Episode 671
Saeed Jones, Silvia Moreno-Garcia, and The Lowest Pair
Poet and Kirkus Prize winner Saeed Jones unpacks his newest collection Alive at the End of the World and why Billie Holiday had a bone to pick with Maya Angelou; writer Silvia Moreno-Garcia (Mexican Gothic) explains how her love of horror at a young age found its way into her latest book The Daughter of Doctor Moreau; and indie folk duo The Lowest Pair perform "Pear Tree" from their first record 36 Cents. Plus, host Luke Burbank and announcer Elena Passarello discuss our strange childhood obsessions.
Saeed Jones
Award-Winning Poet
Award-winning American poet Saeed Jones is back with Alive at the End of the World, a brand new poetry collection from Coffee House Press. He is the winner of the 2019 Kirkus Prize for Nonfiction for his memoir How We Fight For Our Lives and the 2015 PEN/Joyce Osterweil Award for Poetry for his poetry collection Prelude to Bruises. His work has also appeared in The New York Times, the New Yorker, GQ magazine, among many others. Originally from Memphis, Tennessee, he now crafts his work about the complicated affair of being alive from Columbus, Ohio.
Silvia Moreno-Garcia
Writer and Novelist
Mexican by birth, but Canadian by inclination, Silvia Moreno-Garcia is a bestselling novelist whose world-building chops are a "thing of wonder" (The New York Times). She’s written numerous critically acclaimed novels including Gods of Jade and Shadow, Mexican Gothic, and Velvet Was the Night; her newest novel, The Daughter of Doctor Moreau, is already a showstopper. Set against the backdrop of nineteenth-century Mexico, the novel is a dreamy reimagining of The Island of Doctor Moreau, but like all of Silvia’s novels, it is infused with her knack for unusual adventure and surprising romance. Alongside her fiction writing, Silvia has edited several anthologies and is also the publisher for Innsmouth Free Press. As the winner of the Locus and British Fantasy awards for her work as a novelist and as the recipient of the World Fantasy Award for her work as an editor, she’s a writer that you’ll want to revisit both on and off the page.
The Lowest Pair
Indie Folk Duo
The Lowest Pair is a perfect example that good things come in pairs. Dual banjoists Kendl Winter and Palmer T. Lee met on the banks of the Mississippi and have been touring the US ever since in their own version of The Never Ending Tour, racking up over 500 shows across the country from Bellingham, Washington to Bangor, Maine. The American folk duo combines Palmer’s Midwestern charm with Winter’s playfulness on their songs, including four albums of original work and one cover album. They continue to approach their instruments as vehicles for exploration and deepen their poetic and resonant songwriting. This pair is the perfect choice when you’re looking for America’s next great musical duo.
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Luke Burbank: This episode of Live Wire was originally recorded in February of 2023. We hope you like it. Now, let's get to the show.
Elena Passarello: From PRX, it's Live Wire! This week, poet Saeed Jones.
Saeed Jones: I like to get right to it. You know, the secret is make straight white men nervous from the jump. Just nip it in the bud, honey.
Elena Passarello: Author Silvia Moreno-Garcia.
Silvia Moreno-Garcia: I would say I was not lonely, I was lonesome and I kind of like that and like living in my interior world, that's probably why I became a writer.
Elena Passarello: With music from The Lowest Pair and our fabulous house band. I'm your announcer, Elena Passarello, and now the host of Live Wire, Luke Burbank!
Luke Burbank: Hey, thank you so much, Elena Passarello. Thanks to everyone tuning in from all over the country, including beautiful Billings, Montana. We have a really interesting and fun show in store for everyone this week. One of the folks we're talking to, Silvia Moreno-Garcia, she grew up in a household where she was allowed to watch like horror movies when she was a little kid. We wanted to find out from our audience, we asked them to tell us about something they were into as a kid that no other kid liked. So we're going to hear those responses coming up in a few minutes. First though, of course, we got to kick things off with the best news we heard all week. This is our little reminder at the top of the show there is still some good news happening out there in the world. Elena, what's the best news that you heard this week?
Elena Passarello: Okay, so I'm going a little rogue this week. You know, I've been traveling a bit for the past couple of weeks.
Luke Burbank: I've had been following it on Instagram. You've been covering a range of experiences in this great country.
Elena Passarello: Yes, multiple climate zones. And I was in the desert in Albuquerque, New Mexico, where a dear friend of mine teaches at an amazing school. And I know we're on an Albuquerque. And I just the news of the week is that the kids are all right because this school, the Albuquerque Academy's sixth and seventh grade opera club put on a show. I have a program from it. It's called Off the Rails. They wrote it themselves. There were about 75 kids in it, it seemed like. They wrote themselves. They wrote all the lyrics. There was an amazing teacher there who helped arrange all the songs into an opera. They thought about all the big principles of opera, you know, like epic characters. These are, you know, like 12 and 13 year old students and they did a lot of like cool, like found costumes and. It was every single word came from the minds of these amazing young performers. And let me tell you, this play, which was about the struggles of women over time, had everything. There was a pigeon lady and a pyromaniac who were secretly in, they were in love, but they were trying to work through each other's problems. There was strong man named Big Hunk. Who was dealing with toxic masculinity and he couldn't stop crying. And everybody had to, you know, he wasn't allowed to cry because he was a strong man, but strong man Big Hunk was played by this amazing young actress who's and her mustache kept falling off and she just handled it with all of this like joy and aplomb. There was a tap dancing 1950s house husband who was struggling with the like oppression of the time. Singing and dancing and a million costume changes. And I, David, you know, who was a playwright and a screenwriter, my husband, he and I had The Time of Our Lives. It was literally the best play that I have seen in years. So shout out to Albuquerque Academy for Off the Rails, coming soon to a Broadway stage near you.
