WOW Reads: S2, E4 - TRAP Reads Up In Flames by Hailey Alcaraz

Join the Worlds of Words Center Teen Reading Ambassadors (TRAP) as we discuss Up In Flames by Hailey Alcaraz.

We talk retellings in general and this one specifically as well as new-to-us information about the auction process in publishing in this episode of WOW Reads.

Books and other retellings mentioned in this episode:
Anna K by Jenny Lee
Because You Love to Hate Me edited by Amerie
Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
Iliad by Homer
Malice by Heather Walter
Sherlock (television series), BBC
Summer Lovin' from Grease (a queer remix like this one from One Voice Mixed Chorus)

Behind the scenes, we recommend a viewing of Gone with the Wind to groups reading this book and who have good snacks, a knack for finding similarities and 3 hours and 58 minutes to spare.

This podcast was recorded in the Digital Innovation and Learning Lab (DIALL) in the UArizona College of Education with assistance from the UA COE Tech Team.

Producer/Host: Rebecca Ballenger, Worlds of Words Center Associate Director
Audio Engineer: Liam Arias, Student Employee and Radio, TV, Film Major
Coordinator: Vianey Torres, Student Employee and Nursing Major

Reading Ambassador Advisers:
Samantha Montes, Graduate Assistant
Katherine Connover, Retired Educator

For more information on the WOW Teen Reading Ambassadors (TRAP), visit wowlit.org.

We Can Promote Global Literature Together!

The Worlds of Words Reading Ambassador program is completely free for participants who receive a book for themselves and a book to share with their school librarian, ELA/English teacher, or other school entity. If you would like to support this program, please make a gift on-line through the University of Arizona Foundation.

Thank you for listening and keep reading!

Transcript

Worlds Of Words Center of global literacies and literatures, is committed to creating an international network of people who share the vision of bringing books and children together, thereby opening windows on the world. We encourage thoughtful dialogue around global literature so that children can reflect on their own cultural experiences and connect to the experiences of children across the globe.

Today on the WOW Reads podcast, we're talking to our Teen Reading Ambassadors.

World of Words Center Teen Reading Ambassador Initiative offers Highschool Students college experience within the University of Arizona College of Education that focuses on books for teens. Ambassadors learn about young adult literature under the direction of faculty and staff with expertise in children's literature, education, library science, and marketing. We respectfully acknowledge the University of Arizona is on the land and territories of indigenous people.

Today, Arizona is home to 22 federally recognized tribes, with Tucson, being home to the O’Odham and the Yaqui. Committed to diversity and inclusion, the university strives to build sustainable relationships with sovereign native nations and indigenous communities through education offerings, partnerships and community service.

The author of the book that we're discussing today, Hailey Alcaraz, enjoys writing stories about multicultural Latinxs characters, girls who choose the difficult path when it comes to love, and the clumsy journey of finding yourself as a young adult. She's a second generation Mexican-American woman, a former middle school English teacher in South Phoenix and a lover of powerful female protagonists.

She lives in Scottsdale, Arizona, with her husband, daughters and German Shepherd, Lemon. This story Up in Flames is about a gorgeous, wealthy and entitled girl, Ruby, who has just one single worry in her life, scheming to get the boy next door to finally realize they're meant to be together. But when the California wildfires cause her privileged world to go up in flames, Ruby must struggle to find the grit and compassion to help her family and those less fortunate rise from the ashes.

Great. Thank you guys so much for all of that. Let's start with introductions. My name is Rebecca Ballenger. I'm associate director of Worlds of Words and the Teen Reading Ambassador program is very close to me. I'm so glad you're all here.

My name is Lily, and I have two dogs.

My name is Quinn, and I'm currently in an engineering class. My name is Rebecca, and I speak German with my three older sisters.

My name is Avery, and my favorite book genre is Horror.

And my name is Neha and I'm in London.

Okay, so another interesting thing about me is that I like unlikable characters and unexpected endings. We just spoke with Hailey upstairs. We got to meet the author in person and she talked a little bit about that. Would one of you like to start off our conversation around that?

So in the Up in Flames, she's specifically said that she women in books are supposed to be palatable. They're supposed to be likable and she said that she wanted to get the main character in flames, Ruby Ortega to be as unlikable as possible. Yet you still are rooting for her.

