Take a bite out of the bread of life, without realizing that you are the bread itself.
Life is taking a bite of you, one minute at a time.
“It Rises”
Barbara Perez Marquez is a writer from the Dominican Republic who now resides in the United States. Her prose and comic creations are a much needed contribution to the growing literature on coming of age and queerness for younger audiences. She enjoys participating in the larger conversations surrounding identity and representation in the graphic lit world. You can find samples of her incredible work on her website mustachebabs.com.
Barbara is a former Yellow Arrow Publishing writer in resident and her creative nonfiction chapbook Por La Sombrita was recently published with Bottlecap Press in both English and Spanish. This collection deals with themes of identity and coming of age, family relationships, and brims with an intricate nostalgia for the sensory setting of a distinct childhood.
Barbara had a dynamic conversation over Zoom with Melissa Nunez, Yellow Arrow author and interviewer, where they discussed her entrance to the graphic lit scene and the inspirations behind her newest chapbook.
Who are some women identified writers and artists who inspire you?
I grew up in the Dominican Republic so a lot of my inspiration, especially in regards to this this chapbook, comes from thinking of who I was reading when I was growing up. Salomé Ureña, a poetess from the Dominican Republic, was one of those writers that I felt I did not read nearly enough. Her work still inspires me to this day. As for contemporary writers, Rita Indiana is another Dominican creator whose work is really inspiring. I also read a lot of Miranda July’s flash fiction around the time I was putting this chapbook together. Her work and that of Anne Carson were everything I was consuming and it made me realize the need for more of this genre of fiction.
How did you connect with Yellow Arrow Publishing?
I moved to Baltimore, Maryland, in 2015, after I left the Dominican Republic and then spent six years in New York while I was in school. I was fresh out of graduate school and felt like I was still trying to discover what writing would look like in this new place and stage. For a while, I was trying to get my legs under me with the comics community. While I do write traditional prose, flash fiction, and poems, I also write comics for graphic novels and shorter issues. I found myself there, but around 2018 I just felt sort of aimless. I knew that I wanted to come back to prose and felt maybe a residency program could instigate that motivation to write. I think that programs often allow us do away with all the excuses because we have to write for a deadline. That’s when I found Yellow Arrow.
I believe Yellow Arrow was on the second cycle for residency and it was like right down the street from me, basically. It was really great to see this support for women-identifying writers on this side of town because a lot of the arts center of Baltimore is not really where Yellow Arrow started and where I am situated. It was really exciting to find living artists and writers here and that led to me applying and becoming one of the residents for that cycle. We were the pandemic residents, so it was really interesting for us to navigate what this new iteration of community looked like. We had to figure out online events and if there was a way for us to use the space in a safe environment. We were able to do this small, one-day retreat out on the patio at Yellow Arrow House because we had to be outside and all of that. From there it has grown into a community where we receive newsletters and stay updated on all of these awesome writers that I now know through Yellow Arrow. It was a fun experience that I still value today.
What drew you to graphic art? How did you get started?
I always knew I wanted to write for children. Drawing was not really in my wheelhouse, and so this brought me to graphic novels. I liked that you could have a collaboration aspect between artist and writer and I wanted to be that writer. I was consuming a lot of animation media at the time and have a lot of friends that are artists. That allowed me to see what that realm looked like. I think in discovering flash fiction, I also found this new world of breaking the page.
One of my mentors in graduate school, my advisor for the program, gave me a Linda Berry book. She told me, “I think you really need to read this.” She could tell that I had this like artistic side that isn’t always captured adequately through words alone. When I read that book, I could see the marriage between art and writing that I could explore. From there, another classmate gifted me this Batman comic she thought I would enjoy and then it sort of extrapolated. I saw that there are people that are creating these things. Publishing can have a lot of rules, written and unwritten, but I found out very quickly that comics writing has no limiting standards. Everybody just kind of does their own thing. Somehow, with this knowledge in hand and that sort of lack of rulebook, I got the push I needed to say, “I can do this.” I could experiment with giving guidance to an artist and collaborating together in a different way than just me sitting in front of a computer or notebook. I love creating and giving that part of me to the page and reader.
Is there an overlap in creation and planning for text only and visual work? Or are they very different for you?
