Quiara Alegria Hudes on Writing Through Grief and Joy

Latino USA

My Cultura, Futuro and iHeartPodcasts

Society & Culture

4.9 • 3.7K Ratings

🗓️ 28 March 2023

⏱️ 25 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In 2018, Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Quiara Alegria Hudes decided to take a break from the theater world. Tired of a white, male-dominated landscape, Quiara turned inward, leaning on her memories and stories of the women in her family. The result was Quiara’s first memoir: “My Broken Language.” In 2022, Quiara returned to the stage with the play adaptation of her memoir. On this episode of Latino USA, we talk to Quiara about her memoir, her play, and how grief and joy intertwine in the stories she is bringing to the stage.

Transcript

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0:00.0	It's hard for me to remember that I never wept for one of my cousins.
0:12.9	I didn't know how to grieve.
0:14.8	I think the process of writing them down and memorializing them, breathing new life
0:21.4	into their stories.
0:23.4	That has been my process of grief 30 years later.
0:27.6	And it is a joyous one.
0:30.2	From Fuduro Media and PRX, it's Latino USA.
0:36.6	I'm Maria Ingolosa.
0:38.1	Today, my broken language, a conversation with Pulitzer Prize winning playwright Kiara
0:43.6	Alighria Hudis about adapting her memoir for this stage.
0:50.6	Kiara Alighria Hudis has been writing for this stage for over 20 years.
1:03.2	I got my first paycheck for being a playwright in 2002, so I'm really reflecting on what I'll
1:08.6	call my professional life as a writer.
1:12.1	Kiara's work is personal.
1:14.6	Many of her plays draw from her family's experience growing up in West Philadelphia in the late 1980s
1:20.8	and 90s.
1:22.3	Her play Water by the Spoonful, which looks at themes of war, trauma and addiction, won the
1:29.2	2012 Pulitzer Prize.
1:36.0	But Kiara's work is also about centering joy.
1:40.9	Kiara worked alongside Lin Manuel Mirona to write the book for the musical in the Heights
1:51.7	and later wrote the script for the film adaptation.
2:00.3	In the fall of 2018, Kiara announced that she would take a break from theater.
	...

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