Donna Miscolta’s Living Color: Angie Rubio Stories
In this official unveiling of the cover of her new book of fiction due from Jaded Ibis Press in fall 2020, Donna Miscolta interviews herself.
Me: First of all, what’s Living Color: Angie Rubio Stories about?
Also Me: A Mexican American girl learns life lessons in and out of the classroom about race and power as she progresses from kindergarten through high school against the events that play on the evening news – the Kennedy-Nixon election, the Cuban Missile crisis, JFK’s assassination, the Beatles invasion, and the Women’s Liberation Movement.
Me: What do you like best about the cover?
Also Me: I like how animated it looks – how the words and images vibrate on the page and the overall effect of forward and upward momentum. I love that paper airplane in the girl’s hand. It looks as if it was made from a sheet of homework or a page torn from a book. It suggests something both naughty and creative. It looks like she’s about to make it soar somewhere, that it’ll follow that other figure right off the page and into the future.
Me: What can you say about the colors?
Also Me: Blue is my favorite color. Orange and yellow are my least favorite. But together in this cover design, they make a story. If you didn’t already know, Google will tell you that blue is about imagination, inspiration, wisdom, and intelligence. Orange is enthusiasm, determination, strength, and endurance. Yellow is clarity, energy, and optimism. All the things that Angie is or becomes in the pages of the book. And of course, there’s the color brown. Like Angie. Like me.
Me: Who should read your book?
Also Me: Everyone who was ever a kid.
Me: Who do you think will read your book?
Also Me: Anyone who wants to laugh and feel empathy, who wants to recognize themselves or someone they know or would like to know in these pages, anyone who’s curious about what it’s like to be an ordinary brown girl even if they themselves were never an ordinary brown girl.
Me: Who should play Angie in the Netflix series should anyone be wise enough to see the potential to produce a totally engaging season or two of Angie growing up brown?
Also Me: Hey, producers and directors (hi, there, Eva Longoria!), here’s an opportunity to employ several young brown girls to play Angie at various ages. They’re out there. Just like brown writers are out there just waiting to be seen.
Me: Are you Angie Rubio?
Also Me: Maybe. But maybe so are you. By which I mean you out there reading this.
Me: Who, besides you, thinks people should read your book?
Also Me: For starters, there are these fine folks:
"We have all been Angie Rubio, voiceless, rejected, but always on the precipice of being more. Throughout this endearing collection, you will become more than a reader, you will become Angie's champion until the world she inhabits catches up. Miscolta writes with heart for all the brown girls who feel invisible. These stories say with love and sincerity: I see you." – Ivelisse Rodriguez, author of Love War Stories
"Donna Miscolta has written a captivating short story collection on identity, alienation, belonging and the meaning of friendship and family. Miscolta carefully and delicately layers the moments and memories that go into making a life and a person. Angie Rubio will carve a space in your heart and, long after you've turned the last page, you'll be rooting for her, for all the Angie Rubios out there." – Soniah Kamal, author of Unmarriageable
“Angie Rubio shows us how to survive as a smart girl of color in a world gone mad during the 1960s. You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you’ll be glad the selfie had not yet been invented.” – Kathleen Alcalá, author of Spirits of the Ordinary
