My debut novel comes out in March. And anyone who knows my history will immediately recognize parts of my life in the story. They will see glimpses of my parents’ acrimonious divorce, my dad’s infidelity, his new family, and my grandparent’s passing. They will also see the boundless love I hold for the women in my life, especially my abuelas. And how food brought our family together, and continues to link us into one chain, even after death.
Five manuscripts in, I’ve come to accept that writing from your own life is never easy. It opens old wounds. It makes you relive memories and emotions you thought forgotten. It breaks your heart over and over again.
And then, there’s the awkward conversations with those who recognize your life in your work.
My mom called me shortly after she read a few chapters of the ARC I shipped to her home in Puerto Rico, where most of my family still lives.
“There is a lot of you in here,” she said in an uncertain tone.
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I nodded, forgetting we were on the phone and she couldn’t see me. Her voice was ambivalent, and I was afraid to ask how she really felt. My family doesn’t really discuss things. We subscribe to the lyrics of legendary Mexican singer José José, “Ya lo pasado, pasado. No me interesa.”
“I’m going to finish reading it,” she said after a long pause. “I like how you wrote it. The English and the cooking are easy to understand.”
We quickly moved onto another topic. Our vacation plans for the holidays, I think.
It’s true that there’s pain in unearthing the past, but there is also joy and power — a power that comes from owning the narrative of our own lives, and transmuting those experiences into art. I’ve also found great joy in creating stories that connect us as human beings, make us happy, open our minds, create empathy and help us make sense of the complexities of life.
For me, using my life in my writing happened organically. Salty, Bitter, Sweet is about a seventeen year old who wants to be a chef in a haute cuisine kitchen in France. The novel is a quirky, YA romcom that explores the journey of a girl trying to find her place in the world, and discovering that she can’t have success without inner confidence. I didn’t learn this until my thirties. My protagonist, fortunately, gets to learn it much earlier.
After the first couple of drafts, I wrestled with questions of editorial identity. How could I make this book mine? How could I make my voice as authentic as possible? How could I write from what I know? And did I have the courage it takes to put my life on the page? The answers to these questions naturally led to new, more defined characters, and plot beats that felt honest and true.
With each new draft I felt more self-assured about using all the anxiety and depression that tainted my teen years. I even created a main character who used overachievements as a coping mechanism— a tactic I perfected in high school.
Like that of my main character, Isa, my world fell apart when my father remarried and one of my grandparents died. Like her, I found refuge in the homes of my abuelos and in their stable, albeit imperfect, marriages. I also savored the love they expressed through their cooking.
My abuelas Josefa and Cuqui both possess a remarkable gift for cooking from the heart. I can still taste the thick tomato sauce in abuela Josefa’s habichuelas guisadas, even though I haven’t eaten them since she passed away over 20 years ago. And my abuela Cuqui’s afterschool Coke-floats made me feel like someone loved me enough to find the perfect ratio of Coke and ice cream. Every single time.
The more I wrote, the more I found opportunities to own my story in a meaningful way. Not just the sorrow but also singular moments of forgiveness, happiness and love.
As I wrote, I realized I was staring at a mosaic of my life, and if I was brave enough, I could rearrange the tiny broken, jagged pieces to create something new and amazing.
Born and raised in Puerto Rico, Mayra Cuevas is a professional journalist and fiction writer who adores love stories with happy endings. Her debut fiction short story was selected by Becky Albertalli as a New Voice in the Foreshadow YA serial anthology in 2019, and her debut novel releases in March 2020. She is a TV and digital producer for CNN, where she has worked since 2003. Follow her on Twitter and Instagram.
