Q&A with Mona Alvarado Frazier

 

 

 

Mona Alvarado Frazier is the author of the new young adult novel The Garden of Second Chances.

 

Q: What inspired you to write The Garden of Second Chances, and how did you create your character Juana?

 

A: More than half of women in prison are mothers, and most are not incarcerated in a facility that makes it viable for caretakers to take children to visit. The separation of mothers and their children is a significant issue and impacts their mental health.

 

Most girls experienced trauma, addictions, neglect, and abandonment. A significant trauma results from Intimate Partner Violence (IPV) or Domestic Violence. The issues of IPV are not reflected in many YA books, although 12 percent of American high schoolers experience emotional, physical, or sexual abuse from their dating partners. And transgender teens and gender-nonconforming youth are disproportionately affected, so that percentage is probably higher.

 

Amid these difficulties, many of the girls tried to deal with these issues the best way they could. I wanted to tell their stories.

 

The character of Juana is a composite of those girls who experienced domestic violence, were mothers, and proved resilient during the hardships of their incarceration.

 

Q: You’ve worked for many years with incarcerated youth. Did you need to do additional research to write the novel, and if so, did you learn anything that especially surprised you?

A: Since this novel was set in 2003, I had to do additional research on immigration laws, the regulations of California’s Department of Juvenile Justice, and the statistics on intimate partner violence. The area that alarmed me was how high the incidence of IPV is among teenage girls.

 

Q: Did you know how the novel would end before you started writing it, or did you make many changes along the way?

 

A: I only knew that Juana would survive her experience, but I didn’t know exactly how that would happen. The beginning changed a few times, the middle numerous times, and the ending a couple of times.

 

Q: How was the book's title chosen, and what does it signify for you?

 

A: The three working titles I originally had didn’t quite fit Juana’s journey. As a child, Juana’s happiest memories are when she spent time with her mother in their garden. After losing contact with her sister and her baby, along with her depression after being incarcerated, she loses hope.

 

But when the warden grants Juana’s proposal to make a garden in the backyard, she recalls the wisdom her mother imparted during their time together. This motivates her to try again against all odds.

 

I sought to find a title that inferred progress toward the hope that grew within her and a place that held special memories. The process of cultivating rocky soil, sowing seeds, growth, and harvesting symbolizes what Juana goes through.

 

Q: What are you working on now?

 

A: My second YA novel is scheduled for the winter of 2024. It is set in 1972 against the backdrop of the Vietnam War, the rise in feminism, and the Chicano Movement. A 17-year-old girl deals with the aftermath of her father's death in Vietnam, her family's expectations, and the social justice issues in her community.

 

Q: Anything else we should know?

 

A: Yes, I have a couple of things. If you have a story to tell and it won’t let go, keep writing. A writer is in it for the long haul.

 

If you’re a reader and chose to read this novel, please support the author by leaving a review on Goodreads, Amazon, or wherever you bought the book.

 

Please keep in touch via my website, www.alvaradofrazier.com, where you can subscribe to my monthly newsletter and find updates on the novels. My links to Twitter and Instagram are also listed there.

 

Thank you for giving me this opportunity to talk about The Garden of Second Chances.

 

--Interview with Deborah Kalb

Q&A with Beth Alvarado

 

Beth Alvarado is the author of the new work of fiction Jillian in the Borderlands. Her other books include Anxious Attachments and Anthropologies. She lives in Oregon.

 

Q: In an interview with your publisher, you said, "I’ve always had a hard time with ‘plot,’ but for some reason the constraint of writing from several points of view and in different voices, liberated me..." How did you come up with the idea for the various voices in your book, and how did it liberate you from the idea of "plot"?

 

A: I was teaching a literature class focusing on work by Flannery O’Connor, Raymond Carver, Grace Paley, and George Saunders, and decided to write one story wherein I would imitate all four author’s styles—which meant I would need four narrators and a segmented story. An early version of the first story, “The Dead Child Bride,” was the result.

 

That story went through a number of revisions, but it gave me a template. Angie, the mother, and Jillian, the daughter, carried over from story to story and, as I invented other characters’ voices, some of them carried over, too, which gave the book the feeling of lives woven together within a particular world.

 

Working with those constraints was liberating because they gave me a starting place. To begin a new story, I would think: Okay, this one will start from Angie’s point of view, and this is the situation, and this is her conflict.

