Key West Bound!
Thanks for sticking with me, gentle readers! I've been on the road a lot this summer and working hard on Nola Novel #2--which I'm happy to say I've now drafted! Hurray! A complete first draft, finished before the back-to-school flurry begins. Whew!
I've also been working on editing the great essays in FAMILY TROUBLE, which is just such a terrific project. I love it. I've learned so much from the contributors. Their insights about writing memoir about family members are dynamite. So wise. I think this book of essays is going to be really useful to writers, CW teachers, and aspiring writers.
I head out soon to visit my aunt in Key West, my last remaining relative on the island. (I've written about her in the forthcoming ISLAND OF BONES.) We get to spend a week together, and my cousin, who's four days older than I am, is taking some time off to come down from Miami, too! Castro family party!
In addition to mojitos, the Kino Sandal Factory (a family tradition), and the beach, my aunt is going to take me to see family graves and other sites of importance, because she's leaving Key West this fall for retirement, and she wants to make sure as many of the grandkids as possible know our history before she leaves. Since it's become such a resort destination, Cayo Hueso (island of bones) is just too damn expensive for ordinary working people to afford to live there. My family, which has been there since the nineteenth century, will be there no more. Qué lastima.
I'm looking forward to seeing my sweet aunt, a long-time librarian at Key West High School, and my cousin, who works to ensure that female horticultural laborers in Latin America have decent workers' rights and protections. They both rock. Cool single Castro women. We're going to say coño and make flan and laugh a lot.
I haven't been to Key West since I was seventeen and spent a week with my grandmother, who's gone now, so it's kind of emotional for me. I remember taking the Greyhound there from San Antonio. It wasn't exactly the most fun spring break for a college freshman--Nanny wouldn't let me go to the beach; she was sure I'd get "corrupted by the hippies"--but it was love, you know? Family. And this will be, too.
I've also been working on editing the great essays in FAMILY TROUBLE, which is just such a terrific project. I love it. I've learned so much from the contributors. Their insights about writing memoir about family members are dynamite. So wise. I think this book of essays is going to be really useful to writers, CW teachers, and aspiring writers.
I head out soon to visit my aunt in Key West, my last remaining relative on the island. (I've written about her in the forthcoming ISLAND OF BONES.) We get to spend a week together, and my cousin, who's four days older than I am, is taking some time off to come down from Miami, too! Castro family party!
In addition to mojitos, the Kino Sandal Factory (a family tradition), and the beach, my aunt is going to take me to see family graves and other sites of importance, because she's leaving Key West this fall for retirement, and she wants to make sure as many of the grandkids as possible know our history before she leaves. Since it's become such a resort destination, Cayo Hueso (island of bones) is just too damn expensive for ordinary working people to afford to live there. My family, which has been there since the nineteenth century, will be there no more. Qué lastima.
I'm looking forward to seeing my sweet aunt, a long-time librarian at Key West High School, and my cousin, who works to ensure that female horticultural laborers in Latin America have decent workers' rights and protections. They both rock. Cool single Castro women. We're going to say coño and make flan and laugh a lot.
I haven't been to Key West since I was seventeen and spent a week with my grandmother, who's gone now, so it's kind of emotional for me. I remember taking the Greyhound there from San Antonio. It wasn't exactly the most fun spring break for a college freshman--Nanny wouldn't let me go to the beach; she was sure I'd get "corrupted by the hippies"--but it was love, you know? Family. And this will be, too.
Faye said:
Joy, I'm sure many of your friends are thinking of you, as I am, as you revisit your roots and your family. Enjoy the flan, and laugh well.
July 30, 2011 11:20 PM