The Story of My Anger is your YA debut after your Pura Belprè Honor-winning middle grade novel, Aniana del Mar Jumps In. Can you talk about why you wanted to write for young adults and why this book?

Interestingly enough, I wrote the first draft of The Story of My Anger back in the summer of 2020 before I ever wrote a single word for Aniana del Mar Jumps In. It was written completely in prose and began fist as a series of journal entries written by a sixteen year old theatre student who wanted the lead role and was very much based off of my own experiences as a high school theatre student in Texas. But when I got to the last chapter I was sort of “over it,” and decided to shelve the project and then that’s when Aniana poured out of me. When I was asked by my editor what I wanted to work on next I “dusted” this manuscript off and decided I actually wanted to convert it into a novel in verse and so I rewrote the entire thing (multiple times). I write for young adults because as a former middle and high school teacher I know how isolating, scary, confusing and overwhelming this time in one’s life can be. I also remember not reading a lot of books by and about and for girls who looked like me. I think it’s important for young BIPOC readers to see themselves on the cover of books and to know that their lives, experiences and stories matter. And that is also what this book is about - whose stories get told, whose stories get silenced, whose stories matter and who gets to dictate that. I think this book helps young people realize that there is more than one way to use their voice, more than one way to be “an activist” and fight for what you believe in.

What was the most interesting and the most challenging part of writing YA versus Middle Grade?

I think the most interesting thing about writing YA was being able to tackle more mature subject matter and allowing my characters more freedom with a little less adult or parental involvement or interference because they’re more independent at this age. I think the most challenging was writing in a voice that truly captured how a teenager would handle and/or perceive the various traumas and experiences Yuli endures. I wanted to write the dialogue scenes in a way that sounded like teens without relying too heavily on slang or colloquialisms that didn’t sound natural or were used incorrectly.

In the book, Yulieta Lopez is accustomed to playing a lot of roles she that the diligent daughter, the honorable hija, the good girl who serves everyone else before serving herself, but she hits a breaking point where she must play the role of fighter. Among that role is fighting against book banning efforts by her town’s school board. Can you talk about book banning’s role in the book and the intersection between that and the other sources of Yulieta’s anger?

Yulieta discovers that books are being removed from her favorite teacher’s classroom. One of the books being removed is her favorite play for colored girls who have considered suicide when the rainbow is enuf by Ntozake Shange. This is the play that changed Yuli’s life because it was the first time she’d read a play with an all Black female cast and that showed Black women and girls in their full humanity. Yuli is outraged that this book is being removed from the classroom because it means other Black girls may never get to experience what she did and have their whole lives changed. Yuli wants to raise awareness about what’s happening and get the books reinstated. Yuli’s outrage also stems from the various forms of racism and microaggressions she’s faced as a member of the drama club. Her drama teacher’s refusal to produce a play with an all Black cast and her comments around Yuli’s hair add fuel to Yuli’s fire because for Yuli, both the book banning and racial bias and typecasting that happens in the drama department are a form of silencing and erasure of BIPOC and marginalized student’s stories and identities. Yuli is tired of always having to wait for someone to put her and her friends in the spotlight and make their stories center stage, so she and her friends create a guerilla theatre group in order to “make their own table” rather than waiting on someone to give them a seat at the table.

This story is told through both verse and scripts. What made you choose to tell the story in this format opposed to writing in prose?

Originally this book was written completely in prose. But it just didn’t feel like it was “working,” and it wasn’t my best writing to be honest. (I just don’t fancy myself a fiction prose writer---not yet anyway!) I then tried to write the entire novel in verse but that didn’t quite work either because I had entirely too much dialogue and it didn’t sound very poetic to me. So, then I decided that if this is a book about a theatre student putting on short plays, why not rewrite the dialogue heavy scenes like a play! It made the most sense and freed me of the need to write dialogue “poetically.” Most of my books are hybrid or multi-genre texts so it seemed fitting that this book would also end up mixing genres in this way. I wanted to keep a sense of Yuli’s inner world and turmoil in the language of imagery and metaphor so I kept her voice in verse and then moved all the more plot and dialogue driven scenes as a play script. I wanted readers to be immersed in the world of theatre and I think writing scenes as they might appear in a play script helps accomplish that. Readers are no longer passive witnesses to Yuli’s story, but the fourth wall is broken and readers can feel immersed and a part of the story similar to what happens with the Stage Manager in the play Our Town by Thorton Wilder, which is the fall play being put on at Yuli’s school.

The book is set in Texas, how did that impact some of the decisions Yulieta makes? Why was it important to have this novel based in that state?

The book is set in Texas because that’s where I’ve lived the last 25 years and it’s where many of the book bans began way before they became a national news story. Usually what happens in Texas first is what ends up influencing other conservative states and other states follow. As I mentioned, I actually wrote the first draft of this back in 2020 as book bans started to increase around the state and the nation but it was inspired by what had transpired in AZ in 2012 when Ethnic Studies classes went under scrutiny and books were removed from classrooms. Back then, I always knew that if one state was capable of banning books and ethnic studies, other states and institutions would soon follow. And now here we are, with the US facing the most book bans in its history and our libraries and freedom to read under attack on a national scale. To me, it’s important to set my stories in Texas, not just because it’s the home I’ve known for the last two decades, but because I want to dispel some of the myths the rest of the country has of Texans. Many of us ARE fighting back, ARE raising our voices and don’t want to just up and leave our homes. We love this state and want to make it better and want to fight for our rights and freedoms. Yuli knows she needs to fight at the local level and that’s what she does. She may not be able to take on the governor but she can speak out at her local board meeting and make a difference in her community.

Yulieta Lopez faces significant challenges in her theatre program. Can you delve deeper into why you decided to set the story in this particular setting? What specific aspects of the theatre program made it the ideal backdrop for exploring Yulieta's internal and external struggles?

As someone who spent many years in theatre (and still sporadically direct and consult with local theatres in Houston) I know that there still exists a lot of racial bias, discrimination and oppression in the theatre and acting world. I think that directors often try to hide their prejudice behind coded language like “you just weren’t right for the part,” when the subtext to that is “you aren’t the right skin color for the part.” Yuli struggles to be “seen” and the theatre/stage works as a metaphor for that as well. All she wants is her time in the spotlight both literally and metaphorically, but girls who look like her are too often ignored, silenced and pushed to the sidelines to “wait in the wings” for their turn. But all too often, they are almost never “given” the opportunity to take center stage. When Yuli decides to stop waiting for someone to give her the spotlight, and instead makes the world her stage, she becomes the “leading lady” of her own life and journey and starts playing the part she was always meant to play. By setting this story up with the backdrop of the theatre world, we’re able to see Yuli play different parts and eventually step into the role that was always meant for her but that she had to evolve into.