We spoke with Uruguayan-Australian author Alejandra Martinez about her debut novel Salsa in the Suburbs, a heartwarming tale about migration, growing older and la familia.
Puentes Review: You won the 2022 Fresh Emerging Writers Ink Prize. How did winning this prize help in finishing the manuscript of Salsa in the Suburbs?
Winning this prize was instrumental in completing the manuscript. It gave me confidence and motivation to keep going. It was also confirmation that the story had potential.
Salsa in the Suburbs tells the story of a family who escapes the military dictatorship in Uruguay in the 1970s and arrives in Western Sydney. How did the seed for this story first take hold of you?
The idea of the family leaving Uruguay and coming to Australia is largely based on the experience of my own family. In addition, I wasn’t aware of any novels published in Australia about the experience of Uruguayans living in Australia. I felt it was a story that was missing in Australian literature.
An older person, going out into the dating world was something I wanted to explore for various reasons. First, stories don’t often focus on older people from non-English speaking migrant backgrounds and how they might perceive the society they live in and the challenges they face. Second, Juan is a very resilient man with a great sense of humour, which is often the case for working class people. He brings all this to his relationship with Frances. He needs to allow himself to be vulnerable and open for the relationship to progress which can be difficult for older men with his background.
Tell us about Juan and his relationship with his daughters. How did you approach the tension between both generations when talking about heritage and language?
Juan adores his daughters but since his wife died, he doesn’t know how to give them space. He needs them to feel connected, he needs family. Latino families can be intense!
In regard to the tension about heritage and language, I think this is a common theme for many families that have migrated to Australia. The parents feel strongly connected to their language and background, in fact they hold onto it tight, as they don’t really belong in the new country they find themselves in. While the children need to find their place in this country to be able to grow and thrive. I wanted to explore how with the next generation some need to identify strongly with their heritage while for others it feels like a burden, thus the characters of Lola and Betty and the way they identify and live their lives.
Are there any themes or ideas that you explored in Salsa in the Suburbs that you would like to revisit in future works?
I think it’s important to explore issues of class in literature and I would like to continue to do so. The experience of migration is very different for educated migrants to those with little or no education.
I’m also interested to continue writing about ageing and mental illness, as they are both important topics in our society.
What’s next for you as a writer?
For now, I will be promoting Salsa in the Suburbs and continue writing short stories.
In 2023 you curated the event A Home of One’s Own: Writers on the Housing Crisis for the Boundless Festival. Can you tell us about this experience?
This was an opportunity to look at the importance of housing and how people’s well-being can improve if they have secure and affordable housing. Housing is our base, it’s a basic need that everyone should have. When you have housing you can work, you can create, you can grow. I rented for many years and insecure and poor-quality housing was detrimental to my mental health. A real estate agent even rang me while I was in labour with my second child, to tell me that I needed to let them open the house for a sale inspection. This is what happens when housing becomes a business and not a right that we should all have.
What advice would you give to other Latin American writers in Australia?
Write and get your stories out there, send them to magazines, journals. It’s an extremely competitive space and you will have many rejections, but you need to keep going. Join writers’ centres and do some of their courses and meet other writers. I’m hoping that Salsa in the Suburbs will pave the way for many more Latin-American Australian stories.