I think that they certainly use different sides of my creative practice. When it comes to a comic script, I know that I have a freedom in format if that makes sense. You’re just telling the story and nobody is going to read these words in this way. The manuscript is sort of like a secret little thing that somehow eventually becomes art. Whereas with prose, I know I have this box in some way, shape, or form. With creative nonfiction, even with the chapbook, I would do a lot of page breaking. You format things and you play with the blank space and all of that stuff. When I am creating prose I want it to look attractive on the page and I have to consider the final product in print. This chapbook was the first printed piece of prose that I’ve had in a while. I haven’t had to worry about that so much because I’ve been creating for open mics and I’ll just read from my phone. I didn’t even own a printer for like five years. So there is that visual difference there. However, when it comes time to create they still remain very similar. I work to evoke and maintain the spirit of what I’m trying to say in both forms. I get it into words and then explore that in different ways.
What do you think draws you to the topics in your writing and comics? Things like female knight orders in the comic world and then the personal content in your prose?
I think the draw for most of the topics is that they’re fun. They are really great sandboxes to play in. I grew up really interested in animation superheroes and fantasy magic and all of these things are part of what I want to create. We talked of course about female inspiration, women creators and inspirations there, but I was also reading Gabriel Garcia Marquez and inhabiting this world of magical realism. I felt it was something I could and should create, as I feel there are not enough women writing magical realism. I also find myself creating queer topics because I grew up queer in the closet. Every writer wants to write what they needed when they were younger or the story they want to see on the shelf and that definitely motivates my queer content. I know I want to leave a legacy with the stories I write of the support and knowledge I wish I’d had, something that would have made my experience a little easier. I can do that for the readers to come.
When it comes to fantasy work, the order of Belfry was really close to my heart. In this case, the artist approached me with this conversation about lady nights. I was like, “What do you want to say about lady nights? I think they’re hot and that we can tell a really interesting story here.” It was this marriage of all of those elements that fuel and inspire me. We were creating this heavily queer cast and we had this fantasy aspect where we were playing with the medieval knights order. We were very intentional with this. We weren’t necessarily being Arthurian on purpose. We knew we could have easily skewed it that way, but we wanted to somehow have some semblance of “reality” in our fantasy where it still felt very grounded, which I think is so important. In classes and workshops you always hear about writing what you know and you have the own voices movements with writing, but I think we can do both. I think if people do their work, you can still create something different and present perspectives that are new and necessary. I didn’t grow up in a medieval pseudokingdom, but I can put a bit of myself in this idea I built upon research and collaboration.
La primera vez que mentí, las palabras hormigueaban en mis labios y desguste la libertad.
“Mentiras Blancas”
The first time I lied, the words tingled my lips and I tasted freedom.
“White Lies”
Do you regularly handle your own translation work and how do you approach this? Does anything inform which language you write in first? I am not fully fluent in Spanish but I did read through your chapbook in both languages and the way you handled “White Lies” really stood out to me. I love digging into decisions like this.
I’m glad you pointed that out and I appreciate you reading the collection in both languages. That’s great practice. I do translation as sort of a side gig just because I’m really interested in linguistics, and I think it allows us to explore writing on a different level. I think that the words that we use obviously are very specific in the sense of what you need in the moment for your writing. When I do any translation work, I’m more interested in salvaging the creative voice of a piece of work than just translating this word from the English to the Spanish. Google can do that, right?
For my chapbook specifically, I approached the editor of Bottlecap Press about how important it is to me that my writing is available in both languages. I grew up speaking Spanish because I’m from a Spanish country, and while this chapbook is in the American market, I’d love this opportunity to present it to people that are in the Dominican Republic. Especially for those in the audience who want to be a writer but are not sure how to do that. It is a great opportunity to present the chapbook I wrote and show a bit of what that looks like. So for that purpose, I offered my time and gladly took on the task. Then it became the matter of those individual choices, like the hormigueas choice versus tingling. It could have easily been like cosquilleo, but I was like, that’s not right. I looked at each piece and I considered what words I was trying to express along with the feeling that I was trying to inhabit in that specific moment. And that sort of allowed that sort of play on words.
Translation is so interesting because Spanish is so regional, like we’re all different. But there’s also beauty in finding where those things cross. I’ve translated things for other creatives in the past and sometimes they’re looking for something where the character is not necessarily Dominican. Then the translation is more about finding a sort of neutral translation. That’s fine and that’s something that I feel is important, too. But then you have creatives that are like in need of a specific character, for example, a Puerto Rican. I’m not Puerto Rican and I’m sure there are great Puerto Rican translators out there, but I had this opportunity to look at this particular piece of work. The creator knew my background but still wanted me to look at this Puerto Rican character. That’s where that research came in. I knew that I was unfamiliar with Puerto Rican jargon or slang, so I had to look it up. I can research that side and read from a translator’s point of view and offer that sort of perspective.
