Sunday, August 28, 2016

Eleni Gage's "The Ladies of Managua," the movie

Featured at My Book, The Movie: The Ladies of Managua by Eleni N. Gage.

The entry begins:
I didn’t see the three main characters of The Ladies of Managua as I wrote the book; instead I heard them speaking. But once I’d finished the first draft and read it, I thought, “These are three great roles for Latina actresses!”

The book is told in the voices of three generations of Nicaraguan women—a grandmother, a mother and a daughter. I wrote the novel in 2012 and 13 while we were living in Granada, Nicaragua, and it wasn’t until we’d moved back to New York that Jane the Virgin premiered on TV. For those who haven’t seen the show (and if that’s you, you really should start DVRing right away) it’s also about three generations of Latina women, only they’re of Venezuelan origin. (It’s a satire of telenovelas, and my book is not, but at heart, both are about the relationships between three complicated women.) The grandmother, mom, and daughter in the TV show—who share a love as powerful and conflicts as profound as the women in my book—are played by three amazing actresses—Ivonne Coll, Andrea Navedo, Gina Rodriguez. So, of course, the easiest way to cast The Ladies of Managua would be to have this ready-made family play the characters. However, I think it would be difficult for the viewer (me included) to see them depict a different family. To solve that problem, I’ve come up with an alternate dream cast.

For me, the entire story begins with the character of the grandmother Isabela, the society lady whose bourgeois demeanor hides a surprising past. I would love to see her played by...[read on]
Visit Eleni N. Gage's website.

My Book, The Movie: The Ladies of Managua.

--Marshal Zeringue