Last night I was cruising for some Ari and Dante stuff and I read a bunch of Benjamin Alire Saenz interviews and here are some gems about them/the book. I suggest checking out all these interviews because he’s a sweetheart and very inspiring.
- “So I thought I wanted to write a gay-themed book, I thought that I wanted to write a book about a young boy who really didn’t know that he was gay. I mean Ari really doesn’t know it. That’s the theme—what does he know? So I created this situation, and I thought about what names I would give them, and I love the name Dante and I teach the Inferno a lot. And “Ari” is not uncommon among Latinos, or at least Mexican Nationals. So I just started to write this story and I wanted it to be set not in the present time, because I think it’s easier now for boys to admit they’re gay. In the 1980s I don’t think it was so easy, and I didn’t want to have all this texting stuff in the book.” [x]
- “We often contribute to this stereotypical view ourselves when we begin (perhaps unconsciously) performing our own ethnicity. Tamales, tortillas, tacos, mariachis: the works. (I love all of those things, by the way.) That said, I absolutely refuse to do that. I don’t have to prove I’m Mexican American; I am Mexican American. There is as much diversity in our masculine identities as there is in the dominant culture at large. We are not all brown: Ari is dark; Dante is fair-skinned. All of us do not even have Spanish-language first names and surnames. We come from all social classes and we all have different relationships to the country we live in—and we have different relationships to México. Ari and Dante (like me) live in a cultural ecotone, an in-between liminal space between the competing cultures of the United States and México.” [x]
- “I wrote Ari and Dante not as gay boys—but as boys. Confused, tender, beautiful, flawed boys who are deeply loved by their parents.” [x]
- “The whole part about Ari’s accident has to do with manhood and boyhood and how we relate to nature and what is natural for these boys. Ari’s instincts are that he would do anything for Dante, but he doesn’t understand it on an intellectual level, only on an instinctive level.” [x]
- “Ari is lost and miserable. Dante, too is lost, but he isn’t miserable. He throws himself into the universe and feels a part of it. Ari does not. And yet no boy, can face the world alone. When Ari and Dante meet, the biggest secret of the universe becomes their friendship, their deep and profound love–though they do not understand just how deep and profound that love is. This a love a love story, but not just between two boys. It is a love between boys and their parents, and that love is the most profound love of all.” [x]
- “Some blogger said the ending was predictable. Maybe so. But, for me, it’s the journey that matters. We take a trip with two boys and, in the end, we feel we know them. We feel that they were real. And they are real. Boys fall in love with each other sometimes. Sometimes they don’t even know that’s what’s happening. That love can be painful. Every kind of love can be painful. But that doesn’t mean, the novel has to end in tragedy, does it? If I’d have written this as an adult novel, I would have given it a different ending. But I wrote this book for boys and their parents. I wanted my readers to understand that love between boys is fragile and tender and lovely–and difficult–but also possible.” [x]