October 6, 2009
Tags:
About Gringa in a Strange Land
I have a long list of book titles for books I will
probably never write, each a little egg in a shell. Tough
little coating, holding all those stories, all those
people. Very often the content of a book seems squeezed out of that shell, the title forces a certain attitude
toward the story. My new book, "Gringa in a Strange Land,"
is different. It had another title for years. Decades!
Like a woman called Maude who changes her name to Madonna
(for instance). When I happened to pick up the manuscript of "Gringa" during a very difficult time in my life when I needed to write about something pure and hard, the book
had a very different feel to it. There it was, perched at the end of the "sixties," this thinly-disguised version of myself fleeing what she knew, most of it - America, comforts, direction - and living the beat/hippie/artist
life in Mexico. By the time the book became "Gringa in a Strange Land," I like to think that the ingredients added, of vitality and irony and hope, and that mysterious yearning for beauty and connection which persists - well, I like to think the title and the book have come together.
