When I started conceiving of what would become this interview series, I made a really long list of writers I could talk to. I divided them into “has expressed interest already,” “could say yes if asked,” “don’t know,” “could say no/dream authors.” I had the fortune that every single person whom I asked to contribute to this project said yes without hesitation.
As the roster grew, I started thinking I could be bolder and reached out to at least one of the Dream Authors and asked him to be a part of this series. To my surprise, he said yes.
Which is why today I’m happy to present the very last interview for this 2019 Latinx Heritage Month Interview series: Daniel José Older.
His books, especially Shadowshaper, were some of the first in my radar when I started looking into more YA fantasy written by Latinx, and I haven’t looked back since. He writes about topics that authors often shy away from when writing genre books, like racism and intergenerational trauma, all while still weaving in intricate magic systems or dinosaurs. He’s a New York Times bestselling author, he’s full of Star Wars secrets, and he still has time to talk about his love of Into the Spider-Verse and Thor: Ragnarok (two of the most valid Marvel movies).
Here’s our conversation (uncensored and thus full of swears from both of us).
How’s everything been? I know you have a book out soon, which is The Book of Lost Saints…
Yes!
How are you feeling about that?
I’m feeling really excited. It’s a departure for me, it’s a different kind of book than I usually do, so it feels like coming into the world in a different way, with a different voice. Every book is different but this is a standalone book; it’s a book for adults, and it’s very personal in a lot of ways. It just feels like a new direction, so all that stuff makes it exciting.
I have no idea what the world is gonna do with this book. You never really know, but I feel like it’s more of a mystery to me with this book, for some reason. It’ll be cool to just hear people’s impressions and have conversations about it.
As you mentioned, all of your books have been different from one another. Even though they’ve all been genre books, but they’re all unique in their own way. I was wondering how you approach worldbuilding with each project. Do you start with a character and then build a story and world around them, or do you start with the world and then sort-of drop characters into them?
That’s interesting. It definitely flows, and it’s certainly different for each project. What’s interesting is that the first two series that I wrote were in the same world, right? Shadowshaper and the Bone Street Rumba both take place in the same world, and they have characters that interact and everything, so for the first bunch of years that I was writing, for the most part, I was just writing in that world. It wasn’t until Star Wars [Last Shot] and Dactyl Hill more recently when I started to go beyond that world. Even The Book of Lost Saints is technically in that world, which nobody knows yet because they haven’t read it. It’s the tiniest threads that connect them. Every once in awhile throughout Shadowshaper they mention a DJ that they like: that’s the main character of Book of Lost Saints.
With Shadowshaper, I knew it was my first book, so I wanted it to be [set in] Brooklyn. I didn’t even know what urban fantasy was, I just knew I wanted to tell magical stories in the city. That was the most important thing to me.
I started making this whole world in Brooklyn, and then Sierra clearly was like, “This is gonna be my story.” I was like, “Well, shit! Do I have a choice in the matter?” You know what I mean? And [she] took over. She grew a lot over the course of the book, and as I was writing it, the world transformed too. They kinda grew together, I think is the best way to think about it.
As someone who’s read the Shadowshaper books, I know that the world continues building throughout the series, which sometimes you don’t see in a lot of fantasy. Sometimes you’ll get all of the worldbuilding dumped in the first book, but then, in Shadowshaper, it continues building as Sierra continues learning about her magic and her family. Was that on purpose?
For me, a sequel has to level-up everything: the tension, the thread, the danger, the magic, the world; all that has to step up a notch or two, or a lot. I knew that if I was gonna write a sequel, and that was not guaranteed; I didn’t sell the series as a trilogy, I sold [Shadowshaper] as a single book. When [Scholastic] actually decided, “Oh, we want more of these books because it’s actually doing well and we didn’t expect it to do so.” Then I had to stop and ask myself, and I kinda asked Sierra, in a way, “Are we gonna do this again? Do you want more?” In my own meditation and imagination I did go to the character and I put that onto the character and [then] onto myself as a writer.
The Sorrows [in the first Shadowshaper book], for me were a thread to pull into the larger world of Shadowshaper, and that was what they were to me. I think they make Book One a more interesting story because there’s levels to the bad guys; they were a hint into how much more there is in the world. Once I decided to just “let me pull that thread and see what [comes] to me,” that’s when I opened up and that when I got like, “Let’s really do this,” and it does feel like a big world. Once I locked into that, I thought “there’s so many ways we can go with this.” Even with The Sorrows on one hand, and the idea of Sierra’s lineage on the other, I thought were [both] interesting. Book Two, Shadowhouse Fall, kind of deals with The Sorrows a lot and, as you know, Book Three, Shadowshaper: Legacy, gets into the lineage on another level.