Luke Burbank: I would go to opera if it dealt more with like toxic masculinity and not like I don't know Bluebeard's Castle where it's just like I got this big castle and I really don't want you to go into any of those rooms because there's some not great stuff and now we're gonna sing about that for about 3.5 hours
Elena Passarello: so much of opera is about toxic masculinity and the oppression of women now that I think about it. So this is a real nice compliment to that tradition.
Luke Burbank: Like, Wagner never mentioned Snapchat once. [Elena: No.] That's why it's not relatable to me.
Elena Passarello: Yeah, and those Greeks, I mean, good lord, those Greek operas.
Luke Burbank: Speaking of kids doing the darndest things, my best news story is also about a kid doing something pretty cute. Two-year-old Juliana Allen of Panama City, Florida, took a visit to a pet store with her mom a few months ago and happened to see a two-year old white tree frog named George. I don't know if it was named George in the store or if Juliana gave George that name. But Juliana, two years old, sees this frog and says, Mom, please, can we get this frog? And she basically talks the mom into it, even though they've already got a dog and a cat. But the mom does not have a heart of stone. She says, okay, we'll get the frog. By the way, this frog had been given up by its previous owners, raising the question, is it that hard to take care of a frog? Yeah, what? Who rehomes a frog, anyway, this has actually turned out well because Juliana and George have bonded. In a way that is just like something out of a Disney movie or something. The frog perches happily on Juliana's shoulder as she watches TV and eats breakfasts. Or when she sits in her stroller, he rides around with her around the house. She's taking him to her grandmother's parents to show him off. I don't know if you'll be able to see this over the connection, but this is a photograph, Elena, I'm showing you of Juliana taking George's pulse with her toy stethoscope. Every morning when she gets up, according to her mom, I mean, Juliana is still. Very young and has fairly limited language. She says basically to her mom every morning, she wakes up and the first thing she says is, baby frog, and then I just have to bring her George. Now this is the thing too, cause you always wonder what's going on really in the mind of an animal and a pet. You know, we love them a lot. We think like my cat here bubbles. I think that I'm making her life better when I like pick her up and play her like a banjo on her stomach. I mean, does she enjoy that? Probably not. But we just kind of never know. The thing about tree frogs that's interesting is they actually turn a certain color when they are stressed or threatened. So these particular tree frogs are called white tree frogs. They turn dark brown, but when Juliana is carrying George around, he is green and turquoise, which are relaxed colors for a white tree frog. All pets should have some kind of fur color change to tell us if they're liking what's going on or not.
Elena Passarello: All pets should be mood rings. That's exactly right.
Luke Burbank: That's right. Not a cat. I just need the mood ring.
Elena Passarello: You just need a bird ring. You could take its temperature with a little toy stethoscope.
Luke Burbank: The unlikely friendship of Juliana Allen and George the Tree Frog. That's the best news that I saw this week. All right, let's invite our first guest on over to the show. His work has appeared in the New York Times, The New Yorker, and GQ. His stunning memoir, How We Fight For Our Lives, was the recipient of the 2019 Kirkus Prize for Nonfiction. U.S. Poet laureate Ada Lamone calls his latest collection, Alive at the End of the World, a serious argument for community and the rebellion of joy. Take a listen to Saeed Jones right here on Live Wire. This was from a show we recorded in partnership with the Portland Book Festival. Saeed, welcome back to the show.
Saeed Jones: Hi, honey. How are you?
Luke Burbank: It's so good to see you. The last time we talked, you were at your home in Columbus and you had just gotten a dog named Caesar. And it was during the pandemic. And we were literally looking for anyone we could talk to. And we saw on, like, I don't know, the internet that you had gotten a do and we said, that sounds like 20 minutes of radio.
Saeed Jones: Yeah, month one, month of one of lockdown. You're like, do you have time? I was like, yes, I have time. Are you kidding me? When do you need me? What are we gonna talk about? We talk about anything. Sure, dog? Okay, I'll bring the dog. Yeah, it was great.
Luke Burbank: Thank you for your being generous with your time. Now your new book Alive at The End of the World. You have a line in it where you you say did I just trick myself into writing another memoir, right? We had you on for how we fight for our lives, your memoir about your life and your mother and everything. Is this book of poetry something where you also accidentally wrote another memoir?
Saeed Jones: I think I did trick myself, yeah. I think so, I mean, I write poetry collections one poem at a time. And so I'm just kind of focused on, you know, these very, to me, minor kind of moments of deep humanity. But yeah, when you begin to step back and you're like 20 poems, 30 poems and everything, it is a bit surprising. And I think, I had a lot more clearly to unpack.
