Crossing Cultures with Adult and YA Fiction: A Conversation with Natalia Sylvester

Natalia Sylvester is the author of three critically acclaimed novels. Her debut, Chasing the Sun was followed by Everyone You Know Goes Home. Her latest, Running, is a young adult novel that came out last year just in time for the election. Sylvester immigrated to the United States from Peru at the age of four and is based in Texas now. Her work has also appeared in the New York Times, McSweeney’s, Bustle, Catapult, Latina magazine, Electric Literature, and the Austin American-Statemen, among others. Undomesticated recently asked Sylvester about homecomings, her writing process, fashion, and standing up for what’s right.

UNDOMESTICATED: Your debut novel, Chasing the Sun, is set in your birthplace of Lima, Peru. It has recently become a hot tourist destination, but your story shows a more volatile time, especially when it comes to human rights. The story is set during a critical time, as Alberto Fujimori begins his presidency, and the era of the Shining Path, the revolutionary communist party, comes to a close. Did you choose this time period to write about before you thought up the storyline, which includes a kidnapping? Or did you think of the storyline first, which would then lead you to that timeframe?

NATALIA SYLVESTER: My first novel was partially inspired by events in my own family when we still lived in Peru. When I was three, my grandfather was kidnapped for ransom for 60 days, and the effects of this traumatic experience on him and our family was one that was always met with silence—I myself didn’t learn about it until I was 12. Since fiction is how I often try to fill the gaps between what we think of as factual and what are truths we don’t always have full access to, I wrote it out of a desire to want to understand more: about my family history, my country’s history, the ways that trauma reverberates.

UNDOMESTICATED: You’ve returned to Lima several times over the years, which helped in your research for Chasing the Sun. I always think airport landings are so emotional, especially when one returns to a former home. Can you discuss your feelings upon landing in Lima when you visit? Have those feelings changed over the years?

SYLVESTER: I love this question. The first time I returned to Lima, I was 12. I remember the airport landing so distinctly—the way everyone on board clapped when we landed safely, how windy it was when we got off the plane, and an earthy, fishy smell in the air. I was hopeful that even though I had no memories of Peru, parts of it would feel familiar, and thanks to my parents always making sure I felt connected to it, so many parts of it did. It was like finding yourself in a place you’d always belonged to.

UNDOMESTICATED: In your next two books, you break away from your family background and write about misunderstood communities in Florida and Texas, both places you have lived. In Everyone You Know Goes Home, the characters are mainly Mexican immigrants in Texas. One of the things I loved most about the book is how you structure your story around Dia de los Muertos. I was struck by how Dia de los Muertos seems so similar to the Chinese Hungry Ghosts Festival. The Chinese holiday was one I appreciated the most when I lived in Hong Kong. On the street before some of the most contemporary skyscrapers in the world would be whole roasted pigs, luscious fruit, and burning incense to honor hungry ghosts until they could find proper respect from their living family relatives, which includes making offerings to a family altar.

So I love how you begin your book when, on the night of her wedding, Isabel meets the ghost of Omar, her husband Martin’s late father. Omar wanders every Dia de los Muertos, hoping his family will finally give him the respectful mourning rites he deserves, which includes an altar with food and other objects that represent things he enjoyed during his life. Until he receives that, his ghost will return each year. How did you come to structure the book around this holiday?

SYLVESTER: The Chinese Hungry Ghosts Festival sounds so wonderful! I love how it’s equally centered on honoring the spirits of those who’ve passed. I think too often in U.S. culture, ghosts are seen as something to be feared while in so many other cultures, they’re celebrated and honored. In the case of Everyone Knows You Go Home, I initially came to structure the book around Dia de Los Muertos because like Isabel and Martin, my husband and I were married on the Day of the Dead. And since so many of my stories are sparked by a “what if?” I started to wonder what would happen if the spirit of a loved one visited not only on a wedding day, but every anniversary that followed. And to further complicate things: what if no one would talk to him except his new daughter-in-law? What kind of bond would form over the years, between Isabel and the estranged-to-everyone-else Omar? The more I wrote, though, the more the story revealed its deeper layers, which is that, of course it was a story about migration. About crossing borders, both physical and spiritual ones, and what it’s like to be made to feel invisible in a country that you sacrificed so much for. The here and there of life and death struck me as very similar to the here and there of migration, the ways we often feel caught in the in-between. But, as sad as that may seem, I didn’t want to only dwell on the grief, but also the joy and life in these characters’ stories. Dia de Los Muertos is a celebration of similar dualities: there’s death, but equally important, there’s so much life and honoring and remembering.

UNDOMESTICATED: Your latest novel, Running, takes a completely new direction in many ways. First, it’s a young adult novel, so while you still attract adult readers, this book shifts the focus of its audience to teens. Second, it centers around the Cuban American community in Miami, a community that is usually described as exiles rather than immigrants. Mari is a high school student whose father is running for President of the United States. In the book you address social justice, including LGBTQ+ rights, climate change, and immigration reform, topics on which Mari and her father do not agree. What overarching message(s) do you have for teens or women who have a close relationship with their younger female family members?

