The Chica Lit Club

By Michelle Herrera Mulligan -- Críticas, 9/1/2004

When St. Martin's executive editor Elizabeth Beier received a manuscript about six Latina friends of different racial and socioeconomic backgrounds from first-time author Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez, she knew she had a winner. "With some writers, you know right away they are literary 'it girls,'" says Beier. "She turned in an accomplished, assured draft with a strong voice." In fact, St. Martin's was so sure that The Dirty Girls Social Club (El club social de las chicas temerarias) was going to connect with a large American audience, they bet half a million dollars on her advance. Since 2003, St. Martin's has printed 160,000 copies in English hardcover, 150,000 in English paperback, and 32,000 in Spanish paperback. These are impressive numbers considering the initial print runs were 125,000 in English hardcover and 10,000 in Spanish paperback. St. Martin's hopes to repeat that success this September with Valdes-Rodriguez's new Playing with Boys (Jugando con muchachos).

In her witty, Sex in the City–like debut, Valdes-Rodriguez, a former staff writer at the Los Angeles Times and the Boston Globe, blended U.S. pop cultural references with the rhythm of a hip Latino lifestyle. Her descriptive writing style assures that any U.S. reader unfamiliar with the Latin world will not feel left out. At the same time, Valdes-Rodriguez's irreverent Latinas, who share intimate details about their sex lives and career struggles, speak to a largely untapped young market.

Valdes-Rodriguez, who was born in Albuquerque, NM, to a Cuban father and an Anglo mother and learned Spanish as an adult, set out to represent an English-speaking, affluent Latina in her fiction. "My books are for a mainstream American audience," Valdes-Rodriguez says. "I wanted people to understand the diversity of the modern Latina experience." Given this sentiment, it almost seemed contradictory when St. Martin's decided to translate the novel into Spanish, but the market responded.

Chicas temerarias was marketed to Spanish-language television, newspapers, and bookstores. The decision may have had more to do with basic publishing principles than reaching the Hispanic market. "When you have a strong book, there are only so many extra things you can do to exploit its potential," says Beier. "We did an audio version with Alisa narrating the book and decided a Spanish version could appeal to a smaller piece of the market."

But the Spanish market was bigger than the publisher thought. "Readers who loved the book sent it to their Spanish-speaking relatives," says Beier. With her newest novel, Playing with Boys (Jugando con muchachos), St. Martin's hopes to capitalize on its prior success. It is releasing 15,000–18,000 Spanish-language paperbacks this September, simultaneously with 160,000 in English hardcover.

In a similar format to Dirty Girls, Valdes-Rodriguez's new novel follows the adventures of three friends living in Los Angeles: a former telenovela star trying to break into Hollywood, a Texan music promoter adjusting to the big city, and a housewife turned screenwriter with a painful past in El Salvador. The book examines Latin American life more extensively than in Dirty Girls, describing the emerging rap music scene in Cuba and political strife in Central America. "I wanted to find a way to address serious historical issues through chick lit," says Valdes-Rodriguez.

Succeeding in the Spanish-language market can still be a tricky business. Though grateful for the translation, Valdes-Rodriguez admits being frustrated when Chicas temerarias came back riddled with grammatical errors due to a rushed production schedule. Even the title didn't work. Temerarias loosely translates to "daring girls." "Some bookstore buyers felt that the more accurate sucias ("dirty girls") might be offensive to some sectors of the Spanish-language audience," she says.

After conquering the United States, the book didn't sell to the mother country as easily. Regional differences came into play for some publishers who thought the "Latina" American story line wouldn't resonate with Spaniards. "There was a feeling that Spanish women might not identify with readers from another region," says Valdes-Rodriguez. Chicas temerarias was eventually sold to Planeta's literary imprint Seix Barral, which also published Sandra Cisneros's Caramelo, a best seller in Spain. For both books, Planeta re-translated the Latina writers using Castilian Spanish over the pan-regional mix of Spanish used in the States.

Despite potential cultural confusion, Valdes-Rodriguez thinks there aren't many differences between readers of Dirty Girls and Chicas temerarias: College-educated, Manolo Blahnik–worshiping Latinas live around the world. "One speaks Spanish and the other speaks English. They both tend to be young, educated professional women who love clothes, apple martinis, and sex," she says.

With Playing with Boys, St. Martin's seems determined to perfect the translation process. The publisher has hired award-winning sci-fi/erotica novelist Daína Chaviano (see Críticas, Jan./Feb. 2004) to translate. "We're thrilled with Daína's work," says Beier. "This time around, we're making sure we get it right."

Since she published Dirty Girls, Valdes-Rodriguez has been busy, promoting her books, recording her first album as a tenor saxophonist and vocalist, negotiating with Hollywood on film/television adaptations of her work, and raising a toddler son. Despite all this, in the next year, she'll be pitching Dirty Girls on Top, a sequel, and a fourth novel set in Miami. If the author's successful modern style continues to connect in Spanish, she may make chick lit en español an international phenomenon.