Luke Burbank: I mean, in reading this book, it really struck me as a person who was working through a lot of pain, including the section where you're annoyed at an audience member who asks you basically the question I just asked you.
Saeed Jones: I like to get right to it. You know, the secret is make straight white men nervous from the jump. Just nip it at the bud, honey. Uh-huh. Getting stressed out. Finish your posture.
Saeed Jones: I can't even remember what we were talking about, I was just so excited to get to...
Luke Burbank: I mean, was this book just... I saw an opening in it. I guess my real question is, was it cathartic for you to write about these things in the book, or was it re-traumatizing?
Saeed Jones: Mm, it was not re-traumatizing. I don't find writing, I don't know. I mean, I've never found it to be traumatizing. I don't know, I mean it's too hard. It's too much of a craft, too much joy. It's our engine, so how could that hurt me is kind of how I feel. I think it was cathartic, though, in the sense that, well, one, you know, I don't know if you know but the world is ending. So I felt thinking about dystopia and the apocalypse, I mean, there's an entire genre of not just literature, it's like culture in every form about the dystopian, what happens, but who's entrusted to be the hero or the historian in those stories? It's a pretty narrow aperture. And I was like, well, why not? Why can't that person that we entrust the history and the perspective of like, here's what's going down, here's, what we need to pack up and carry. And here's what we need to leave to poison. Why can't that person be a black queer person who's grieving?
Luke Burbank: We're talking to Saeed Jones. His new book is Alive at the End of the World. We have to take a quick break, but when we come back, I want to talk about Maya Angelou and Billie Holiday. And the intersection of those two, one of the best titles for a poem that I've ever seen in a moment here on Live Wire. Stay with us. Hey, welcome back to Live Wire, here at the Portland Book Festival, coming to you from the Alberta Rose Theatre in Portland, Oregon. This week, we are talking to Saeed Jones about his latest collection of poetry. It's called Alive at the End of the World. Can we hear a poem?
Saeed Jones: From the book? Sure, sure. Yeah, so I guess for a little, in addition to, yeah, you're right, tricking myself into writing another memoir, my mother, Carol Sweet-Jones, died of heart disease just over a decade ago. And so it was right in the middle of, well, last year was the 10-year anniversary of her passing, right? So in the depths of this pandemic, and you know all the detail, y'all were there. We are there, right. I was thinking about that because of course when you're grieving, I mean, it is an ongoing relationship. It's not the end It's the beginning of a new phase in your relationship with who you miss, right? And I you know, you often think like I wish they were here God, I wish I could tell them like how much fun I had or whatever But the thing is in the middle of the pandemic. I was like, okay. Well your mother died of heart disease was Disproportionately kills black women in this country. It was like if it's not like giving birth in this country. It's heart disease for black women. Statistically, it's horrifying. And she worked in an airport in Atlanta in the state of Georgia. So I was like, you sure you want to bring her back for this? You know, like, so I think with this book, I was thinking so much about the afterlife of grief. That's what I've come to call it. And this poem's about that afterlife vibe. A Stranger. I wonder if my dead mother still thinks of me. I know I don't know her new name. I don't know her. Not now. I don't know if her is the word burning in a stranger's mind when he sees my dead mother walking down the street in her bright black dress. I wonder if he inhales the cigarette smoke that will eventually kill him and thinks, I wish I knew a woman who was both the light and every shadow the light pierces. I wonder, if a passing glance at my dead mother is enough to make a poet out of anyone. I wonder if I'm the song she hums. As she waits for the light to change.
Luke Burbank: Saeed Jones, reading from Alive at the End of the World. You have a line, it's actually kind of in the sort of afternotes of this book, that just absolutely floored me. You wrote, you don't get to decide when an experience is done with you.
Saeed Jones: True. That's intense. Learn it now. I also heard a lot of nods. But it's true, right? I mean, I think, my theory is it has something to do with capitalism, honestly. The ethos of American capitalism is that move on, get up, because you got to get back to work. Right. Grief, depression, gender journeys, you know, all of these, you know, candor, intelligence, you know, is deeply inconvenient for capitalism. Right? You know, so we really have this ethos, right? Built into us, like move on, pick it up. And so I think that, yeah, it's like, you know, you feel the pressure, no one has to say it to you. Right, I think America is really good at like teaching us how to bully ourselves. You know? But no, it is not up to you, you know when you get to stop crying. And then that manifests in the poem, it's not up me when I get to start crying, right, Yeah, and I think that's true. I mean, you, all kinds of relationships, breakups, even jobs. You know, I've had an experience where I had a job and I left, and years later, I was like, still mad at a boss I hadn't spoken to in years. You know what I mean? Like, you know, and so I wanted to, I think grief, like queerness, has opened me up to understanding so much of, so many aspects of humanity. It's the most, you know, grieving and being queer, I think, are two of the most. Humanizing experiences of my life. And so, yeah, I found power in acknowledging that perhaps I'm still enthralled to a dynamic that I would very much like to move on from or claim a sense of power in relation to, but maybe I'm less in control than I thought, which is like, did I just trick myself?
