Jewish and Puerto Rican, she’s writing a cli-fi novel

By Dan Bloom

CHIAYI CITY, Taiwan — Michelle Fernandez is the twentysomething daughter of a Puerto Rican mother and a Jewish father, and while in college  in upstate New York she minored in Jewish studies to learn more about her dad’s heritage.

She’s also very concerned about climate change issues, and as a Millennial with strong feelings about what might be coming down in the future, if world leaders do not stop global warming in its tracks before it’s too late, she has a a ”cli-fi” novel-in-progress set in the near future, too.

How I found Fernandez is a good story because in this Internet world, anything can happen.

To make a long story short, I was surfing the net one day recently when on Twitter I spotted a writer interested in climate fiction novels, and her Twitter handle gave me a nice Yiddishkeit chuckle.

“Meeshuggeneh” she calls herself in her tweets.

Since the motto of San Diego Jewish World is “There’s a Jewish story everywhere,” I just had to find out more. So I emailed Fernandez, and the Albany-based writer agreed to sit down and tell me about her ”meeshuggeneh” Twitter handle and how it came to be. It’s an interfaith story with sweetness. It’s also about a young woman with a rare neurological condition called “hydrocephalus.” More on that later.

“My paternal grandmother was Jewish, and my mother always made an effort to ensure that I was aware of this aspect of my heritage,” she said. “Although I am not religious, I’ve been drawn to the philosophy of Judaism throughout my life. There is a lot of ecological consciousness in Judaism, which places so much importance on individual responsibility. The Hebrew concept of ‘tikkun olam’ (to repair the world) plays a big role in the narrative of the climate-themed novel I am writing.”

When asked how she came to use ”meeshuggneh” for her Twitter handle, Fernandez didn’t miss a beat and replied: ”Meesh is my nickname, from my first name of Michelle, so it’s a riff on ‘meshuggener,’ which is Yiddish for a crazy person.”

Born and  raised on Long Island, New York, her parents and and much of her family are still there. But Fernandez works and lives as a college librarian in upstate New York in Albany now.

Just for fun, and to add some spice to this column, I asked Fernandez what her favorite words were in English, Spanish and Yiddish.

“I wouldn’t know how to pick a favorite English word. I love them all,” she said. ”But in Spanish, there is a concept called ‘verguenza ajena,’ which denotes a feeling of shame or embarrassment on behalf of someone else, even if that person doesn’t feel it themselves. It’s an extreme empathy bordering on pity. My favorite Yiddish words are mostly insults, so I won’t mention them here, but ‘chutzpah’ (huge nerve) is my favorite compliment. ‘Tikvah,’ (Hope) too. Tikvah is important.”

When asked what inspired her to sit down and try to write a climate-themed novel, Fernandez said: “I’ve always been preoccupied with climate change, since I was a little girl. I was the kind of kid who sat in the basement reading about tornadoes and scaring myself to death while my peers were jumping rope. ”

Fernandez said that she doesn’t really consider herself a climate activist, but as a writer with a strong feeling to sound the alarm in her own way.

“I don’t think of myself as an activist, really, and I think that was part of what I was trying to reconcile while writing the novel,” she said. “Most people accept the reality of man-made climate change at this point. We know our habits need to change. We recognize the effect we are having on our planet. We register it all, intellectually, but it doesn’t translate into our daily lives. We read the reports, and then we toss our Styrofoam in the trash and drive 20 miles to work. I wanted to play with this idea of complacency, of compromise that’s inherent in living in an industrialized country. No matter how green you live, there’s still some blood on your hands. And how do we deal with that guilt, what lies do we tell ourselves?”

”Then, of course, there’s the power of the written word to register dissent,” she added. “So I guess writing is my activism, in a way.”

When asked if the main character in her unpublished novel, Shiri Shapiro was based on her own life at all, Fernandez said: “I wanted my protagonist to come from one of the ethnic groups who were largely displaced by the construction of the Empire State Plaza in Albany, which includes most of your garden-variety New York immigrants of the early 20th century: Jews, Italians, Greeks, Irish. Shiri’s Jewish because the environmental consciousness built into Judaism speaks to the central theme of the novel. And because I’ll take any excuse to sprinkle some Yiddish into my writing.”

“Shiri’s got some of me in her, as all of my characters do, but I wouldn’t call her my alter ego. Maybe more of an alter id. She’s very impulsive,” she said. “And in Hebrew “Shiri” means ‘my song’.”

Fernandez, 27, works part-time in two different college libraries in the Albany area. She studied English and Judaic Studies in college at SUNY Albany, then got a masters degree in English literature at the University of Puerto Rico. After teaching college writing for a while, she decided to come back to Albany to study for a masters in science degree in library science, which she completed in December 2015.

When asked why climate change issues are important to her, Fernandez said: “It is the single biggest existential threat facing the human race in my lifetime, and the biggest moral challenge to my generation.”

A reporter wanted to know why Michelle thinks so-called climate-denialists are so much in denial.

“Because the truth is scary,” she replied. “It’s very human and very understandable. But such a head in the sand attitude, in the face of all the scientific evidence about man-made global warming, is also unfortunate.”

Asked the usual question, “are you an optimist or a pessimist about climate change?” the budding novelist said: “I try to stay positive, but I read far too much to justify unsubstantiated optimism. We have a lot of work to do.”

Her personal outlook on life, her philosophy of life?

“Maximize personal enjoyment, minimize negative impact on the world around you,” she said, without missing a beat.

During the course of my Internet chats with Fernandez I also learned that she has a rare neurological condition called “hydrocephalus.” When asked if living with the medical condition and undergoing six brain operations inspired or motivated her or influenced in the writing of her novel, she explained it this way.

“Illness and pain are naturally isolating, so my life has lent itself to writing in a big way,” she said. “I’ve had six brain surgeries over the past decade. It forces you to reorganize your priorities, to develop an inner strength and self-reliance that can be really daunting. Another running theme in the novel is individual suffering versus the suffering of the planet, and that is obviously drawn from my own experiences.”

When asked her how health is now, and if in the foreseeable future her condition can be easily managed, she replied; “As you know, I suffer from hydrocephalus, which is an incurable neurological condition whose only form of treatment is surgical. I have an implanted device, called a ‘shunt,’ which re-routes the excess fluid from my brain into my abdomen. When everything is working, I am fully functional. I have pain sometimes, and because my condition has to do with the fluid pressure in my brain, I am unusually affected by changes in air pressure. I’m essentially a human barometer. But it’s manageable.”

“However, when the shunt malfunctions, which is difficult to predict, I need brain surgery,” she added. “So it’s hard to tell. Right now, I feel fine, but it can change very quickly. The hardest part to adjust to is that unpredictability.”

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Bloom is a freelance writer based in Taiwan.  An inveterate web surfer, he may be contacted via dan.bloom@sdjewishworld.com.  Comments intended for publication in the space below must be accompanied by the letter writer’s first and last name and by his/ her city and state of residence (city and country for those outside the U.S.)