mini-interview with Nilsa Ada Rivera
It's Mommy's El Camino! Thanks for riding along.
In 2021, I met Nilsa Ada Rivera via FaceTime. We had both just signed contracts through the Periplus Collective. As a mentor, over the course of the year, I had the pleasure and the privilege of talking with Nilsa as she worked on a book-length project.
Nilsa Ada Rivera writes stories about housing insecurity and other intersecting topics. Her work appears or is forthcoming in the Tahoma Review, Latine Literature, The Rumpus, Hippocampus Magazine, and elsewhere. Her essay published in Home in Florida: Latinx Writers and The Literature of Uprootedness was nominated for the 2022 Pushcart Prize. She received her MFA in Writing from the Vermont College of Fine Arts. She may be found online on IG and FB @nilsawrites.
As is my mini-interview practice, I asked Nilsa to respond to three to five questions from a total of eight offered.
Take us on a walk through a place that gives you life.
My ears popped and I knew I was home. My husband Roberto, my son Gio, and I were in Barrio Quemado, San Lorenzo, my grandmother’s hometown. We stayed in Cerro Gordo, another barrio in San Lorenzo for my 47th birthday. I was partially raised there but moved to Miami when I was fifteen, ever since missing the only place I could romanticize as home. A recent visit in 2021 left me wanting more. Now I visited in March 2024.
We rented an Airbnb house at the top of a peak with an elevation of 2,723 feet, no Mount Everest but way higher than flat Florida. The oxygen was so fresh and green that it infused my overworked lungs with strength. I’ve lived in the city for most of my life: Miami, Tampa, Orlando but always the city. The aggressive traffic, mean people with no time to talk, and the hustle and bustle burned me out and when I was offered a remote job in pre-pandemic 2019, I saw it as a blessing. Working from home for the last five years has given me too much time to contemplate my life purpose and how I’m spending my time on earth. I think that’s what the pandemic did for many of us.
Days before we arrived in Puerto Rico, as Roberto and I decided on our itinerary, we discovered that our families lived less than hour away from each other in the southeast part of Puerto Rico. Both our families lived in rural PR where electricity didn’t arrive till the 40’s. This discovery makes us laugh and hug because we’ve been together for sixteen years. Our families have been in the U.S since the 60s. They even arrived in different states, mine left for NY and his for Boston and somehow, we found each other as adults in Miami. And so, our desire to reconnect with our roots deepened, not only tugging at my heart but now holding my husband captive too and as such I’m relieved to not choose tourist attractions. I knew I wanted to journey into the country, to travel the roads my grandmother walked and the rivers she and I visited as children. But I had been trying to adapt the trip to my husband and son so that my idea of a good birthday party didn’t bore them too much.
Still on my birthday which fell on a Monday, we visited El Yunque, PR’s rain forest assuming that Mondays would be a slow day for tourists. It was crowded and we had to wait over two hours to get in. My son Gio and I waited for our turn in an informal line of people to walk up the stairs to a pool Spaniards built for their leisure. Gio asked me if I wanted to take a picture. When I said, “No” and my son is confused. I don’t want a picture; I want a minute to reflect on how my ancestors walked around these dense parts Pre-Columbus. I want a rock to take with me, and a leaf to record how my homeland smells. Has anyone invented a device to record smell yet? I ask him and I swear my twenty-one-year-old son thinks I’ve lost it.
After a few minutes we realize we can’t deal with all the tourists and my husband apologizes. “What do you want to do? It’s your birthday.”
Take me to the river I used to go to as a little girl. And we drive back an hour to San Lorenzo. On both sides of the slope as my husband drove the curvy narrow road, trees reign like lost kings and queens. Supreme and wild leaves swaying in the salty air. Far but within view, the ocean lay solemn on the right as we drove up the halda. I couldn’t find the definition for halda in the dictionary for what I think it’s a peak or slope, but somehow not knowing the word in English makes it more revered to me. Both of our towns are mountainous, green, ingrained with spirituality, and good humble people who will stop to talk to you, feed you, give you a beer or shot of Palo Viejo, and give you directions to wherever it is you want to go.
When we finally reached the river, it was not as I remember it. As a child, my friends and I had to move branches out of the way, hunch down, and step over rocks to reach the small stream of water, un charco instead of a real river. The puddle to me was a river. Now there’s a house at the end of it. There’s a small concrete bridge, but as soon as I get there, I take off my shoes, get out of the car, and dip into it. The water barely reaches my ankle. Roberto and I spend almost an hour collecting rocks while our son sleeps in the car. And that hour makes my birthday the best day in the last thirty-two years of my life.
What project(s) are you working on right now that you're most excited about?
When I first started writing, I wrote fiction. Stories of crime and fantasy. Stories of escapes. For the last eight years, I’ve been writing essays and memoir pieces, always with the knowledge and hope that I will return to fiction one day.
I have two nonfiction books in the works. One is about the insane state of housing in Florida and the other a memoir about my time as a teenage homeless mom who used her Santeria to give her strength. But every weekend, I write a few paragraphs for the story about Oya. Oya is the African orisha of storms and lighting, of transformation and destruction. I am a daughter of the sea. Without the ocean, I cease to exist just as I cease to exist without my spirituality. This story about the ocean reclaiming Florida and Oya yielding her power to take the land that we have taking care of is my reward. As I write the books, being able to take a couple hours a weekend to write this story feels like eating a piece of chocolate while on a diet. It’s more than a cheat day. I write it to remember that we eat to live and write to breathe.
What's a type of art-making that you haven't yet done that you'd like to do?
My art and hobbies reflect my culture, my wishes, and my journey to reclaim what has been stolen and washed away. I’ve been dabbling in wood carving and into clay work. One day, I want to create pottery pieces or artesania but I don’t really know how. I’ve been working myself up. I’ve started with air clay and have realized; I have a lot to learn. The first pieces have cracked and come apart but I plan to continue. I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to make pottery or create a wood piece that can be called art. But maybe it isn’t about creating art for others, maybe it is about mere creation and play. For now, these attempts at working myself up to creating a doll out of wood or clay are providing me with a route to a new me, one that was always meant to be. These attempts are taking me closer to a new Nilsa, one that is Puertoriqueña and American, creative and connected to nature, and artsy without thriving for perfection.