SYLVESTER: My greatest joy in writing Running was getting to journey alongside Mari as she steps into her power and activism. She’s not perfect, and she doesn’t have all the answers, but she has so many valid and important questions, and she learns not to be afraid to voice them and act on them. So I’d say to teens or people close to younger family members, never underestimate the power of our youth. Mari’s dad is running for president, but her power actually has nothing to do with her vote (because she can’t) and everything to do with her being willing to learn and change and champion the things she believes in.

UNDOMESTICATED: In Running, Mari’s parents expect her to dress a certain way to adhere to their conservative “family values,” a term that always makes me cringe for all the ways it excludes many of us. One of the ways Mari rebels against her parents is by wearing a pair of big hoop earrings. Can you tell us what it means for women to wear big earrings and how it somehow seems threatening to others?

SYLVESTER: You know, it’s funny, because I love hoop earrings, but I remember a time when I didn’t wear them because I was aware of how they were perceived as “too much” or even “cheap” in so-called professional settings. And of course, all that is really code for women of color being too much in white spaces—it’s loaded with racism and xenophobia. The moment I chose to wear things like hoops or loud, bright colors anyways was the moment I decided to no longer let myself be silenced. I didn’t want to participate in my own erasure for the sake of white people’s comfort. Mari’s part of a family that very much wants to present a certain way. Her father is a white Latinx man who’s risen to power as a conservative politician in large part because of his white privilege and how comfortable he is maintaining a status quo that keeps those in power empowered. So I loved that even in this supposedly small way, like wearing hoops, Mari is not only rebelling against her father, but all the systems that her father enables.

UNDOMESTICATED: Still on the topic of Running, both because it’s your most recent book and because it espouses many of the themes we so cherish here at Undomesticated. One of the characters in Running that really resonated with me is Jackie, the student activist leader at Mari’s high school. She’s bold and confident, but there’s something else about her that I really love. She does not pressure anyone into doing anything that person doesn’t want to do. This is a rare trait. Did you model Jackie after someone you know in real life, or even yourself?

SYLVESTER: I loved Jackie, too, and I loved that you picked up on this part of her personality. Jackie ended up being inspired by so many young people I’ve met over the years who’ve left me in awe of their kindness and respect for others’ agency. It’s truly such a different generation from the one I grew up in; I was bullied so much as a child, and I remember feeling all this pressure to be someone I wasn’t. That’s not to say that those things no longer exist, but in Jackie I wanted to center what it looks like to have the super-popular girl in school actually be a positive, not-at-all toxic person.

UNDOMESTICATED: It’s not an easy feat to publish three books in six years. Can you tell us a little about how you got your first book deal and what it was like selling your next two books?

SYLVESTER: My first book deal was actually not for my first book! Like so many publishing paths, mine was one of much rejection, and the first novel I wrote and got an agent with was on submission for about a year and a half before we accepted it wasn’t going to sell. It was such a hard thing to realize, especially because I’d worked on that manuscript, on and off, for about six years. But one day when I was deep in moping mode, a childhood friend said to me, “Well, your plan was always to write books, right? Plural.” Which made me realize nothing began and ended with this one book. I had to keep going. That’s when I got to work on Chasing the Sun. It had actually been my senior thesis as an undergrad student, and while the concept and characters remained the same, I ended up rewriting the whole book over the course of a year or so. That book ended up selling in 2012, publishing in 2014, and when I sent my draft of Everyone Knows You Go Home to my agent in 2015...she didn’t love it. We went back and forth before realizing we just didn’t have the same vision for the book, so I chose to look for a new agent. In so many ways it felt like starting from square one: cold querying agents again, hoping one would represent and sell my work. But I’ve been with the same agent ever since, and in a lot of ways I look back and see that first unsold book as a blessing, because it taught me from the very beginnings of my career that publishing is about perseverance.

UNDOMESTICATED: Do you think you’ll continue to write YA, or do you have plans to return to adult fiction? And can you give us a little peek into what you’re working on next?

SYLVESTER: Yes and yes! My next novel is a YA book that will be published in 2022—inspired by my own experiences living with hip dysplasia, it’s about a Peruvian American teen who’s auditioning to become a mermaid at a Florida theme park, at the same time that she’s navigating first love and a possible hip surgery. I’m also really excited to be back at work on my next adult book; it’s still in its early stages so I won’t say much about it yet. But I always hope to write for all ages: kids, young adults, adults. The beautiful thing about writing is that each story tells you who it’s meant for as you write it.

UNDOMESTICATED: Thank you so much!

For more on Natalia’s work, check out nataliasylvester.com.