Luke Burbank: There is a poem in this book with the title, performing as Miss Calypso, Maya Angelou dances whenever she forgets the lyrics, which Billie Holiday, seated in the audience, finds annoying. Is any part of that a real thing that happens?
Saeed Jones: Yes, Maya Angelou wrote it, I can't remember the title, but it's in one of her memoirs, one of a memoir. She wrote about it several decades later. But yeah, early in, Maya is just like a fascinating figure. And I tell people, I think, you know, I appear in the book, a lot of ghosts, and then also a lot of black kind of cultural icons, little Richard, Diane Carroll, Tony Morrison, Paul Mooney, oh, I love the Paul Moony. But Maya, I tell people, is, I think, arguably the happiest person in the poem. Because she's just like, we'll do it. At that point in her life, she was performing under the stage name Miss Calypso in the Bay Area. Not a very good singer, but a great dancer. She was always an incredible dancer. And so literally when she would forget the lyrics, she, and I mean, she would, I mean look at pictures from Maya, I think Maya was beautiful her whole life, but whoa, whoa. And at this point in life, like she'd be performing, forget the lyric, and she would just go. I appear to have forgotten the lyrics and then like she would then do a dance kind of till she got back to, you know, and so obviously the men in the house were like, you can forget the lyrics all you want. And then, so then, you now, decades later, and again, because Maya Angelou wrote a series of memoirs. She lived so many lives, which is another interesting parallel with the book. Billie Holiday turns out to be in the audience and comes to talk to her in the green room, and I think they saw each other like... Like she visited her at her home later and did not get along. They did not like each other. Maya Angelou's really homophobic because of rumors about Billie Holiday's bisexuality. And she says, I mean, very transparent in her own writing. I was like, I just didn't think very highly of her. But Billie Holiday, imagine. I mean I think there's a direct line from Billie Holiday to maybe the caliber of Whitney Houston. So imagine you're on stage just getting along, being a little, you know, you think it's cute, and you look out and then there's like, there is the artist of the form that you are on stage making a joke of in front of her. And so in the green room, this is what Maya Angelou said, Billie Holiday told her, you're going to be famous, but it won't be for singing.
Luke Burbank: Wow.
Saeed Jones: That was the end. There's one album, one music album, in all of Maya Angel's life she recorded. It was Miss Calypso. That was it, a wrap. So I'm like, I guess Billie Holiday was right. And then Billie Holiday died a few years later. It's incredible. What are the odds?
Luke Burbank: Well, you mentioned Whitney Houston, and you have a poem about Diane Carroll in the Beverly Hills Hotel and a bathtub, which to me very much seemed like it's also a poem by Whitney Houston. [Saeed: Yes. Oh, yeah. Yeah, that's a parallel.] Because of the circumstances around her passing and also her life. I mean, are you seeing a connection between all of the women that you're writing about in this book, including your mother?
Saeed Jones: Yeah, I mean, I think you see me on the page examine and perform my distress, my peril, like my sense of like, oh, what's going on and everything like that. And I think it's always important. I mean I think a great deal about intersectionality and everything that and what's on in our country. But as much as I'm freaked out, it's like, you know who it's really hard for in this country? It's like black. Women, black trans women, you know, so I, I think it's important, you know, even as I'm like owning, y'all are freaking me out, you know, you're stressing out Saeed. I also think it is important for me to think, like, well, what else? Like, who else is, you know, going through this? And in thinking about my mom's experiences and certainly the women who appear in the book, I'm like, yeah, it's like, yes, Saeed, you have a certain privilege to speak out about your age, your rage and your distress. It's very dangerous for black women to be as vocal. I mean, a black woman says the sky is blue and you see the pushback, you see the disrespect.
Luke Burbank: Note at the end of the book certain poems being nonfiction, which presumes the existence of fictional poems. And I'm trying to understand the difference because aren't all poems nonfiction on some level because it's an experience, it's a feeling. Like what's the difference between a nonfiction poem and a fiction poem for you?
Saeed Jones: Um, I've written poems and certainly read poems to other people that could be a short story, you know, in a different, I mean persona, you know, um, yeah, you know, Billie Holiday, Maya Angelou, I mean, that's not, I mean, it's it's based on something in truth, but I'm, I'm taking on Maya Angelous as a character, you know, the dynamic, the capital T truth may be present, but is it accurate, factual? No. So I liked trying to identify for the reader these specific moments, like this is a nonfiction poem where. Essentially like looking at poetry's potential to kind of function as a personal essay.
Luke Burbank: Would you consider the Luther Vandross poem nonfiction or fiction?
Saeed Jones: Ooh, that's a good, I mean, it's definitely closer to non-fiction. I mean it's, yeah, I think it is non-fiction in that I tried to, every detail in the poem is, yeah something he went through in his life, pretty specific. Like he would, like in, if you read an excellent biography of his by Craig Seymour, and they were pretty close, and like Luther never used pronouns when talking about his relation, like he was so closeted. He was very strategic, so he wouldn't say, he would just say, I'm in love. I'm in love and it's so great. He was very careful, you know?
Luke Burbank: You write that this poem that is about Luther Vandross is you made it intentionally difficult to read aloud as a reference to how Luther Vendross would like collaborate.
