Do you ever have a book go viral through your family?
Your aunt reads it and tells everyone at dinner. The copy gets passed along. A few more dog ears show up. The spine gets cracked. And a year later half a dozen people have read it?
Well that's what happened in our family with Catherine Hernandez's wonderful debut novel Scarborough. I even just put it on my Best Of 2022 list!
Catherine Hernandez is an award winning Canadian author and screenwriter.
Born in Toronto, she is a proud queer woman of Filipino, Spanish, Chinese and Indian descent. She attended Ryerson University (now called Toronto Metropolitan University) for theatre but pretty quickly realized that she wanted to write. She started in magazines but soon branched off to books and plays.
So her first novel, Scarborough tells the story of a place -- a low-income, culturally diverse neighborhood east of Toronto -- my home and the fourth largest city in North America. Scarborough is a multi-voiced novel with unforgettable characters: Victor, a black artist harassed by the police, Winsum, a West Indian restaurant owner struggling to keep it together, Bing, a gay Filipino boy who lives under the shadow of his father's mental illness, and many more.
I couldn't put it down. Neither could a lot of people! Scarborough has won a slew of prizes and awards and was turned into a critically acclaimed film which became first runner-up for the People’s Choice Award at TIFF in 2021.
Catherine has gone on to write a number of other books including Crosshairs and Singkil, The Femme Playlist. Her next book, due out in 2023, The Story of Us is about a caregiver and her elderly client. And she’s even put out children’s books, like M is for Mustache and Where Do Feelings Live.
We talk about many things in this conversation including: body image, social support systems, posing nude, finding voice, authenticity in books, the tragedy of Turtle Island, being confronted by otherness and the beautiful traditions of a Navajo wedding.
Catherine is a talent and a force and such a dream guest.
Let’s flip the page into Chapter 118 now…
Chapter 118: Catherine hernandez poses for positivity with pride and presence
What You'll Learn:
What is Scarlem?
How do we find our voice?
What are the singular pressures that the kids of immigrant parents feel?
What is it like to pose nude for a magazine?
How can we learn to accept and celebrate our bodies?
What are the Blue Zones?
What is true authenticity in books?
How can we fight the algorithms to spread the word on lesser known great books?
Why is being confronted by otherness an imperative?
What is the tragedy of Turtle Island?
What are the privileges of the settler?
What are the special elements of a Navajo wedding?
Notable quotes from catherine:
“Don't focus on becoming a writer, focus on telling a story.” Catherine Hernandez #3bookspodcast
connect with catherine:
word of the chapter:
Resources mentioned
Catherine’s first book (29:10)
Catherine’s second book (59:49)
Catherine’s third book (1:30:05)
Scarborough by Catherine Hernandez
Alias Grace by Margaret Atwood
Lord of the Flies by William Golding
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
Bodies are Cool by Tyler Feder
Big Little Lies by Liane Moriarty
Charlie Salt - Medicine Man
Autobiography of Red by Anne Carson
Where the Sidebook Ends by Shel Silverstein
Cultish by Amanda Montell
A Swim in the Pond in the Rain by George Saunders
Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari
Four Thousand Weeks by Oliver Burkeman
Our Book of Awesome by Neil Pasricha
