The Legacy of La Doña Unspoken Heroism in the Family Tree

As I sit with the memories of my grandmother, Altagracia Ramos, they breathe life into La Doña—a character who captures the very essence of a matriarch's resilience and strength. In today's discussion, we'll uncover the transformative tales of La Doña and her counterparts, Isabella and Julitza, as they navigate the trials and triumphs from youth to the golden years. Their stories not only challenge societal norms about aging but celebrate the unwavering spirit of women who turn their scars into symbols of beauty and power. Prepare to be immersed in the rich narrative that awaits in my upcoming book, "Under the Flamboyant Tree," as we honor the silent battles and unspoken victories carved into the lives of these indomitable characters.

The whispers of the past echo through generations, revealing the silent redemption of the women in my family—a theme deeply embedded within the arcs of La Doña, Isabella, and Julitza. Today, we give voice to the unspoken struggles that shape their existence in oppressive environments and the strength they conjure to emerge transformed. In sharing these sagas of serenity amid chaos, we carefully tread the line between confronting difficult subjects and uplifting the tales of survival. As we venture closer to the release of the series, I invite you to embrace their journeys of love, survivorship, and protection that reflect the real and raw experiences of so many.

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Oh we could, we could fly. Welcome to this new season of the have a cup of johanni podcast. So I want to title this new season that I'm embarking on with I'm growing, so this is going to be the season of growth and that's what I'm going to share with you throughout the season. So I thank you for coming over here and sitting with me and I hope you enjoy. Hello everyone, welcome to the second episode of May. I just woke up and I am motivated to record this today, because if I don't do it today, I'm just not going to do it.

Speaker 1: 0:42

So last episode we talked about the main character for Under the Flamboyant Tree, which is Isabella Prescott. But she really was born Bianca in the Dominican Republic and she changed her name and it's a whole metamorphosis, kind of like transformation story arc that she has going on. And if you are interested in understanding that character first, because that will be the first book that I publish then go ahead and listen to that episode first and then come back over here. The second character that I'm going to talk about is La Doña, and we'll just call her La Doña for now. She is the crone in the story. So, as you may have heard from the previous episode. You know that I have these very strong characters, three women, that just couldn't be contained in one manuscript and therefore just made it almost impossible for me to write those first two attempts that I did at writing a story that combined them. And after trying so hard on that second attempt, I just let it go and went ahead and then just gave the pages to Isabella Prescott and as I was typing, drafting that manuscript, that was solely on Isabella Prescott, then the other characters started kind of like to become their own people and then I started to see where their stories will converge on the page. So, like I said, today we will talk about La Doña. I'm not sure how long this episode is going to take. Folks. I always say it's going to be a quick one, but sometimes, when I say that it's almost like I'm jinxing myself, quick one, but sometimes, when I say that it's almost like I'm jinxing myself and it becomes like this, super long for me. Like 30 minutes is long, but let's see, let's see All right. So La Doña.

Speaker 1: 2:52

La Doña is heavily influenced by my grandmother, altagracia Ramos. She was the lady that raised me. I wrote about this as well as some of the blog posts. So if you want to go through his blog on haveacupofjoanniecom, go ahead and you will see. There's one that talks about my forever muse, which is solely on her and how she taught me to read, and there's another a throwback Thursday that talks about that post and expands a little bit more on my grandmother.

Speaker 1: 3:27

But I remember when I was younger and by that time I had already come to the United States and I was living with my biological mom at that time. And when I tell you the entire family loves my grandmother, I mean it's a fact that the entire family, the entire neighborhood, loved that woman. She was so respected, so loved, she embodied when you hear a matriarch, she embodied that. And I hate going back into another anecdote, but I said this to one of my coworkers. I was like Dominican women are strong and I say that because the example that I grew up around was this woman, this kind of like mountain of a woman, and not in stature per se, not in physical strength, but in spirit per se. Not in physical strength, but in spirit. She was a mountain of a woman in spirit, no-transcript, and she would be so selfless that those who weren't would just feel ashamed under her shade and this was the person that raised me. So La Doña is heavily influenced by her.

