Michael Nava is the award-winning author of seven novelsfeaturing criminal defense lawyer Henry Rios. The Little Death(1986), the first book in the series, completed while Nava was in law school,was followed by Goldenboy (1988), How Town (1990), The Hidden Law(1992), The Death of Friends(1996), The Burning Plain(1997), and Rag and Bones (2001). He is also the co-author of the nonfictionbook, CreatedEqual: Why Gay Rights Matter to America (1994).
Nava is a six-time recipient of the Lambda Literary Award aswell as the Bill Whitehead Lifetime Achievement Award for Gay and Lesbianliterature. Nava lives in San Francisco,where he works as an appellate lawyer. He kindly agreed to sit down with La Bloga to chat about the reissue on February 19th of his Rios novels in e-book format by Open Road.
DANIEL OLIVAS: Howhas the publishing industry changed vis-Ã -vis gay protagonists since thepublication of the first Rios novel?
MICHAEL NAVA: It’sgone full circle. The first novel, The Little Death, was rejected by 13publishers before a small, gay press, Alyson Publications, took it on. Several of the rejection letters commendedthe work on its literary merit but said, in varying degrees of frankness, thata book with a homosexual protagonist was not saleable.
After the first two books, I was picked up by HarperCollinsand then Putnam during that brief period in the 1990s when mainstream publishersbelieved there was a vast gay readership waiting to be tapped. Of course, there was an audience but itneeded to be cultivated with skillful marketing, something that mainstreampublishing isn’t really geared up for. Sowhen a number of high profile gay books – not mine, by the way – failed todeliver, mainstream publishing basically stopped publishing LGBT books,particularly LGBT fiction, and that’s where things stand now.
I sense the same dynamic at work with Latino/a books andauthors. Particularly after the recentelection, Latino/as are the hot new thing and I’m sure there are people in NewYork publishing wondering how to exploit that market without understanding thatLatino/a readers, like LGBT readers, like readers of any traditionally underservedcommunity, have to be reached in specific ways and by particular avenues. The mentality of mainstream publishing seemsto be: if we build it, they will come. But that’s not how it works. Latino/a or LGBT readers have to be identified and reached and thestraight, white, overwhelming female middle-class readers who are the biggestconsumers of fiction also have to persuaded that, for example, a novel about agay, Mexican criminal defense lawyer might have some resonance for them if theywould give it a chance.
Fortunately for us writers and readers from “minority”communities, the New York gatekeepers have less of a literary stranglehold thanthey once did. There are small anduniversity presses that publish our fiction and the internet allows for a kindof self-publication and distribution that was quite impossible when my bookswere being published in the 1990s. That’s one reason I am so excited to have the Rios novels in e-bookformat. E-books are the future.
DO: What do youhope will come out of the e-book publication of the Rios series?
MN: My hope isthat they will now reach both a new generation of readers, particularly LGBTand Latino/a readers and that older readers who may have missed the books thefirst time around will have a second and less expensive chance to read them.
Although the last book of the series was published 13 yearsago, I know that they continue to have relevance to young and new readers. Rios is a strong, intelligent, self-aware andintrospective outsider who when, confronted with society’s condemnation,chooses to trust his deepest experience of himself as a decent and moral humanbeing. That still describes thesituation of many other “outsiders” whether they are LGBT or Latino/a ormembers of any other disenfranchised group. All of us have had our “coming out” experience where we elect to defythe stereotypes and biases of the mainstream culture and stand up for ourhumanity and our human rights.
Plus, to clamber off my soapbox for a second, I tell goodstories with complex and compelling characters and no shortage of snappydialogue! If I hadn’t hooked readers that way, the books would have long sincebeen out of circulation.
DO: Do you seeanother Rios book in the future?
MN: No. Henry and I have parted as friends, but wehave parted. For the last 15 years Ihave been working on a massive project that has turned into four novels set inMexico, on the border, and in Hollywood from 1895 to about 1929. I am still writing about outsiders and theplace they make and made for themselves in America. In these novels – I call the series The Children of Eve – I hope toillustrate, again through compelling narratives, how the United States’prosperity and self-perception has always been in large part the work of thevery groups and people who were the object of the various “isms” – e.g.,racism, sexism – that have permeated and continue to permeate the culture.
The first novel in the series, The City of Palaces, is completed and I am searching for apublisher (interested readers can download the first three chapters at mywebsite: http://www.michaelnavawriter.com). TheCity of Palaces tells the story of Mexico in the years just before and atthe beginning of the Mexican Revolution as seen through the eyes of anupper-class Mexico City family. I amhard on work on the second novel which includes silent films, Buffalo soldiers,the Mexican Revolution and the tragic history of the Yaquis among its themes. I figure I will be working on these books forthe next decade.
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