Interview: Jacqueline Jorgensen Interview by Christopher Mahon ©200 3Christopher Mahon All Rights Reserved

Jacqueline Jorgensen has written the memoir, Beyond Mud and Vines, which was discussed in my September 2003 column. It’s the story of her escape from an abusive family in the jungles of Puerto Rico and her journey alone to a city on the other side of the island, where she established a new life. She was only twelve when she left her family. The book is sometimes advertised as a novel but I learned from her that, in fact, it is really a memoir that reads like a novel.

I wanted to start out the interview asking Jacqueline if some specific things in the "novel" were actually true. I was curious about her stories about how she once made her own tooth brush out of sugarcane fibers; how she returned to the jungle to save her siblings and mother and hid underneath her old house on her first night back; and a mysterious "coffee woman" who helped her on the way to her new city, where she looked for work in a factory where workers sewed gloves. And, of course, I learned that all of the stories were true.

I want to ask you if some of the things that you describe in the book are actually true

It’s all true.

Can I mention a few things?

Sure.

Is the story about the toothbrush true?

(Laughs). Yes, I think I described it pretty well.

Did you really hide under your family’s home on the night when you returned to rescue your brothers and sisters and Mom? And did your sister really slide food to you through the floor?

Yes.

That must be such an incredible memory.

You don’t forget things like that and I still cry a lot for my sister.

Was there really a mango tree?

(laughs) It’s still there.

Did you really learn how to make gloves in the way you described?

Oh, yes. Oh, yeah.

Did you really meet the coffee lady?

Isn’t that something? Marta, you mean. Everything is true. It’s like one of the things that you hear or read and see on TV about miracles. I intended to go back and I never did and so I never knew what happened [with Marta]. Oh, but that’s just a heartwarming chapter there.

How did you learn to write?

That’s what I find that should be amazing enough to share. That I think everybody should know. You have to read the second book Yearning to Be American. To find out how I learned. But I actually just learned a language on my own.

What do you mean?

That I could read and I could speak by hearing people and I wrote the words the way they sounded to me and I created my own story language. That nobody else could read. By the time I got to California and went and started school I still learned the English but my form of writing was the one language that I created, misspelling everything. So it was very difficult to get on track and say I have to learn the right English to be able to write and by that time I was already in my thirties so I was kind of a slow learner then. And so then I just started to take creative writing classes.

Did you have good teachers?

I didn’t have anybody personal. You just kind of sit in the class and learn. I felt that, yes, there were ... they knew more than I did. The mistake I made was that I really truly believed that if people were highly educated, if they were teachers they had to be highly educated, in any kind of profession, and if they were born and raised in America, everybody would know better than me and I would never be as good as they were.

You have a lot of natural gifts as a writer.

Thank you. I kind of found out later that no, that’s not necessarily so because I even know one school teacher that is a grammar teacher. I found out that she doesn’t know as much as I thought she did.

I bet.

I’m still learning.

I was struck by the way your book was both, you know, the plot of it moved along at a great pace but in the midst of all that you were very reflective about what was happening without stopping the story.

What I decided was just to tell myself the story at the computer and just write my thoughts. When I read now, when I go over the manuscript, there are many things that could change because I have learned so much more. Perhaps the writing will not be as effective because I wrote that book with the education of a ninth grader.

Do you have any favorite writers?

Yes, but I’m a very slow reader. I read a lot of books and I have favorite writers but I believe a person should write the way you think, the way you feel.

What are your feelings about the Spanish language? Do you want to write in the Spanish language?

I wish that I had learned it, that I know it better, because I need to translate a book. I think it’s a beautiful language and I never learned it correctly. Because when I came to the states in 1954 not only did I want to just convert into another person, but I came to Minnesota and there was no Spanish at all.

I would think that it’s such a beautiful language that it would be hard to leave it behind in any way.

It is. But when I left I was running away from all of my problems, and it really did not bother me to leave it.

Are you working on anything now?

I’m doing the third book and I’m also doing a short biography.

Does the third book have a title?

So far what I have is "Back to the Mud and Vines" because it’s about going back after my divorce and trying to find my family.

Do you have any advice to writers?

I have a lot of advice. For one thing I want the trashy language out. That’s one of the reasons why I’m having a difficult time finding someone who would do a movie of my book keeping the language clean. They want to use the F-word in every sentence. I think it’s low-class and people with a tiny brain and a small vocabulary have to use those ugly words. I mean, I wrote a book without using those words and I can speak for hours without using them. If people want to be respectable, they’re not earning it when they speak like that.

My advice is to clean up the language and if they go with a self-publisher, which is the only way you can get a book out there for sure, don’t give even one copy away until you recover your expenses.

How did you pick Sabina’s name [the name of her title character]?

Oh, I didn’t pick it. They gave me that name to make me feel bad trying to say "albina." I had a lot of names: white-eyed girl ... yellow head. When my godfather drowned, my godmother was the one who made me feel real good about the name and said it was pretty, and so I kind of kept it.

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Read Christopher Mahon's review of Jacqueline Jorgensen's memoir-as-novel, Beyond Mud and Vines