All About Under The Flamboyant Tree: Embracing the Past to Shape the Future

What if facing painful truths could lead you to a deeper connection with your heritage? Join me, Johanny, as I share how writing my upcoming book, "Under the Flamboyant Tree," has been a journey of self-discovery and healing. In this heartfelt episode of "Have a Cup of Johanny," we explore themes of family secrets and cultural identity through the eyes of Bianca Ramirez, a character inspired by my Dominican roots. I open up about the emotional process of drafting and editing a novel that is as much a tribute to my homeland as it is a personal narrative of confronting my past.

Through the lens of Bianca's challenging homecoming to the Dominican Republic, I reflect on how putting myself in her shoes has mirrored my own experiences of facing uncomfortable truths. This season, themed around growth, encourages you to consider your own life-shaping stories and the impact of reconnecting with your heritage. I invite you to join our conversation, share your experiences, and navigate these challenging personal journeys together. Whether you're an avid storyteller, a reader, or someone seeking self-discovery, this episode holds a mirror to our shared quest for growth and transformation.

Chapters

• 0:00 Season of Growth
• 13:04 Facing Truths Through Personal Storytelling

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Oh, we could. We could fly. Welcome to this new season of the have a Cup of Johani 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.

Speaker 2: 0:26

Hello everyone and welcome to another episode of have a Cup of Joanny podcast. As you know, I am Joanny Ortega On the month of September. It's early morning, y'all. I need a little bit of water. It's early morning, y'all, I need a little bit of water For September.

Speaker 2: 0:57

I was trying to figure out what am I going to talk about in September. So many ideas, so many thoughts. But then I was like, since I'm getting closer to the publication of Under the Flamboyant Tree, let me talk about that, but not so much about the process, more about what this podcast is about, which is just learning and growth, and I wanted to share with you all those things that I learned from while writing and editing. For me, let me tell you all something before we start into this episode is that, for me, I can draft. I can draft very quickly. I get in the zone, probably don't come out of the zone and I go in and boom, I draft. I draft a book, I draft a short story, as long as I don't lose el hilo, lose the thread, and don't take long pauses on the drafting side of the house. I'm good, I'll keep going, and I draft it from beginning to end. It is the editing process to end. It is the editing process. Oh goodness, when I have to chop up things, add things to it, that's where it's like I can vomit the words all day long. But when it comes to looking back at what I put there, having to rehash all of that because for me I tap into experiences and memories that I've gone through, that I can vomit all of that and it's like this release, but then having to go back to it, it's a little bit more, self-traumatizing a little bit. So I have to kind of ease my way through the edits a lot when it comes to what I write, just because I want to make sure that it's not too hard on me, so that way I can have a good experience myself as I edit this book, if that makes sense. But it's early, early morning today. I don't know why I started this so early, but let's do it. Let's dive into under the flamboyant tree and this journey of self-discovery and healing and reconnecting with my roots. Are you ready to join me on this adventure? I'm not sure if I'm going to cry, I don't know yet, but are you ready? Of course? Of course you are, because why would you be here listening to my morning raspy voice Exactly, let's go.

Speaker 2: 3:52

So I've always been fascinated by stories that dig deep, that shape us, those family secrets. When you like, you go like that, and you know, I've always. I don't know if it's the telenovela side in me, that's what I'm going to blame it on the telenovelas that I grew up on. I love stories like that, I love them and I tend to write those kind of stories. So under the flamboyant tree is no different. It's. It's that story that people are going to go, like you know. But it's also a love letter to the Dominican Republic, like I told my therapist once. I was like I can't wait to go back. I can't wait to go back. I feel like now I'm in a good place where I can visit, where I can separate the bad things that happen with the beauty of the island, the nourishing of the soil and the beauty of the people that live there.

