It is really sad Latinos all get bunched up into the same image,
and it's so different.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
One of the beautiful things about the Latinx List
is that you have 10 writers who 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.
Like I'm 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.
Hi, I'm Giovanni Maldonado.
One of the finalists of the Latinx TV
List, and I'm here today in lovely Los
Angeles with my really good friend, Mario Ruiz.
And he's going to interview me.
All right.
Let's do this.
How would you identify yourself?
I'm Puerto Rican.
I was born and raised in the island.
And I came to LA about five years ago.
What does it mean to be Puerto Rican?
Since we are part of the US and we're a territory,
or a colony, however you want to call it, we're kind of living
the Puerto Rican reality, but then everything that we
consume, whether it's TV, movies, pop culture,
it's all just, like, imported from the US.
It felt as if I was kind of straddling this line of,
am I fitting into the box of Puerto Rican,
am I fitting into the box as an American?
Who am I?
Where am I?
And I think it wasn't until I got here to the US, kind
of being exposed to the American culture
and what it's like as a reality, it did make me feel,
OK, I am someone that's different.
I might be a part of the US, I know
that I'm Puerto Rican in the sense that I
know that I don't fully fit in.
That doesn't necessarily still answer to me
what it means to be Puerto Rican,
so I've had to kind of create that identity for myself,
I guess.
And do you know what happened that made you realize
the difference between being from mainland USA
and being Puerto Rican?
There's a bit of a culture shock.
I mean, coming from Puerto Rico, we're
all Puerto Rican on the island.
Everyone that you're with shares,
like, a similar cultural value.
Once I got here to the mainland, suddenly I'm a loud person.
Suddenly I'm like, wow, this guy's, like,
really intense or passionate.
Suddenly I'm just kind of like exotic,
and that really made me kind of recognize that there
is something different here.
What does it mean to you to be a writer that's also concerned
with Latin topics in general?
As we've been talking about, stories, and being Puerto
Rican, and what does that mean, and how do you present that
to an American audience, I will admit that I've yet to kind
of figure most of that out.
I do think it's like my responsibility,
and the kind of stories I want to tell.
I'm just going to have to try really hard to accomplish
that sort of thing.
Did you see a change when you arrived here,
the type of stories you were telling?
I mean, I guess that falls back to what we were
saying earlier about kind of straddling
that line of, like, who am I?
What's my identity?
What stories am I telling?
Coming to LA, it, like, radicalized me in a way.
Like I had to be Latino.
I just-- I couldn't escape it.
Suddenly I just felt more Puerto Rican than I ever felt ever.
It just kind of evolved that way that I
just suddenly felt myself telling Latino stories,
Latinx stories.
And can you pinpoint to something
that made you want to tell the story
of [INAUDIBLE] in your script?
It's a script about Lupita [INAUDIBLE],,
such a marvelous figure.
A Latina coming from her country to come to the US,
Los Angeles to pursue a dream that's
probably the biggest of dreams, which
is to be a part of Hollywood.
How would you say your experience with the Latinx TV
List has been?
It just kind of opened a door for me.
I've gotten to meet amazing people because of it.
Such a great thing to celebrate because it allows
us to demonstrate that our stories are
more than just the cliches in media,
and TV, and movies of the past.
It helps us entertain and educate
about who we are as a culture.
The only way that we can tell all those different stories
is by having more representation in that sense.
If you allow more Latinos or Latinas, or Latinx,
to tell these stories, you are able to have
a deeper conversation about what it means to be Latinx.
If we can get to a point where we don't have to say Latinx,
kind of preface every story, that's when we've
accomplished what we're trying to set out to do,
you know, in that sense.
And that's-- you know, that's my hope, my dream.
Thank you for celebrating Latinx heritage month with us.
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Accentos bienvenidos, all accents welcome.