The prolific author and poet started her career as a community reporter, then pivoted to creative writing. Now, the award-winning author of the new book, Forgotten Sisters, blends fairytale, horror, suspense and more to capture the grit and mysticism of moving between worlds. Cynthia shares how her success has forced her to rethink her boundaries, and how being the mother to two children with autism informs her writing.
Follow Cynthia on instagram @cynthiapelayoauthor. Order her book, Forgotten Sisters, here.
If you liked this episode, listen to How Johanna Rojas Vann Wove the Truth Into Fiction and What Jennifer De Leon Had to Confront to Become the First Writer In Her Family
Alicia Menendez: Reading one of Cynthia Pelayo's books, including her newest release Forgotten Sisters, is like stepping into an alternate universe one shaped by genres ranging from true crime to fairy tale. That escapism is rooted in Cynthia's childhood growing up in inner-city Chicago and a major departure from her early work as a community reporter. A pivot that required a sort of writer's identity crisis. Cynthia shares her key to being prolific and how her success, including winning the prestigious Bram Stoker Award, forced her to rethink her professional boundaries. Cynthia, thank you for being here.
Cynthia Pelayo: Thank you so much for having me.
Menendez: There is a lot of darkness in your work, a lot of darkness in Forgotten Sisters. Where in your own life, what are you drawing upon to get to that sense of darkness?
Pelayo: The city of Chicago. Of course, we see it as this scary place on the news and it is a beautiful city. There's a lot of light here and a lot of dark and a lot of fantastical things. But a lot of what I saw growing up, a lot of suffering, a lot of young people being lost, a lot of injustice. And especially the city's history. It's also reflective of that. It's a very sad history that we have had such major tragedies in this city. Many of which I don't think we've reconciled with as a community. And so those are things that I identify with because I see what trauma and tragedy does to someone in communities long-term.
Menendez: Knowing that there was danger in the neighborhood, danger outside, your parents' response was keep you inside, which I think is a very familiar dynamic to a lot of our listeners. And while there is some sadness to that, like a little kid inside watching monster movies because the monster movies are her escape from the, quote, unquote, "monsters outside." It also is in some ways what really opens up your imagination and your sense of the fantastical and what was possible. I don't know that we get your prolific work without all of that time as a kid spent inside indulging in escapism.
Pelayo: That's where it comes from. I couldn't go outside. I wasn't allowed to spend time outside alone. Like as a kid riding my bicycle, I couldn't do that. I couldn't go to sleepovers. I couldn't go to walk to the park, which was a block away. I mean, my high school was even a block down and my dad would still drive me from the garage to the front door and watch me walk into the house. And even I'm the first person in my family to step foot in a college classroom. And so I went to undergrad downtown and my father was so terrified of me riding the L by myself that for the first year, my dad would drive me from the house to the front door of college and then pick me up when I was done with class because this is my daughter. I'm going to protect my daughter.
And it was always... I have two older brothers and they were very protective of me. And so I couldn't leave, I couldn't do anything. I just remember being so mad and what did I have, I had monster movies. And my father thought it was the most interesting thing. My mother thought it was terrifying and she called the priest to come talk to me and my father laughed it off. He's like, "This is fine. I think we should see where this goes." And my father was really into the news. And that's why my undergrad was in journalism because that was something that my father could see as a potential for me.
Menendez: Cynthia, you and I could have been on a similar path. There was a part of you that wanted to be a journalist. You spend some time as a community reporter. Can you tell me about a time or an experience during that period when you ran up against the limits of objectivity?
Pelayo: I just remember spending nights out at Humboldt Park with unhoused youth. I remember showing up to police-involved shootings. And I wanted to be able to communicate what was going on within my community. I wanted to be able to write about that. But I think I got to a point in writing about it that it became so traumatic because it's what I lived and it's also what I was writing. And I think I needed to take a step back and that's why I went into fiction. It seemed like it was a better place for me to begin processing everything I had seen. So I-
Menendez: You make that sound neater than it was though, Cynthia, which is in reality, you show up at grad school saying, "I don't know what I want to say, but I know that I have to write." You're this writer with an identity crisis, which I think a lot of us can relate to in one form of another. Having this generalized sense of what it is we want to do, but not sure what we want to apply that to. And what I find so interesting about your story is they pair you with two playwrights, which is very different than the way you learn how to write as a journalist. What is it you learn from those playwrights about developing voice and developing characters?
Pelayo: So it's funny because I was initially denied entry to the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. And they were like, "We don't know what to do with you. You're a journalist." And I just said, "I need to write. I need to talk about what I'm experiencing." The chair called me, he was like, "Can you get in a cab and come down?" And I left my job and I begged and like, "I need to tell you what I feel, and I don't know how to do that. I need you to help me." And genre wasn't a thing at the School of the Art Institute at the time. And they paired me with Jesse Ball and Ruth Margraff. Jesse Ball at the time, I mean, he's one of my favorite writers. And so when they paired me with him, I was completely floored. And at the time, he was experimenting a lot with fairy tales, which if you know my story, those were the first stories I was told because my parents couldn't read. And it was the stories they remembered, and they would recite to me.
