Valdes-Rodriguez now mellow about the LAT

Alicia Valdes-Rodriguez was known in her short career at the L.A. Times for penning a hilarious piece on being a Latina visitor to Cuba and encountering Woody Harrelson, and for submitting a 3,400-word resignation letter in which she slammed pretty much everybody. She showed them, getting a $475,000 deal for her first novel, The Dirty Girls Social Club, reportedly written in an Albuquerque coffee house. Of the LAT, she says now in the Miami Herald (via Romenesko): "It was like any bad relationship...we just weren't a good match.''

[Update: Los Angeles blogger Luke Ford digs into his Valdes-Rodriguez archive.]

10:59 AM Tuesday, June 10 2003 • Link
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"She threw one of those take-this-job-and-shove-it tantrums, threatened to write a novel and wound up on Medicaid.

Grifter--she was married, and he was working. Welfare cheating by the middle class and she's not even embarrassed.

Posted by: Kate at June 10, 2003 01:00 PM

I think, now that she's doing so well, she should pay back the money she got from our tax dollars. How about it? Oh, and I'm not just saying that because you're Latina, but because I resent supporting your novel-writing ass.

Posted by: Amy Alkon at June 10, 2003 03:48 PM

Believe me, if copping some public assistance for a while means she got a $475,000 book deal, she's already paid us all back many time over in taxes. We should give more writers welfare if that's the way it works out. Solve the budget deficit in a year.

Posted by: Andrew Rice at June 11, 2003 12:43 PM

Actually, I had health insurance through the National Writer's Union when I left the Times, and intended to use that for the birth of my child. Sadly, the union cut health benefits to memebers a few months before I was to give birth. I was very ill, could not work, and my husband was home taking care of me. We had enough money to buy our own health insurance, but by then were living in New Mexico, where you couldn't buy your own individual health plan in those days. I had a complicated pregnancy, and my son was born via C-section; I reluctantly used public health insurance for his birth. To call me a "welfare cheat" is stupid and incorrect. Furthermore, the first federal tax check I wrote after selling my book was more than the cost of my operation, close to $80,000. I think I've paid you back, whiners.

Posted by: Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez at July 11, 2004 04:11 PM
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