How The Moon Is Backwards Began
I first met my in-laws in 1989 when my son Jackson was born. Judite and João traveled to Austin, Texas from Brasília, and it was their first time abroad. They didn’t speak any English and spent a nightmarish twelve hours in the Miami airport due to a flight cancellation. Unable to communicate with anyone, Judite watched a woman using a pay telephone to call long distance and figured out how to call us to let us know what was happening.
The usual shtick about a mother-in-law is what a nightmare they are—but I adored Judite from the first moment we met. She and my father-in-law put me on a pedestal, served my every whim and fed me fabulous meals. A nursing mom needs to be pampered and provided an excellent diet. No one can be allowed to upset the mother as this has a negative effect on milk supply. Like so much wisdom derided as “folk,” this is absolutely correct. I spent my days napping and nursing, and Judite calmed the baby when he became fussy. My husband Jasiel is the oldest of ten children and had vast experience changing diapers. I thought I was living in the lap of luxury, but Judite saw it differently. “Justine turned the kitchen over to me completely.” I had done her a favor, in her view.
Judite is a tough, sweet, resourceful woman, a brilliant cook and accomplished seamstress, and she had a lot of stories to tell about growing up in the drought-stricken Northeast of Brazil and moving with her husband to help build Brasília in 1958. Her ten children had heard these stories so many times they were old hat, but to me they were enchanting. As a qualitative researcher in my day job, I saw everything through an anthropologic lens. I recorded her words in writing and asked her a lot of questions to get further details.
Judite was dyslexic but never realized it until I explained it to her. She had problems learning to read as a child, and she told me “The letters danced on the page” and “it was like the letters were moving under water.” She struggled mightily but learned to read and write. As a young woman she met João at church and they married. There wasn’t much work in the Northeast state of Paraíba, so João accepted a contract to help build the new capital Brasília as an ironworker. At first Judite stayed in Paraíba with a toddler and a newborn, but she then did the unthinkable and flew to Brasília with the kids to be with João.
Intelligent, hardworking, and driven to succeed, Judite first found work washing clothes for the vice president’s wife. She and her family were living in a tent encampment, so she did the laundry in a nearby creek. As the city began to take shape, she began work ironing uniforms for the military, then became a salad chef in the generals’ dining room. She is apolitical and deeply religious, and never wavered from her devotion to Jesus and the Assembly of God. She has a quick wit and despite the challenges of aging and memory difficulties she can still land a funny zinger with impeccable comic timing.
I began to think about weaving Judite’s stories into a novel twenty years ago. But I had never written fiction and I had no idea where to start, so it remained a vague thought in the back of my mind. Then Jasiel and I visited Brazil from our home in London during the 2018 presidential campaign, amid the shocking ascendancy of far-right candidate Jair Bolsonaro, a former Army captain who idolizes the military and waxes nostalgic about the days of the dictatorship. I asked a friend of many years what they thought of Bolsonaro and told them I was concerned about possible moves toward military rule and a new dictatorship. They looked at me blankly and said, “there was never a dictatorship in Brazil.” I was shocked and pissed off and I said, that’s it. I’m going to write that novel and it’s going to be about the dictatorship. And I enrolled in a novel writing course at City, University of London.