How I came to write Reclaiming Paris
By Fabiola Santiago - November 17, 2008
One weekend morning more than a decade ago, when I lived in a Miami Beach apartment with sea and sun at my window, I woke up with the sunrise and went straight to my computer. I had just returned from an emotionally-charged assignment at the U.S. naval base in Guantánamo, Cuba, reporting for The Miami Herald on the thousands of Cuban rafters who had fled the island and were being held there in refugee camps. But when I sat before the blank computer screen, it was not a newspaper story I wrote. I felt as if someone else was guiding my thoughts. When I came out of the trance, it was well past noon and I had written the story of my maternal grandmother’s quixotic life.
To my surprise, the story was embellished with what I imagined her life to have been like, as I never had the opportunity to ask her. I was separated from my beloved Abuela Ramona by exile when I was ten years old, never to see her again, and that loss deeply marked my life. Interviewing refugee children like me, women like my mother and grandmother, men like my father, resurrected my losses, the ghosts of my past, and fueled a need to make sense of it all by writing with the freedom that a writer can only find in fiction. The essence of what I wrote that day is the sixth chapter in Reclaiming Paris, and the heart of the novel, which is about the loves and losses that define a family, personal and historical, and are handed down from generation to generation.
Another important aspect of my novel is sense of place and the question of what constitutes home. I come from an island defined by riveting stories from the day Christopher Columbus is said to have laid eyes upon it and declared it the most beautiful place he had ever seen. It is also an island cursed with destructive history, a land of mysteries and conspiracies. Those of us who had to leave it, transplanted our version of Cuba with us, and so, Miami has become an equally intriguing place. The places I love also inspired Reclaiming Paris and are like characters: my two homes, Matanzas and Miami, which in my heart are one; my two dream cities, Havana and Paris, both incomparable grand dames.
And of course, there are the perfumes.
When I left Cuba on a Freedom Flight in 1969, I only carried with me three mementos: a doll lost in the labyrinth of early exile, a set of silver bracelets that I still wear when I fly, and a tiny bottle of perfume, a gift from my best friend, Mireyita. I don’t remember its scent but the bottle, made of wood and inscribed “Cuba,” has always held a place of honor in my bedroom. And yes, like Marisol, the protagonist of Reclaiming Paris, I have a penchant for collecting poetic scents, and when all else in life fails, I change my perfume for a little inspiration.
To my surprise, the story was embellished with what I imagined her life to have been like, as I never had the opportunity to ask her. I was separated from my beloved Abuela Ramona by exile when I was ten years old, never to see her again, and that loss deeply marked my life. Interviewing refugee children like me, women like my mother and grandmother, men like my father, resurrected my losses, the ghosts of my past, and fueled a need to make sense of it all by writing with the freedom that a writer can only find in fiction. The essence of what I wrote that day is the sixth chapter in Reclaiming Paris, and the heart of the novel, which is about the loves and losses that define a family, personal and historical, and are handed down from generation to generation.
Another important aspect of my novel is sense of place and the question of what constitutes home. I come from an island defined by riveting stories from the day Christopher Columbus is said to have laid eyes upon it and declared it the most beautiful place he had ever seen. It is also an island cursed with destructive history, a land of mysteries and conspiracies. Those of us who had to leave it, transplanted our version of Cuba with us, and so, Miami has become an equally intriguing place. The places I love also inspired Reclaiming Paris and are like characters: my two homes, Matanzas and Miami, which in my heart are one; my two dream cities, Havana and Paris, both incomparable grand dames.
And of course, there are the perfumes.
When I left Cuba on a Freedom Flight in 1969, I only carried with me three mementos: a doll lost in the labyrinth of early exile, a set of silver bracelets that I still wear when I fly, and a tiny bottle of perfume, a gift from my best friend, Mireyita. I don’t remember its scent but the bottle, made of wood and inscribed “Cuba,” has always held a place of honor in my bedroom. And yes, like Marisol, the protagonist of Reclaiming Paris, I have a penchant for collecting poetic scents, and when all else in life fails, I change my perfume for a little inspiration.
