Jasminne Mendez Talks Theater and Book Banning in YA Debut, ‘The Story of My Anger’

By Amaris Castillo

The tone of Jasminne Mendez’s YA debut, The Story of My Anger, is set ablaze in the prologue. 

“My name is Yulieta Lopez

and this is the story of my anger, 

and how it became 

a five-alarm fire I tried

to smother silent…”

Yulieta doesn’t want to play the part of an angry Black girl. But there’s a lot happening around the Texas teen that boils her blood. Yuli is angry about her racist drama teacher who looks over Black students for lead roles. She is angry that her favorite teacher and his livelihood are being threatened over the literature works he introduces to her and her peers. Soon, this fury erupts and Yulieta decides to take action.

The Story of My Anger (out Sept. 16 from Dial Books) is a powerful novel-in-verse about the need to find and use your voice, and it’s one that will connect with women of color who are used to navigating difficult and unwelcome spaces. Yuli’s anger is palpable, and rightfully so. Mendez, herself a poet and playwright, brings a crystal-clear authenticity to her protagonist and the complicated world of high school theater. The threads about book banning and tensions between students and administrators is very timely for the climate we’re in, which in turns deepens the story further/

Ahead of the book’s release, Mendez spoke with the Dominican Writers Association about writing about anger, book banning, and much more. 

This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.

Congratulations on The Story of My Anger. This is your YA debut. How do you feel about unleashing this story into the world soon?

I was definitely nervous, especially as the ARCs were coming out and people were reading it. I’m hoping that assuages when the book actually comes out, which is usually when I get nervous. 

Given the social and political climate we’re in right now, and this book touching on all of those now taboo subjects, I’m definitely nervous about the trolls coming out or any kind of backlash that may ensue. But I am really excited for the story itself, with regards to the relevant topics that it deals with. It’s really thinking about Black girl anger and empowerment, and how anger doesn’t have to be a bad thing. We’re always seeing it as this negative emotion, when I think it can really be used to fuel change and to empower individuals, in particular young Black girls who are often villainized if they express any emotion other than happiness. 

I think about the ways that, in my life, I have suppressed my own anger for fear of getting labeled as this angry Black girl, or angry Black woman. So I’m excited to send a message to young Afro-Latinas and Black girls, that it’s OK. It’s OK to feel all of your emotions. It’s just a matter of how you channel and express it. But overall, I’m excited to enter the YA space. Hopefully it reaches the people that it needs to and connects with readers.

Your book follows Yulieta Lopez, a Texas teen who longs to be cast in the lead role of her school’s fall play, titled Our Town. What does the lead role signify for Yulieta?

I think it signifies this idea that she’s finally being seen and that her talent is finally being recognized. It’s a sense of validation that, My hard work has paid off. The talent that everyone says that I have is finally getting to shine through. Despite her skin color that says she shouldn’t be the lead in this play based on “old America,” if you will, she can surpass those color barriers. Her talent can be what matters, and not her skin color. It’s a form of validation for her to say, It doesn’t matter what I look like. My talent supersedes all of that, and I’m deserving of this role.

Yulieta soon finds herself battling racism in her theater program. She has a drama teacher who has outdated ideas of who gets to play what part in plays. How did you arrive at this major obstacle for your main character?

Personal experience. I was a theater nerd in high school. I did theater in middle school, high school, college, and beyond. Some of my encounters with folks in the theater world were very much microaggressions and macroaggressions. There were a lot of things that were not said, but were understood: If you audition for a certain part or even read casting calls, you realize that not very often are there casting calls for girls or women who look like me. Even when I was auditioning for plays seeking Latinos or Latinas, the understanding was, We don’t mean you. We don’t mean people who look like you. It’d be evident by the shift in the tone or the mood of the casting directors or whoever was there. 

This book is set in Texas and builds up in a space like a Texas suburb, where maybe you are in a predominantly white school. Some teachers and adults don’t realize that their bias is a racial bias, and that they’re being microaggressive. They’re like, Well, this is the way we’ve always done things. But I think Yuli is a little bit more aware. It raises her understanding of what is really going on. And that frustrates her, because it’s never-ending. She really thought and hoped this year would be different, and it proves that it’s not. 

I want to address the structure of The Story of My Anger, which I very much enjoyed. Your book is categorized as a novel-in-verse, but you also include other genres like prose and scenes that are written like play scripts are. How did you decide on this approach?

It took a while for me to get there, honestly. My first version of this book was a full prose novel that I wrote back in 2020, before I wrote Aniana Del Mar Jumps In. So this book was sparked by the George Floyd murder and the protests, and me thinking and analyzing the ways in which I have dealt with micro- and macroaggressions and racism in my own life. It started as journal entries of this young teenage girl writing about this problematic theater teacher. I wrote 60,000 words in full prose, and then was like, Yeah, I’m done. I tucked it away. Then Aniana Del Mar spilled out of me, and my editor was like, ‘OK. What else you got?’ I dusted off this book… 

(Later) I realized, Let me try it as a novel-in-verse, which really meant rewriting the whole thing from scratch. And I did that, but then I kept running into walls because so much of what was happening was dialogue-based. I was like, How do I make this work? And finally, it was just like a light bulb went off. I was like, This is a book about theater. Why not write the scenes like a play? It allowed the book to open up and allowed for more possibilities.

In the book you reference for colored girls who have considered suicide/when the rainbow is enuf, the 1976 work by Ntozake Shange (An-tuh-zakay Shange). Yulieta keeps a worn-out copy of the play on her nightstand, and she narrates that reading it was the first time she had read a script with a cast of all Black women. What role did for colored girls have on you?

Same. For Colored Girls was the very first play that I was ever introduced to with an all-Black female cast of characters. I actually played Lady in Purple in college, and then Lady in Blue in a version of it after college. 

