Writer Spotlight Revisited: Ruth Behar

Musicality, handmade books, a suitcase by the door, and bebita: Ruth Behar enjoys her dance with children's books

Charlie Barshaw coordinates our regular Writer Spotlight feature and interviews writers of SCBWI-MI. In this piece,  revisit cultural anthropologist, poet, and children's book author, Ruth Behar. 

We interviewed four years ago. One of your memorable quotes (among many) still moves me to this day: [On switching from recording the fact-based research of Cultural Anthropology to writing middle grade fiction] “I had the power to embellish reality and make it sweeter than it really had been. I had the power to invent things that never happened and make them seem utterly true. Words I had wished had been said to me could be said at last and make my heart so happy.”

Ruth in Havana, photo courtesy of May Reguera

No question. Just, wow!

 

When we last communicated, you were contemplating an epistolary novel based on your grandmother’s life of resettlement from Poland to Cuba. Since then, that book has been published to much acclaim. Did you have some of your grandmother’s letters to work from?

Yes, that book, Letters from Cuba, was published in 2020 with Nancy Paulsen Books and in paperback in 2021. I actually didn’t have any of my grandmother’s letters to work from. I only had a few postcards from Cuba with her youthful photo on one side and a brief message in Yiddish on the other side, but that was all. So I had to imagine the letters she might have written. I did draw inspiration from published letters by immigrants who found their way to the United States. I hope one day the letters of immigrants to Cuba will be collected and published.

Lucky Broken Girl and Letters From Cuba were based on your life and heritage, but they are works of fiction. How do you know when and where to leave the actual events and explore the essence of the thing?

With both Lucky Broken Girl and Letters from Cuba, I turned from actual events to fiction when there were gaps in the historical record or gaps in my memory, or if I simply wanted to imagine what might have been. Writing dialogue for my characters is another moment when I need to lean into my imagination. In anthropological writing, I’m drawing on transcripts of recorded interviews. For my novels, I work with the words I’m hearing in my head. I have to listen closely to these words to arrive at what I think my characters would say if they were real people.

Tia Fortuna’s New Home: A Jewish Cuban Journey is your first picture book. You’ve written scientific papers and novels for most of your life. How did the constraints of the limited word count and vocabulary of the picture book genre change your writing style?

It definitely was a challenge to write a picture book! You have to make every word sing, like in a poem, so that the story can come alive in unison with the illustrations. Tía Fortuna’s New Home went through several revisions as I added and trimmed, added and trimmed, over and over, until the story flowed and I was able to compress all the action into a single day. 

On this one day, Tía and her niece, Estrella, are saying goodbye to Tía’s beloved seaside casita and getting Tía settled into her new home at a retirement center where the sea is far but there are banyan trees and butterflies. I read aloud everything I write before letting it go, but with the picture book I realized the story had to not only make sense when read aloud but it needed a strong sense of musicality. 

Tía Fortuna’s New Home is a bilingual book; I incorporated the repetition of words in Spanish, so that kids could enjoy saying them aloud and learning those words if they’re not Spanish speakers.

When Tía Fortuna is leaving her casita, she says goodbye to the palm trees that respond with “adios, adios, adios.” In turn, when she arrives at her new home she greets the banyan trees, and they respond with “hola, hola, hola.” 

I hadn’t used this kind of repetition in my novels, so this was an enjoyable departure from my usual writing style. When I read the book aloud to groups of children, we repeat the Spanish words together and they love that so much; it feels as if we’re singing.

You have published a volume of poetry: Everything I Kept/ Todo lo que guardé in English and Spanish. (You are your own translator.) But you also have a number of your poems bound in rare and valuable “homemade” journals. Can you talk about those, and the amazing artist who creates them with you?

I am fortunate to have worked with Rolando Estévez, the amazing Cuban artist who crafted handmade books, some in small editions and others completely unique and one-of-a-kind. Estévez and I met when I began to travel to Cuba in the 1990s to get to know my native land and engage in projects creating bridges between Cubans who live abroad and Cubans who live on the island.

I dared to tell him I was writing poems about the emotional experience of returning to Cuba after growing up in the U.S. and he insisted I write them in Spanish as well as English, which I did. He was an amazing reader and encouraged me to keep writing poems. Many of those poems ended up in his beautiful handmade books.

These books incorporated elements of the Cuban environment, such as seashells, leaves, and rocks, as well as things like antique cigar labels, and bits and piece of lace, and even a kiss from an author, imprinted with lipstick onto the page.

In the book you mention, Everything I Kept/Todo lo que guardé, the original handmade version has a three-dimensional suitcase on the cover. Inside, it is lined with sand from Varadero Beach, where my parents honeymooned, and the suitcase opens and closes with two little pieces of Velcro, which had to be brought from the United States since it’s impossible to find in Cuba.

I owe so much to Estévez and I am sorry to say that he passed away on January 17 of this year. We were planning to travel together to the Library of Congress for an upcoming exhibition of treasures from their collection that will include a poetry dress that Estévez made to fit my measurements, an astonishing work bringing together forty-five poems by Cuban and American women writers. 

Sadly, we won’t be able to go together, but I hope to be there to celebrate his memory and the love of books that he shared with me and the world.

Readers can learn more about Estévez’s books on my website: https://www.ruthbehar.com/writings/poetry-handmade-books/

To experience the awe of the poetry dress, formally entitled Otra piel para otra entraña/Another Skin for My Insides, have a look at this video:

https://www.loc.gov/item/webcast-10510/

Your maternal grandparents emigrated from Poland to Cuba, and your paternal grandparents from Turkey to Cuba, where you were born. But after the Bay of Pigs incident, your family moved to an Israeli kibbutz until ultimately moving to New York City. You said that traveling was one of the allures to becoming a Cultural Anthropologist. This wanderlust must affect your view of the world, and of “home.”