Along the lines of worldbuilding, I wanted to ask about Dactyl Hill Squad: what came first, the dinosaurs or the Civil War orphans?
[laughs] I mean, it’s just. As soon as it occurred to me, it was like, “Duh,” you know?
It all just flowed out of that singular thought of researching and finding these Cuban girls that had been dropped in this orphanage, and wondering what would’ve happened to them, and wondering about pterodactyls. For a fantasy writer it’s a very natural thought to have. As a normal Muggle, that’s not a normal thought, and I understand that.
For me, once that thought hit, the whole world opened up quite clearly. And I just wasn’t interested in writing a straight historical novel; it didn’t excite me. And I love history, obviously. If you read one page of Dactyl Hill Squad, you can tell I love history. For me, it comes to life so much more if you add a fantastical aspect because that’s the type of nerd I am. Once I started writing that world, it just naturally unfolded in a brilliant way.
I mean. That sounded arrogant.
It was, but what I mean is that, what was brilliant was the way that the world revealed itself to me. I’m actually in awe of fantasy and how it’s almost like there’s another—it’s hard to describe—but it’s like: as a writer, you’re watching something beautiful happen in front of you, even though it’s happening in your imagination. It’s like you get to watch this amazing movie. And then it’s actually interactive, you get to play with the scenery and help the characters make decisions, especially hard decisions. That’s the joy of being a writer: it’s watching it all unfold and being a part of that.
As you mentioned, there’s a historical aspect to the series, since it’s set during the American Civil War. How do you tread the line between romanticizing history and being able to portray these realistic things that happened, because in the beginning of the first book there’s a lynching that happens and it’s shown on the page and everything. How do you go about it, especially when it’s a middle grade?
That’s the thing I thought the most about in the series, ‘cause that’s the hardest thing. Really telling the truth, not traumatizing your readers, and not overbearing or overwhelming them with the tragedy of it, but also not sugarcoating it. I think that’s particularly hard, because it’s very personal. There’s a lot of thought behind it but also, as anything in writing, there’s a lot of intuition and instinct that comes to play. One thing I decided early on was that, while this is a book that’s set during the time of slavery, it’s not a book that’s gonna show slavery firsthand. But it’s also not gonna pretend that slavery isn’t happening. That’s something I knew was a guideline that I had to have, first of all as a non-Black person; as a Brown person, but not Black. I didn’t wanna write a book about slavery.
Yeah, you also don’t want it to be trauma-porn.
Yeah, I didn’t want it to be trauma-porn. But Dactyl Hill Squad has always been about the idea of an adventure, swashbuckling, historical fantasy story that was about kids flying around, saving each other’s lives, and getting the bad guys. All the stuff that we love about fantasy, including having shootouts, having varied adventures and excitement, because I love that stuff. I loved that stuff as a kid. A lot of us didn’t get to grow up seeing ourselves in those stories.
When I got to the historical aspects of [researching the Civil War], it was full of lies and bullshit; stuff that was trying to make people feel better about their history, [when they] actually need to confront their history. So, I didn’t wanna do that, but I still wanted to tell a fun story. It’s all in the balance; it’s hard to strike, but I think it was important to have.
I also think one book can’t do everything. I think we need books that are heavy, and we have a lot of those. For a long time, we were barely allowed to tell histories of people of color, and when we did it would have to be heavy. Those are important books— we need those books.
We also need books for those kids that just wanna read a fun adventure but also need to be told the truth about the world. We need all kinds of books that are honest about history.
There’s also a common thread throughout all your books, about family, especially finding family, as well as the intergenerational trauma that comes with family.
That’s very true.
And when you consider the history of Latinx authors and their writing, why do you think the concept of family is important to talk about in literature?
Intergenerational trauma is a thing that is both real and, much like the history that we’ve been discussing, is not talked about enough. I don’t think we deal with it healthily or clearly enough.
I think we’re trying to do a lot more, social media has helped that, because people are able to have conversations in public that we didn’t think we could before. We were never allowed to talk about that.
Literature allows room for the complexity of thought that is required when we’re dealing with things such as intergenerational trauma, the pain of exile, diaspora, tradition, and the changes of generations; all these levels of struggle that we’ve had that are very beautiful and painful, poetic and sometimes not poetic at all, just harmful. All of that is true, and what better way to explore that than in a novel, which is, ideally, a big enough room to fit that amount of nuance and levels. I think we labor under the false idea that you can’t do that in a space particularly in a genre novel. If I can do anything with my career is to prove that to be a lie.
And that’s especially true in the last Shadowshaper book, not to brag about already reading it—
[laughs] You can brag!
Because Sierra is finding out about all the intergenerational trauma in her family and along the way she finds out more about the deep-set history and magic that’s inherent to her family, and I think that’s important to strike, especially in a fantasy novel, where people think that fantasy can’t be about serious topics, as you said.