I wish people could see her face, as you said that, because there is a little bit of eye rolling. Is that something that you agree with that these characters have to be palatable to be likable a certain way?

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No, I think that they don't have to be palatable. I like characters that they are almost three dimensional. They don't stay on the page. They follow you around. I like characters that make you think about it, and I think that's part of the appeal about the unlikability of Ruby Ortega. I think that if characters had to be palatable, to be likeable

I feel as if most villains wouldn't be as liked as they currently are. Because, say, I'm trying to think of series most people would recognize with really liked villain. Let's take any Disney movie. Let's say most of the villain characters don't have any like secret motivations that lead them to what they're doing. They have pretty clear visions that aren't the most palatable.

Say they just want to become the prettiest you're ever, such as the evil Queen. But they're still really liked by people that watch Disney movies. So that's what I feel about it.

So yeah, I think what she said was, I misspoke, I think what she said was they have to be palatable to be rooted for. For for people to root for them they have to be a certain kind of way.

And I see a lot of people root for the villains, actually, especially Ursula.

Yeah. And I think that, like, it's even more common today for a character not necessarily to be as perfect, like going back to Disney. Some of the most recent movies, the villains are like, they have this other side that's being shown to them. They have motives that are more relatable and make them less villainous.

I think I think I've seen, particularly in the fantasy genre, and other young adult literature as well, morally gray characters coming about more especially, morally gray protagonists so that they are still written in a way that you do root for that character. So I think that you're more likely to root for a character if they’re palatable, but that isn't always the case, and it's becoming the case less often.

Okay, So let's talk about Ruby. Why would somebody not like Ruby Ortega?

Because of the lifestyle that she's currently living, the privileges that she's had, and she doesn't fully recognize those until later in the book. And so someone else might see her as this bratty, spoiled girl when there is a lot more to her than just that.

Think about let's think about how she relates to other people in this book. How did she relate to her roommate? How does she relate to Remi? How does she relate to her siblings? How does she relate to Frank? Frank is is Frank not the person who helps with the construction?

my gosh. I forgot about him.

Okay, Ruby.

Frank is a jerk.

Frank. Okay. I think that Ruby compares a lot to Remy. Her love interest, kind of, because they're both very, very complex and both have very strong opinions and that is, however, in different ways. Like they have strong opinions in different ways. Ruby tends to have strong opinions about things that she wants to go her way. And Remy really likes to help people.

But I think that throughout the book, you see Ruby become more like Remy in that way, that she wants to help others around her.

But Remy is a lot like Ruby too, and we like him.

Yeah, but he because he like, because he helps people. And and I think maybe if we saw it from Remi's point of view, which the author said that she she would like to do that, if she could, to write the story from Remi's point of view. Maybe we wouldn't like him as much. And I know that some people that read the book also didn't like him as much.

So I think.

Personally, I find Remy a little weird just because of the beginning of the story, because he was just full on stalking Ruby and I can't get over that. He was...she didn't give him his her address. She didn't give him her phone number. She didn't give him her social media. Yet he found all of them with no one telling him that.

And that just I can't get over that fact.

Does Ruby ever change? Does she ever become likable?

When she starts to care about others and try to help in the community towards the end of the book and become more like Remi in that perspective, where she understands that some people are like or another less fortunate place than her and she can do something to help. I think she becomes more likable then and she grows a bit more, even if her personality remains stubborn.

I feel like the thing that made Ruby really likable for me is how she scooped the bed and breakfast off the ground, even if she used some questionable ways to do it. I just really liked how it gave us an insight into her grit, her perseverance, how she's going to tackle a problem.

So you admired her after that, but did you like her?

Yes, I did.

I think maybe it's not so important to be likable. What if what if it wasn't important to be likable? Neha, why don't you let us...Why don't you answer that question?

If it wasn't important to be likeable? I think we look at more what the character does. I think in that sense as I was saying Ruby gets better towards the end when they start lending help, then I think that made her more admirable or more I'm trying to phrase it in a way that isn't using the word “like”.

Yeah, I don't think Ruby cares if we like her. She just wants to be effective. Yeah.

I don't think it's important for characters to be likable because take, for example, The Great Gatsby. It's a sorry, it's a really popular story, but none of the characters are meant to be likable. It's meant to just show that these people aren't good people and just tell the story. And I really like that.