It is true that I had a lot of wanderlust as a young woman and wanted to travel, especially to Spanish-speaking countries. Cultural anthropology gave me the passport I needed, allowing me to spend extended periods of time among strangers who kindly took me in and shared their life stories with me. 

Every place I went became “home” for a while, and even after leaving, the memories of my experiences stayed with me, and continue to do so to this day. So “home” for me is in many places. I’ve lived with a suitcase by my door, awaiting the next journey. Because I was an immigrant child, I think I’ll always have a nomadic soul.

Photo by Gabriel Frye-Behar

New York is where your son Gabriel now lives. A celebrated filmmaker and writer, Gabriel is now collaborating with you in writing some children’s stories. What is it like working with your little-boy-turned-grown-man?

Curiously, Gabriel now lives in New York where I grew up, while I still live in Michigan where he grew up. I’ve loved being his mother and it’s been wonderful to enter this new phase of our relationship where we’re writing children’s stories together. 

We’ve always enjoyed talking about books and watching and discussing movies, so being a writing team is a natural outgrowth of those experiences. Gabriel helped me make the book trailers for Lucky Broken Girl, Letters from Cuba, and Tía Fortuna’s New Home, so we’ve been collaborating for some time on projects relating to children’s literature, but now we’re writing books. 

He’s a terrific editor and has a great ear for dialogue, which come from his filmmaking experience, and I learn a lot from him and feel immensely proud that he is as passionate about storytelling as I am.

With Gabriel, you co-wrote the upcoming (Fall 2023) picture book, Pepita Meets Bebita. Please tell us a little about the story, and how you came to work with your son.

We are both so delighted about our upcoming picture book, Pepita Meets Bebita! The story emerged from the big change that took place in our lives when Gabriel became a dad and I became a grandmother in 2020, an event that brought light and hope to our family in the midst of the pandemic. But it also brought some confusion to the sweet little dog that Gabriel and his wife, Sasha, had treated as their “bebita” before they had a human baby girl.

I noticed that Pepita was looking rather sad once the baby arrived; they could no longer give her the same attention she’d received before because the baby took up all their time and energy.

It seemed there was a story to tell about transitions and rites of passage as a family integrates new members. I asked Gabriel if he wanted to write that story with me from the point of view of the dog, Pepita, and fortunately he said yes, and that’s how our collaboration came to be.

Here’s a blog post we wrote together about the experience of writing the book:

https://nerdybookclub.wordpress.com/2023/04/05/pepita-meets-bebita-how-this-mother-son-picture-book-came-to-be-by-ruth-behar-and-gabriel-frye-behar/

You also have a WIP middle grade Sephardic novel. It sounds very ambitious: four different characters from four different time periods, and from four different countries. How goes this project?

I am happy to say that this Sephardic novel, Across So Many Seas, is done! I feared I wouldn’t be able to write it but somehow I did. As you note, it takes place in four different time periods and in four different countries (Spain, Turkey, Cuba, and the U.S.) and is told from the point of view of four twelve-year-old characters, Benvenida, Reina, Alegra, and Paloma. 

You need to read to the very last page to see how it all comes together. My agent, Alyssa Eisner Henkin, says it’s like Alan Gratz’s Refugee (a book I love) but told entirely from the perspective of girls. The novel will be out in February 2024 with Nancy Paulsen Books.

One big reason I wished to reconnect was to examine your journey into children’s literature. Back in 2019, you were an acclaimed and published poet and anthropologist dabbling in middle grade fiction. Today, you have three titles published, with more in the pipeline. You have fully embraced the kidlit world, and it has embraced you back. What have you discovered since we last met?

Young Ruth 1996

I’ve discovered that I still have so many kidlit stories to tell and feel immense gratitude that I have been embraced by the kidlit world. Finding the child’s voice in my fiction has been a gift, a totally unexpected, beautiful gift. I marvel that children read the books I’ve written and find life lessons that uplift them. There’s nothing more amazing than having a young reader ask for sequels to my books because they want to continue being in the world of Ruthie in Lucky Broken Girl or Esther in Letters from Cuba.

I’ve witnessed firsthand how children experience the stories in books with such intensity, with the fullness of their hearts. I guess that’s why some adults want to ban books, because they can’t bear to see children engage with books so deeply. But that experience is one of the sacred wonders of childhood. I hope as a society we’ll find ways for children to read widely and diversely so they feel at home in our big wide world.

As a certified non-dancer, I am fascinated by those who lose themselves in the music. From that traumatic car accident which left you in a body cast for a year (from which arose Lucky Broken Girl), you worried that you might break your leg again. But you found the cha-cha and tango to be exhilarating. What is dancing to you?

Dancing is pure joy. Moving to music that I love allows me to forget all my worries and fears. In partner dancing, there is the beautiful trust that develops with another person, where you agree to move together through space for the length of a song. It’s magical when you and your partner understand each other and communicate without saying a word; at most, you both sing aloud the words to the song you’re dancing to. I am grateful for those moments. I feel I find that girl I was before the car accident, the girl who’s still intact, the girl who never broke a leg.

Please share any social media links:

Twitter: @ruthbehar

Instagram: @ruthbeharauthor

FB: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100058128067412 [official author page]

FB: https://www.facebook.com/ruth.behar/  [personal account]