Author Spotlight - Joanna Rosado
The Mérida English Library community is fortunate to have many accomplished writers in our midst. This edition of Author Spotlight turns its attention to one of the expat community’s longest-tenured international residents, Joanna Van Der Gracht Rosado.
She moved to Mérida in 1976, and after a year living here, she married Jorge Rosado, the man she fell in love with on her first visit to the city. Together, they raised their family and simultaneously, founded a college – Tecnología Turistíca Total (TTT) – that offers four-year bachelor degrees in Tourism, Languages, Audio & Multimedia, and Digital Animation to students from all over south-eastern Mexico and beyond.
Joanna gained a following as the Mérida correspondent for the Mexico City News from 1981 - 1991. Readers enjoyed her often humorous take on life-in-the-tropics. She also wrote for travel guides, and in 2007, she self-published her first book, “Tomando Agua De Pozo”. She claims that while working on her manuscript, she woke up early each morning feeling so motivated to get everything down. She found it hard to believe there was a real thing called “writer’s block”. When Mérida’s international residents embraced her book, the author says she felt awed and grateful – and that she still feels just the same. Eventually, a commercial editor got ahold of a copy, and wanted to re-publish. She edited substantially and re-named the second version, “Magic Made in Mexico”. It begins with the author’s own story, before giving way to advice and anecdotes about adapting to Mexico – from A to Z. Many readers said they could relate to the awkward pratfalls Joanna experienced while learning to navigate a new language and culture. The book also includes a short general history of the country and the state of Yucatán. For entrepreneurs, there’s a short piece about how Joanna & Jorge started TTT from scratch.
Joanna moved to fiction in 2013 with, “The Woman Who Wanted the Moon”. The novel begins during Mexico’s 1968 student massacre. The absolutely authentic descriptions of the tragedy mirror what the country has yet to reconcile. But for Joanna, “The Woman Who Wanted the Moon” is not a dark tale, to her it a celebration of Latin passion, spirituality, resourcefulness, and family loyalty.
Most recently, Joanna has written about her family roots. In “Circles: A Family Memoir”, she recounts the life of Gisèle van Waterschoot van der Gracht, a Dutch artist who hid Jewish friends in her small apartment during the World War II occupation of Amsterdam. Serendipity brought Joanna’s father, John – a private in the Canadian liberation forces – to Gisele’s door, and after both realized they were first cousins, he helped her to acquire desperately-needed food and supplies. When he was deployed to Belgium, they established a written correspondence that lasted until his death in 1981. Gisele had a life of rich experiences and became well-known as a painter and stained-glass artist. But before dying at the age of 100, she claimed that the war years and Liberation were her most intensely lived.
Joanna has contributed to anthologies such as “Our Yucatan: Tales and Poems, Mostly True, But Laced With Artistic License “and “29: Short Stories and Memoirs by Emerging Writers”.
The author says that everyone has at least one book inside them, longing to come out. Several times a year, she leads workshops, and is a founding member of the 15-year-old Mérida Writers’ Group that meets every two weeks at MEL. Joanna blogs at http://changesinourlives.wordpress.com , and welcomes your queries at joannvdg@gmail.com .
“Magic Made in Mexico”, “The Woman Who Wanted the Moon”, and “Circles: A Family Memoir”, are available for sale at the Mérida English Library and are also part of the library’s permanent lending collection.
