Meet Suzette Partido of National City

Today we’d like to introduce you to Suzette Partido.

Alright, so thank you so much for sharing your story and insight with our readers. To kick things off, can you tell us a bit about how you got started?
There are no “overnight successes.” There are bits of good writing, great readers and kick-ass publishers. Things can snap into place through marvelous green lights of connectivity, but the production of writing a book goes on longer than you can stand unwelcome guests. Like any first time author, I pray for one endorsement to wave the fae wand, covering my sticky hand with a layer of glittered readership and ultimately a fancy, textured, golden sticker of “Winner-Winner-Chicken-Dinner Award”, or inclusion in the year’s “Top One Hundred Banned Books.”

I am thrilled to share with SDVoyager Magazine that my first book, a memoir titled Love Will Save Us, Right? is due in bookstores on October 28. I will be holding my first author’s appearance at Book Catapult in South Park on Saturday November 1. The book is published by City Lights, a bookstore and publishing powerhouse, and increasingly rare, un-chained independent book enterprise in America, known and respected for its commitment to innovative and progressive ideas, and its resistance to forces of conservatism and censorship.

Before writing Love Will Save Us, Right? for three decades, I worked in San Diego as a community developer and non-profit organizer. I served as an AIDS chaplain, street outreach worker, substance abuse counselor, reproductive health educator, volunteer coordinator, mental health activist, fundraiser and public speaker. For more than thirteen years I worked for a large urban church before managing an HHSA community liaison for children’s public behavioral health. Before retiring to provide better support for my autistic and proud son, I served as the director of education for a local affiliate of the National Alliance on Mental Illness.

Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
The book began when my family received a shut-off notice due to an unpaid water bill, the timing of which could not have been worse as I had just left a sixty-hour a week job to take over round-the-clock caregiving for my neurodivergent child.

After paying the water bill, I began to write about a life centered around mental health struggles, special needs parenting, food insecurity, autism, family history, late stage capitalism, poverty, and “the infallible exhaustion of queer love.” That essay grew into an irreverent, time-traveling coming-of-age story about family, love, and resilience, creating an organic balance between two perspectives — motherly and subversive.

As you know, we’re big fans of you and your work. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about what you do?
I am known as a performance story-teller with chops in liturgical theatre. I use spoken word personal narrative which invites audience and readers into an easy intimacy, witnessing firsthand the relentless pursuit of safe harbor for my family while navigating a revolving door of struggle, exasperation, kindness, community, and laugh-out-loud naughtiness, wrapped in a promise of unyielding love.

The book Love Will Save Us, Right? is a collection of eighteen essays bursting with depth, history and humor weaving together a narrative with themes of special needs parenting, neurodiversity, autism, queer family building, mental health, poverty, food insecurity, grief, and hope.

I am proud that the book is being called, “Essential reading for anyone trying to make sense of America’s broken promises while finding beauty in all the broken places. A stunning debut from an exciting new voice in American literature.”–Ariel Gore, author of Rehearsals for Dying: Digressions on Love and Cancer.

Is there anyone you’d like to thank or give credit to?
The top shelf of my gratitude list; right next to my wife, mother, sister and son, stands City Lights Bookstore and Publishers represented by two extraordinary figures: Amy Scholder and Elaine Katzenberger. On the next shelf, you’ll find kick-ass ministers, Reverends Alice King, David Miller, Wendy Bartel and Lynn Gardner.

A song of serious praise to Nancy Jo Mackey and Gary Ruyle for decades of bringing back the light and to Wizard Roy Attridge for insisting I create a space to write and use it. Shout out to Mollie Kellogg the Incognito Witch for years of excellent and wholesome creative support, and a crucial, agradecimientos especiales to Isabella Furth of Blue Fish Editorial for encouraging me to push my words into the public arena.

I am forever indebted to my trusted platoon of first-line readers, S. Barnard, L. Bessemer, E. Diana, D. Lonergan, L. Partido, and T. Southfox. To my darlings, D.L. Alvarez, and Martina Kaden, a big fat #LoveYouMeanItCallMe for bringing more writing into the world. To Barbara Bright Wilder & Dr. Lynn Northrop and and to Nikki Clinton Lewis and the San Diego Community Birthing Center because they midwife new life and hope to a broken world.

Pricing:

• $16.95

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.suzettepartido.com
• Other: https://citylights.com/city-lights-published/love-will-save-us-right/

Image Credits
Painting by American artist Mollie Kellogg. Book cover design by Victor Mingovits.