The Memoir Land Author Questionnaire #6: Annabelle Tometich

"To understand my mother, I first had to understand myself and the tangled roots from which I grew."

Since 2010, in various publications, I’ve interviewed authors—mostly memoirists—about aspects of writing and publishing. Initially I did this for my own edification, as someone who was struggling to find the courage and support to write and publish my memoir. I’m still curious about other authors’ experiences, and I know many of you are, too. So, inspired by the popularity of The Oldster Magazine Questionnaire, I’ve launched The Memoir Land Author Questionnaire.

Here’s the sixth installment, featuring Annabelle Tometich, author of The Mango Tree: A Memoir of Fruit, Florida, and Felony. -Sari Botton

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Annabelle Tometich

Annabelle Tometich went from medical-school reject to line cook to journalist to author. She spent eighteen years as a food writer and critic for The News-Press in her hometown of Fort Myers, Florida. Tometich’s writing has appeared in The Washington Post, USA Today, Catapult, the Tampa Bay Times, and many more outlets. She has won more than a dozen awards for her stories, including first place for Food & Travel Writing at the 2022 Sunshine State Awards. She (still) lives in Fort Myers with her husband, two children, and her ever-fiery Filipina mother. Learn more at annabelleTM.com.

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How old are you, and for how long have you been writing?

43. I started in journalism when I was 25.

What’s the title of your latest book, and when was it published?

The Mango Tree: A Memoir of Fruit, Florida, and Felony came out April 2nd.

What number book is this for you?

One!

How do you categorize your book—as a memoir, memoir-in-essays, essay collection, creative nonfiction, graphic memoir, autofiction—and why?

I think it’s a fairly traditional memoir. It started as a cookbook, funny enough, and then, through the course of many revisions, became a fruity, felonious memoir.

What is the “elevator pitch” for your book? (Up to one paragraph.)

When my Filipina mom used her BB rifle—the one usually reserved for sniping pesky squirrels—to shoot out the truck window of a white man she claims was stealing her precious mangoes, I thought: I hope no one ever finds out about this. Hours later, when a reporter from the newspaper where I worked as a restaurant critic called, asking if this woman was related to me, I thought: Well, shit. 

Growing up half-Filipina and half-white in Robert E. Lee County, Florida, I yearned to blend in, meld. With the pull of a trigger, my mom, once again, made that impossible. At the end of the call, the reporter asked one last question, colleague to colleague: “Did she really shoot at that guy—over a mango?” I told him the truth: “It’s complicated.” And, as The Mango Tree shows, it is. To understand my mother, I first had to understand myself and the tangled roots from which I grew. 

Growing up half-Filipina and half-white in Robert E. Lee County, Florida, I yearned to blend in, meld. With the pull of a trigger, my mom, once again, made that impossible. At the end of the call, the reporter asked one last question, colleague to colleague: “Did she really shoot at that guy—over a mango?” I told him the truth: “It’s complicated.”

What’s the back story of this book including your origin story as a writer? How did you become a writer, and how did this book come to be?

I very much fell into writing. I took pre-med courses in college, but after graduation, I read some Anthony Bourdain books and decided to skip medical school to work in restaurants (almost killing my very-not-stereotypical but also sometimes-stereotypical Asian mother in the process). After a couple years as a cook, I opened a daytime catering company that basically bled money. I needed a night job, and the first one I found was as a sports clerk at my local newspaper. I fell in love. I loved the camaraderie and intellectualism of the newsroom. I loved the pace of a daily paper. And I found I loved writing.

This book started, more or less, as a mid-life crisis. In 2019, 14 years after I started at The News-Press, I got a job offer to be the restaurant critic at the Tampa Bay Times, which is how journalism works: You start in smaller markets then move to bigger and more prestigious ones. I wanted so badly to accept it, but I couldn’t. My life and family and everything are here. When I turned it down, I spiraled. And then I thought: If you’re going to stay in your hometown, what can you do to grow yourself and your career? My answer, perhaps naively, was: Write a book!

The Mango Tree, as I mentioned, started as a cookbook. After my mom’s arrest, if you googled “mango shooter,” the first result was a link to her mugshot as published in my newspaper, and the second was a recipe for an Absolut Vodka cocktail—which is hilarious. I wanted my cookbook to blend quirky essays on my multiracial life with recipes that loosely tied into those essays. I queried agents with my hybrid dysfunctional-family-cookbook-slash-essay-collection and got ZERO bites. One agent responded with “I’m not quite sure what this is,” and neither was I!

A close writer friend of mine said if I removed the recipes and connected the essays, I’d have a strong memoir. And I was like, “But I’m writing a cookbook?” And she was like, “No, you’re writing a memoir.” And I was like, “Nuh-uh,” and she was like, “Uh-huh.” As soon as I accepted that and understood how neatly this mango tree fit into the story of my life, the book came pouring out of me.

Order the book.

What were the hardest aspects of writing this book and getting it published?

It took me forever to accept that it was a memoir. My journalism/food writer brain felt much more comfortable calling it a cookbook. (Writing about myself was so foreign to me.) I called it a cookbook for way too long, even when there were no recipes and it was not even a little bit a cookbook.

