Diana Rojas’ first book explores the “migrant existential identity crisis”
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When Diana Rojas is asked where she is from, she jokes that she is from Connecticut, New Jersey AND Costa Rica. Relocation across her childhood is only one aspect of the struggles she describes with identity in her debut book.
“Litany of Saints,” Rojas’ first work of fiction, is a triptych (a work of art composed of three pieces) exploring the intersection of self-identity and a slew of social ideas, from religion to politics. Imbuing her Costa Rican heritage into her piece, Rojas draws inspiration from her encounters and personal experiences with identity to craft a multifaceted look into the people of Costa Rica, the good and the bad.
Since 1996, she and her family have lived in D.C.’s Adams Morgan neighborhood, but she has moved around a lot as an adult. After college, Rojas worked as a daily news reporter, including time as a stringer with USA Today in Brazil. She says she freelanced after the birth of her three kids.
Her book “Litany of Saints” is a collection of three novellas. It offers three distinct stories about the immigrant experience and the struggles each character has grappling with their identities as a result, or as Rojas dubs it, “the migrant existential identity crisis.”
“I don’t want people to overlook the fact that the stories and what happens in these stories and the idea of reinventing yourself is not just the Costa Rican story,” says Rojas. “These are universal stories. These are about the human condition.”
In a conversation with Rojas, she discusses the steps she took to develop her book and her motivations in sharing her work despite how personal or jarring it may be for her. Rojas also provides a look into her writing process, the elements it takes to create a complex story, such as “Litany of Saints,” and the next step in her literary fiction journey.
Did your background in journalism aid in writing your first work?
When I was in high school, I wanted to be a journalist. In fact, I had really lofty goals. I was going to win a Pulitzer Prize. But then life happened, and I had a baby in my late 20s. I tried to keep up with journalism, but it was hard. You had to give your all to journalism. I was that person when the editor said there was a fire, I would be there. I was going to cover the news. But then [my] priorities shifted.
After I had my kids, I went into freelancing and did “less exciting” news. I wasn’t going to the fires because I wasn’t always available. Part of the reason I stuck with it is actually a theme I bring out in my story, this idea [of] “who are we supposed to be?”
As a teenager, I would make such a big deal about wanting to be a journalist, but then I realized, “Oh, I can’t balance this. I’m not that person.” I felt like I had dropped out. I felt like I owed it to the women before me, who had blazed that trail and made this possible. I felt like I owed them something and I had failed. I felt like I had to keep trying.
Then I had a midlife crisis, and the whole theme of my midlife crisis was “What do I want to be when I grow up?” I decided at the end of it, I could be anything I wanted to be. I have always been free. I had trapped myself in this perception that I needed to do this, so I did this hard pivot. I quit all my journalism commitments and said, “Let me try something new.” That new thing was fiction. Once I freed myself, the story started flowing.
Did you find skills you use as a journalist transferable to writing fiction?
For sure. In “Litany of Saints,” for example, the third story took a lot of research. I had to get a lot of background research done because [the story] is based on history. To do that, I spent a few months interviewing people. I did that with other stories, too. In the book, I interviewed family members about their immigration experience. I interviewed older women about their experience in a machista society. The interviewing is very important to me and is still the tool I use the most.
Why did you ultimately decide to portray three distinct, although similar, experiences, in the “Litany of Saints?”
The first story was [originally] a standalone, I had no intention [of writing more]. Honestly, I had no intention of getting published. This is my first endeavor. There was so much more I could have put in there because I only touched upon religion.
There’s so much more I could have included. There’s being a woman. There’s sexism coming from a sexist country. Then there’s politics. I mean, in D.C., politics is everything. That’s when I had this moment — what if I wrote a different story that focused on politics? What if I wrote a different story that focused on sexism? I started thinking of all these stories and how to put them together. So I would write the stories alone and then weave them together. If you read them carefully, you’ll find these themes that go through all the stories holding them together. The bigger story is the migrant existential identity crisis.
Did you draw from personal or real-life experiences to craft the main character and more religious elements of the first story?
This author named Carlos Fonseca said, “Life is, at the end of the day, the greatest fiction, a story we tell ourselves in order to keep going forward.” In all my fiction, there is an element of me.
