and yet what you're saying is like, well, but
basically we were kind of invisible.
Speaker 1 (15:59):
As I've grew grew up in Philly because I'm mixed,
so I come from a mixed background. I was always
between neighborhoods half white Jewish, half brown Puerto Rican, so
I could really see the segregation depending on what neighborhood
I was in. It's the fourth most segregated city in
the nation, and so the invisibility that I witnessed in
(16:20):
North Philly would get me so so mad as a teenager.
And yet there was also something a little bit magical
about being out of the spotlight. There was so much
cultural innovation. We did not get watered down, we did
not get diluted. And so even as I was mad
(16:41):
about that invisibility, there was something about it that I
thought had value, kind of being off the grid a
little bit in terms of the play, there was a vibe.
I was going for, a really strong vibe. And I
say this because it makes me think about my abuela
and her approach to being her approach to being humble,
(17:03):
to being a caretaker of the community. And her vibe
was like, leave the door unlocked, come in, have a seat.
There will always be a plate for you, she told me.
When you cook, she taught me how to cook. When
you cook, you always put a plate aside, because you
never know who's going to come through the door, and
you have to have a plate ready for them. So
that's the vibe I wanted to have in the theater.
(17:23):
A stranger walks into the theater, sees the set, even
before the play has begun and goes, oh, I'm welcome here.
I wanted the vibe to be pull up a chair
at our kitchen table. We have some stories to share
with you. We're so glad you're home.
Speaker 3 (17:42):
I mean, seeing the play is very emotional.
Speaker 2 (17:45):
I think everybody who I've spoken to who has seen
the play has just come away with what an emotional
experience it is. But there is also this weight, right
because it is so proundly emotional. How did you handle
that on a nightly basis? Also being the director.
Speaker 1 (18:03):
It was so fun. I didn't feel like I was
wearing a separate playwriting hat and directing hat. I just
felt I'm creating a piece. I mean. One of the
nice things about being directors you choose the cast. So
I got to choose the cast, which got us off
to a great start. Because the cast was spectacular.
Speaker 2 (18:19):
My cousin blessed La and Yap Spanish heres.
Speaker 1 (18:26):
So we had a blast. And because they were all
playing the same character. It's not that one person played
me quote unquote as a character, but they all played
the same character. It was a diverse cast of Latina
actors and that really forced our hand, which is like
don't talk like me, don't talk like her, talk like you.
(18:47):
And the proposition we're making to the audience is that
we are all each other. Right. It was a little
bit of a philosophical thing, but it felt embodied and natural.
And they just passed a little name plate geeky necklace
around amongst them, so you could tell, oh, she's geeky now,
Oh she's geeky now. So honestly, it did not feel
like a risk. Sometimes it felt like playing. It felt
like being playful, and that was the right place to be.
(19:16):
The reason I wanted to take the book and turn
it into a play was in particular the themes of
spirit and the themes of body, because these were things
I hadn't seen a lot of in theater, and I
think they're beautiful themes. And I think there's a lot
of humor, there's a lot of life. There's a lot
of drama in them. If people don't talk about God
in the theater, you know, it's like that's only for
(19:37):
self help podcasts or something. It's like, no, these are
epic stories, man. The play ended with a very long monologue,
like a seventeen minute monologue, just describing the bodies so the.
Speaker 4 (19:49):
Women were closed by and Natre's Mary.
Speaker 5 (19:53):
They will Dagan have Nagan and someonet exposed.
Speaker 1 (19:58):
It was so fun talking about different forms of fatness,
how different fatness played out on different kinds of bodies.
Speaker 4 (20:06):
Ches eroded cheap, they were my grand Canyon mom side jiggles,
my night yet grow full.
Speaker 1 (20:17):
You know, our bodies weren't are normal, and it was
just so fun to create a scene where I could
just assert that all the different ways our bodies looked
were normal and we could just laugh about it. And
this is why we created in one transition a dance
where they were just going to pinch each other's butts.
(20:39):
I was like, how did you Awula touch your butt?
Let's see it. We made a whole dance out of
it because I was like, we're allowed to do this
in a healthy way. We put the butt pinched dance
right after a grief scene, so you could really we
really hugged the corner type where she's grieving Mighty Lou
and then all of a sudden they're pinching each other's
(21:00):
asses and making the cooing sounds. It's like, how did
your Auela speak to you when she would do that?
You know, so it was like Madi's Auela would grauch
like like she was gonna bite her, you know, and
somewhat I was like, oh, you know. So we made
the coups, we pinched the butts, we we processed through comedy,
(21:21):
through the comedy of our real particularity, weirdness. It was
fun to talk about how different all our bodies were.
It was so fun to do all that.
Speaker 3 (21:34):
To wrap it up, what is the project of Kiara?
Speaker 2 (21:39):
Like when you say that you are leaving a record
of your language, is of your stories, of your moments.
I mean, you've done so much Kiara. Do you feel
overwhelmed by that at all? By this sense of like
kind of where we started out, like, well, there's a
blank page.
Speaker 1 (22:00):
One of the things As a director, because this was
my first time directing, I kept talking to the actors
about this triangle that I wanted them to continually stay
alive in as an artist between control, freedom and community.
If you have too much control as an actor and
really as an artist, there's no breath, there's no life,
(22:24):
there's no surprise. If you have too much freedom, you
lose the thread. You play the wrong notes, you say
the wrong words, If you don't have enough community, then
you're just a silo. So we had to stay alive
in the community. The control and the freedom, we had
to find the right balance. For me, directing the piece
(22:47):
was my act of community. It's that sense of freedom
for me. I have the freedom, I can write whatever
I want. Will I take it? Will I really take
the freedom and be bold?
Speaker 3 (23:05):
Kiera, thank you so much for joining me on Latino USA.
Speaker 1 (23:08):
Thank you.
Speaker 3 (23:12):
That was Kiara Alegria Hudis.
Speaker 2 (23:14):
Her memoir is titled My Broken Language. This episode was
produced by Julia Rochan, edited by Marta Martinez. It was
mixed by Stephane Lebau and Gabriel le Biez. The Latino
(23:37):
USA team includes Andrea Ropes Cruzado, Daisy Contreras, Mike Sargent,
Victoria Estrada, Renaldo Leanos Junior, and Patricia Sulbrand, with help
from Raoul Perez. Our editorial director is Fernandes Santos. Our
director of engineering is Stephanie Lebau. Our senior engineer is
Julia Caruso. Our associate engineer is jj Carubin. Our market
(24:00):
manager is Luis Luna. Our New York Women's Foundation Fellow
is Elizabeth Loenton Torres. Our theme music was composed by
Zan Ruinhos. I'm your host and executive producer marieo Hosa.
Join us on our next episode. In the meantime, find
us on all of your social media and remember Monte
Vay Yes Jao.
Speaker 5 (24:19):
Latino USA is made possible in part by the Ford Foundation,
working with visionaries on the front lines of social change worldwide,
the Heising Simons Foundation unlocking knowledge, opportunity and possibilities More
at hsfoundation dot org and the John D. And Catherine T.
(24:40):
MacArthur Foundation
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