Ask the Author: Aaron Hamburger
Answered Questions (9)
Aaron Hamburger
Wow, that sounds like an amazing story! I don't know the legal particulars as it would relate to your grandfather's situation, but in my grandmother's case, the rule was that it took a year to establish residency in Cuba, which she wanted to do in order to enter the U.S. avoiding the quotas on immigration from Eastern Europe. However, in her actual situation (which deviates from what happens in the novel) she got some help from someone in the U.S. consulate and was able to leave Cuba a little earlier than a full year. Good luck with your novel!
Aaron Hamburger
I have to say writing Hotel Cuba was the most pleasurable writing experience I've ever had. I started by wanting to solve the mystery of my grandmother's true life story, and so delving into the research, traveling to the places she traveled to (like Havana and Key West) and trying to imagine them through her eyes, going to the National Archive, finding her immigration and marriage records online, reading primary and secondary sources, this was all fun, fun, fun to me! I could have gone on forever. What was hard? There was so much I had to leave out to make this a novel, in particular what happened to her and her fictional avatar Pearl after the end of these pages (which I note briefly in the book's acknowledgments). Also my grandfather's story was a novel in itself. But in the end, I think Hotel Cuba's overall shape as a story is the better for it. Thanks for this question!
Aaron Hamburger
Thanks for that question. For me, first and foremost is always E. M. Forster. I always aspire to hi deep humanitarianism and elegant sentence-crafting. I also love Bernard Malamud's stories and his novel The Assistant, which was particularly enlightening in terms of how he brought the rhythms of Yiddish to English. Maybe this next one seems like a curveball, but Jane Austen! Sense and Sensibility, with its story of two sisters, one practical and the other romantic, was a kind of analog for this story. Oh, and of course, the marriage plot!
Aaron Hamburger
Thanks for that question! I was inspired by the true-life story of my grandmother who with her sister was running away from war and anti-Semitic violence in Russia after World War I, trying to get to America, but ended up in Havana, Cuba instead. What could that have been like, to go from a war-ravaged rural isolated wintry shtetl to sun-drenched Havana, where everything--the weather, the language, the food, the music, the customs--was so different! There were many Jewish immigrants like my grandmother who made this trek and they thought of Havana as a mere way station, a "hotel" as they called it, but I had to believe this experience must have left its mark on my grandmother's life and character, and I was excited to explore what that could have been. Doing the research for this was fascinating and the writing of it sheer joy. Wait until you read the book!
Aaron Hamburger
I teach a class called "Breaking Through Writer's Block," and one of the central tenets is that there's no such thing really. There are times when we're unable to write and times when we choose not to write. Sometimes it's because something's happening in our lives over which we have no control, and the choice not to write is a valid one. At other times, there are emotional reasons we don't write. Usually it's the fear of writing something bad. In that case, my solution is to write as badly as I can. It takes faith and courage, but I force myself. And then usually afterward, I look at what I've done and it isn't quite as awful as I'd imagined it would be before I started. And of course if all else fails, READ. No better source for inspiration.
Aaron Hamburger
So many rewarding things about being a writer. First, when you read something wonderful, you have an entirely different appreciation of how it's put together because you've been there, with a blank page that you've had to fill with words, so you understand the labor that goes into it. Next, very often when I'm writing about something, I find out what I really think about it through the process of clarifying my thoughts on the page. Writing about something almost ensures that you will learn something about the world and about yourself. Also, when you're a writer, it gives you this wonderful excuse to ask people questions about things they know a lot about. People are so generous. If you're writing a book about a given topic, you can meet all kinds of fascinating people who know more about it than you do and they can share their lives with you. I've met the most amazing people this way.
Aaron Hamburger
Read, read, and read. Read widely, not just in your preferred genre and not just texts by authors whose life experiences mirror yours. Brush up on the fundamentals of composition time and again. Write as often as you can. And live as fully as you can with eyes, ears, mouths, noses, and fingers open to the world of the senses. You never know what details of the experience you're living now you'll want to draw on later when you're writing a scene.
Aaron Hamburger
Very often I'm inspired to write by something I've read. I remember once hearing Steven Spielberg say that writers are readers, and I find this is true in my own experience. Also, whenever I feel blocked creatively, I will turn to a book I love or a new book, and the beauty or wisdom of the writing often makes me want to continue.
Aaron Hamburger
I feel as though Nirvana is Here is the story I’ve been writing or trying to write my entire life.
Like the protagonist of the book, I grew up in the segregated suburbs of Detroit, though in the 1980s, not the 1990s, and like the protagonist, I felt very much like an outsider. I remember vividly being a freshman in college in the fall of 1991, sitting on the floor of a friend’s dorm room, when another student came running in, saying, “You have to hear this song” and putting on “Smells Like Teen Spirit” by Nirvana. The song felt so different from anything I’d heard before, and it felt in a way like a kind of permission to be who I was, to claim an identity I’d been running away from for so long in my life.
When I was twelve, I was sexually assaulted by another boy my age, a neighborhood bully who threatened to kill me if I told anyone what he’d done. His threat notwithstanding, I did tell my therapist, who was legally obligated to tell the police. I remember vividly sitting in the police station and being asked if I “wanted it,” which was my assailant’s defense for what he’d done. Because I said no, both to that boy and the police, I was safe. This led me to the wrongheaded conclusion that if I admitted to anyone that I was attracted to other guys, he would be found innocent and I would be found guilty, and my assailant would be set free and could come find me and exact his revenge.
All this is the background material that inspired the fictionalized version of the story of this book. It’s material that for many years, even as an adult, I felt that I had to keep hidden, that somehow others would feel repelled if they knew the truth. In my earlier fiction, I’ve written semi-autobiographical stories, but always with this key fact of my own life erased or shunted off to the side. This book is the first time I’ve attempted to grapple with this subject matter head-on, and it’s been liberating. Suddenly, I feel as though my fiction has taken on a new sense of vitality and honesty that’s liberated me to tell all kinds of stories, not just my own.
Like the protagonist of the book, I grew up in the segregated suburbs of Detroit, though in the 1980s, not the 1990s, and like the protagonist, I felt very much like an outsider. I remember vividly being a freshman in college in the fall of 1991, sitting on the floor of a friend’s dorm room, when another student came running in, saying, “You have to hear this song” and putting on “Smells Like Teen Spirit” by Nirvana. The song felt so different from anything I’d heard before, and it felt in a way like a kind of permission to be who I was, to claim an identity I’d been running away from for so long in my life.
When I was twelve, I was sexually assaulted by another boy my age, a neighborhood bully who threatened to kill me if I told anyone what he’d done. His threat notwithstanding, I did tell my therapist, who was legally obligated to tell the police. I remember vividly sitting in the police station and being asked if I “wanted it,” which was my assailant’s defense for what he’d done. Because I said no, both to that boy and the police, I was safe. This led me to the wrongheaded conclusion that if I admitted to anyone that I was attracted to other guys, he would be found innocent and I would be found guilty, and my assailant would be set free and could come find me and exact his revenge.
All this is the background material that inspired the fictionalized version of the story of this book. It’s material that for many years, even as an adult, I felt that I had to keep hidden, that somehow others would feel repelled if they knew the truth. In my earlier fiction, I’ve written semi-autobiographical stories, but always with this key fact of my own life erased or shunted off to the side. This book is the first time I’ve attempted to grapple with this subject matter head-on, and it’s been liberating. Suddenly, I feel as though my fiction has taken on a new sense of vitality and honesty that’s liberated me to tell all kinds of stories, not just my own.
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