The White Hot - by Quiara Alegria Hudes (Hardcover)

Book Synopsis

The story of a runaway mother's ten days of freedom--and the pain, desire, longing, and wonder we find on the messy road to enlightenment--from Pulitzer Prize winner Quiara Alegría Hudes.

April is a young mother raising her daughter in an intergenerational house of unspoken secrets and loud arguments. Her only refuge is to hide away in a locked bathroom, her ears plugged into an ambient soundscape, and a mantra on her lips: dead inside. That is, until one day, as she finds herself spiraling toward the volcanic rage she calls the white hot, a voice inside her tells her to just . . . walk away. She wanders to a bus station and asks for a ticket to the furthest destination; she tells the clerk to make it one-way. That ticket takes her from her Philly home to the threshold of a wilderness and the beginning of a nameless quest--an accidental journey that shakes her awake, almost kills her, and brings her to the brink of an impossible choice.

The White Hot takes the form of a letter from mother to daughter about a moment of abandonment that would stretch from ten days to ten years--an explanation, but not an apology. Hudes narrates April's story--spiritual and sexy, fierce and funny--with delicate lyricism and tough love. Just as April finds in her painful and absurd sojourn the key to freeing herself and her family from a cage of generational trauma, so Hudes turns April's stumbling pursuit of herself into an unforgettable short epic of self-discovery.

Review Quotes

"In The White Hot, Quiara Alegría Hudes has written the brown Latina modern-day Siddhartha that Hermann Hesse never saw coming. Here is a necessary takedown of the patriarchy--a book written for everyone, but especially for those of us whose moms fled because escaping was the only option. I wish this masterpiece had existed for teenage me. Gracias, Hudes, for gifting us April Soto, a force of a voice that will stay with me forever."--Javier Zamora, author of Solito

"April Soto has fled her life but has left us The White Hot--at once a reclaiming, a credo, and a heartrending letter to a beloved daughter from an unforgettable mother. In wise, searing prose, Quiara Alegría Hudes fills in a daughter's lost history while treating us to a stunning debut about the passions that whisper: to honor what you love, leave. The White Hot articulates our beautiful, unspeakable wildernesses. . . . Dignified, sexy, and true, with lines ('A mother is a life sentence'; 'How could love look like leaving?') burned indelibly into my heart."--Marie-Helene Bertino, author of Beautyland

"I read The White Hot in one sitting. Ruthless, visceral, immersive, uncompromising, and relentless, this is one of the most heartwrenching literary rides you will ever take in your life, the kind of book you will immediately want to buy for all the mothers and daughters in your life. It's an extraordinary debut!"--Angie Cruz, author of Dominicana

"Bold and utterly original, The White Hot is a literary family thriller that reckons with the price we--and those we leave behind--must pay for our freedom. It is primordial scream meets brilliant argument, and it will forever change what you think is possible for art to achieve."--Jennifer Croft, author of The Extinction of Irena Rey

About the Author

Quiara Alegría Hudes is the Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright of Water by the Spoonful and the musical In the Heights, which won the Tony Award for Best Musical, and which she adapted for the screen. Her memoir, My Broken Language, was longlisted for the Andrew Carnegie Medal. Her essays have appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Cut, The Nation, and American Theater Magazine. She is co-founder with her cousin Sean of the prison writing program Emancipated Stories.