To see people hear my story and not be afraid of it,
and embrace and say this is something that has value,
that makes me feel great.
[GIGGLE]
One of the beautiful things about the Latinx List
is that you have 10 writers all come
from different experiences.
What drives you?
What's that push?
To me, my culture represents a north star
that I can kind of follow it.
Again, trying to be the artist both my parents
weren't allowed to be.
They know how complicated it is being Latinx in this country.
We've been here.
We're indigenous.
This is our home.
I feel like now people are willing to pay attention.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
Hi, I'm AJ Mendez.
I'm a writer, performer, and mental health advocate,
and I have made the Black List inaugural LatinX TV List.
And here interviewing me today is my husband, Phillip Brooks.
You're a lot of things.
You are a performer, an entertainer,
a writer, a good cook.
[LAUGH]
So how does your Latinx identity influence your work?
It is the impetus for all of my storytelling career.
It is, you know, growing up I was told that--
pause for the train.
You remember when we got married and we--
We had to do this during the wedding--
--had to pause for the train. --during our vows.
[LAUGH]
Storytelling was the way for me to create
my own place to belong.
I didn't see a representation of me on TV.
Instead of waiting around for that,
I decided to just become that, you know.
I didn't see a brown superhero, so I put spandex on and started
beating up bad guys and I became my own superhero
as a professional wrestling champion.
I didn't see stories about Latinx triumph, so I wrote one
and I became a best selling author.
It's really hard to see what you cannot see,
and so that has driven me to be that example
and that representation.
Is there a lot of parallels between being a female
and being Latinx?
Like do both of those worlds collide?
Being brown and being a woman, a lot of times
you kind of feel like these are like strikes against you.
You and I walk down the street and a woman yelled at her car
for me to go home.
Yeah, that happened.
And I originally thought it was because I had a Cubs hat on--
Yeah.
--and we were in Milwaukee.
Oh, no.
Do not appropriate my hate crime maybe.
Well, no, that was--
[LAUGH]
I mean, that's, you know, that's something
that I've never experienced.
When I was really young, I didn't have--
I wasn't connected to it and I didn't feel
like I needed to defend it.
Once it became this thing that people were going to attack
and judge, that made me fiercely want to hold onto it
and defend it and be proud of my culture.
How do you feel currently about Latinx representation
in entertainment as a whole?
I feel like we've come a long way,
but there's still so much further to go.
We want to create the change that we want to see.
A lot of my storytelling now is putting
characters in that journey.
I have a very Americanized Latinx experience.
It's like I didn't get to have any of the fun of the culture,
but I got all of the racism.
So, you know, I want to kind of explore that space.
I don't see that on TV.
Explain to me Americanized Latinx experience.
My parents are both first generation
Puerto Rican American.
There's so much beauty to the culture
that I feel my particular upbringing missed out on.
My family and I grew up extremely poor.
I was homeless for most of my youth.
There was zero connection to my roots.
The first time I really even understood that I was Puerto
Rican was when I went to live in Puerto Rico,
so it's quite the culture shock.
That was the safest that I had felt in childhood.
And so, to me, my culture represents like a north star
that I can kind of follow.
And my goal now, as a storyteller,
is to reconnect with those roots and to tell that perspective
of somebody who is confused on the inside
by that connection and yearns for that connection.
How did your parents shape who you
are through those experiences?
They had kids really young.
They had kids around 16, so we basically grew up together
and taught each other, you know, how to open up a bank account
and like how to whittle your own shiv, the important, you know,
survival assets.
I feel like that's high-- that's highly stereotypical.
I had a shiv.
You said it, so it's absolutely OK.
And I've used it.
And so whatever the idea of like what, you know,
America is supposed to represent of like, you know, opportunity,
I feel like they didn't get a chance.
I felt a duty to make the most of that opportunity
that they missed out on.
I started writing comic books.
And I was-- would write me.
I was like the superhero and I was the star of my comic book.
That was my way of escaping.
You know, I could travel the world.
And I could be strong and capable, and anyone but me,
and anywhere but here.
And then after that, it was, you know,
just continuing writing and became an author.
And now I'm running television.
And it became less about waiting for the world
and my circumstance to give me an opportunity
and more just about creating it for myself.
Talk to me specifically about your submission
to the LatinX List.
So my submission was a dark comedy called "Home."
and it's about a suicidal Latina that
steals the life of a white Mormon girl to start fresh.
It's pretty messed up, yeah.
Yeah, it's a comedy, I swear.
And it really came from this feeling of forced assimilation
and the world kind of telling you,
as a brown woman, how to behave.
And if you can be white passing, stuff might be better for you,
it might be safer for you.
And this particular story starts with a suicidal girl that
is based very much in my experience
surviving a suicide attempt.
If you're trying to leave the world,
what happens when you don't and you have
to live with the consequences?
That sounds like a really dark traumatic place,
but I relish finding the comedy in like the most
traumatic parts of my life.
You don't laugh, you don't cry.
Exactly.
And I remember walking out of that hospital
and just racking up and being like this is so absurd.
So what's changed since you've been selected?
I no longer feel like I have to let people know I'm--
I'm a screenwriter.
People know now and they're coming to me.
You're a big deal.
[LAUGH]
Hey, you don't gotta name names, you're a big deal.
It's so affirming for everything I've been through in life.
How do you pay it forward?
How do you inspire the next generation?
So the most important thing that we
can do for the next generation is provide representation.
And when somebody shows you what is possible, that's inspiring
and that makes it a lot easier road to travel.
And so if we can put brown faces on TV,
and we don't talk about how being Latinx
is an obstacle, how we talk about how it is an advantage,
like why not explore that.
And if we put that on TV, and we put that
in books, and in comic books, and we have brown voices
behind the scenes as well and we show them,
that is the way we let people know
that are looking for their place to belong there is a place.
And if you don't see it, just create it for yourself.
You're an amazing person.
I think it's cool that everyone can get
to see a little sliver of that.
I'm April's husband.
[LAUGH]
We're going to wrap this up.
April Mendez, everybody.
I'm credited as AJ Mendez.
Oh, are you?
[LAUGHS]
AJ Mendez, everybody.
Only you can call me April.