The Radically Loved Podcast · Episode 418
Spiritual Journey: Healing of the Body and Spirit with Quiara Alegría Hudes
The Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright behind Water by the Spoonful and In the Heights on her memoir My Broken Language, the spiritual legacy she inherited from her mother, and why she thinks America has become a disembodied country.
Quick answerThis is Episode 418 of The Radically Loved Podcast, first published on 29 January 2022 and re-run as Episode 501 in March 2023. Rosie Acosta talks with author and playwright Quiara Alegría Hudes about growing up between two very different households, the Taína-Lukumí-Boricua practices she learned from her mother, and what it means to live in your body rather than only in your head. It runs about 63 minutes.
The Conversation
What This Episode Is About
Quiara grew up between two households that could not have been less alike. Her mother’s side was large, Puerto Rican, and spiritually alive — a world of drums, ceremony and a faith rooted in the earth and the body. Her father’s was the suburbs: order, quiet, the American Dream as it is usually pictured. She has said the suburbs felt designed to conceal the natural chaos of life, and that she already knew life was not orderly.
Much of the conversation turns on My Broken Language, the memoir she began writing at the end of 2019. The title comes from growing up surrounded by many languages at once — spoken, musical, spiritual, visual — and having to decide which voice would be hers. She is candid that she could not reconstruct a timeline of her childhood, and did not try to. What she remembered was how moments felt. The book is about growth rather than events.
The other thread is embodiment. Quiara argues that America is a disembodied country in a philosophical sense: mind-driven, inclined to surrender the body and the spirit. She talks about watching her sister give birth at a birth centre, what that taught her about consent in medicine, and why the power of your own voice in a clinical room is routinely underestimated.
Writers know more than anyone how inadequate words are in the face of human accomplishment and torment, and heart and spirit.
From the Episode
Things Worth Staying For
- Chaos is not the opposite of a good life. Quiara describes learning to ride it rather than tidy it away, and finding that it produced flow and power rather than disorder.
- Memory lives in the body. She could not date her own childhood accurately, but she could remember exactly how it felt — and treats that as a legitimate form of memory.
- Identity does not fit in a box. She found freedom in belonging to several cultures at once rather than choosing between them.
- The drum as the voice inside you. Her mother’s practice used drums; Quiara came to her own spiritual connection through the rhythm and the dancing rather than through words.
- Consent belongs in medicine. Her sister’s birth experience reframed how she thinks about being spoken to, and over, by clinicians.
The Guest
About Quiara Alegría Hudes
Quiara Alegría Hudes is an author and playwright. Her work includes Water by the Spoonful, which won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, the memoir My Broken Language, and the book for In the Heights. With her cousin she founded Emancipated Stories, a project that publishes the writing of people who are incarcerated.
She grew up in West Philadelphia and lives in Washington Heights, New York. Alongside her writing she carries the spiritual legacy of the Taína-Lukumí-Boricua tradition she learned from her mother, a recognised Santera.
More from Rosie
Related resources
This episode is from Rosie’s original show, which ran from 2017 to 2025. Her current podcast is The Radically Well Podcast.
Frequently Asked Questions
Episode FAQ
Who is Quiara Alegría Hudes?
A Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright and author. Her work includes Water by the Spoonful, In the Heights and the memoir My Broken Language.
What is My Broken Language about?
It is her memoir, covering early childhood through coming of age. The title refers to growing up among many languages at once — spoken, musical, spiritual and visual — and choosing which voice would be her own.
Which podcast is this episode from?
The Radically Loved Podcast, Rosie Acosta’s original show. It is Episode 418, published on 29 January 2022, and was re-run as Episode 501 in March 2023. That show ended in October 2025; the archive is still available.
How long is the episode?
About 63 minutes.
Where can I listen?
On Audioboom, where the show was hosted, and in the Radically Loved archive on Apple Podcasts.