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c h i k k a
b u z z
FOR CALIFORNIA-BASED FILIPINO
author Marivi Soliven, whose novel
The
Mango Bride
will be released by US
publishing giant NAL Penguin in April, real
life is rife with the stuff of literature. She
doesn’t have to look very far. “I work as
a telephonic interpreter for my day job,”
she says. “Thus Amparo, the novel’s main
character, is likewise employed. Most of
her calls are drawn almost verbatim from
actual conversations I’ve had in the course
of my work. ”The majority of the novel is
set in California, which Marivi has called
home since getting married in 1995, with
some parts set in the stratified society of
1960
s Manila. But it is the gripping plot
and engaging storytelling that holds wide
crossover appeal. Marivi is an acute observer
of Philippine life, and you’ll be mesmerized
by the book’s sweeping
telenovela
quality
—
from the upstairs/downstairs struggle
(
complete with a secret and forbidden love
affair), to the surreal, tragic and sometimes
comic realities that befall the main
characters in Manila and California.
An earlier version of the novel won the
Carlos Palanca Memorial Literary Award for
the “Novel in English” in 2011 and following
this she was granted a Hedgebrook writing
fellowship — a huge honor as her personal
writing hero Gloria Steinem is a Hedgebrook
alumna and co-chair. This month, you can
pre-order it on
Amazon.com
.
The author
shares a few chapters in the making of this
entertaining read.
Q&A:
Married
to the
story
Marivi Soliven talks to
Smile
about what it took to
bring her new novel to the
bookshelves
Author Marivi Soliven
at home in California
How , d you do it?
I wrote a first draft during NaNoWriMo
2008,
worked on it for the next two years,
found an agent in February 2011 and
landed the Penguin contract in April 2011.
I wrote nearly every day from 6.30am to
8.30
pm, in between calls for my day job,
and on weekends, in the car on the way
to LA, in Florida to escape my in-laws, in
parking lots while my daughter Sofia was
at ballet, at the skating rink... It was all
sealed and sent to the publisher in May
2012.
In a nutshell,
The Mango
Bride
is…
My agent says it falls in the genre of
upmarket literary women’s fiction. So I’m
assuming that means it’s more than a few
steps above
50
Shades of Grey
,
but not
quite
Anna Karenina
.
What was the biggest
challenge in researching
and writing this book?
Remembering Manila in the
,
60
s, the Hotel
InterContinental, Manila North Cemetery —
simple stuff, but the devil is in the details.
I leaned on friends to help flesh out the
setting. All the character quirks I cribbed from
my mother’s family. That was the easy part.
It
,
s your female characters
who especially stand out.
How did you flesh them
out?
They are drawn directly (speech, gestures,
makeup and all) from my mother and her
sisters. Full-on character sketches, down
to the way they hold their cigarettes, the
movements of their hands.
The novel will be read
by a vast and varied
audience, each with their
own appreciation. What
,
s
the one thing you hope
they , ll get from this book?
That the Philippine diaspora comes in
all shapes and sizes. That not everyone
sees America as the Promised Land. That
mail order brides and that whole human
trafficking business needs to become
part of the conversation on immigration,
domestic violence, deportation and human
rights.
What are you working on
at the moment?
A murder/love story set in the taxi dance
halls of San Diego in the 1930s. Based
on a true story and featuring cameo
appearances by Carlos Bulosan and Fred
Astaire. It’ll be like that musical
Chicago
,
only set in San Diego.
Can’t wait to read the book?
Sample an excerpt at