How did you handle writing about real people in your life? Did you use real or changed names and identifying details? Did you run passages or the whole book by people who appear in the narrative? Did you make changes they requested?

In my early drafts, I didn’t change anything. Real names. Real addresses. Real hairstyles and eye colors. I wrote things as vividly and honestly as I remembered them. Once the book sold, I realized I had to obfuscate a little. My tita, for example, doesn’t need her street name out there.

I offered to run passages by anyone I named in the book—at least those I could track down, and I was pleasantly surprised that almost everyone let me use their real names. A few people had small requests that I was happy to honor, but most were just like “Cool!”

That said, while my mom knows about the book and seems to understand that she is central to it. Her health and memory are not great, so it’s hard to say how much she understands. But honestly, even at her sharpest, my mom was never one to shy away from her actions and their consequences. She’s not ashamed of much, and I tried to paint a very honest picture of her and her complexities.

This book started, more or less, as a mid-life crisis. In 2019, I got a job offer to be the restaurant critic at the Tampa Bay Times... I wanted so badly to accept it, but I couldn’t. My life and family and everything are here. When I turned it down, I spiraled. And then I thought: If you’re going to stay in your hometown, what can you do to grow yourself and your career? My answer, perhaps naively, was: Write a book!

Who is another writer you took inspiration from in producing this book? Was it a specific book, or their whole body of work? (Can be more than one writer or book.)

Three spring to mind: Grace Talusan (The Body Papers), Cinelle Barnes (Monsoon Mansion) and T Kira Madden (Long Live the Tribe of Fatherless Girls). Each of these writers and books made mine feel not just possible, but worthy. I’ve actually gotten to know Grace and Cinelle, and work with them, and they have been amazingly generous mentors. With T Kira, I’m just a massive fangirl. She writes about otherness and queerness and belonging and Florida with such beauty, it quite literally makes me gasp. I want to be her when I grow up as a writer.

What advice would you give to aspiring writers looking to publish a book like yours, who are maybe afraid, or intimidated by the process?

Find your writing people. Take workshops. Attend readings. Volunteer with your local literary society. Follow writers on social media. Reach out to authors whose books/essays/short stories you adore and let them know.

This world can feel so foreign, but if you’re in it with good intentions, then other writers will see that and embrace you.

What do you love about writing?

I love the immersion of storytelling. I love diving into that rabbit hole and getting to that place where the story envelopes you and makes you part of it. Once I’m there, I almost feel like a documentarian. I’m just trying to write what I see, what I smell, what I hear, taste, feel. I’m in the story, and if I can get the reader there with me, I’ve done my job. Ugh, I love that!

What frustrates you about writing?

That we don’t value it more.

That was a huge frustration of mine when I worked in journalism, and the industry is being crushed, on so many levels, because of our inability to value it. I mean that literally, in that journalists and writers are grossly underpaid, but also in a societal sense. Our values, unfortunately, lie elsewhere.

What about writing surprises you?

The “aha” moments. Especially in memoir, getting to relive your past through the lens of your present self creates so many opportunities to make sense of things or at least see them anew. Often, for me, these “ahas” don’t happen while I’m writing. It’s after, when I bolt up from sleep, grab for my phone and open my Notes app, like: HOLY SHIT THIS IS WHAT IT ALL MEANS!

Does your writing practice involve any kind of routine, or writing at specific times?

Oh, god, I wish. I tend to write whenever and wherever I can find time. Usually, I write during the day when the house is quiet, but I may also write late at night, on the weekends, in my car at my kid’s swim practice, at the doctor’s office waiting for my mom’s appointment, in my car at my kid’s soccer practice (you get it). It’s a skill I learned and honed in journalism, and it has really come in handy at this stage of life.

I love the immersion of storytelling. I love diving into that rabbit hole and getting to that place where the story envelopes you and makes you part of it. Once I’m there, I almost feel like a documentarian. I’m just trying to write what I see, what I smell, what I hear, taste, feel. I’m in the story, and if I can get the reader there with me, I’ve done my job. Ugh, I love that!

Do you engage in any other creative pursuits, professionally or for fun? Are there non-writing activities you consider to be “writing” or supportive of your process?

I still love cooking. I’m also a pretty devout CrossFitter/weightlifter (although I swear it’s not ALL I talk about!). I feel like cooking and CrossFit are both very meditative. The rituals of cooking—the chopping, seasoning, mixing, roasting—they pull me out of my head and force me to focus on something else, which I think is often when the writing ideas that are simmering in the back of my mind start to coalesce. It’s the same with CrossFit, mainly because I can only think about pain and my imminent demise :)

What’s next for you? Do you have another book planned, or in the works?

Yes, two! I have a children’s book in the works that I will *hopefully* be able to share more about later this year. It too involves mangoes!

And I am starting to work on a second memoir about the fifteen years I spent as a restaurant critic, wherein I hid my half-Filipina self behind a pen name that made me sound like a French guy, which, you know, wasn’t problematic at all.

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Check out all the interviews in The Memoir Land Author Questionnaire series.