Y: So much of your work revolves around books. How did you come to be a lover of books?
S: Oral stories were always huge in my family. I shared a room with several of my siblings, and we would lie in bed and also tell each other stories to put each other to sleep. When I actually transitioned to the actual book is when I was in foster care. They do all these tests for kids. The testing in New York City starts in third grade, I want to say, and they tested me, and they were like, “This kid participates in class and knows the answers, but for some reason, their reading level is not where it needs to be.”
And so, I have this teacher who sat with me and asked me, “What kind of stories do you like?” And I was like, “Oh, I love mysteries or like weird, creepy, scary stuff.” She introduced me to Roald Dahl, and I feel like that was a pivotal moment for me. She would sit with me and have me read aloud, and I had to get used to my voice and pronouncing words. It was that connection of [telling] oral stories like this with my family. But here’s this actual book that contains stories that I can go back to with characters that I can go back and visit.
Y: How did you feed that love growing up?
S: Growing up in the Bronx, we didn’t really have any bookstores. This was even before the [now-defunct] Barnes and Noble was there. I got all my books from street vendors, and they were the best booksellers. And I was the best negotiator.
I used to buy books from Fordham Road or Third Avenue. It was just lots of fun, and I feel like those books helped me build community because my friends and I would pass around the books and talk about them. It was a book club, but not a book club.
Y: Switching gears a bit –– What parameters did you give the authors who contributed to Wild Tongues?
S: I sort of told them the world [has] their stereotypes of who we are, but I want us to subvert those stereotypes or subvert a myth. I told them, “It could be sort of whatever you want.” It was very collaborative. Once they signed on, they told me, “Here are a few things that I was thinking about writing about. I feel like I could subvert this, or I want to tackle this myth.”
I read through the pitches and kind of [had] conversations with them. When you’re talking to someone or going back and forth in correspondence, you can tell how passionate someone is about a certain thing. I leaned into their passionate response to their own pitches.
Y: What was your favorite and least favorite part of working on this book?
S: My favorite was really getting to edit the contributors’ essays. It was so wonderful to sit with these writers and their memories and to help them fill in the gaps by asking questions that any reader would ask. The hardest part was writing about my life. You know, pulling up my essay just because it’s hard to turn and take a look and see what were some of the things in my life that happened or that made me feel othered or that was very stereotypical. It’s tough to look at those things. I think I admired all the contributors for doing that and writing about it and turning in their pieces and then having to turn the lens on myself. It was challenging, for sure, but at the same time, very therapeutic to finally get my truth out there.