And Ruth Margraff is just like this beautiful figure. She would take us to the ballroom at the school and just have us incorporate movement and sound. Even to this day, when I'm writing poetry, I move around my space, I move around my room and they both taught me to experiment. And they both were the ones that told me, "You're a horror writer who doesn't know she's a horror writer." You need to lean into it.
Menendez: That's the thing. You blend a lot of genres. Some of it is ghost story, some of it is true crime, some of it is fairy tale. And so when you get the note, especially earlier in your career that people, quote, "can't connect with your voice." How do you sort through the pieces of that that are, you are trying something very high-wire and complex, which is multiple genres at the same time?
Pelayo: Yes.
Menendez: Sometimes some of it is technical, which is just like the actual work of the writing. And sometimes it's someone saying, "I've never read a Latina author before. I'm not Latina myself and I can't see my own experience reflected back in me and yours because I don't see you as a total and complete person." How do you figure out what that feedback actually means?
Pelayo: I ignore it. I learn to accept that there's always going to be criticism. And I learned to accept that there is always going to be a level of hatred and a level of bias for not only what I write, how I write, but who I am. And the reason I think I am where I am today is because I didn't listen to them. I had to maintain this level of defiance, which I think rubs a lot of people the wrong way. But if I allowed myself to be meek and quiet, I would never create, I never be able to write. And so I want to create something that I find exciting. And most of my work, people are like, "I've never read anything like this." I'm like, "Well, now you have."
Menendez: What did it require of you to get published?
Pelayo: Wow. I think 400 of agent rejections and hundreds and hundreds of editor rejections. And people telling me Hispanics don't read, and people telling me Hispanics don't write. And people telling me that you're never going to get published. And I'm just like, "Okay." I started writing journalism, what, '97. I was still in high school, and I was publishing in newspapers. And fiction, I started a combination of indie publishing and self-publishing. And it was always, I noticed people who had worked with other Latina authors or people who had Latino authors within their roster that were like, "Okay, I see this voice and what she's doing is interesting." So I think being able to meet those people that were willing to give me a chance is what got me here.
Menendez: Winning the Bram Stoker Award, what does that change about your career?
Pelayo: It's overwhelming because we believe I'm the first Latina and first Puerto Rican born to win the Bram Stoker Award. So I think it's kind of put a magnifying glass on me and it's made it a little bit scarier to be a public person because I thought, I'm going to be a writer and I'm going to write and I'm going to create art. But there's this whole social media aspect and that's how I really built my following. It was like on Twitter and social media. And I was very open about my life and my experiences for a long time, but it's also drawn a lot of negative attention. I've had people trying to get access to me in personal spaces. And so on the one hand, of course, I am so grateful. This is the honor of my life. On the other hand, it's scary because it's kind of put the spotlight on me. And then on another hand, it's made me know and learn even more so people are looking to me to be a mentor to younger and newer authors.
Menendez: Yeah. Well, let's talk about that because I think there is the truth that public people used to just be elected officials and celebrities. And now, I think there's a much broader swath of us that exist as public people where I would argue, if you have a forward-facing Instagram account and a forward-facing Twitter/X account, then you are now a public person. What are the boundaries you have now put in place to protect yourself so that people who want the mentorship can still have access, but that people who don't understand healthy boundaries do not?
Pelayo: Right. That's one thing I used to always do. I used to always say, "I am accessible," especially if you're a BIPOC author, low income. I am here if you have question, like my phone number was out there for everybody. People could text me at whatever time. I was so accessible to the writing community for such a long time, and I helped a lot of people. I've mentored many people. Some of them now have major contracts and I'm proud of them. But now, it's like, "Okay." Now, it's more people. So now that means I don't share anything personal about my life. I've never really shared things about my children, about my life. I now try to make sure any of my mentorship goes through formal organizations like the Mystery Writers of America or the Horror Writers Association. Just so that there's more barriers of protection in place because I was very accessible for a long time.
Menendez: You are prolific. Just the volume of your work, Cynthia, is incredible to me. It would be incredible to me if you didn't have children. It is additionally incredible to me because you have two children with autism, which presents a unique set of circumstances. I am just curious from how you get it done perspective. How you are finding so much time to write? What does your process look like?