Speaker 1: 5:11

And going back to where I started, I remember seeing this picture. And going back to where I started, I remember seeing this picture. My mom showed it to me and she was like look, how beautiful grandmother used to be. And, mind you, I always had a lot of thoughts in my head as a young person, as a young person, as a child. Go check out Isla and Mrs Franchisee will ring and you will see like, yeah, that character has a lot of me in there too, and that I always had like these thoughts just swirling in my head. I think I was meant to be a writer, since I was very young, because these ideas, these thoughts, just percolated over and over and over.

Speaker 1: 5:54

So when my mom told me that I was, like the first thought and while I didn't say it out loud, but my first thought was like she has always been beautiful. I mean the liver spots, the freckles, the wrinkles, the bulges in her stomach as she gained weight, the widening of her hips as she gained weight and had like eight babies, the slow gait, the slightly hunched walk as the weight of the world got heavier and heavier on her. All of that, to me, was beautiful. It just showed how passage of time had decorated her body. So I didn't agree with my mom as, like, look at her, she used to be so beautiful. She was so beautiful because to me this woman was always beautiful. I didn't get to see her in her younger years because I wasn't born yet born yet.

Speaker 1: 7:02

So in the book that La Bonia will have, I take liberties in explaining the younger years, because I'm making a lot of things up here. It's not autobiographical, I think that's how you say it, but it takes a lot of anecdotes from what I heard about my grandma. Because, mind you, my grandma was very quiet. She was always into her tasks, right. So she was this quiet person toiling away, getting things done while everybody may be gossiping around her, talking haciendo bochinche and doing all of this, you know, mama, that's what I called her. Mama would just be doing things that matter, doing things that push the family forward, and that's something that I've always respected about her and in a way I took that from her and made it mine, added it to my personality, because I'm like that, while everybody is distracted, caught up on gossip, on the shit going on, that. Really, when you look back at it later on in your life, you would notice that it really had nothing to do with you and you may be regretting just the fact that you wasted time focusing and looking at that.

Speaker 1: 8:24

But yeah, I saw that growing up. She would just take care of things. If she needed to say something, she will bring that person. She will call on this person. She was a queen, this woman. She will call on this person. She was a queen. This woman, like she will be, like, call such and such. I need to talk to them and they will call them. And it doesn't matter if these people were in Bonau, in Santiago, in El Siga, wherever they were in the Dominican Republic, right, they would take the guagua and come to San Isidro to talk to my mom, and it was like that. It was like a queen shit right there. Right, I need to talk to this person and they would just come. And she meant business. You know she was her first baby. I realized that she couldn't have been more than 16 years old and she had already been married and had her first child. I'm sorry I'm getting very emotional, but when I looked into her eyes then in that picture it was Sepia, black and white Her eyes. They looked so scared. She was holding this baby that was bigger than her entire torso. So she looked lost, like just caught in this moment, was bigger than her entire torso. She looked lost like just caught in this moment.

Speaker 1: 10:02

And my grandfather was the devil. The entire series is called the Devil. That Haunts Me and my grandfather. He just he left a trail of scars on little girls all throughout the island and when I look back and I think of that picture, I'm like I think it all started with my grandmother and both of them are dead right now. I mean, my grandmother died way earlier than my grandfather and I've always had this kind of hatred for him In a Latinx family. You know you can't have that, you can't do that for family, but I just always felt like he ruined my grandmother's life. He ruined her just as he ruined a lot of little girls as well and scarred them for the rest of their lives. It was, and it still is, like this open secret in my family and in the manuscript I call it loud whispers because it's so well known. Yet no one dares talk.

Speaker 1: 11:11

So when drafting the, the manuscripts, I decided I wasn't gonna change the name of that character in the book, just like in real life. He will be called Tobias and it won't change, and that will be Adonia's devil. Each woman has their own devil in the story that kind of scars them and turns them into something that they would have never have become if they wouldn't have come across that person in their lives. So all of them have kind of like this transformative arc that turns into a redemption arc. Because I just I feel like at one point when you have been dancing with the devil for so long, it stains you and in a way you have to atone for that stain, even though it wasn't you that did those things, but you knew of those things. And because you, unlike the devil, have a conscience, it stains you and it stays with you.

