She then landed a staff writing job with the Boston Globe, where her innate sense of justice found an outlet both in the stories she filed, and in calling attention to what she felt was the paper's biased coverage of news events involving minorities. "Why am I identified as part of a Latino movement and not by my mother's Irish background?" Her Cuban-born father was a sociologist who taught at various universities, and the family moved around often during her childhood before her parents' divorce.Īfter attempting to earn a living as a musician in New York City for a time, Valdes-Rodriguez enrolled in the graduate journalism program at Columbia University, finishing in 1994. "There's a part of me that wants to vomit to be called a Latina writer," she told Chicago Tribune writer Patrick T. She sometimes points out in interviews that she was only half-Hispanic, and did not become fluent in Spanish until she took it up in her twenties.
Born in 1969 in Albuquerque, New Mexico, she was a talented tenor saxophonist in her teens, and graduated from Boston's prestigious Berklee College of Music. Valdes-Rodriguez's career trajectory from journalist to author was not her first foray into the creative professions.
"So much of what's written in English about Latinas is about us being downtrodden and struggling. "This is the book I wanted to read but couldn't find," Valdes-Rodriguez told Rocky Mountain News writer Erika Gonzalez.
ALISA VALDES RODRIGUES CRACK
The tale of six college-educated Latina women, and their career and romantic travails, prompted book-world talk that an author had finally managed to crack the popular-fiction market for Hispanic-American readers, and she was hailed as the next Terry McMillan, the best-selling writer of Waiting to Exhale. SidelightsĪlisa Valdes-Rodriguez's debut novel, The Dirty Girls Social Club, was heralded as a publishing-industry breakthrough when it appeared in 2003. Film rights to The Dirty Girls Social Club were optioned by Jennifer Lopez and Columbia Pictures. 1994-98 reporter, Los Angeles Times, Los Angeles, CA, 1998-2001 features editor, Albuquerque Tribune, Albuquerque, NM, 2002. Martin's Press, 175 Fifth Ave., New York, NY 10010. Education: Graduated from the Berklee College of Music, c. Valdes (a sociologist) and Maxine Conant (a poet) married Patrick Rodriguez (a writer), 1999 children: Alexander. Born in 1969, in Albuquerque, NM daughter of Nelson P.
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