Writing Latinos, from Public Books, features interviews with Latino (a/x/e) authors discussing their books and how their writing contributes to the ever-changing conversation about the meanings of latinidad.

In our final episode of Season One, we talk with Ingrid Rojas Contreras about her book, The Man Who Could Move Clouds: A Memoir, published last year by Doubleday. The Man Who Could Move Clouds was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, National Book Award, and National Book Critics Circle Award, and was named a best book of the year by Time, NPR, Boston Globe, Vanity Fair, Esquire, and more. Her first book, Fruit of the Drunken Tree: A Novel, was a national bestseller. 

There was so much to discuss! We covered the bicycle accident that left Ingrid with amnesia and led her to write her family’s story, including their supernatural abilities. We talked about a doctor’s impulse to come up with a scientific rationale for phenomena that might also be explained narratively, in the context of a particular family dynamic. We discussed the genre of memoir, and the yogurt Ingrid used to eat in Colombia and now seeks out every time she returns home.