Saeed Jones: Yeah, Luther was a bitch. It was great. You know, I get it. I mean, who wouldn't be? You know under those, you know, the class is a very stressful place to be. Turns out it makes you not so nice. Um, but yeah, he was also, you know, genius, rigorous, you know, The Wiz? You know The Wiz, yeah? Okay, thank you. All right. It was on national television. I forgot I was in Portland. Black people know the whiz. [Luke: It was on national television when there was like three channels.] You got it. Luther Vandross wrote two songs for it when he was a teenager. What? That was the range of his talent. I think honestly just Wade and sexuality would have totally changed the dynamics of his career. Anyway, so he was really rigorous in the studio and he gets to the point at his peak. He's consistently collaborating with people like Aretha Franklin. And if even Aretha... While singing, recording would mispronounce, he would stop. I assumed you were referencing like a whole argument. I thought you just meant like a random others. I didn't realize that. Yeah, the quote is, I mean, because it happens. And they were I mean they they would fuss and break up. They were very much like frenemies. It was really interesting. They made up towards the end of his life, which I think was good. What did he say? He interrupted her. And she said, who has the most number one albums, Luther?
Saeed Jones: And he said, how long has it been since your last one? That's when I tell you, like, studying history and going into this to, like... I was like, whoo! I'm a lot... A reason to live for another day. Oh, my God!
Luke Burbank: Well, we are very glad to have you here with us and glad to have this piece of work. It's Alive at the End of the World by Saeed Jones. Saeed, thank you so much. That was Saeed Jones right here on Live Wire as part of the Portland Book Festival. His poetry collection Alive at The End of The World is available now. You can also hear Saeed on the weekly podcast, Vibe Check, which he co-hosts with Sam Sanders and Zach Stafford.
Elena Passarello: I love that podcast. [Luke: It is a delight. It's the best.] I feel like I've learned something and I feel I have three best friends. Oh my God, shout out to that podcast!
Luke Burbank: Yeah, we had Sam on the show recently talking about it. And now I've become a regular listener to VibeCheck. So get it as they say wherever you get your podcasts. Live Wire is brought to you by Powell's Books, a Portland institution since 1971. Powell's offers a selection of new and used books in stores and online at Powells.com. This is Live Wire. Of course, each week we ask our listeners a question. This week we asked them to tell us about something you were into as a kid that no other kid liked. Elena, you've been collecting up those responses. What do you see?
Elena Passarello: Okay, occasionally a question inspires our executive producer to, uh, enter in or Laura. And I wonder if maybe I think this might be our Laura. There was no last name attached to this, but doesn't sound like our girl to you. Laura says, I was strangely obsessed as a child with the first wives club. I somehow convinced my friends to do the dance from the end at my middle school talent show, and I'm pretty sure they never forgave me.
Luke Burbank: Wow, I love that because I'll be honest that doesn't seem like the big demo for that movie was middle schoolers. [Elena: No, no, not at all.] What else are one of our listeners or possibly employees of the show? Reporting as something that they were into as a kid.
Elena Passarello: We don't work with anybody named Wendell, so I think Wendel is a listener who said that as a kid, Wendle was obsessed with at-home workout videos. And I feel like this is a dying breed, but I totally remember this. My mom had Jane Fonda workout, Buns of Steel.
Luke Burbank: Yeah, whatever, whatever the latest VHS tape that was being pitched to change your life, as it were. [Elena: Like sweating to the oldies with Richard Simmons or whatever.] You know, I met Richard Simmons once in person at a radio station that I was working at. And he was exactly how you would hope Richard Simmons would be. He smelled great, had amazing hair. He sang me a song in the hallway of the radio station. This was not even for air. He was just Richard Simmons-ing it up. Everywhere he went, just spreading joy and love.
Elena Passarello: For telling me this. I'd like to change my best news to that story that you just told me.
Luke Burbank: And then I dressed up as Richard Simmons for Halloween the next year, but then I carried the signed headshot I'd gotten from Richard Simmons so I could refer people to it, like, this is who I'm trying to look like. What's something else that one of our listeners was into as a kid that's a little bit maybe unusual?
Elena Passarello: Oh, talk about unusual. Ty says, I was obsessed with cleaning. I used to beg my mom to let me mop the floors and then I would cry when I couldn't do it. What a dream child. Oh my gosh. I know.
Luke Burbank: All I have is a Roomba that fights with the cat all day. I need a small human child who's got like, you know, really, really tidy tendencies.
Elena Passarello: Does your Roomba cry when you don't let it attack your kitchen floor?
Luke Burbank: No, but I will tell you that the cat has learned how to turn on the Roomba when it wants to wake me up, because there's a giant, flat button on the top that turns green when you hit it. And if I will not emerge from my chambers in the morning, and the cat wants me to, she will turn the Roomba on now. So I consider them to be in cahoots.
Elena Passarello: She's too smart.
