Sonia Daccarett is the author of the memoir The Roots of the Guava Tree: Growing Up Jewish and Arab in Colombia. Also a communications professional, she lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Q: What inspired you to write The Roots of the Guava Tree?
A: At midlife, I was struck by how much my present life seemed disconnected from my past, almost as if two separate people had lived the same life.
I wanted to go back to rescue the memories, the feelings, the questions I left behind as a way of linking my childhood in Colombia with my current life. I also wanted to explore and shed light on lesser-known immigration experiences, such as those of my Jewish and Arab grandparents in Colombia.
I wrote this book to answer questions about my identity, to understand where I came from and what motivated my grandparents and parents…but also to connect our story to all human stories and the universal themes of family, diaspora, and identity.
Q: How was the book's title chosen, and what does it signify for you?
A: The title of the book comes from the guava trees in the garden of my childhood home, which were prolific producers of fruit. These trees predated my family on the property and thrived in the soil and the place where they were rooted.
I longed for my family to be the same: to thrive, to be rooted and happy like those guava trees. But reality was more complicated.
Q: The writer Yossi Klein Halevi said of the book, and of you, “In telling her story of a Palestinian and Jewish family courageously attempting to live outside of history, she has deepened our understanding of the complexity of Jewish and Arab identity in our time.” What do you think of that description?
A: Jewish and Arab identities are often presented as opposing, polarized and endlessly divided.
But what does it mean when someone embodies both identities? What does it mean when an Arab and a Jew choose to love each other and have children together in a country like Colombia? How does my family’s story challenge simple or binary narratives?
I hope the book at least provides a deeper sense of the complexity – and the possibilities.
Q: What impact did it have on you to write the book, and what do you hope readers take away from it?
A: I wrote this book to answer the questions I had about my identity, to understand where my family came from. In the process of thinking about what made my grandparents and parents human, why they did the things they did, I grew to love and appreciate them even more deeply. I hope readers are inspired to think about their own grandparents, parents and families in this way.
The book also delves into what it felt like to live in a country experiencing severe violence and conflict. Colombia faced tremendous challenges in the 1980s and beyond, and I hope readers will come away with a more nuanced view of what that period was like for regular Colombians.
Q: What are you working on now?
A: I’m thinking and writing about immigrants – and the experience of immigration. I have a few projects in mind, and we’ll see where they go!
--Interview with Deborah Kalb
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