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Poet, Activist and Author, Aya de León In Conversation with LxP On Life and Work

Aya de León is an author to watch: Uptown Thief, her first trade novel, just won the 2017 Independent Publisher Book Awards Gold Medal in Urban Fiction. The follow-up to Uptown Thief, The Boss, will be available wherever books are sold this May. Her work has been talked about everywhere from Library Journal to the Village Voice and American Theatre Magazine. There’s no sign of the spoken word professor and performer stopping anytime soon and LxP is thrilled to ask her about her life and work during National Poetry Month.

Where do you draw inspiration for your writing? My inspiration comes from a combination of outrage at how the world currently is and envisioning how I would like the world to be. How would you describe the genre of books like The Boss and Uptown Thief? Why did you decide to write in this genre? These books are part of my "Justice Hustlers" series with Kensington Publishing. They are officially Urban Women's Fiction, but I call them Feminist Heist novels. I've spent much of my adult life working in progressive and nonprofit environments. There's always this moment when we're scrambling for funding and someone suggests that we should rob a bank. This is basically that fantasy brought to life. What audience did you have in mind when writing these novels? How did you decide to write for that audience? I write for women. My heroines are women of color, but I hope to appeal to women from many different walks of life. I'm fortunate to be writing for Kensington's Dafina imprint, which primarily targets young African-American and Latinx women, so they market heavily to young WOC. Part of the reason I think of myself as writing for women is that (as VIDA and other women's writer's groups and organizations show over and over again), male gatekeepers in the literary establishment are deeply committed to ignoring women's writing. So, I just embrace the notion that I'm writing for women and go for it. What themes, ideas, or conclusions, if any, do you hope for your audience to take away from these books? I'm an unabashed feminist and I hope that people will take away visions of women's agency, power, and cooperation. I hope people will have opportunities to think about the many ways that women are oppressed and see that the way to address that is to work together and organize, as opposed to individual solutions. I'm really impressed by Andi Zeisler's work on marketplace feminism [We Were Feminists Once: From Riot Grrrl to CoverGirl®, the Buying and Selling of a Political Movement], that really questions the idea the feminist/feminism is just about personal choice, individual identity, celebrities, and consumer brands. Also, I really like how [the protagonist of Uptown Thief] Marisol is a super badass Latinx woman. She defies stereotypes about us but also has that cariño and backbone and sense of family that is so powerful among the women in our communities. I hope folks will see Latinx women in a different light, and that we can also imagine ourselves differently. Another theme in the books is resisting assimilation, and this really came out of Uptown Thief. The second book in the series, The Boss, is about Tyesha, who is African American. The third book is about a pair of West Indian sisters. And they all have to go back to reclaim something about their original culture. Your writing tackles some heavy themes like sex work and the effects of structural inequality. How did you first become interested in these issues? I was a politically active teenager, so I've been thinking about these issues for many years. I started Uptown Thief in 2008, and it was my first time writing about sex work. In thinking about structural inequality—particularly race, class, and gender—I liked the idea of people going out and redistributing the wealth, as opposed to only putting pressure on others who have wealth and power to try to get them to change. At the same time, I do also believe in social movements and in voting. In particular, I've been a big advocate of Steve Phillips' book Brown is the New White, which talks about how people of color and progressive whites are a New American Majority that can win any national election if the Democratic party has a grassroots focus, progressive policies, and stops chasing white men who lean conservative. Do you have plans to continue writing in this genre or would you like to try any others? (Memoir? Children's books?) I am contracted for 4 books in this series (all heists), and then I think there are two more in my head that are more just action/romance. I also just finished a YA Black/Latinx girl spy book. I have a children's book in the works about talking to children about anti-black racism. I'm also interested in an intersectional memoir about food/body image. Your first book, Puffy: People Whose Hair Defies Gravity, was a self-published children's book. What have been some of the major differences between indie publishing and getting a book deal? Where to begin? I wrote Puffy while I was desperately trying to get an agent. I really was going crazy with the waiting game. It was so great to be able to press a "publish" button and get it to happen. At the same time, there was no one behind that book but me. No press. No infrastructure. Uptown Thief has had a much bigger life because my publisher had invested in it. I've been really fortunate, however, that Puffy has had a bigger life than it would have, thanks to some great progressive librarians who have backed the book. If I had it to do over again, I would have published with both CreateSpace and Lightning Source. Since it's only with CreateSpace, I can't get into indy bookstores, because CreateSpace is an Amazon company, and many of them won't do business with Amazon. You came up in the Bay Area spoken word scene and currently teach at UC Berkeley. You’re an acclaimed author, activist, educator, and mother. Is there anything about your career trajectory that you feel might be instructional or educational for the next generation of WOC writers? First off, the biggest thing of all: the road to creative success is full of failure and rejection. Don't give up. My own personal path was to delay motherhood til my early 40s and go really hard after my personal healing in my 20s and my artistic career in my 30s. But in all of it, I had to run up against my own internalized racism and sexism as an Afro-Latinx woman. There were ways that we get groomed to be of service to others, and we feel guilt if we put ourselves first, and discomfort if we hustle on our own behalf. I had to be willing to dial back the caretaking and keep a lot of my energy for myself and my career. Now that I'm a mom, it's even more intense, because there is another person who is really dependent on me for care. So I'm supposedly "balancing" this day job, writing, family, being an activist, doing the motherhood thing. There are days now, when "I'm having it all" which includes a great kid, a loving and challenging marriage, a chest cold, a new book coming out, a cluttered house, and I'm running late between my kid's school and work and I think, yep, this is me having it all!