So that reminds me of when Hailey told us that she was interested in The Iliad and the Trojan War because there were no clear winners. And that was part of a discussion also that we had about retellings. So this is a retelling of Gone with the Wind. And maybe before we talk about some of our favorite retellings, we can address some of some of that.

I was just thinking about that. I was thinking about how this story brings up a lot of issues with immigration and immigration laws and the I forgot how she phrased it. Something with homes or like the housing issue with immigrants and and then I also thought about the other tragedies in this book, like obviously the wildfires and her mother dying and how none of that really stands out because it is a retelling which I a I can appreciate a retelling, but this story, it just it feels like the only purpose was a retelling.

And when we spoke with her, she said that she wanted to bring more issues to light in this as well, which I think she definitely did with the immigration, but I think maybe not as much as she would have liked because I feel like that didn't stand out to me as much.

Did it get lost in the romance?

I think it totally did. Or just not even in the romance. Just in Ruby's self absorbed mind. Like I really liked her, actually. But I think that the story really gets lost by being inside her mind and just constantly talking with herself. It kind of dragged on a little bit.

Yes, the plot, the problems were mainly just plot points, things to move the story along. I agree with what you said and how it just sort of blended all together.

So in this story, we have Ruby Ortega, who would be the parallel for Scarlett O'Hara in Gone With the Wind. We have Remi Bustillo, who parallels with Rhett Butler. We have Ashton, who pairs with Ashley and Millie, who pairs with Melanie. And then the wildfires are the backdrop rather than the Civil War. So there's there's there's a lot of parallels in that.

And the people in our lit discussion who were older, we made all those connections and some people in this group that were younger were not as familiar with this story. Did hearing some of those parallels or how did hearing some of those parallels change your relationship to the book?

for one, it made actually the story make a little more sense to me just because, like some of the stuff I see definitely feels like it was definitely more meant for older, like times because like just the guys in the story, it just doesn't feel I don't know how to word it properly, but just like the characters, well, they do mostly feel modern.

There are definitely parts of them that I feel like had to stay old for it to make sense in the story, if, you know what I mean.

I kind of understood more so why the plot moved the way it did, because something that happened in Up In Flames didn't necessarily make sense. But hearing those parallels to Gone With the Wind, I it did start to like align with so they were trying to follow this plot point and that's why this ended up happening.

Neha?

And I agree I think that I started to read Gone with the Wind after we had that discussion. I think even just from the first couple of chapters, it did help me understand why certain things were happening in the book.

So let's talk about retellings that you guys are more familiar with. Let's start with you, Avery.

I really like Sherlock Holmes retellings, mainly because Sherlock Holmes in general is one of my favorite books series. I love Arthur and Arthur Conan Doyle, but a retelling I like is Sherlock. It's a modern retelling of Sherlock Holmes. It's a show by BBC, and I just really enjoy it. I haven't actually been able to watch the whole thing, seeing as I don't have access to BBC, but from what I've seen, it's good.

So there's I really like fairy tale retellings. And then there's a short story anthology collection that are a collection of retellings that took my breath away. It's the collection is called You Love to Hate Me and it's about like the Giant in Jack and the Beanstalk. Sherlock Holmes. She's Sherlock Holmes is a girl in this story and she's a high school student, and she's writing a letter to her friend on what happened and she's sorry.

And now she's going to go chase the villain and.

Retelling that Hayley mentioned that I'm curious about now is the antique, I think Neha you had asked about that. Is that on your reading list now?

Yes, I looked it up afterwards, and I found out that there was recently a sequel published as well, so I'll definitely be looking into that.

So it's an Anna Karenina retelling.

Yeah. And another one of my favorite retellings is, it’s now a duology called Malice and Misrule by Heater Walter. Going back fairy tales, it’s a beast and beauty retelling but with Maleficent as [unintelligible] true love.

And then I hadn't thought about it, but we also talked about retellings of songs like a queer retelling of Summer Loving from Greece. That sounded fascinating to me too, so I'm going to have to look that up. So that was the kind of research that Hailey was doing when she was writing this book. She says that she does a deep dive into a particular genre genre when she's getting ready to write.

