Remix: "In the Heights" Playwright Quiara Alegria Hudes Writes So People Remember Us

Here I am, yes.

What's the memoir?

It's about the late '80s and early '90s when I kind of came of age as a girl in Philadelphia, and it's my spiritual awakening during the time of the crack epidemic, the AIDS crisis, and how I became a writer and a storyteller through a series of kind of spiritual events.

You've told so many other people's stories.

What is it like now to tell your own?

It's really intense.

It required a different process of me.

I think I've also always told stories under the guise of fiction.

Even though my plays come out of family stories, I insist that they're fictional plays 'cause there are fictional elements there.

But a memoir, uh, I can't do that.

I can't really fudge it.

And so to really go back with my memory and insist on accuracy, on my point of view, uh, especially when I'm dealing with things like did my cousin or did my cousin not pass away from AIDS, and still there's not a clear line an answer in the family about it.

So what do I do about that? How do I gain clarity and tell the truth when there's still not answers?

I also have just blackout years, like years I don't really remember with the same clarity in which I remember other years.

I thought I did, too.

I thought I didn't remember.

I thought I didn't know.

And what I found is I do actually remember more probably than I'd like to, that telling myself I didn't remember and being active and not remembering was, um, a kinda temporary state I let myself be in while I didn't wanna deal with some of the stuff from the past.

How did you excavate that memory?

Through a series of writing rituals.

You know, every piece that I've written has a different process, and I learn how to write it as I go.

With this piece, it involved taping up all my ancestors' pictures on the wall, so all of my tias who aren't with us anymore, lighting them some candles and saying some prayers so that I felt safe.

I felt in a safe place.

I felt loved, and I felt trust in my kind of emotional space so that I could then kind of go into the forest, not following any path, and see what I would discover there.

And some of the discoveries were incredible and delightful, and some of them were super painful.

Here I am, yes.

What's the memoir?

It's about the late '80s and early '90s when I kind of came of age as a girl in Philadelphia, and it's my spiritual awakening during the time of the crack epidemic, the AIDS crisis, and how I became a writer and a storyteller through a series of kind of spiritual events.

You've told so many other people's stories.

What is it like now to tell your own?

It's really intense.

It required a different process of me.

I think I've also always told stories under the guise of fiction.

Even though my plays come out of family stories, I insist that they're fictional plays 'cause there are fictional elements there.

But a memoir, uh, I can't do that.

I can't really fudge it.

And so to really go back with my memory and insist on accuracy, on my point of view, uh, especially when I'm dealing with things like did my cousin or did my cousin not pass away from AIDS, and still there's not a clear line an answer in the family about it.

So what do I do about that? How do I gain clarity and tell the truth when there's still not answers?

I also have just blackout years, like years I don't really remember with the same clarity in which I remember other years.

I thought I did, too.

I thought I didn't remember.

I thought I didn't know.

And what I found is I do actually remember more probably than I'd like to, that telling myself I didn't remember and being active and not remembering was, um, a kinda temporary state I let myself be in while I didn't wanna deal with some of the stuff from the past.

How did you excavate that memory?

Through a series of writing rituals.

You know, every piece that I've written has a different process, and I learn how to write it as I go.

With this piece, it involved taping up all my ancestors' pictures on the wall, so all of my tias who aren't with us anymore, lighting them some candles and saying some prayers so that I felt safe.

I felt in a safe place.

I felt loved, and I felt trust in my kind of emotional space so that I could then kind of go into the forest, not following any path, and see what I would discover there.

And some of the discoveries were incredible and delightful, and some of them were super painful.