Pelayo: My secret weapon is a husband that I have been with for 20... Gosh. Gerardo and I have been together since... I mean, we were friends in high school. And we got married at 21 and 22. And he made the conscious decision that he was going to sacrifice a lot. He said, "If we have children, I will take care of them. I will do the house stuff. I do the laundry." He does the cooking, he does everything. And he's given up a lot so that I can do this. And I mean, I wake up at 6:30 in the morning, I take one of the kids to school, I come back, I have a day job. I work my day in marketing research and then I take a nap at some point in the day, and then I write all night. I'm trying to balance it a little bit more, but I think my husband, I couldn't do this without him.
Menendez: You live in the same neighborhood that you grew up in and I live adjacent to the neighborhood that I grew up in. I think it begs a question for those of us who've become upwardly mobile of whether or not you can ever go back. I mean that metaphorically, of course you can always go back. But your life is not the same life you were living 20 years ago. The neighborhood is not as it was 20 years ago. And I wonder how you process that? How you carry yourself now that you're in a very different set of circumstances, but in the same place?
Pelayo: It feels like I'm moving through a ghost sometimes because the neighborhood has... I imagine Chicago has gentrified. And it was always very important for me, for youth, to see that I wasn't going to leave. That was always like growing up, everybody was like, "I'm going to go to the suburbs. I'm leaving the neighborhood."
And I always remember saying, "I'm not going anywhere. You're going to scatter my ashes in Humboldt Park." I refused to leave this neighborhood because this was the community that made me who I am, and I couldn't imagine leaving it. But then again, it's so different. It's so different. And I just remember such sad things happening at certain places. And I remember people getting shot there. I remember at the park behind me, a classmate was paralyzed from the waist down weeks before high school graduation. And now, it's a park that's relatively safe. And so it's very strange.
I don't imagine myself leaving the city ever. I think I'm a fixture here. The kids in the neighborhood, I mean, I still go to my high school from time to time to speak to them. And they all like when I pop in, they're like, "We know you live in the neighborhood and we're always looking out for you to say hi." So I think it's important they know I'm here.
Menendez: Your own children, two children with autism, you have characters with autism in your work. And I wonder why that felt important, but it also feels like a high-wire act when you are writing about a community of which you are adjacent but not a part of.
Pelayo: Yes, that was a very difficult line to balance because I learn more and more every day about autism, the autism community. One that my oldest is high functioning in the regard that he goes to a regular school. He does have an aid that is with him in school. My youngest goes to an autism school. My youngest is nonverbal, so there's a lot of challenges there. I mean, he's six and a half, and he just learned how to use a spoon.
And to us, it was like the biggest celebratory event of, I mean, the year. We were so proud of him. But in writing the character for Shoemaker's Magician, the autistic little boy, I wanted to make sure that I was approaching it from a place of love. He's modeled after my oldest and I wanted to show how strong he is and how smart he is.
And my concern with the way autistic characters have been portrayed in relation to parenthood is that the parent always seems frustrated. And I wanted to show a mother that just loves everything about her child from his stimming to all of him overall. And so I just wanted it to come across that way. Her love for him regardless.
Menendez: I love that so much. I think any mother would love that so much.
Pelayo: Thank you.
Menendez: My final question to you, Cynthia, which is, is it in the dedication to Forgotten Sisters that you write, "To my father, you will not be forgotten"?
Pelayo: Yeah, yeah.
Menendez: What is it that you want to be remembered about your dad?
Pelayo: Everything. Sorry. I was writing that book. And I just remember my dad did hospice at home. And I remember sitting with him and my dad would just say, "Why are you here? You should be writing this book. You shouldn't be sitting here with me." And he had weeks to live and I'm like, "Daddy, I'm trying to spend time with you."
And so I just remember I would have my iPad there and just I would write with him. And he was so proud, so proud of me. And it was a great year because I was able to put so much work out. But my father died. And the next day, The Shoemaker's Magician was released. And it was like weeks later, I won the Bram Stoker Award. And the day after was Father's Day. And it was an utter heartbreak that he had sacrificed so much, and he wasn't able to see it. He was so close. And he was my favorite person.
And I think we meet people in our life that we're just so well-connected with. It could be a friend or a partner or a cousin. With me, it was my father. And I miss him a lot and I just wanted to make sure that I could communicate how much I miss him to everyone else.
Menendez: It was very clear to me reading that dedication. So thank you for helping us remember him. Cynthia, thank you so much.
Pelayo: Thank you so much.
Menendez: Thanks for listening. Latina to Latina is executive produced and owned by Juleyka Lantigua and me, Alicia Menendez. Virginia Lora is our producer, Kojin Tashiro is our lead producer, Tren Lightburn mixed this episode. We love hearing from you. Email us at ola@latinatolatina.com, slide into our DMs on Instagram or on Threads and TikTok @latinatolatina.
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CITATION:
Menendez, Alicia, host. “Why Cynthia Pelayo Refuses to Commit to One Genre.”
Latina to Latina,
LWC Studios, March 18, 2024. LatinaToLatina.com.