I don't think we get nuanced and complex images of Latina e think we're just playing toe what white people think Latinos are.

One of the beautiful things about the Latin X 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 like I'm trying to be the artist.

Both my parents weren't allowed to be.

They know how complicated it is being Latin X in this country.

We've been here were indigenous.

This is our home.

I feel like now people are willing to pay attention.

Hi, my name is Ana Selena's and my script inside Cunt is on the blacklist Latin TV list.

I'm here with my boyfriend, Edgar Montes here, and he's going to ask me some questions about my story.

And I hope you guys enjoy How do you identify yourself?

Culture as you know, my mom is from Sweden.

She's from a little island off the coast of Sweden.

My dad is born in Cuba, but raised in Puerto Rico.

It's whole family left Cuba, so I don't have any family left in Cuba.

I've only been once, and it was as a tourist, so my connection is to Puerto Rico.

That's where I went growing up.

That's where I visited my family.

But my dad doesn't identify Puerto Rican.

Not at all.

He considers himself a Cuban.

He fought against the Puerto Rican accent and was like, I have a Cuban accent, which I don't know if he did a good job fighting against a totally disagree that.

I think he does sound very Puerto Rican on top of that because it's my mom who's Swedish.

Her culture was often very dominant in my house.

She speaks Swedish with me.

So I speak Swedish and my dad, I think, is a little more passive about his culture but also had a vested interest in Americanizing.

I had to kind of fight for my dad's culture, and I never really understood like these pieces of his culture as culture.

How much of that do you think is because of, like, sort of the complex history of Cuba and maybe pain?

And how much do you feel like you wrestle with recognizing all of that, what it means to be Latino for my dad is very different than what it means for me.

My dad fought against having a Spanish accent, whereas I fought to speak Spanish at all.

And I do think that's actually a very common next generation phenomenon.

I have a lot of land next.

Friends are really self conscious about their Spanish, and I feel like that's the case with me, because I have a point of reference of how bad I am.

Eso it all leaves me feeling a bit insecure about what I am culturally e do self identify as a Latina because it means half of myself being seen in a way I felt like was erased growing up a little bit.

Do you feel like that's why you got into writing?

Was a part of you trying to express this?

Not necessarily hidden but off Forgot inside of yourself.

When I got out here, I was auditioning for parts that just were such a sliver of myself, and I had always wanted to write, but I think that really affirmed what it meant to write for myself.

Writing was a way to sort of Mel the pieces of myself that I wasn't seeing on screen or getting auditions before, because it's hard to feel like something is possible.

If you've never seen yourself there, do you feel like you see yourself represented?

I don't feel represented on TV or in movies.

I think Latinas are especially unrepresented in comedy.

And when we do see Latinas in comedy, I feel like it's usually playing to archetype for stereotype.

I want to see weird Latinas on TV.

I want to see them also behind the camera, and there are exceptions, and I feel like those exceptions are people who have carved out a space for themselves.

How did you become a E?

Came to L.

A.

As a teacher, I actually have a master's in education.

I was teaching art to the kids.

It was like this art immersive school.

In doing that, I waas acting things out a lot.

I would dress up as artists.

I dressed up like Frida Kahlo, and I was having so much fun in the performance and also validating these five year old, mostly Latino kids that they were artists and I ended up getting validated myself.

There's just, like repetitive theme in your story of this thing that you're like keeping down, exploding out.

Is that how it felt to be on the Latin X TV list?

I felt extremely validated by being on the blacklist Latin next TV list, especially when you're carving your own path.

I didn't feel like I had to pretend to be a version of myself.

I could just be this imperfectly Latina writer who is multicultural and very Americanized, but also not American in some ways and weird and that even my script didn't have to be like a trophy or anything.

Your script is the very opposite of trophy.

You should get into that.

Your script is insane.

So it's called inside cunt.

And what is it about?

The script is about a girl who's vagina suddenly starts transmitting Russians by signals.

So it's a spy dark comedy, and when we start our story, she's depressed.

She's angry at the world.

She doesn't feel accepted and by like taking an active role in what's happening with her vagina and claiming that ownership, she finds a confidence in who she is, what drives you?

What's that push?

I feel that in order to succeed, I have to be really, really undeniably good and I think that comes from being a child of immigrants being and unrepresented creator.

I feel like if I'm not working my hardest, nobody's going to give me the time of day.

For most of my life, I was afraid to admit what my dreams really were.

Now I allow myself to imagine a world where I have created a show and it's on television.

You're close to that world.

You're on the black list.

Next TV list.

Well, Steve, you grew up looking at the television being like, I don't see myself feeling insecure about all of these things.

How do you inspire these generations of kids to feel power in their identity?

I think the way you inspire young Lad next Kids is to show nuanced, complicated depictions of identity on TV.

We can aspire to those things and carve out that space, and that itself is so powerful so that we create more diverse heroes.

And I think we get there by writing characters who are fully human and are written from unauthentic point of view.

Well, that's all the questions that I have are memorized if I'm being honest.

Well, thank you, Edgar, And thank you guys for watching our discussion and thank you to the Latin X TV list.

And I hope you guys have a great Latin X Heritage Month.

Thank you guys for celebrating Latin X Heritage Month.

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