Elena Schwolsky’s new novel explores motherhood and activism

Sunset Park resident Elena Schwolsky has held jobs in a variety of occupations, among them nursing, factory work, and public health education. But since retiring from a position at the New York City Department of Health in 2015, she has added another profession to the list, writer, something she says is the fulfillment of a childhood dream.

Her first book, Waking in Havana: A Memoir of AIDS and Healing in Cuba, was published by She Writes Press in 2019. Her second book, her first novel, Thursday’s Child, was released on May Day.

Thursday’s Child is set in 1973 and centers on 24-year-old Ruthie Moreinis, a divorced mother who travels to Cuba as part of the Venceremos Brigade, an organization of idealistic Americans who were eager to contribute to the revolution and help build a new society based on racial, gender and economic equity.

Ruthie’s trip mirrors one that Schwolsky herself took with the Brigade, a still-active group, founded in 1969, that continues to bring American volunteers to Cuba. Like Ruthie, Schwolsky left her child, who was then a toddler, with his father for the three months she was away. But while the book includes autobiographical material, Schwolsky makes clear that it is a work of fiction. To wit, in the novel, Ruthie’s long-awaited reunion with her daughter, five-year-old Sasha, fails to materialize. Worse, she has no idea how to find the child or her ex-husband and the unfolding story details Ruthie’s anguished search for them. Unsurprisingly, it’s an emotional odyssey that touches on gender relations, sexual politics and the always difficult balance between personal fulfillment and societal expectations.

It’s emotionally tough material and Schwolsky spent years shaping the story, taking numerous classes, working with a writing partner and reading every book she could find on crafting a compelling narrative.

She succeeded. Thursday’s Child is a dramatic, insightful and engaging read.

“I wrote the novel because I wanted to explore something that came up in Waking in Havana,” she told the Sunset Post. Although the memoir recounts Schwolsky’s work as a nurse in a Cuban AIDS sanatorium in the early 1990s, it references her first trip to the island 20 years earlier.

“People who read my memoir kept asking me how I’d been able to leave my 18-month-old son and go away for so long,” she begins. “I realized that I hadn’t really thought about it. I was 22 when I gave birth and 24 when I went on the Brigade. I just assumed my son would be fine; he’d be with his father and I knew he’d be taken care of. I didn’t think about how long three months is in the life of a toddler. I also didn’t think about the fact that I was going somewhere that, because of the U.S. blockade, made contact with people at home impossible. After the memoir came out, I wanted to look back at what it had been like to leave my child. I knew I didn’t want to write it as memoir, so I opted to do it as autobiographical fiction.”

In addition to an account of Ruthie’s search for Sasha, Thursday’s Child touches on a number of other topics, from the Chilean coup that ousted President Salvador Allende to campus anti-apartheid activism to the ways that friendships sustain us. Moreover, the intersection of the personal and the political is showcased. “When I went to Cuba in 1972, I was trying to figure out how to live my life as an activist and mother,” Schwolsky explains. “I wanted to think about how mothers can be engaged with the world and also be caring, loving, and consistent parents.”

Schwolsky knows that there are no formulas to help mothers determine how best to do this. Nonetheless, she hopes that Thursday’s Child will “provoke a level of understanding, maybe even compassion,” for those who struggle with these questions.

At the same time, she says that she is ready to put these themes behind her and turn to two new projects, one that focuses on writing about her current struggle with advanced-stage ovarian cancer and a second that looks at the collision between the COVID-19 pandemic and the Black Lives Matter movement for two fictional women, one Jewish, one Black.

A book party for Thursday’s Child will take place tomorrow, Sunday, May 17, from 2 to 4 p.m. at UPROSE, 462 36th St. Copies of the novel will be available for purchase.