Dear First Love
by Zoé Valdés
List Price: $23.95
Pages: 304
Format: Hardcover
ISBN: 0060199725
Publisher: HarperCollins
Zoé Valdés was born in 1959 in Havana, where she wrote poetry and fiction and worked as a cultural critic. In 1995 she fled Castro's regime and moved to Paris where she continues to write. She is the author of nine novels, many of which have been bestsellers in Europe. Ms. Valdés writes a monthly column for the Spanish newspaper El Mundo.
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Q: "It's poetry that's taught me everything I know," says Dánae. "Poetry has shown me the world; I owe a debt of gratitude to poetry for the love I feel for nature, the earth, the trees, the ocean. Before I had read any poetry I resembled nothing so much as a blind woman -- and a mute one, too, because I had no idea how to put my thoughts in order, no idea how to speak, the words wouldn't come. Poetry taught me how to talk" (p.165) Do you owe a similar debt of gratitude to poetry? What is it like to be novelist or poet in Communist Cuba?
ZV: Yes, I have indeed a similar debt to poetry, like Dánae everything I know I learned from poetry, from a life lived in a dimension in which the only solution for salvation was poetry, which is no more than to make of life a sublime event. A writer is always a subversive individual for a communist regime unless the writer decides to become a spokesperson for the regime. In communist Cuba to be a writer--with the critical liberties that being a writer supposes--is impossible. To be a free human being is equally impossible.
Q: Most of your readers will be unfamiliar with the summer work camps that adolescents like Dánae volunteered at in order to improve their chances for prosperity as adults. Can you give some background concerning these camps? Are they still in existence? Were conditions as wretched as those you describe?
ZV: Going as "volunteers" to the summer work camps is questionable. It was and still is absolutely mandatory. In fact, nowadays all high schools work permanently out of the countryside. The idea is for the student to pay for his/her schooling by working as a farmer. It is not true that schooling is free in Cuba. It is also not true that by working on farms, as required by the communist regime, students will improve their lives or attain prosperity. Today's working conditions are much harsher than they used to be for my generation.
Q: Santería -- or at least Cuba's version of this Haitian religion -- looms large in your story. Can you tell us something about how this religion is practiced and perceived by the average Cuban?
ZV: Cuban Santería comes directly from the rulings of Ochá and was brought to Cuba by the African slaves. In a deeply creative process during the foundation of the Cuban nation, the mixing of races, between the European and the African, resulted in a religious syncretism.
Q: You incorporate all kinds of music into your novel: popular tunes, romantic ballads, military songs and religious intonations. Would you say that music is a major force in Cuban life? Is it a major force in your own life?
ZV: For me a writer is a timid musician. Any phrase written by a writer must have an interior melody. A novel is a symphony whose mystery is only brought forth by the Beethoven silences, which are established in a sort of complicity between the writer and the reader. Today in Cuba, popular music is one of the possible ways for collective elevation and catharsis.
Q: In America, small rural communities are disappearing as populations move toward more urban and especially suburban areas. Is this happening at all in Cuba? How have the rural regions changed in the past few decades? Are there broad cultural differences between rural and urban environments?
ZV: It has been 43 years since anything has moved in Cuba. There is a dictator there, nothing moves without his consent. All Cuba is a farm in decadence under the control of a slave master.
Q: Can you tell us something about your rather unusual narrative technique? Why did you choose alternating -- and sometimes non-human -- voices to tell Dánae's story? What was the reason for providing more than one ending?
ZV: My narrative technique is indebted to poetry and cinema. I wanted Dear First Love to be choral novel, a concertoratoria, and I wanted to pay homage to the animistic culture of the Taínos, the Cuban indigenous people, who were exterminated by the Spaniards and whose souls are still with us culturally. The multiple endings were inspired by Akira Kurasawa's well known film "Rashomon".
Q: How has Cuba's political situation figured in your writing? How, if at all, did your work change after you left the country?
ZV: Cuba's political situation figures in my writing in the way the stories of my characters develop. I cannot describe a Cuban woman from today without describing the terrible situation of sexual discrimination she faces. I suppose the same would happen to an African or American novelist whenever they decide to reflect their respective realities. The interior world of a novelist does not change by the mere fact of leaving his/her country; on the contrary, when in imposed exile all the senses in relationship to what occurs in the native land become acute.
Q: The older Dánae muses, "A person is born to flee. . . . I know that I have learned, out of habit, to love all that I am abandoning. But I don't want my obligations, my 'duties,' to turn into slavery. What I need is for my duties, my obligations, to not stop being pleasures; I need to live with dignity." Does this statement reflect your own feelings about leaving Cuba?
ZV: Perhaps; but I have written this work in an unconscious way, which is the way the more poetic truths are told.
Q: What do you think would have been your fate had you remained in Cuba?
ZV: I only had two choices: prison or exile.
Q: America currently is having a cultural love affair with Cuba, and many are calling for the US to renew its ties to the country. Do you think Americans romanticize Cuba? Was this novel in any way an attempt to reveal the realities of daily life there?
ZV: America has not always had a cultural love affair with Cuba. This is one of the excuses for Castro's coming into power. It is unthinkable to renew ties with a mad dictator who has destroyed his own country and who wishes the destruction of the United States as well. Some Americans and also Europeans romanticize Cuba, others are direct collaborators of the regime.
Excerpted from Dear First Love © Copyright 2008 by Zoé Valdés. Reprinted with permission by HarperCollins. All rights reserved.
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