'The White Hot' asks: If men can go find themselves, why can't women?

"Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Quiara Alegria Hudes asks a provocative question in her debut novel: What if a woman undertook a spiritual quest in the same way that some literary men do? The White Hot follows April, a young mother from Philadelphia who buys a one-way bus ticket and leaves her 10-year-old daughter in an effort to find herself. Hudes says the novel was inspired by Siddhartha and other classic tales of men finding enlightenment."

"Hudes says the novel was inspired by Siddhartha and other classic tales of men finding enlightenment and by her own mother, who was never afforded the same freedom. "She had to, like, find God while she was doing the dishes," Hudes says of her mother. "I remember feeling kind of ... bitter about that, even in high school, feeling like a lady wouldn't get to do that. Just dudes get to go on the road, hit the road. Be the pilgrim, make their progress.""

"She says that as the daughter of a Puerto Rican mother and a white father, she identifies with the city's many different facets. "There's so many identities, and oftentimes they're directly at odds with each other," she says. "It was those friction points that made me feel kind of alive. And now I know as a writer, that's what I'm always digging into.""

The White Hot follows April, a young mother in Philadelphia who buys a one-way bus ticket and leaves her 10-year-old daughter to find herself. The novel reimagines male literary pilgrimage narratives by placing a woman at the center of a spiritual quest and contrasts societal expectations of motherhood and freedom. Inspiration includes Siddhartha and classic tales of men finding enlightenment, and an anecdote of a woman who had to find God while doing household chores underscores constrained female autonomy. Related works include the 2011 play Water by the Spoonful, the book and film adaptation of In the Heights, and the memoir My Broken Language. The narrative focuses on identity frictions arising from multiracial background and urban life.

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