Song of the Water Saints by Nelly Rosario

In March, One Book One Bronx will start on Song of the Water Saints by Nelly Rosario. Dates: Mar 24, 31, Apr 7, 14, 21, 2020. In April 2002, Angeli Rasbury interviewed Rosario for Mosaic Literary Magazine.

Angeli Rasbury: Why did you choose to set your first novel in New York and the Dominican Republic?
Nelly Rosario: For me, part of writing is examining some parts of experiences and what you know and take a look at this. I did a lot of this. I am very close to my past, my family, close to history, so it only made sense for me to choose those two places. That’s the combination I was dealing with at the time. I am in the post-college mode when you are looking at yourself and your background. That’s where I was at the time I wrote the book. It’s personal in that sense. It definitely has to do with all the things that form me and inform me.

I used to work at the World Trade Center. One day I went to the [bookstore] and I found this book called 1,000 Nudes. I had bought the book. It was thick. It was so interesting to me. It had these Victorian nudes. I came out and saw this Japanese couple taking their wedding photographs in the area where the palm trees were. It started getting me thinking about the story. What if I told the story of this grandmother and a photograph? It just started snowballing. I looked through the book and saw a lot of pictures of women at the turn of the century. Nudes. I started asking questions. Who was the photographer? How did they pose? What got them to pose with all the social mores? It completely fascinated me. I said this is what I am going to write. This is going to be her grandmother and I kept going and going. Before I knew it, this tale started unraveling. I started discarding a lot of the old stories. It was important in the beginning to start spinning and thinking of a lot of different stories even though I didn’t use any of them.

Complete interview: https://mosaicmagazine.org/nelly-rosario-interview