She mentioned participating in NaNoWriMo and that she gets into the zone when she writes. What do you guys think about that kind of approach to writing?

Do feel like the music thing makes sense, but maybe not so much the genre thing, because I feel like there's a lot of things to be learned from every different genre that can help with writing. Well, I do feel if you're trying to write for one specific genre, you want to know how other books in that genre are written so that it feels more in line with that genre.

Yeah, I think that makes sense to like to advertise it, then you would want to make it more like what other people are used to. At least In the beginning of your writing career, which this is her first book, so that makes sense.

And our sound and our sound engineer, Liam, reminded us that a former teen reading ambassador, author Gabriela McCall. Gabriela Garcia McCall mentioned that her characters come to her in dreams and she has to jump up and write them. She she gets hit with that inspiration. Whereas Hailey is really writing in the zone and she's consulting her brother about intellectual property, and she's talking to her editor.

So still producing these books for us, but with different approaches. So she wrote her book and she sent it off to an agent. And the agent was able to find not one but two publishers. And then it went to auction. Can somebody please address the auction process?

Auction, So basically what she said was the editor contacted all of the publishing companies, got the information from them and what they were offering. And then set up a weeklong time frame for each of the publishing houses to cast their bids. So she said that she ended up taking the highest bid, but that's not always the case. For example, let's say one publishing house offers you $200,000 for a one book deal.

I'm ready for that book.

And then another one offers you 150,000. But it's a two book deal. So she said that she ended up with a two book deal and it was the highest bid.

So she's the first person to talk to us about that auction process. And it was all new information to us.

Yeah. And I wasn't sure when she saying that that was something that all authors end up going through or choosing or is it just something that could happen?

She said, it really depends on the author and also the popularity of the author, too.

So she said, most authors probably are lucky to get. Most new authors are probably lucky to get one company, one publishing company interested in them, but that there are some major, major authors who are like, I'm going to write a book and it's automatically going to go to auction. And not just what you publishing houses, but with a lot of publishing house.

Yeah, she didn't like specifically say that other people did it, but I feel like she implied that all authors did it when she said like, with any other author though, if they're big enough, they they won't have to wait for it to. They can just immediately go to auction.

Okay. So it's about time to wrap up. What are our last impressions? What are the last few things that we would like to say about Up In Flames by Hailey Alcaraz? We'll start with Neha.

And I think that it was really interesting to see a quote from before knowing it was a retelling to find out some things I don't know much about. So wildfires and issues surrounding immigration in America. And definitely after finding out it was a retelling. It's nice to see how classics can still be made relatable and relevant to audiences.

Speaking of relevance, I really like the relevance geographically, since it's based in the Southwest and we live in the Southwest and know some of these locations I really like.

I really sorry. Something that stood out to me was the relationship that Ruby had with two of her younger sisters, and I kind of could relate to some of her struggles being the oldest and not recognizing what's important to her younger sisters, or how much like the youngest sister specifically does for their family. This is like the first book that I haven't ever talked about.

My sisters, because I don't relate to this at all because I'm the youngest. So I think it was cool too, to read it from like the oldest sibling perspective and my sisters could probably relate to that because they're a lot older and definitely took on a lot of responsibility when I was born. But I do think that how Hailey Alcaraz brought in very current issues was really clever.

Ummm I definitely enjoyed the book. I don't really know what else to say about it.

Yeah, so I enjoyed Up In Flames and I definitely enjoyed talking to Hailey. She gave us some insights about writing that we didn't have before. And of course, as I mentioned, I did have a lot of fun reading this book as an older reader because it was like a scavenger hunt or something for me. And I do want everyone to know that if they want everyone in Tucson to know if they would like to meet Hailey Alcaraz she will, she is slated to be at the Tucson Festival of Books in 2024, in March, and we are going to be there in March, too, with our next author, which we will also podcast.

Lily, why don't you tell us who that's going to be on our next episode?

Our next book will be The Colliding Worlds of Mina Lee about a girl who gets stuck in a web comic she created by Ellen Oh. Join us next time.

I'm really looking forward to that. I would like to thank Liam, our podcast sound engineer, Vianey who keeps us on track with everything. Samantha, who is our lit discussant, Catherine Our volunteer, and The digital Innovation and Learning Lab, where we're currently recording and the COE tech team.