 

When I’d get a good first sentence, I’d just let Angie “talk,” which often resulted in a scene, and then I’d think, okay, what does Jillian have to say about this? And then I’d come up with an outsider who could give us a different perspective. Then back to Angie or Jillian or Juana of God or the Demented Elderly, etc.

Instead of a linear plot, it was more like a prism. I was looking at a situation from various angles and as I came to the end of a section, I’d think: Okay, what needs to happen next? Never looking any further ahead than what the next character had to say, not worrying if it was ever going to have rising action or come to a resolution—and so I often ended up surprising myself.

 

And, to paraphrase Flannery O’Connor, if the writer is surprised, so will the reader be.

 

The stories ended up being driven by the voices of the characters and not by plot points. I think my aversion to plot was philosophical because plot, to me, implies cause and effect and, in my view, the universe is more random than that. I don’t see my characters as actors so much as acted upon, as responding to forces that are largely out of their control—which is not to say they are helpless.

 

Q: Over how long a period did you write the stories in the collection?

 

A: Ten years, because I was also working on a book of essays. In 2010, when I wrote the first story, SB1070, the anti-immigrant law in Arizona, had just been passed. By 2019, when I finished the ninth, the U.S. was separating children from their parents at the border and putting them in detention camps.

 

I am describing, of course, the social context of the stories rather than their content—but those are the forces that were exerting pressure on my characters’ daily lives. I had to find ways to make the political realities surprising and moving—even magical— so that the book wouldn’t become didactic or predictable.

 

I wanted the stories to be as layered and nuanced as all of our lives are. In some ways, this book strikes me as the most deliberate thing I’ve ever written, but it was also the most spontaneous. Because I had the structure and the grounding in reality, I was free to let my imagination go wild.

 

Q: How would you describe the relationship between Jillian and her mother, Angie?

 

A: I never really thought about their relationship as I was writing, which is odd, I guess. I was always most interested in exploring them as separate people who loved each other but had very different relationships to the world.

 

Angie is certain she’s always right. She also is fiercely protective and believes she can remake the world for Jillian. Of course, because Jillian cannot speak, she is subversive. They don’t ever have conversations and dialogue is usually what you use to reveal characters’ conflicts with one another.

 

There are some natural tensions between them. Jillian mostly ignores her mother, perhaps out of self-defense. Angie cannot “hear” Jillian’s thoughts—although it turns out Jillian’s long-lost father and a few other characters can. Angie can interpret Jillian’s drawings—although who knows if she does so accurately?—and she believes, absolutely, in Jillian’s talent.

 

They seem to accept one another’s flaws, which is maybe unusual for mothers and daughters?

 

There’s mutual caregiving going on. Angie gradually becomes less controlling—of course, she’s been cured of her fears by Juana of God by then—and Jillian, who has always been headstrong, takes the lead, expecting her mother to do whatever she needs her to do. I suppose that is a kind of role-reversal?

 

Q: What do you hope readers take away from the book?

 

A: When I first started writing the stories, I was obsessed with how dangerous the world is for girls and young women. In the first paragraph, I write that the story takes place in the desert “where bureaucrats ban books and brown skin and birth control. . .[and] where the bodies of dead girls are sometimes abandoned in alleys. . . Such was the climate and the atmosphere.”

 

As a result, the book is dark—but it’s also funny and spiritual and fierce and unflinching. This is a world of people, primarily women, who are trying to protect one another and, along the way, magical things happen—among the living and between the living and the dead.

 

The whole time I was writing it, I was reading the news almost obsessively. I was doomscrolling before the word was coined and then creating the stories as an antidote. I think this is why so many people are writing fabulist and speculative fiction: as a way to “tell the truth, but tell it slant.”

 

Q: What are you working on now?

 

A: Right now, again, I have two projects going. One is a series of lyrical essays on travel, literature and art, and daily domestic life while I’m sheltering in place. The other, which is on the back burner, is a draft of a nonfiction book that I am considering revising as a novel. We’ll see.

 

Q: Anything else we should know?

 

A: Oh, I feel I have already gone on for too long. I thank you for the questions—they were provocative—and for the opportunity to talk about my work. And for including me in your wonderful blog! 

 

--Interview with Deborah Kalb