Meet the Author: Pedro Hoffmeister
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How did Pedro Hoffmeister’s daughter inspire the character Cielo?
Hi there, my name is Pedro Hofmeister, and I've been thinking a lot about why I wrote American Afterlife, and it really comes back to my daughter, Rue Tortuga, my turtle. She was the inspiration for Cielo, not literally, but emotionally. Her curiosity, the way she asks big questions, the way she feels things deeply and doesn't shy away from them, I wanted that type of character moving through this destroyed city after the earthquake. I wanted to see what that would look like, so it kind of started with being inspired by my daughter and the way she thinks, and then thinking about this massive earthquake destroying our city. And then thinking like, okay, Tortuga, what would she do if she was here? And what would she think?
And how would she react to different scenarios? And she's really curious and adaptable, but also can like switch emotions quickly. And so she's capable of like reacting with a big, strong emotion to something. And I was like, what if Cielo, the main character, had those characteristics? And then hearing Scarlet's voice, it sounds perfect. I was thinking about the way that my daughter survived middle school and early high school. And that's such a difficult time in a human's life, but in a character, it's an epic time of change. And Rue was as likely to shoplift pizza as as she was to get an A-plus in an art class, you know? So she was a little capable survivor at all times. And I was like, that would make such an interesting character, the kind of person that basically just does whatever helps her to survive the best in any moment.
And she wasn't incredibly popular, but she and her best friend, Xochitlena, were just inseparable. And so... Cielo and her friend in the book had that kind of inseparable bond where it was like them against the world. And then because she practiced that in middle school with Xochitlana, she was ready when everything went wrong. She was ready to adapt and survive in the future. I went to college as an athlete. I was a wrestler at the University of Oregon. I was recruited for wrestling, so I thought of myself as an athlete. And then I needed a class that fit my very busy athletic schedule. And I ended up saying, well, I've always loved to read, and I've always written a little bit, as you do as a kid if you're interested in stories or poems.
And so I took an intro to poetry class, but I didn't know how to write poems at all. I was a terrible poet. I would just make these attempts. But they ended up all pretty much being narrative and nonfiction. And my family had a lot of mental illness, just like there's mental illness in Cielo's mom in the story, in her mother character. So my family had mental illness and there was a lot of dysfunction and addiction. And just like in the novel, the mother character is hyper religious to a kind of cult level. My family was very religious. My siblings and I have some religious drama from that time period. But my parents have changed and become very different people and they're wonderful. They were really fearful and extremely religious when I was young.
So I based that whole religious cult element on my family. My brother and I kind of reacted to all of that extremism in our family by going the other direction. And we were teen criminals. This is well known. I had all these true stories kind of of my brother and I committing crimes, and I ended up writing poems about my brother and I committing crimes when we were teenagers in this intro to poetry class. My poetry professor, Chin, called me up at the end of class one day, and I didn't know him at all, you know, so I thought I was in trouble. And he called me up and he let everybody else ask their questions and leave the room. And then he was like, I think we need to hang out. And he said, what are you doing on Friday?
Do you have a wrestling tournament Saturday? And I said, no, I don't. And he's like, okay, meet me at Lucky's Bar. And so he took me out to this bar and we played pool and we told stories. And it turned out that he had grown up in a Korean gang in Washington, D.C.,
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Chapters
4 chapters
1
How did Pedro Hoffmeister’s daughter inspire the character Cielo?
0:01–10:56
2
What role did Pedro’s wrestling background and college poetry class play in his writing start?
10:56–14:07
3
How did family mental‑illness and religious cult themes shape the novel’s mother character?
14:07–19:47
4
What was the turning point when a poetry professor encouraged Pedro to keep writing?
19:47–24:04