Luke Burbank: Hey, thanks to everyone who sent in responses to our listener question. Of course, we've got a question for next week's show, which we will reveal at the end of today's program. So stick around for that. In the meantime, our next guest had, let's just say, a unique childhood. Her parents let her watch horror movies when she was like five, and which led her to be declared a witch by some of her classmates. Now, it all turned out OK, because these days she's the best selling novelist. Of many books. Her writing has been called a thing of wonder by the New York Times. She's written numerous critically acclaimed novels, including Mexican Gothic. Library Journal describes her latest work, The Daughter of Dr. Moreau, as historical science fiction at its best. Here is our conversation with Silvia Moreno-Garcia, recorded as part of the Portland Book Festival last year. Hi Silvia, welcome to the show.
Silvia Moreno-Garcia: Thanks for having me.
Luke Burbank: Do you have a specific memory of when you first picked up the HG Wells version of the island of Dr. Moreau and did it make a big impression on you?
Silvia Moreno-Garcia: Yeah, I was a teenager, and back in the old days in Mexico, we didn't have young adult fiction or children's fiction. We just had classical novels. So if you were a teenager you read The Three Musketeers or Journey to the Center of the Earth, that kind of stuff. So that was children's literature, and I picked it up at that point.
Luke Burbank: That was what was available. It wasn't like scary to you or, I mean, some of this stuff you write. I think there's a, in the foreword you sort of thank your mother for letting you see scary movies when you were a kid or something.
Silvia Moreno-Garcia: Yeah, my mother was a big scary movie fan. The first scary movie that I saw, I was five years old, and she took me to see Aliens. Is that the one where the alien, like, comes out of the person? Well, it's the second one, so the alien is bigger. It's an alien queen. Oh, that's the one when the alien comes out of its mouth. Is that right?
Luke Burbank: She's laying all the eggs at the end? Do you, I mean, have, as a five-year-old, how do you interpret that information as a five- year-old child?
Silvia Moreno-Garcia: Well, the reason why we went to see Aliens is because we were living from Baja California, from the north of Mexico, and the town that we were living in at the time, the power went off in our neighborhood, and so there was no air conditioning. And it was very warm in the summer. So my mother said, we're going to the one place in town that has air conditioning, and that was the movie theater.
Silvia Moreno-Garcia: But back then, there were no multiplexes. It was one single screen. Everybody went to see the same movie. And the movie that was playing that night was Aliens. So we got seats in the front row. That was what it was like. Oh my god. So my mother just said, there's going to be a monster on the screen, but it's not real.
Luke Burbank: Do you think that that, I mean maybe not that specific moment but just that kind of relationship with things that can seem scary, having access to that as a kid, do you think that that has impacted your voice as a writer and the kind of things you go towards?
Silvia Moreno-Garcia: Yeah, I have a deep love for horror fiction. I've edited several horror fiction anthologies, magazines, all that kind of stuff, and I've written several horror stories. I really love it. It's one of the lesser genres where people think that it's the lesser genre. It's the dirty genre because when you say, I like to read or write horror fiction, people go, why? You look very normal.
Luke Burbank: Right, they're thinking of the kind of lowest common denominator, you know, Friday the 13th or something that's a, where it's more just a slasher than the complex actual kind of literary characteristics that can exist.
Silvia Moreno-Garcia: Yes, of course. Although I do love kind of low-bro fiction, too. There's a kind of purity and a beauty in some of those texts. And I used to like reading horror comic books in Mexico when I was growing up. And they were very low-brow. There was always something chasing a woman with big titties on the cover. It was a skeleton, then the next issue was a vampire, and then it was a werewolf.
Luke Burbank: I would have killed you if you had gotten my hands on some of those comics as a kid. Your book, The Daughter of Dr. Moreau, has been described as sort of a reimagining of the original with certainly a more feminist perspective. It's not a prequel. It's a sequel. It is a re-imagining. What does that mean in terms of the plot and kind of how close to the original versus using your own license.
Silvia Moreno-Garcia: It skews pretty far from the original. It just takes some of the ideas that are handled in the original and a couple of characters, but it kind of moves in its own direction. I don't like a lot of remakings where only one element changes. So for example, with Disney, they do this a lot. They'll be like, oh, now it's Dumbo, but it's like CGI Dumbo. And I'm like, what do I care? I like the drawing of the elephant. There was nothing wrong with it. I thought I was. There was nothing wrong with it.
Luke Burbank: I thought I was losing my mind or just maybe not in the demo for all the live action re-releases of these films, which seemed to be the original film, but now it's just people instead of the cartoons. You wanted to do something more inventive with your take on Dr. Moreau?
Silvia Moreno-Garcia: Yes, I think women of a certain age know that the beast from Beauty and the Beast in the cartoon was hotter than the live action beast. Yeah, yes, absolutely.
Luke Burbank: Okay, so you use the original book as a jumping off point of the original story, but then where do you, without giving away too much of the plot, where do kind of take it?