Yes, definitely.
Your next book, The Book of Lost Saints, is a sort of multigenerational story about family, but I wanted to know if there are parallels between your own story and experiences and family. As a writer, I try to straddle the line between taking inspiration from my own experiences and family, while still wanting to fictionalize or at least exaggerate it. I wanted to know your thoughts.
It’s actually similar to how in Dactyl Hill there are characters that are literally supposed to be that person, then there are characters that are based loosely on that person, and then there are characters that are totally made up. I think that the whole range of how we writers deal with the reality around us.
With Book of Lost Saints, it’s very much “inspired by.” There’s no this person is this person in my family, but a lot of what it’s about is the experience of being here, in the comfort of our own homes, and hearing the different stories of war and tragedy and triumph and love and heartbreak that our parents and grandparents and all those aunts went through to get us here. It’s about reconciling the emotions and the mysteries between that past and present and what that means; the way we carry the past with us. In Book of Lost Saints, Ramón literally carries the past with him in the form of Marisol: she’s with him, and it’s a form of haunting.
I think that metaphor of haunting is so true around the experience of immigration and diaspora and so many things, because we all carry that island with us, wherever we are, in different ways, and we’re aware of it on different levels. It influences us in different ways that we sometimes don’t even know. I find that so striking in my own life.
Here’s one wild example, like, it’s so small, but it’s just different things about when I finally went to Cuba: understanding things about my mom that I didn’t even realize were Cuban, and then seeing things about me that I didn’t realize were Cuban, such as certain ways we talk about movies; I had always thought that was weird, as if it were exceptional. And then I go and there’s a whole island of people talking about movies the way we do. It’s just so funny to me. At the same time, it was very beautiful and sad, to have realized that sort of truth about belonging, twenty years into my life. It’s incredible. That shapes you. I wanted to tell a story that spoke to that mix of emotions.
It also speaks to the ability to put memory onto the page in a way that maybe is sort of personal to you but could resonate with another reader.
Exactly. And I want to say that a lot of Cuban stories are deeply entwined with the events of the time in a way that is quite striking. When my mom would talk about her life, it was always mixed in with what was going on in global politics. That truth jumped out at me when I was listening to her, and other relatives as well, as I was growing up. I needed to touch on that as well.
Do you ever run into the same problem I do, where you name a certain character and later on realize, “Wait, this character’s named after my second-cousin, twice-removed?”
The only reason that doesn’t happen is because all my uncles are named José. There’s not that many names in my family— José Luis, José Luisito.
No, sometimes it does, I’ll check and then be like, “Oh, wait, that’s that guy!”
Sometimes I worry about them finding the story and thinking it’s about them.
That I worry about. Yes, I do worry about that. But I’m also like, there’s nothing I can do. That always happens no matter what.
I remember in high school I drew a picture of— it was a cartoon of a break-up happening, and someone totally thought it was about them—and it wasn’t— and we got into a big fight over it. I was like, “oh my God, this is art.” This is art! It’s about someone else! [laughs]
I once wrote this story for a class that was about a quinceañera and I sent it to a friend and she was like, “This is about that quinceañera we went to, right?” And I had to be like, “Oh… maybe it is?”
See, there it is.
Sort of on another lane, I want to talk about Star Wars!
Yay!
¡Estar Güars!
¡Estar Güars!
How different is it to write for someone else’s Intellectual Property (IP), such as when you did Star Wars: Last Shot, versus your own IP? Because you’re dealing with someone else’s timeless characters, with your writing Han Solo and Lando Calrissian and tying it into the Solo movie, so how was that experience?
It felt really natural. I went into it quite wary of what it was gonna be like, but also excited about this. I kinda went in with some armor on, because I assumed that whatever I wrote was gonna get torn apart three different ways from Tuesday and I’d have to staple back together a mess. And I was pleasantly surprised because they were just like, “This is great.”
If anything, they were like, “You could, you know, come up with some different planets. We’ve all seen that planet a lot. It’s a big galaxy, just make up some planets.” And I was like, “You want me to make up Star Wars planets? No problem!”
I made up about 50: different planets, moons, creatures—
Plus, the Latinx in Space!
The Latinx in Space, yo, I didn’t think they were gonna let me keep any of that shit. And they did! And that’s great! And I drove home the point that Alderaan is a Latinx planet. With that E before the S, as we must do. They were just super cool about everything.
It doesn’t always work that way, because it is complicated and you have to play well with others to write IP. The project I’m working on now with them I actually can’t say anything about.
