"chismosa by trade," "metiche by heart"
a mini-interview with Isabel Quintero
In 2016 Isabel Quintero invited me to read at the reading series she produced and hosted. I remember asking Myriam Gurba to go with me—we had already been on a road trip to Fresno together and the drive to San Bernardino would give us time to talk our faces off again.
At the reading, Isabel requested that I read a piece that had been recently published. The piece, titled “Revelation,” was about my grandmother’s passing a few years before. I had never read it before an audience so I was surprised when, as I read, I burst out crying. I made it through the piece and later felt grateful that Isabel had requested I read this one in particular—I would have forever avoided reading it aloud to an audience otherwise. It would have never touched air.
Isabel Quintero is a writer of books, including children’s and young adults. She’s won numerous awards and has worked in education for over two decades. The last book of hers that I read, Photographic: The Life of Graciela Iturbide, was commissioned by the J. Paul Getty Museum. You can find her on Instagram or Twitter @isabelinpieces.
As is my mini-interview practice, I asked Isabel to respond to three to five questions from a total of eight offered.
What does your fantasy writing day look like, start to finish?
I wake up at 6 am because I am the daughter of Mexican immigrants who woke up before the sun to get to work and if I woke up later than that I had wasted most of the day. So, I wake up at 6 and I get ready and go for a long walk on the trails near my place. I don't listen to music or anything besides the birds and animals rustling around me. I make it to one of the lookout spots and admire the cities around me and get annoyed at the growth of warehouses. I walk back to the car and think about what I'm going to work on. I get home and take a shower and have some breakfast. I serve myself another cup of coffee and sit in lounge pants or in my underwear and write and write and write. When I'm done, I go for another walk, around my neighborhood this time, then come home and read.
One collaboration you've done with artist Zeke Peña is Photographic: The Life of Graciela Iturbide. If you could choose another artist/writer to profile for a book, who would it be and why?
Dude, I am metiche at heart. A chismosa by trade and so I want to write about everyone. My story telling skills were honed at my mom's friends tables where the woman talked about heartbreak and migration and their bodies and kids and everything. They taught me the power of memoir and biography at an early age and so yeah, I'd like to write about so many folks I admire or find fascinating. I want to write a book about Meg Medina, our current National Ambassador for Young People's literature. I want to write about Michele Serros, about women singers, about home cooks in my community, about so many people--celebrities and not.
Even before Photographic I wanted to write non-fiction, biographies especially, but I wasn't sure how to approach them. The Getty took the guess work out of how I would do that which was great because then I could just focus on the writing. The project really pushed me towards a direction I had been nervous about going. I didn't grow up with comics or graphic novels and didn't get into them until I was an adult and so I feel a whole lot of imposter syndrome in that world. Comics folks are intense. They take their craft incredibly seriously and know so much about its history and that can be intimidating for a newbie like me. But I also really respect that medium and the endless possibilities that visual storytelling offers the writers.
You've done a number of collaborations. What are some things you've learned working in collaboration with an artist?
I'd definitely love to work on another graphic biography with Zeke because I really enjoy working with him. We both have respect and admiration for what the other does and we come to our work that way. On the two full projects we've done together, I've felt that although they were my words on the page, it became our story because of how closely we worked on it. There is a lot of communication, exchange of ideas, sometimes he'll even edit my work. He's a pretty good editor and I trust him with my stories, and I think that's important when you work with someone--you have to be able to trust them with your words. And you have to be honest. Even if it's hard, otherwise the final product will suffer. When we worked on Photographic, for example, there was one time when Zeke had sent over pencils for a page and I'd approved it because they looked great. Our editor looked at them and also loved them. So he inked them. The next morning I woke up in a panic and the first word out of my mouth was, "FUCK." It was the wrong image he was supposed to use on that page. He lost a few days of work on that and it was already a tight schedule. I still feel guilty about it. It is inevitable that a collaboration will have a few moments where the partners working together will not agree or when something like this could happen. The important thing is to talk it through, take responsibility when needed, and keep pushing forward because you have a job to do or project to finish.
What (if anything) has changed about your writing practice since becoming a parent?
So much. It is all fragmented now. What I didn't realize, naively, ignorantly, was how much child care would play a role in whether or not I get to write for the day. And then I have to contend with domestic duties and being a partner and family time and friend time and time for me. Before I used to write whenever I wanted. Until 2 or 3 am if I wanted to. Or, I'd get up in the morning, go for a hike, come home and take a shower, make some coffee and get to it. That was the perfect day. Now, I watch our son the first half of the day so his dad can work and his dad watches him the second half so I can work. It's fucking hard.
Giving birth during the pandemic, the very beginning before vaccines, was also rough. It was very isolating. Mental healthwise, I'm still recovering from that. And of course that has a direct effect on my work and every other aspect of my life.
However, opposite of that, I've been flooded with picture book ideas because having the privilege of being a parent, of witnessing the development of a human being first hand, is incredible and has forced me to look at the world differently. Before he was born I had no idea what he'd be into. I thought Sesame Street or Bluey, but of course not. My sweet boy is obsessed with spooky things, especially skeletons and vampires. His imagination is unfiltered and untethered, free from cyniscim, free from fear, free from anything that sometimes gets in the way of my own imagination. I cannot help but be inspired by the way he walks through and how he experiences the world.