Silvia Moreno-Garcia: Well, it's set in Yucatan, which is the south of Mexico, in the late 1800s. And what happens is that in that time period, there's a real sort of civil war going on in the peninsula. The west side is controlled by Mexican people, either a fully European descent or mixed indigenous and white descent. And then the eastern portion of the peninsula is controlled my Mayan people, and they are fighting with the west because they've been. Basically enslaved for a while, and after, you know, three, four centuries, it gets a little bit tiresome, so, you now, and so they're in this civil war, and then in this little wedge on the side of the peninsula, there's British Honduras, and the British are there, and they are supporting the Maya, not because they're very nice, but they really feel that if they can get a free Maya state, they can have a protectorate. So everybody's kind of in this conflict, and. And that's when this story is taking place. So it's a completely different context because the original novella, The Island of Dr. Moreau, takes place in an unnamed island in the middle of the ocean, like a lot of 19th century books take place in the town of M. You don't know where M is and you're like, oh. So the grounding really changes the story and you've got Mexican characters and a different kind of look at the animal creatures than what Wells does. So I thought it was really fun And, you know, I don't know if. I don't think it's scary. Some people tell me like, well, will I be terrified of this? And if not, I want my money back. And I'm like, man, that's a hard thing to promise. I mean, I saw Aliens at five. Nothing is terrifying. Nothing is terrifying.
Luke Burbank: I feel like your personal bar, Silvia, is slightly elevated. This week, we're coming to you as part of the Portland Book Festival here at the Alberta Rose Theatre in Portland, Oregon. We're talking to Silvia Moreno-Garcia. Her latest book is The Daughter of Dr. Moreau. I think it's interesting that the main character, the daughter of Dr Moreau, is Carlotta, who is a very sheltered, sort of naive person, because she's just lived in this one place. Doesn't know a lot about her family history, her mom, things like that, which seems like the opposite of what your childhood was. Your parents were journalists, you moved around a lot, like you were not, you saw Aliens when you were five, like you weren't overly sheltered. How do you get inside the head of writing a character like Carlotta that's very different from what your lived experience is?
Silvia Moreno-Garcia: Well, it's very fun precisely because it's a completely different lived experience, but I do have think we have some commonalities I was an only child so I would say I was not lonely I was lonesome and I kind of like that and like living in my interior world. That's probably why I became a writer. I used to walk around the house and talk to myself. At some point there were concerns about that situation.
Luke Burbank: Shortly after you saw the horror movie as a baby.
Silvia Moreno-Garcia: It was, I was a creepy child to a lot of adults because I was a very smart child. I started reading from a very young age in both English and Spanish and my, there were a lot of books in my house. And my parents really emphasized art and philosophy and literature and movies as being key components of life. And so you would get this small child that, you know, is introduced at parties. And, and I would be like, well. You know, I'm eight years old and I'm saying things. Well, I was reading Shakespeare sonnets and I was considering that my favorite one is, and the adults are like, what is going on with this kid? That's interesting.
Luke Burbank: It's interesting because there's a scene at the beginning of the book where basically Carlotta is doing that. Like her dad is showing her off. Is that basically pulled from your real life?
Silvia Moreno-Garcia: Yeah, my dad was very proud of me as he called it a very successful experiment.
Luke Burbank: Autobiography.
Silvia Moreno-Garcia: No he just, his philosophy of life was that if you feel, I guess if you fill a child with a lot of knowledge and information and freedom, they'll come out really well as opposed to kind of repressing them in the traditional Catholic mode that other kids in my neighborhood were being repressed. So as a result of that, when I was 13, 12 or 13 years old in school, my classmates said that I was a Satanist.
Luke Burbank: Because you are not sufficiently Catholic to fit into the normal milieu.
Silvia Moreno-Garcia: Yes, I decided that I did not want to get a confirmation. I did want to go through the full Catholicization process and everybody else was getting their first communion and all that kind of stuff, and I said I didn't want to. And then I said that I really like horror novels like It and Stephen King and certain kind of music, Metallica and that kind stuff. So as a result of that, I was branded a witch. I'm not kidding. Yeah, they said I was a witch.
Luke Burbank: Was that like upsetting to you at that age or did you feel like it was sort of good street cred?
Silvia Moreno-Garcia: It was like, it saved me from a lot of beatings, because...
Luke Burbank: What do they think that you're a literal witch?
Silvia Moreno-Garcia: Yes, yes. People don't bug you that much when they think you're a master of the dark arts.
Luke Burbank: I'm wondering if there's a takeaway that you're hoping that folks will have after reading The Daughter of Dr. Murrow. I mean, it's a really compelling page turner. You just as the reader wanna know what happens next. It's got a lot of really well described scenes and plot, but is there an overarching message that you really wanna try to send out with the book?
Silvia Moreno-Garcia: I hope in general that people realize that Latin American authors or authors of Latin American descent have sometimes been pigeonholed in a specific type of writing, and that we can do more than one type of reading. And this is just one Mexican story with science fiction elements and historical elements. But there's a lot of other stories that maybe traditionally have not been, people I have not been able to tell them. Because the market has been pretty resistant to them. And I had rejections from publishers at certain points in my career where people just said, we're not gonna, my favorite one was the person who said, your name is too long to go on a spine and it's too weird.
Luke Burbank: Oh my gosh.
Silvia Moreno-Garcia: And so that kind of stuff is, you know, there's all these potholes in the industry, and I hope that it just shows that there's many modes of writing that we can engage in, and there's a lot of talent probably out there that's untapped and a lot stories to tell.
