Houston author’s stories reflective of her Dominican American roots
Jasminne Mendez is often labeled an overnight success. That makes her laugh.
“If you count 15 years, then I guess I am,” she said.
Her literary voice may be new to some, but her words are a convergence of many perspectives that have been developing for more than a decade.
The Houston-based Dominican American poet, playwright and author has written two memoirs for young adults, “Island of Dreams” and “Islands Apart: Becoming Dominican American,” chronicling her coming of age as an Afro Latina girl. Her poetry in “City Without Altar” was hailed by acclaimed author Julia Alvarez for bringing vividness to voices that are often silenced. Mendez also has written a children’s book, “Josefina’s Habichuelas” and a book of essays, “Night Blooming Jasmin(n)e.”
Her latest book, “Aniana Del Mar Jumps In” (Penguin), is a middle-grade novel about a 12-year-old Dominican American swimmer who is diagnosed with juvenile arthritis. On March 26, Mendez will be the featured author for Inprint Cool Brains! Series for children at Meyerland Performing and Visual Arts Middle School.
Although she’s been sharing her story for years, there has been a surge of interest in Mendez and other Black and Latino authors after the death of George Floyd and the nation’s racial reckoning and social unrest. Some readers may want to understand what they don’t know. Others may want to reaffirm what they do know.
“There is more acknowledgment now of why stories like mine matter and need to be heard,” Mendez said. “There is more of a yearning for stories that are intersectional and that combine a variety of experiences, like the female narrative, the Latina narrative, the Afro Latina narrative and living with chronic illness.” Mendez has been diagnosed with lupus and scleroderma, which are autoimmune diseases.
“I live at the intersection of all of these things,” she said. “I’m a daughter of immigrants. I’m bilingual. I live in Texas, which complicates things even more. There has been a yearning for these kinds of stories.”
For Mendez, who was raised in San Antonio, writing became the outlet for her tell the stories about her life and experiences, something she had never read in literature books. Dominican authors sharing their personal stories were rare, except for Alvarez, who rose to prominence with her novels, “In the Time of the Butterflies” (1994) and “Yo!” (1997).
Mendez said she devoured books growing up, even though her parents couldn’t afford them. Her father took the family to the library every two weeks on weekends.
“My dad was very big on reading, and he always read in front of us, so I would write these short little quirky stories in my notebook, sharing them with my dad, with teachers, but I never really thought or considered it as a sustainable career,” she said.
Mendez turned to theater in middle school, high school and as a college student at University of Houston. She even tried to break into the local theater scene, but with the exception of the Ensemble Theatre, a Black artistic company founded in 1976, there weren’t many opportunities for a Dominican American actress, she said. So she discovered the local spokenword scene, where she could combine poetry and theater.
Her first published work came out of a health crisis. Mendez, who holds both bachelor’s and master’s degrees from UH, was teaching full time at a local charter school when she became ill. She took a leave from teaching and used the time off to put together a book of poems and essays. The book, “Island of Dreams,” came out in 2013 and won an International Latino Book award.
That lack of seeing herself reflected in books as a child fueled her desire to create her own stories as an adult, Mendez said.
“When I sit to write a story, or a book or even a poem, it’s because there’s a part of me that would have needed that poem or that story at some point,” she said. “So it’s this desire to want to share my story so that someone else doesn’t have to feel as alone as I have throughout my life, because I didn’t have those stories reflected back at me anywhere in literature, for the most part. It’s a desire to make connections and build these connections between people.”
Mendez’ personal stories explore her experience as a Dominican American. But it was after the death of Sandra Bland, who was pulled over in 2015 for a traffic violation in Waller County and found dead hanging in her jail cell three days later, that Mendez started calling herself a Black woman.
“Between Trayvon Martin and Sandra Bland, I started to interrogate my own internalized anti-Blackness. I never felt comfortable as a Black woman because culturally I grew up Latina with merengue, eating rice and beans and plantains and talking about the island. It wasn’t until those tragedies that I really started to interrogate and tried to reframe my own understanding of my identity.”
She’s called “Afro Latina,” but Mendez said her choice is to put her Blackness front and center.
“I rather say, ‘I’m Black and Latina’ because folks think that they are mutually exclusive identities, and that only perpetuates the anti-Blackness that continues to exist in Latino communities,” said Mendez, who has a 4-year-old daughter with husband Lupe Mendez, an educator and the current Texas poet laureate.
Her next book will focus on race and racism, and she’s bracing herself for pushback with book bans, especially in Texas.
“It makes me very nervous that this will be the book that gets banned and will get me front and center for the wrong reasons and the right reasons,” she said. “Book bans take access away from kids who, if they don’t get it in their classroom, their parents are not going to take them to the library. They don’t have money to go to Barnes & Noble. And if you pull those books, you’re depriving them of seeing themselves in these stories. That’s not OK.”