What an exceptional premise for a story! In "Our Neighbor," the neighbors are watching a neighbor do a most unusual thing. What was your inspiration for this story?

I had just moved to my present apartment when I saw a neighbor sweeping down doorsteps on both sides of the street. I did not mind her until her behavior began to turn more and more unusual: aside from sweeping, she would blow leaves up and down the neighborhood, take out everyone’s trash (including my own), and make sure that no one’s neglected circulars or mail or packages got wet in the rain. A friend told me that no sane person does such things for free—which makes sense when you consider that in a capitalist world individualism always reigns supreme. This implication that a person may be a bit cuckoo for defying the dominant consciousness interested me. Regardless of her motivations, this neighbor was—and still is!—doing things for the common good. Maybe all of us should be more like her, I thought. Maybe all of us should be a little ‘wackier,’ if you will. This is not to say that sanity and madness are absolutely relative and beyond understanding, or only socially patterned; but I do think that social values change with history, and they certainly help define ‘normality.’

So, to answer your question more precisely, the inspiration for ‘Our Neighbor’ was both a real-life character and a concept.

The dialogue between the family watching the neighbor is quite visual. I felt like I was sitting in the room with them. How do you start a story? Any specific technique that prompts you like a conversation or an intriguing person?

I prefer a simple, understated beginning. Whatever can help me achieve this—an action, a thought, an exchange between or among characters—works for me so long as it allows me to introduce or move toward the ideas that I wish to explore. I guess I like to raise the stakes as a story progresses.

The ending turns the whole story around, doesn't it?

Maybe? I want readers to draw their own conclusions. There is a good deal of projection in the story. The observers project their notions of madness out upon their neighbor, for example. And since the story is told through their point of view, as opposed to their neighbor’s or a broad-omniscient narrator’s, it is difficult to ascertain what really happens at the end—other than the obvious, of course. After reading the story, some will view these observers as people who have misjudged a well-meaning person. Others will not be swayed by the final revelation and will continue to believe that the neighbor’s behavior is totally wacked-out, weird, ‘not normal.’ Others will not be sure of either option. What I ask is this: what in the text makes you feel the way you do, dear reader? And—especially if you find textual evidence lacking—to what extent do you think that you yourself are projecting onto the story/neighbor? Finally, if you are projecting ideas of normality or abnormality, where do you think that you picked those up?     

Good questions for the readers, Juan. What books are you reading at this time?

I’m reading Langston Hughes’s second autobiography, I Wonder As I Wander. I’m also re-reading Steve Yarbrough’s wonderful novel The Oxygen Man.

Who would you say are your greatest influences in writing?

One would not know it by reading ‘Our Neighbor,’ but Richard Wright has greatly influenced me as a writer. He can record the mental life of a character with unparalleled skill. In general, I try to emulate writers who query and even indict the present economic/social order, writers like John Dos Passos (think USA), John Steinbeck (think The Grapes of Wrath) and Jack London (think The Iron Heel). We definitely need more oppositional literature in these turbulent times. However, I believe I am like a sponge—always absorbing new styles and influences, consciously and unconsciously.

The reason why ‘Our Neighbor’ is not fashioned (stylistically or otherwise) after the works of any of these writers is simple: before this story, I’d been hard at work writing the tale of a poor immigrant housemaid in New York. I got tired of delving frequently into her thoughts and of crafting lengthy passages—this is a novella, by the way—and of the self-imposed moral pressure to render her difficult experiences as honestly as possible. After finding the necessary inspiration, I welcomed writing something much more relaxed (and relaxing). So the aesthetic minimalism of ‘Our Neighbor’ is not, as some have told me, evidence of Ernest Hemingway’s influence on my prose—it is my way of taking a breath of fresh air!

What are you working on at this time?

I’m writing the story of a gay man whose internalized homophobia is—predictably!—getting in the way of his relationship with another man. It is a critique, not of people who buy into homophobic ideas, but of the patriarchal social structure that makes those ideas available in the first place. This story may or may not be part of my first collection of short stories. We shall see.