Luke Burbank: Well, we as the readers are very happy that they fit your name on the spine of all these books. They're great. Silvia Moreno-Garcia, everyone, right here on Live Wire. That was Silvia Moreno-Garcia here on Live Wire as part of the Portland Book Festival. Her latest book, The Daughter of Dr. Moreau, is available now. I'm Luke Burbank here with Elena Passarello. We've got to take a quick break, but don't go anywhere because we will be right back with some incredible music from folk band The Lowest Pair. You're not going to want to miss it.
Luke Burbank: Welcome back to Live Wire. From PRX, I'm your host Luke Burbank, here with Elena Passarello. Are you ready for a little station location identification examination? [Elena: Yeah, absolutely.] All right, this is where I'm going to quiz Elena on a spot in the country where Live Wire is on the radio. She's got to guess where I am talking about. This city is called the City Beneath the Rim Rocks. The Rim Rock, which are also known as the Rims, they're 300 to 800 foot sandstone formations. The other nickname for this city is the Magic City. Due to how fast it grew after a railroad was built there.
Elena Passarello: Okay, I'm feeling Wild Wild West. Wild West, yeah.
Luke Burbank: How about this? It was home to Martha Canary, aka Calamity Jane.
Elena Passarello: Deadwood, South Dakota, based on the TV show.
Luke Burbank: That was a great character on that show, by the way. Oh, my favorite. Yeah. We're going more Montana. Bozeman. It also starts with a B. You're getting closer. Billings, Montana. Absolutely. Billings Montana. We were on KEMC-FM, AKA Yellowstone Public Radio, where we've just been added. So shout out to everyone out there in the big sky state listening in Billings. Sometimes checking your email, let's be honest, can be a little stressful, but we want to change that over here at Live Wire. We want to make checking your email more joyful with our weekly newsletter, which is only good news. That's all we do over here at the Live Wire newsletter. We got sneak peeks and deep dives on upcoming events, details on where you can join us live, new episode drops, and even more than that. Getting this drop of joy, it's super easy too. You head over to livewireradio.org, and you click. Keep in touch, it takes like 30 seconds, 25 if you're speedy. So help us help you have a little more fun in your inbox with the latest from the Live Wire newsletter.
Luke Burbank: This is Live Wire. Okay, before we get to our musical guest, a little preview of what is coming up on the program next week, we are going to be chatting with the travel writing goat himself, Rick Steves. He has helped hundreds of thousands of Americans travel to Europe in ways that are fun and affordable with his TV show and his travel guides. His new book is the story of his time on the so-called Hippie Trail back when he was just out of college. He was basically a part time piano teacher. He was heading from Istanbul to Kathmandu, and it really sort of activated his love for travel. We're also going to hear some of Rick's never-have-I-ever travel anecdotes, and believe me, they are good. He's Rick Steves, everybody. Then we're going to get a reading from William Nuʻutupu Giles. He is a Samoan writer and poet from Honolulu who joined us for a special Live Wire event in Seattle at the Hotel Crocodile. Then we are going to round the hour out with some music from this incredible project called The Lullaby Project. They bring together professional singer songwriters and then parents who are experiencing homelessness and the result is some of the most gorgeous music that you will hear performed by members of the Oregon Symphony. So you do not wanna miss next week's episode of Live Wire. All right, our musical guest this week met on the banks of the Mississippi. They've been touring the U.S. Ever since, racking up over 500 shows across the country from Bellingham, Washington to Bangor, Maine. They've also released five albums of original work, including 2020's album, A Perfect Plan, which No Depression magazine called A Perfect Album for the Moment. Their latest album is called Horse Camp. It's available now. Take a listen to this. Some music from The Lowest Pair. Recorded live at the Alberta Rose Theatre. What song are we gonna hear?
Palmer T. Lee: We're gonna do one off of our first record. [Luke: Okay.] Called Pear Tree.
Luke Burbank: All right, this is The Lowest Pear on Live Wire.
The Lowest Pair: [The Lowest Pair perform "Pear Tree"]
Luke Burbank: That was The Lowest Pair, right here on Live Wire. Their latest album, Horse Camp, is available now. All right, that is going to do it for this week's episode of the show. Thank you so much to our guests, Silvia Moreno-Garcia, Saeed Jones, and The Lowes Pair. Live Wire is brought to you in part by Alaska Airlines. Special thanks this week to Amanda Bullock and the fine folks at the Portland Book Festival.
Elena Passarello: Laura Hadden is our executive producer. Heather de Michele is our Executive Director. Our producer and editor is Melanie Sevcenko. Our assistant editor is Trey Hester. Our marketing manager is Paige Thomas and our production fellow is Tanvi Kumar. Our house band is Ethan Fox Tucker, Sam Tucker, Ayal Alves and A Walker Spring who also composes our music. Molly Pettit is our technical director and mixer and our house sound is by D. Neil Blake.
Luke Burbank: Funding provided by the Oregon Arts Commission, a state agency funded by the state of Oregon and the National Endowment for the Arts. Live Wire was created by Robyn Tenenbaum and Kate Sokoloff. This week we'd like to thank members Christian Fulgham of Shoreline Washington and Sarah Doan of Portland, Oregon. For more information about our show or how you can listen to our podcast, head on over to LiveWireRadio.org. I'm Luke Burbank for Elena Passarello and the whole Live Wire team. Thanks for listening and we will see you next week.
PRX.