Coming back to the chapbook, it became an opportunity to also explore my own voice in Spanish which I don’t get to do very often. I do not write in Spanish as much as I should. I think that looking back I hadn’t really thought about that part of my life yet. The chapbook looks at like the first 15 years of my life and ends there. I think at some point there will probably be another chapbook to cover the ages between 15 and 25. This is when I explore the idea of becoming aware of my writing and that desire to be a writer. I was at that point of learning English and trying to teach myself how to be good at that. I think there was this unintentional effort to write in English because that’s where all the people write and that’s where the market is and all of these thoughts that tie into that. And so I do that a lot. I still write in Spanish. I had one story that I published in a magazine during college in Spanish because the editor was Dominican and she called me out on not writing in Spanish. She wanted to see what I could do. Fast forwarding to now, I have this impetus in me to make the market available to Spanish speakers and I know that some of the other works that I have don’t have that versatility. With the chapbook I had this special kind of control over it where I could put my money where my mouth is. I want to see my work in Spanish so I have to make it happen. It was fun. Ultimately, I think it was really cool to see how chapbooks are translated because it does slightly change the piece itself. I’m really excited to see, once I start doing readings for the pieces, the reception to the language I read them in. That will be an interesting journey ahead.
What do you think a writer gains from looking back and writing our child selves as an adult?
I think there’s obviously a lot of perspective. First and foremost, I think that there’s a lot of writers that look for a sense of catharsis when it comes to creating our nonfiction work, particularly for myself. It’s about coming to terms with the history that brought me here. I think it’s very important for me to present the things as I experience them. They are not perfect and I’m not really interested in presenting them in that manner. I’m not presenting this wonderful childhood. I want you to look at the imperfections and really recognize what a journey truly looks like. I think it is nice that my chapbook reflects that state of society as a queer person. I’m more interested in changing the mindsets in the present than changing that perception of the past. I want to change the current perspective of queerness in the Dominican Republic. I think showcasing that story and showcasing my experience as a writer that was gay growing up and has now come so far as to have a book about it presents a way that provides hope to a reader. It provides perspective and an opportunity for somebody to find the chapbook and find both the similarities and differences of that experience. I think those conversations are so important. It’s necessary to look back not necessarily to relive the past, but to examine it from where we’re standing now.
This collection is full of the power of sensory memory and metaphor. How did this develop in your writing?
As we write, we all develop our writer’s voice, and I think mine has always been about taking you on this journey with me as opposed to the more omnipresent narratives. I’m more interested in inviting the reader to go on this adventure together. This allows me to narrate in these camera angles which plays into the comic aspect as well. It’s like sometimes the camera is looking down on the story. I’m interested in like angling on the level of the story. Inherently, you will miss some of the parts of the story, but it allows you to be much closer to the particular moment.
I also preface the fact that it’s nonfiction with creative because I recognize that I’m not 11 anymore. I understand intrinsically that I am speaking for my 11-year-old self as an adult. I think that also changes the perspective as opposed to if somehow at 11 years old, I had the presence of mind to write this down. I think it melts into that part of the voice and allows it to be real and raw and sort of confusing at times, but with intention. We can teach ourselves so many skills as writers, but I think some parts of our voices are just intrinsically ours. And this is mine.
How do you balance cultural commentary with appreciation in your work?
I’m glad that aspect of the chapbook came through. That’s always nice to hear. When it comes to my creative writing practice, I just speak from the heart. I am not trying to romanticize the job, but there is definitely a part of you that when you truly just open yourself to the opportunity to present things how they need to be presented, things just sort of fall into place. The social commentary here comes in glimpses. You have the aspect of me taking public transportation, or my family getting robbed in the middle of the night. I don’t necessarily feel like we were losing sleep over it. We weren’t focusing on that one time we got robbed and making our house safer or something like that, but it was the indent it made on me to consider things. It was something that just like happened in a flash and it happened at one time, but it still felt like it was a story I could tell that gave context to that period of time. Especially because the chapbook takes a perspective of that younger age and I feel like that’s a nice way to sort of put the lens where it needs to be. I wouldn’t necessarily present it from the side of the robber. I’m not really interested in like, speaking for my parents and what they were going through. That is very different than the little like eight year old that woke up in the middle of night because there was a ruckus outside of her door. I think that is the way that I sort of balance things and feel the social commentary comes in, not necessarily easily, but it definitely comes fluidly when necessary. I think it comes in secondary to speaking to the experience directly.