Speaker 1: 12:17

So maybe this will be a short episode after all, but La Doña, the character La Doña, you will see that you will see a young child getting married to this soldier. You will see her voice little by little being taken away from her until she can no longer talk. And then you will see in Under the Flamboyant Tree, how that the action that La Doña made buoyant tree, how that the action that La Doña made affected Isabela. And then Isabela learned from her mother and she repeated those actions as well, and it affected her daughter, julitza, who is the granddaughter of La Doña. And you will see this pervasive silence in the family while loud secrets are all around them. And that's what the series is about how each of those women overcame or did not overcome those things, how it affected them and how it affected those around them.

Speaker 1: 13:24

So in La Doña's story, her redemption arc will be much more dramatic than the one that Isabela will have, because La Doña, after a while, was just running on survival mode period and when you are kind of like subjugated in silence in your own home, like I said, you kind of turn into this different person. And that's what I did. I took what I knew of my grandmother and what I perceived from that photo that I saw long ago of her and asked myself what would have happened if this would have gone drastically worse. What would my grandmother would have done? How would she have reacted? How would her life had turned out? And I answered those questions through the character of La Doña, because in real life my grandmother was kind of saved in a way. I grace God, the universe, whatever it is that you believe in.

Speaker 1: 14:37

And she was saved in that my grandfather eventually cheated on her and married someone else, but my grandmother never divorced him because she was very Catholic and she felt that that was illegal, that he will always be her husband and in a way I resented her actions as well and while not knowing what a feminist was, I think I was a feminist as a young child. Oh goodness, I just thought she was so much better than the box that she put herself in my grandmother, and then I hated that she didn't see that. But she gave, gave, gave, gave, gave until she died. And she didn't, I don't know, got to be angry, got to throw some shit around something, feel something, but she was just so quiet, always toiling away at things, getting things done underneath the radar, calling people, talking to people, pushing the right connections to make things, to have things be completed, and things of that nature, and I just wish she would have fought back. But perhaps she did In her own way. Perhaps she did.

Speaker 1: 16:02

But going back to the character of La Doña, she didn't have that saving grace where Tobias, her devil in the book, went away. Instead, her devil stayed there. And, like I said, when you start dancing with the devil for too long, you start becoming stained with the same color in their cloth, and that's why the character of La Doña in that manuscript has such a dramatic arc, to the point where she does in fact break and she does in fact opens up to this rage, this anger, and you will need to read it to see how that how La Doña does brought in the devil to her home and it caused her a lot of grief. And as a kid I didn't have the maturity to understand the complexity of that and I was just very happy that at least grandpa was not there and that at least my grandma will have peace, because she was more peaceful without him in the house, even though, yes, she was doing everything on her own, but, honestly, from what I saw as a child when he was there, she was still doing things on her own anyways.

Speaker 1: 17:35

So I'm going to go ahead and wrap this up, people, before I become a mess of tears here, and then just let you know that if you're interested in reading the series, go ahead and subscribe. Go to my website, haveacouplejoanniecom, and subscribe. You can subscribe to the newsletter. You can subscribe to the blog post of the category the Devil that Haunts them, the Devil that Haunts Me or Under the Flamboyant Tree, so you can follow along as these three books are evolving from conception to drafts, to rewrites, to editing, all the way to publication.

Speaker 1: 18:21

I can't wait for y'all to read it. And just so you know, while all the books touch on sensitive matters, I do show grace to myself as I'm writing it, because some of it dig into my own trauma. I'm also showing grace to the reader, because these books will not be trauma porn. I don't want that for a reader, just like I wouldn't want that for myself as I'm writing it. Just know that it comes from a place of love, survivorship and protection.

Speaker 1: 18:55

Okay, but I really do wish that y'all will read it, review it, read the arcs when they come out, the advanced reader copies. Let me know what you like and what you didn't like. And, yes, I can't wait to share it with y'all. All right, hopefully I didn't leave you too sad. You're too sad, okay, but remember, all these women have some sort of redemption arc to them. Okay, that these characters, they overcome, just like my grandmother in real life. She overcame. All right, see you next Wednesday. Bye. Thank you so much for listening. I want to hear from you. Leave me a comment, do a rating if you can on the podcast, share it with somebody you love, but, most importantly, come back. See you next time. Bye.