It’s exciting and it’s very collaborative, which is cool. You have to play in someone else’s toy box but with writing characters such as Han and Lando, I’ve had them in my head since I was three years old. As much as it’s someone else’s world, I was like, “I know these characters, I used to play with their action figures, I know how they talk.” It felt quite straightforward and it was fun to explore them. I learned more about that in a way that I wouldn’t have just by thinking through what we get to see of them on-screen, about how different and similar they are, their friendship; all of that is ripe for exploration through a novel.
Plus, we don’t see a lot of stories about male friendships. I think it’s such a beautiful and amazing kind of thing. In my life, my male friends have been really clutch at different times and there’s so much to explore there. Doing it with age-old scoundrels that everyone knows and loves was a perfect way to go.
I don’t wanna take up much of your time so I want to get into some quick questions. Who do you write for?
It’s so funny, this is a whole conversation I’ve been seeing online about who people write for, and there are people who are like, “I write for myself!” and there are people who respond, “How do you write for yourself when you gotta write for the people who are gonna read the book?” I don’t know, it’s an interesting conversation.
I think the answer is that it’s sort of both. I do write for myself on some level, but often it’s my younger self. [Other times] it’s not me at all! It’s the kids that I meet on the road while I’m touring, the young people that I worked with before I became a writer, a lot of whom were a part of my deciding to write Shadowshaper and to become a writer. It’s friends, people that I love or admire. But it’s definitely like, I do write for us, as vague as that sounds. I want Brown and Black kids to have characters, to have heroes—complex human heroes—in which they see themselves, having lots of adventures. Because I didn’t [have that].
And adults, too, I guess.
What movies would you pair your books with?
Into the Spider-Verse!
I’m a big fan of a certain era of [Pedro] Almodóvar movies likeTodo sobre mi madre, and Hable con ella. [Alfonso Cuarón’s] Y Tu Mamá También is another one that definitely, especially with Book of Lost Saints. I think it’s sort of in conversation [with my work], although, I haven’t seen it in literally about fifteen years, so I should probably watch it again before I say that. But I do love all of those movies.
Man, I really love Thor: Ragnarok. It’s so good! That and Into the Spider-Verse are like: they’re heroes! Those are the main ones for now.
Since it’s still Latinx Heritage Month, do you wanna shout-out any Latinx writers that you look up to?
Oh, yeah! There’s so many, man! I haven’t read Ghost Squad yet, but I’m really excited to read it (by Claribel Ortega, of course). I really love the Brooklyn Brujas series by Zoraida Córdova; it’s a great series. There’s a writer named Vita Ayala who’s great; they do a lot of cool work.
I love, to take it back a little, Gloria Anzaldúa, who was a big influence for me in college in terms of finding that place of between-ness which was something that I struggle with and she gave a poetic voice to a lot of the non-poetic thoughts I had in my head about what it meant to be who I was. Cherríe Moraga, of course, is huge.
There’s a poet named John Murillo who’s amazing; he’s Black and Mexican. He’s also a friend of mine, but even if he wasn’t I would just, like, swear by his poetry. He has a book out called Up Jump the Boogie that’s fantastic.
There’s a lot of talent in the Latinx creative world, which I’m really excited about. Would you like to talk about your upcoming projects before we finish off?
November 5th is The Book of Lost Saints. January 7th is Shadowshaper: Legacy, which you read and contributed lots to, thank you. Next year, two trilogies finish off, because that’s the last of the Shadowshaper Cypher and the third Dactyl Hill book, Thunder Run, comes out June 2nd, so that’s exciting. There’s a lot of Star Wars stuff coming up that I can’t say anything about, but it’s coming. After that, I have a book coming out that nobody knows about called Flood City, that’s coming out in spring 2021 and it’s a middle grade science fiction adventure that I wrote way back when I was a brand new writer, back in 2011, so it’s coming out exactly ten years [after the fact].
(This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity. Disclaimer: I did a sensitivity read for the third Shadowshaper book, but that in no way influenced this interview except for talking about Sierra’s character development, I guess.)
I’m incredibly grateful to Daniel for taking the time to sit down and talk to me about his work, and the same goes for all the talented creators I talked to this past month.
Thank you!
Daniel’s next book, The Book of Lost Saints, is available for pre-order now, as are Shadowshaper: Legacy and Dactyl Hill Squad: Thunder Run. You can add Flood City on Goodreads today!
Follow Daniel on Twitter and Instagram for the latest news and updates!
Daniel José Older
Daniel José Older is the New York Times bestselling author of the Middle Grade historical fantasy series Dactyl Hill Squad, the Bone Street Rumba urban fantasy series, Star Wars: Last Shot, and the award winning Young Adult series the Shadowshaper Cypher, which won the International Latino Book Award and was shortlisted for the Kirkus Prize in Young Readers’ Literature, the Andre Norton Award, the Locus, the Mythopoeic Award, and named one of Esquire’s 80 Books Every Person Should Read.