Now that old darkness seems like paradise, a space where the world went silent and there was peace and quiet, if only as long as I kept repeating words like prayers.
“Studying in the Dark”
What is it like representing your work and perspective at public panels and events?
As a creator, it’s always been really important to me to be forward with my identities. I’m always very straightforward with my queer identity and I think I have seen a return to my Dominican identity in particular in the last few years. I can easily admit that when I came to the United States I felt the need to adapt to the American market, but that was swept over by the Own Voices movement that sort of changed the face of publishing. And I was like, “Ok. I think I can be Dominican.” I can be this thing and also queer and also a writer and it’ll work out. The communities I have found since then, like Yellow Arrow, have been part of that return to saying, “I’m a Dominican writer.” I’m not just a writer, not just a queer writer, I’m a queer Dominican writer. It’s really important to me to lead with that because it allows you to bring that back to where you came from.
I've been talking about being able to turn the mirror back to the island and say, “Hey guys, if anybody wants to be a writer, I’m here.” When it comes to the panels, book festivals, and conventions and all of this, talking about authentic stories is still pretty new because publishing is still largely white. The people that get the opportunities with the big best selling book deals and publishers are still white, while the queer and POC stories are still in the minority. So, me coming to these panels as a panelist and sharing what little experience I’ve had, the things that work for me, allows that opportunity to leave the door open and bring somebody else in. There might be somebody sitting in the audience that’s also queer, also POC, and doesn’t even know where to start. Maybe two things that I say in the panel might give them the spark to finish that story or find out how to submit to their local writing open mic or another publishing opportunity. I think it’s ultimately about visibility and continuing that work to pave the way for others. Yes, I’m writing. Yes, I’m creating. Yes, I’m doing all these cool, awesome things that I’m super excited about. How can I make space for more voices like mine?
What advice do you have for aspiring artists?
Publishing is really nebulous at the best of times. Writers, both new and established, can get really lost in the sauce of like, where do I publish my work? How do I get it to the people? How do people read it and receive it? My advice would be to find the other writers around you. Even if you don’t live in a big metropolitan area, we have access to online communities through discord, Instagrams, whatever social media is your preference. Ultimately, what really started me and kept me going was finding those other writers that were in that moment with me, even if we weren’t talking the same genres. When I was in school, I had a screenwriter friend, a poet, and one other fiction writer alongside me. What matters is those checkins, somebody asking about that manuscript you’re working on, asking if you figured out that plot point or if you were able to talk to whoever you need to talk to get that information you need. That would be my top advice: find those communities.
Are there any future projects you’d like to share?
I’m working on three graphic novels that are coming out in the next couple of years. Right now, immediately in August, I have a new kids graphic novel called Paulina and the Disaster at Pompeii. It’s about the eruption of Mount Vesuvius. After that, the story I wrote for Epic, which is the Animal Rescue Friends Tales: A Hard Shell to Crack, is coming out in print in November. Also in November, the third book of The Cardboard Kingdom is coming out. This is like my start in graphic novels and is a project near and dear to my heart. It is about this group of kids that play with cardboard and create this fantasy world. I’m really excited to see what people think of the kids. I created Amanda, the mad scientist, in that cast. We’re introducing a lot of new characters in this new book and a lot of new dynamics that I’m excited to see how people receive them.
You can find updates on Barbara Perez Marquez and her writing at mustachebabs.com and can order your copy of Por la Sombrita (in English or Spanish!) from Bottlecap Press.
Barbara Perez Marquez was born and raised in the Dominican Republic, now she lives in the USA. She’s a queer latine writer with an MFA in Creative Writing and writes short stories and fiction. During her career, she has also been an editor, translator, and even a sensitivity reader for several publications and projects. Her work was first featured in a student collection in the 7th grade, which inspired her desire to become a writer. In her work, Barbara aims to present coming of age and LGBTQ+ themes in both approachable and heartbreaking ways. You can find more of her work at mustachebabs.com.
Melissa Nunez is a Latin@ writer and homeschooling mother of three from the Rio Grande Valley. Her essays have appeared in magazines like Hypertext and Honey Literary. She has work forthcoming in Lean and Loafe, Fahmidan Journal, and others. She writes an anime column for The Daily Drunk, interviews for Yellow Arrow Publishing, and is a staff writer for Alebrijes Review. You can follow her on Twitter @MelissaKNunez.
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