Ursula Villarreal-Moura’s ‘Like Happiness’ addresses relationship power dynamics : NPR

When Tatum Vega gets a call from a New York Times journalist who asks questions about the famous author Mr. Domínguez, it is as if a ghost has appeared in the comfortable house she shares with her partner Vera, in Chile.

Three years had passed since her last interaction with M., whom she had the privilege of knowing as Mateo, and she thought she had finally gotten rid of the remnants of their relationship. But when the journalist tells her that a young woman has accused M. of sexual assault, Tatum is both surprised and not. “You weren’t that person with me, not exactly,” she wrote to Mateo, “but the fingerprints of our stories are surprisingly similar.”

So begins Ursula Villarreal-Moura’s first novel, Like happiness, which movingly depicts its protagonist confronting the unbalanced, difficult and sometimes harmful friendship with Mateo which has been, at the same time, an essential and sometimes euphoric part of his life for many years.

In short chapters set in Tatum’s 2015 news story, she recounts the process of deciding whether to speak to the New York Times reporter investigating Mateo’s misdeeds, and what to disclose. However, most of the novel speaks directly to Mateo, as Tatum attempts to untangle the story of their decade-long unequal friendship, understand how his painful patterns began, and recognize his own role in their dynamic, which kept her trapped in their relationship. a life smaller than the one she wanted and deserved.

Raised by working-class parents in Texas, Tatum fell in love with books early on, finding them a way to “counter the loneliness and boredom of being an only child.” When she goes to Williams College, she feels like she doesn’t fit in, thinks she may be the only Latina on campus, and admits that at first she was “too proud to say that perhaps Massachusetts, the home of Plath and Sexton.” – it wasn’t for (her).” When, in her final year, she discovered Mr. Domínguez’s collection of short stories, Happiness, she is delighted and reads it again and again. Finally, she decides to write to M., in care of her publisher. Her letter reads in part: “Although I am Chicana, not Boricua like you or your characters, I identify with the Latino culture of your work and found your book affirming. It is not often that I see reflected in literature. , television or music… I find your book so indispensable. Your work legitimizes Latino culture and quietly celebrates it. I apologize for placing so much responsibility on your writing. My intention n “is not to burden you, but to thank you.”

Unexpectedly, Mateo responds, and soon he and Tatum are exchanging emails, phone calls, and the intimacy of their daily lives, the music they enjoy, the books they revere, and much more. Mateo even comes to stay with Tatum on Cape Cod when she gets a babysitting job there for the summer after graduation. Is this inappropriate? Tatum is around 22 at this point, clearly an adult; she knows her own mind and can certainly form a friendship with an older man if she wants. But Mateo is 30, a famous if symbolic author, with more money, power and status than his younger admirer.

Over the next decade, Tatum became increasingly connected to Mateo’s life. She travels with him for reading concerts around the country; she deals with his insecurities and soothes his ego; she harbors both romantic and platonic feelings for him, sometimes reciprocated but often not; and, perhaps most importantly, she allows her preoccupation with both her genius and her admitted brokenness to undermine her own desires, aspirations, and difficulties.

In a 2022 interview with the literary magazine Quarterly, Villarreal-Moura said: “Everyone assumes my fiction is autobiographical. It probably has to do with the fact that I’m a woman. People always assume that women write about their lives.” At the time, Like happiness had sold only recently, and all potential readers knew then that it was about a long relationship between a famous Puerto Rican writer and a young Mexican American student that begins when she writes him a fan letter. Villarreal-Moura shared that based on this simple premise, people began to wonder if the novel was autobiographical, to which she replied, “no. It’s a figment of my imagination.”

The author is right that it is too often assumed that women and/or queer writers write autobiographically. In the case of this particular novel, however, it is easy to understand why some contemporary readers would assume that certain foundations are grounded in reality; The story of someone like Mateo taking advantage of younger women is all too common, and various literary luminaries have been accused of abusive behavior over the past decade (and many more are spoken of in hushed tones and in private messages from the Whisper network).

That is to say, even though his novel is not based on anyone in particular, Villarreal-Moura has tapped into something as resonant as it is recognizable, and into Like happiness has given us a beautiful work of fiction that dwells in the gray areas between celebrity and fan, victim and aggressor, absolution and blame.

Ilana Masad is a fiction writer, book reviewer and author of the novel All my mother’s lovers.