Speaker 2: 5:02

And it is. It's a place that is rich with history, with magic, and rooted in these traditions that we have, that have come from some amazing places and we have just molded all of them to make it our own. For me it's my motherland, so of course, for me it's this otherworldly place, like I said, I can't wait to go back and visit. But this novel was that it was inspired by those experiences of navigating the cultural identities, family ties and personal trauma. So, to tell you a little bit more about the character, the main character. So the story follows Bianca Ramirez, and Bianca if my family is listening to this, they know that that is the name of my bestie in the Dominican Republic when I was going to school. So of course you know as I search through my memory of what I'm going to name these characters, because when it comes to the book under the Devil that Haunts them series, I had the story before I had the main characters and I just don't know sometimes what comes first if it's the main character, the story or the first line, the opening line of the book or the opening scene. Sometimes I get one of those three things and that's what I start with. But when it comes to Under the Flamboyant Tree, I knew the story. I knew the story because I had talked about it with my therapist, had unearthed a little bit of my own reality in it, and then, as I usually do, I do the what if. Well, what if this would have gone this way? And through those what if? Moments and introspections that I have, then this turns into this fictional story with that nugget of truth in the mirror. In the middle in the mirror, I should say right, you see that Freudian slip, I think that's what it's called. Right, right. So the story follows Bianca, bianca Ramirez, and she is someone that returns to her roots, but not willingly, right, she returns because she suffered a devastating loss and she's like in this, what is the saying in this? An American saying between a rock and a hard place. So she saying between a rock and a hard place, so she finds herself between a rock and a hard place and she's like fudge it, I'm going to have to go back to the DR, but it's not where she sees herself. Right, and that's a little bit of me in there, because I was like that, like I told you, I was talking to my therapist about, like how I'm in a good place to go back.

Speaker 2: 8:08

But for the longest I was like no, I'm not ready, I haven't achieved this. I haven't achieved that. It was like I had it in my head that I needed to do X, y and Z to be deemed worthy to go back. Because, I don't know, it's like this thing that I had. I was going to say we, but I don't know everybody that immigrates from the Dominican Republic. I don't know if they have the same thing in their minds, that it's like we immigrate somewhere else, whether Europe, germany, the United States or whatnot. And then we have this pressure to become something better, something different. But what is better, right, and usually for us it equates to capitalism, to money, to wealth, to material things. And it's not until we achieve visible success that I felt like I couldn't go back, that I felt like I couldn't go back. What I didn't realize was that it wasn't the success that was holding me back, whether the success or the lack thereof. It was the trauma that I hadn't faced yet. So I was, in a sense, I was procrastinating on whether I should go back to visit or not, and I was vacilando con la idea, you know, kind of like going back and forth, being wishy-washy that's the actual terminology being wishy-washy with it about what I suffered there, the experiences that I had there and how it was that was really holding me back and I didn't feel like I was strong enough to go back to the place. That it will remind me of that.

Speaker 2: 9:58

I think a while back, while I was doing the MFA in creative writing through National University, that it was a short story from a Cuban I think it was at a Cuban author that one of my classes had us read. And I'm telling you, when it comes to the MFA in creative writing and National University, I'm sad that they stopped giving it, that they closed it down, but that is the best mandatory reading I ever had to do. I think I kept most of the books in the curriculum but they were excellent, excellent books. But it was this short story and I'm going to Google it so that way I can find it and put it on the show notes. It was this homecoming short story of sorts, and that's what my trauma, my procrastination, reminded me of. But at that time, when I was going through the MFA, I was also doing other things, going through the Sergeant Major Academy and everything. So I was in no position to unearth all those things at that time, so I was still living under the cover of I'm okay, everything is okay.