I was raised Catholic. I went to an all-girls Catholic high school. My mother is still very Catholic. However, I have no religion, not to say I didn’t try. I tried really, really hard. I always say it just never stuck. But because I tried really hard, I paid a lot of attention to the details of the religion as practiced by my family. There was something comical about it to me, but there was also something soothing. Not to me, but I could see how it would soothe the person, and get them over that speed bump.
When I was creating the character of Ruth, I thought of the women in my family who I had heard of either from gossip or from someone telling a story. What must have that person been thinking at the moment? Why did they stick with the situation? Why did they do that? I thought of the Litany of Saints [Roman Catholic prayer that inspired Rojas’ book’s title] and how it had helped them through these particular situations like a superstition. They felt that if their life just happened to go well, they would tell everybody it was because Saint Whoever helped them. That was definitely based on the sort of experience I had growing up in my family. I still have that.
When you were writing, was your intention to try to spur conversations of identity or simply portray different experiences you or people you know have had?
Maybe subconsciously, I did. I should reiterate that I thought nobody was watching, so I could do whatever I wanted. I wrote fiction, but I didn’t think anybody aside from a few choice friends would read it. So while I can’t pretend that I was intentional about wanting to start the conversation, I was intentional about not censoring myself. There were scenes throughout all the stories where I found myself cringing and asking myself, “Should I say that? Can I say that?” And then I would remind myself that I was writing fiction. The quote doesn’t have to be exact. You can say whatever you want to say. That was pretty liberating as a journalist.
When readers pick up “Litany of Saints,” what is one of the most overlooked thematic elements they should pay attention to?
I use Costa Ricans because that’s where my family’s from, but I don’t want people to overlook the fact that the stories, the things that happen in them and the idea of reinventing yourself are not just part of the Costa Rican story.
These are universal stories about the human condition. I would love for somebody with no relationship to Costa Rica — somebody who maybe can’t even place it on the map — to read the book and be able to relate as a human being to the stories, the plights and the existential crises these characters have.
One of the most important thematic elements in “Litany of Saints” is the immigrant experience. What were the most important ways that you framed that experience?
Migration is so hard. I was born here and moved to Costa Rica as a teenager, so all I had was fun. But then I think about my parents and their parents who also came before them and the struggle of trying to be just a human and answering the question “Who am I?” It’s hard when you have a new label and have to reinvent yourself over and over and over again. I think that’s why I use migrants as my prompt, so to speak, for a book about existential identity crisis. I can’t imagine having to do that over and over.
Besides the immigrant experience, your book explores religion and politics. How much has living in D.C. affected the political discourse in the “Litany of Saints”?
The third story is about family relationships, but it’s also about politics. That was really fun because, first of all, it’s historical politics. What I wanted to highlight was the variation of this small chapter in Costa Rican history and every country that has their tiny chapters. This tiny chapter gives a view of so many different political opinions and outcomes that were happening [at the time]. A lot of people tend to view Latin America through the lens of the U.S. I don’t know if it’s important, but it was fun to highlight these different opinions.
Once again, you take away what [you want] from fiction when you’re reading it, so maybe the people that I want to have an “aha” moment will completely gloss over [it]. You don’t always know what your reader is going to take away from your stories.
You’ve written the “Litany of Saints.” What’s next?
In journalism, you write a story, your editor reads it and you get published shortly. The timeline is really tight. But not in book publishing. It is the slowest process on Earth. I already wrote another novel that’s in the editing process, [but it feels like I’m just] sitting there, losing my mind. I’m so impatient. I would take out my nervous energy by writing. I keep playing. I just play and write. I don’t know if [my stories] will get published. I’m just writing and writing, but I think I’ll keep on with this fiction. I have a lot of stories to tell.
“Litany of Saints” was published by Arte Público Press on April 30. Join Rojas for a book launch party on Thurs., May 23, at D.C.’s Lost City Books. RSVP here. Rojas will also read from her book at The Inner Loop’s 2024 Author’s Corner on June 18. For more updates on her work, visit her website.
This story has been lightly edited for clarity and concision.
An earlier version of this story reported that Rojas resides in the Mt. Pleasant neighborhood of D.C. when she actually lives in the city’s Adams Morgan neighborhood. The story has also been corrected to reflect that she was a stringer with USA Today in Brazil.
– Story by Avril Silva
– Copy edited by Crystal Lee and Michelle Benitez
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