It really changed my understanding of what theater could be and could do. It’s called a choreopoem, so it’s a mix of dance and lyrical work and poems. It’s voices speaking together, apart. It’s just a beautiful play. And it was the first and only time that I have been in a production that was directed, stage-managed, and cast with all Black women. It was a really powerful experience to have that, and to be a part of that. 

And so for Yuli, same thing: Reading that play at that young age was transformative for her, because it showed her the possibilities of what theater could be and could do, and that she did have a place in it.

The Story of My Anger also touches on book banning when the school board threatens her favorite teacher for the works of literature he has in his classroom. Book banning is a prevalent threat today. What message were you hoping to send by incorporating this thread in your book?

All of this is about trying to fight the violence of erasure on Black girls, on Black people, on people of color, on Afro-Latinos, etc. This idea that, if our stories are silenced, then basically you’re trying to erase and silence our humanity and our lived experiences. I think there’s so many connections between the theater that is produced, the people that are given chances to be on stage or even in movies. It’s a reflection of what we’re seeing through book banning. Who is allowed to be on the shelves? Who is allowed to publish? What stories are we reading, listening, consuming? This is all about storytelling, and the stories that folks say should be highlighted or taken away. Sometimes people don’t see those connections, but I definitely do as somebody who has done both theater and is a writer.

And speaking of Yulieta’s favorite teacher, he is Mr. Gonzalez. In his class, she and her peers read books by BIPOC authors, and disabled authors. I was curious about who inspired this character for you?

Yes, my husband. He is an incredible educator and mentors many young people. He’s often the first and only BIPOC male, Latino male teacher that a lot of these students have had. I’ve spent time in his classrooms over the years, and I see how the students respond to him and how close they are to him. He loves teaching. He loves making an impact. He’s a mentor even after some of these students graduate. 

I really wanted to highlight that teachers like him exist. There are good teachers who put their heart and soul and tears and blood into their classrooms, to uplift their students, and their students of color in particular.

Anger, among other themes, is the undercurrent of this novel. What was your approach in how to characterize Yulieta’s growing anger in this story?

I think it’s something that at first she represses and stifles. There’s the metaphor of the flame. Aniana was all about water, and this book is all about fire. As we know, fire can both create and destroy. When you think about glass blowing, it makes beautiful things, right? But it can also burn a house down. It can kill people. It can harm. Within Yulieta, because she is stifling it, this fire grows and does eventually cause harm. But the people around her, like her mom, are trying to help her harness this fire and this anger in order to create change.

So it’s not that you shouldn't have anger. Women often get told that our anger, regardless of race, is bad or wrong. We’re not really taught how to express that anger, either in productive ways, or at all.

What do you hope readers take away from The Story of My Anger?

That art can be activism. Activism is a marathon, not a sprint. Even if the change that we want doesn’t happen right away, we can and should keep fighting. We all have a voice and a story that matters, and we should use that voice and that story to uplift others and to make a change in our communities — whether big or small. 

Something that I continue to think about with this book, and as well as in my own life, is that activism doesn’t have to be on the frontlines. Yulieta and her brother are very much on the frontlines at some point, but we can see that their mom is more in the background as a patient advocate. There’s different ways that we can influence the resistance, the cause, the revolution — whatever causes that we are wanting to make an impact on. I hope students realize that, if you’re not a public speaker or it terrifies you, you don’t have to speak in public. But there are other ways you can help. There are other talents that you have that you can give back to your community, and to those causes that matter to you. So I hope the students are able to see themselves in at least one of these characters and think, ‘Oh, I can do that. Maybe that’s how I can help.’ That’s my hope.

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Visit our BookShop to preorder a copy of The Story of My Anger.

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About the Author: Jasminne Mendez is Pura Belpré Honor Award recipient and a Dominican-American poet, playwright and author of several books for children and adults. She is also a poet, playwright, translator, and professional audiobook narrator. Her most recent publication Aniana del Mar Jumps In (Dial), a novel in verse about a young girl diagnosed with Juvenile Idiopathic Arthritis, received starred reviews from Kirkus Reviews, Publishers Weekly, School Library Journal and others. Her YA memoir, Islands Apart: Becoming Dominican American (Arte Público Press) and her debut poetry collection, City Without Altar (Noemi Press), were recently recognized with honors and awards by the Texas Institute of Letters and her debut picture book Josefina’s Habichuelas (Arte Público Press) was the 2022 Writer’s League of Texas Children’s Book Discovery Prize Winner. She has translated Amanda Gorman’s best-selling picture books Change Sings (La canción del cambio) and Something, Someday (Algo, algún día), the best selling picture book The 1619 Project: Born on the Water (El proyecto 1619: Nacieron sobre el agua) by Nikole Hannah Jones and Reneé Watson and the Pura Belpré Award Winning graphic novel Frizzy (Rizos) by Claribel Ortega.

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Amaris Castillo is a journalist, writer, and the creator of Bodega Stories, a series featuring real stories from the corner store. Her journalism has appeared in The New York Times, the Lowell Sun, the Bradenton Herald, Remezcla, Latina Magazine, Parents Latina Magazine, and elsewhere. Her creative writing has appeared in La Galería Magazine, Spanglish Voces, PALABRITAS, Dominican Moms be Like..., and most recently in Quislaona: A Dominican Fantasy Anthology and Sana Sana: Latinx Pain and Radical Visions for Healing and Justice. Her short story, "El Don," was a finalist for the 2022 Elizabeth Nunez Caribbean-American Writers’ Prize by the Brooklyn Caribbean Literary Festival. Amaris lives in Florida with her family. You can follow her work at amariscastillo.com.