"I'm proud of all my books, but I feel like this is my best book."
Julio Anta on his new book, Speak Up, Santiago! ALSO - A Letter to an Unexpected Ex: The United States
This week, we continue our conversation with writer, Julio Anta. Alongside sharing writing advice and reflecting on the surprising freedom to write political stories that feature DC Comics characters, Julio describes the personal reasons he is most proud of his recent book, Speak Up, Santiago!
ANTERO GARCIA: Reading This Land is Our Land, I was surprised with how political you were able to be in a DC Comics property.
JULIO ANTA: So, I think there's a distinction that needs to be made: This Land is Our Land is a young adult graphic novel that exists separately from the main continuity of DC Comics. Could I have done this story in the main continuity? I don't know if that's the case.
I think I had the privilege of being in this little pocket where I can be more political, because it is aimed towards high school kids. As reflected in a theme of the book, these readers are often very politicized or very open to political work. They are not the 25 to 60-year-old comic book reader that is very into continuity.
In a weird way, 13 to 17-year-olds (which is who YA is designed for) are much more open-minded to these more political topics. But as far as DC itself, I don't know what happened behind closed doors, but I was never once told that I couldn't do anything in that book. If you read the proposal that I wrote for this book before it was green lit, it is almost identical to the book that was published. I never got any feedback about the political nature. All of my edits were about character stuff and maybe we should do this or do that, but it was never about toning down the political nature of the book, which I'm really grateful for. I kept waiting for that moment to happen. Every time I turned in a new draft, I kept thinking, all right, this is the time that they're going to cut this scene out or cut this point out. It never happened.
ALIX DICK: Your most recent book, Speak Up, Santiago! Is written for a younger audience. Was that an easier or harder book for you?
JA: Speak Up, Santiago! is a book about a boy named Santiago or Santi. His father is Colombian-American. His mother is from the US. They always planned on raising Santi to be bilingual, but he had some speech difficulties when he was a child. So they were told that they should focus on just one language, on English. And now he's in middle school and he only just started learning Spanish. And it's something that he's had anxiety about for a lot of his life. It's prevented him from forming a tight relationship with his grandmother who only speaks Spanish. And he is very anxious about his accent and about understanding words.
And so, this is a book about Santi’s journey to go spend the summer with his grandmother and fully immerse himself in speaking Spanish. When he's there, he also meets all these other kids. He discovers this sort of Latin American enclave in this upstate New York, Hudson Valley town.
He goes on all these adventures while he's wrestling with these feelings that he has about speaking Spanish. Ultimately, he comes out on the other side of it, realizing that A, his Spanish is a lot better than he gives himself credit for and B, language is not why his grandmother and his family love him. They love him for who he is, and they especially love how much he cares about his culture and how much he wants to keep that alive.
It's a bilingual book--I wrote it in both English and in Spanish. A lot of it is influenced by both myself and my son. For me, Spanish was my first language, but as I started going to school in Miami, English became my dominant language. And I did have a lot of the moments that happened in this book, where you’re translating in your head and you're missing words, you're confusing words, your aunt playfully calls you gringo and makes fun of your accent and that hurts. It's a very personal story for me. It's not about me, but there's a lot of me in it.
AG: Wow.
JA: To get to your actual question, the middle grade voice is so important. That is something that I worked with my editor a lot on--finding the voice of this character, finding the voice of the narration and making sure that it was not just appropriate, but really engaging for that age level.
I'm lucky that my son is middle grade age, so I was listening to his friends talk. I was talking to him, and it was this very collaborative thing. It's a book that I'm super proud of. I'm proud of all my books, but I feel like this is my best book. I think it's the best written one. I think it's the one that was also the most challenging because I did write it in English and Spanish. It's also the first book in a series that we're really excited about, and Gabi’s drawing the second book now.
I did have a lot of the moments that happened in this book, where you’re translating in your head and you're missing words, you're confusing words, your aunt playfully calls you gringo and makes fun of your accent and that hurts.
AD: I'm excited. I cannot wait to read it.
AG: Has your son read any of your books?
JA: Yeah, he reads all of my books. He can grab any of my books, not just the ones I wrote, but any of the books that I own and read anything that he wants. He’s even read my books for older audiences like This Land is Our Land. He's 10 years old, so they're not necessarily written for his age range, but we talk about all these things at home anyway. He is my biggest fan. It's very sweet.
AG: That’s gotta be so cool to have him cheer you on.
JA: Yeah, he's come to events with me. He was at my signing table at NCTE, just hanging out and he went to my panel. That was the first time that we took a trip, just the two of us to go to a conference or something, and now he just wants to keep going to them with me. I think it helps all the free books that he's able to get. But yeah, he is oftentimes the first reader when I get my ARCs in. And my parents, I think they're just proud of me for being published. It’s always interesting when family reads because every character has pieces of the people in my life.
AD: I love that. Do you have any advice for aspiring writers?
JA: First, it's important to read a lot. Read everything, not just the age range or genre that you want to write in. Read. Most of what I read, and I think it shows in the work, is a lot of nonfiction. There are so many stories out there that are just ripe for picking little parts of them and putting them into your characters. Listen to podcasts, watch movies, watch documentaries.
Next, write the book that you want to read, especially if it's a book that doesn't exist yet. That's what all of my books were. Take Home as an example. My entire career started because I wanted to read a book about the family separation crisis. I wanted to read a comic about it. So I wrote my own. And with Frontera, I wanted a book that delved into the centuries-long history and militarization of the Sonoran Desert. So I wrote that.
I think that would be my biggest piece of advice: write the book that you want to read and also write the book that no one else can write. And I don't necessarily think that no one else could write the things that I write. I don't think that's true, but I think that I have a specific point of view and specific interests. And when those interests and that point of view collide, they make books that other people don't write generally. And I think that's true of every single person in the world, your point of view, your interests, the things that you love will always make something unique that only you can write.
Stay away from trends. Stay away from what you think people want to read. Writing a book takes so long anyway, you're going to miss the trends, so there's no point.
Propina
We will conclude our interview with Julio next week. If you missed the first part of our conversation, you can find it here:
We want to conclude this week’s issue of La Cuenta by shouting out a recent essay from Mario Volta. Detailing his deliberate moves toward self-deportation, Mario’s writing has become a vital set of essays for the present moment. This week, describing his relationship with the U.S. as a breakup, Mario writes about preparing to move on from his once beloved country:
We’ll see you next week.
Love that something like Speak Up, Santiago is out in the world. I have a lot of insecurity about my Spanish. Technically, Spanish was my first language, but it was quickly surpassed by English. I've always felt like it was a failing of mine, not maintaining my Spanish as much as I thought I should have, like the authenticity of my identity was bound to my Spanish aptitude. Anyway, I'm glad this is out there.