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Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Quiara Alegría Hudes asks a provocative question in her debut novel: What if a woman undertook a spiritual quest in the same way that some literary men do?

“The White Hot” follows April, a young mother from Philadelphia who buys a one-way bus ticket and leaves her 10-year-old daughter in an effort to find herself. Hudes says the novel was inspired by “Siddhartha” and other classic tales of men finding enlightenment — and by her own mother, who was never afforded the same freedom. 

"She had to, like, find God while she was doing the dishes," Hudes says of her mother. "I remember feeling kind of ... bitter about that, even in high school, feeling like a lady wouldn't get to do that. Just dudes get to go on the road, hit the road. Be the pilgrim, make their progress."

explored addiction and trauma in a Puerto Rican American family. She also wrote the book for In the Heights and adapted it 

. Her memoir, “My Broken Language,” traced her multigenerational upbringing in Philadelphia. She says that as the daughter of a Puerto Rican mother and a white father, she identifies with the city's many different facets.

"There's so many identities, and oftentimes they're directly at odds with each other," she says. "It was those friction points that made me feel kind of alive. And now I know as a writer, that's what I'm always digging into, you know? Where are the moments where the dichotomy is the reality and is the truth?"

April, the antihero of ‘The White Hot’

She's done the unthinkable. She's left her child. And we know that from the beginning. It's not a spoiler. But what the book doesn't detail as much, because it's just a given, is that she didn't leave her child. She stayed with her child. When she was pregnant as a high schooler, as a teenager, the dad saw that and wanted no part of it and he took off. So she's the one that made the decision to stay. 

I wonder if even me writing the story of her leaving and not the story of her staying did her a slight disservice, but I don't think so. I think that she has this message to give to her estranged daughter, who she left when she was 10 years old, and she wants this daughter to know, look, I stayed for 10 years, but here's what it's like to be a woman who takes her life into her own hands and who has agency. And maybe I waited too long to learn these lessons. Maybe you can learn these lessons a little bit sooner.

It's not an emotion I have such healthy and direct access to. And so I wanted to explore that through a fictional character. What is anger? What purpose does it serve in our lives? It's mostly been the province of men in popular culture and in cultural narratives. What is an angry woman? And is there a way that anger can be productive, actually, in addition to its destructive components? 

One of the things we discover in April's story is that, as a child, she witnessed a pretty traumatic act of violence. Now, those of us who are familiar with PTSD know that when faced with something that triggers that memory, it's fight or flight, it's freeze or fawn. And so I wanted to write this character who fought. She didn't fight when she witnessed this violent act; instead she got into schoolyard fights on the playground. 

And she became a really good fighter and that got her into a lot of trouble. And really the book is about her transforming this kind of raw elemental energy that she's been overly easily tapped into, which is her rage, transforming its power into a different source and release in her life.

On her mom becoming a high priestess in the Afro-Cuban Lukumi tradition

She was born into spiritual gifts and she sees the world through very different eyes than I have. She could see spirits when she was a child and it scared her. She didn't understand it a lot of the time. It marked her as different in her community. And it came with senses of responsibility too. She used to see, "Oh, so-and-so came to me. And said, 'I'm dying, I am dying.'" 

And then they would rush to that elder's house and this elder had died in their sleep. So she saw a few deaths before they occurred. And then, they started coming to her, asking for her insight, and it's more than a child could shoulder. So for many years, she kind of tamped down her spiritual proclivities because they scared her.

I can see now that one of the things that weaves through the pieces I've done with Lin is we're very playful. They're joyous works, they're effervescent works. In the Heights is probably the happiest thing I've ever written, followed closely by Vivo. And we just get that kind of playful side out of each other. It's a little bit more natural to him. 

He's a very upbeat and optimistic person. I definitely have a dark broody side that comes out in pieces like “The White Hot.” … You remember when you were a kid and you'd have a friend and you just be like, "Hey, you wanna come over and play?" That's it, like that's the basic relationship that we have when working.

Therese Madden and Nico Gonzalez Wisler produced and edited this interview for broadcast. Bridget Bentz, Molly Seavy-Nesper and Beth Novey adapted it for the web.

Arts and Culture

The Thread® - Books and Literary News

Tonya Mosley

Author

Quiara Alegría Hudes’ novel was inspired by “Siddhartha” and other classic tales of men seeking enlightenment. It's about a mother in Philadelphia who buys a bus ticket, leaving her daughter behind.

‘The White Hot’ asks: If men can go find themselves, why can’t women?

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