Speaker 2: 11:13

But in this short story it talks about a woman that gets into a cab because she has gone back to her home country from the United States or Europe, I'm not sure her home country from the United States or Europe, I'm not sure. And and then, through getting into this cab, she realizes that when she was younger, her mother used to put her in a cab because her mother was so busy, she was working, and she will send her on this cab so that way she can go, I believe, to her aunt's house or somebody's house, so that way they can watch her. And the thing is that what was happening and it's kind of like insinuated in the story was that the child was being abused on these rides back and forth in the cab. And it's not until she is an adult and she goes back and she gets into a cab that she starts having these kind of like mini flashbacks. But, kind of like me, I have gaps in my memory, big gaps in my memory in my childhood, and I laugh because I always say it's better than crime Would I if I go there? Would I see through those gaps, because that is also a fear, and what would I find? So this story under the flamboyant tree has that.

Speaker 2: 13:04

I make my main character, bianca Ramirez, go through that forcible homecoming, so that way she can face her fears and in a way, as with all of my books, I'm facing my own as well. So when I put myself in her shoes, I'm going through what it will be like to go back to that little house that is all burnt down now. What would it be like if I walked the streets? What would I remember? And that's what under the flamboyant tree is what Bianca gets to unearth when she goes back to the Dominican Republic those family secrets, those things that challenged her when she was very young, that turned her into someone else, someone that needed to protect herself, someone that thought she needed to protect her child in a certain way but ended up hurting her child even more. And those are hard things to face as a human being, and it's a hard thing to face for my character as well.

Speaker 2: 14:28

It's a tough story to edit because I go back through certain moments that mimic my own, that have echoes of my own life and it's hard. But I know in the other end I am healing. And that's what writing this novel has taught me about the importance of facing our truths, no matter how painful. Because I feel like and I don't know for you all, but I know for me like I couldn't have reached the other side of pain, which for me is healing, if I wouldn't have faced my truths. It reminds me every single day that I look at this fudging blue binder where I printed the entire manuscript and I'm doing hard edits. That that's what's on the other side of facing those painful moments it's healing. It just doesn't look like that at first. It looks very painful, it looks very messy.

Speaker 2: 15:36

But, just like Bianca, I had to learn to sit with my discomfort and let the story unfold, naturally, because remember, like I just said, like I had inklings of this way back when when I was a student in the Masters of Fine Arts program for creative writing, and just reading those stories, those short stories from other writers and things that kind of like tap into my pain a little bit, was like somebody knocking on that door, kind of like that echo, and I could see that something was there behind that door. But at that time I acknowledged it but turned away because I wasn't ready Yet. I had other things I was prioritizing. I know, right, I know, when I'm the first one to tell you prioritizing mental health and it wasn't until I started seeing a therapist and talking to a therapist and actually digging through my past and facing the past and then utilizing the talent that I have, which is writing, to do that. Then that's when I really started to understand that that knock was my past, kind of saying I'm here and I'm showing up in your present right now and if you don't do nothing about it, I'm going to show up in your future as well. That, right, there is what Bianca Ramirez has to face and under the flamboyant tree, will she open that door and face it? Let's be honest, right, that's really tough. You hear me talking about it. It's really tough and that's what she has to face. Is she going to fully open the door and face it or is she going to say, not, right now, I'm not ready, and potentially, have her past be involved in her present and her future? Sit with that one.

Speaker 2: 17:48

I want to hear more from you. I want to hear more from you what stories from your life have shaped you. What was that one thing that knocked on your door? You don't have to say it out loud, you can just think about it. How do you connect with your roots, your heritage, your past, your being? Share your thoughts if you want. I know these are very personal things to do, but if you want share your thoughts, send me an email I'm also on social media or you can put it in the comments if you don't mind, and let's start a conversation about those tough journeys that define us, envacitos as it is.

Speaker 2: 18:33

This concludes my episode for today. Thank you for joining me. I am thrilled to share more about Under the Flamboyant Tree, so expect more conversations about this book in the upcoming weeks of September and stay tuned. Next week, I think I'm gonna talk about what makes her journey so compelling and until then, remember to embrace your own story, no matter how complex it may be or how messy it may be. Take care and I'll see you next time. Bye, oh, we could. We could fly. Thank you next time, bye.

Speaker 1: 19:15

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.