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Monday, April 17, 2006

Latest Gothamist interview with Sofia Quintero, Author, Divas Don't Yield, Co-Founder, Chica Luna, Co-Owner, Sister/Outsider Entertainment

As always, if you like the interview, please click "Recommend This!" Click here to read the whole thing.

2006_04_sofialg.jpg36-year-old "Ivy League homegirl" Sofia Quintero is an author, activist, and businesswoman who has transformed her passion for social change into her fiction, most recently with Divas Don't Yield.., a touching road trip novel featuring four outspoken, daring and diverse women-Jackie, Hazel, Inez, and Lourdeswho travel across the United States to celebrate their graduation from Columbia. In the process, they confront each other on multiple levels, coming out about various secrets, learning each other's foibles, and culminating in some powerful confrontations and friendships. Touching on issues of class, race, sexism and sexual orientation, Quintero roots all these issues in the personalities of these bold women, who force their friends to contront often painful truths about themselves.



Part of the burgeoning and successful genre of chica lit, Quintero has also contributed to the anthology Friday Night Chicas, with more stories in the works. Her first two novels, Explicit Content (about two women in the underground hip hip scene) and Picture Me Rollin' (about a female ex-con inspired by Tupac Shakur), were published under the name Black Artemis, though Quintero makes no secret of her authorship of "bona fide hip hip fiction." She started out creatively in the world of film, and began Divas as a screenplay, Interstates, and has also written several short films, including Corporate Dawgs and Blind Date.



Quintero also has numerous activist credentials, currently focused on creating more entertainment and media opportunities for people of color, with an eye toward the mainstream (and the big screen). She is the co-founder of Chica Luna, an activist group currently sponsoring an anthology writing contest and various film projects and co-owner of Sister/Outsider Entertainment, which is developing film, theater, television and book projects (including a play called "Mini Skirt Mafia"). Raised in the Bronx, where she still lives, Quintero has moved from a life of professional activism (and was named by City Limits "New School of Activists Most Likely to Change New York") to one of written activism, incorporating her visions for change into a range of fictional output. A passionate defender of the written word, Quintero has argued for the slogan "Real Men Read" on MySpace. Here, she discusses the roots of her novel (think pop music), the lack of roles for Latina women in Hollywood, the importance of chica lit, art and activism, and fiction as a tool for changing the world.



Divas Don't Yield began as a screenplay called Interstates, about four Latina women going on a road trip. What was the initial inspiration for it, and why did you choose to start with a screenplay?

Believe it or not, Interstates was inspired by the Latin Pop Explosion. You know . . . those six months in 1999 when Latinos were in. Again. It annoyed me how the mainstream industry was patting itself on the back for acknowledging a handful of entertainers who represented such a narrow part of the Latino community. If a role in the film called for a Latina, and Jennifer Lopez passed because she was trying to crossover, the film didnt get made. I was thinking, They dont confuse Julia Stiles and Kirsten Dunst, but one Latina can play them all. So I decided to write a screenplay that would break out not one but four new Latina talents of different nationalities, races, and even sexual orientation. And they would be political. You know . . . care about something other than getting some papi to buy them a mojito at the club on salsa night.



Read the whole interview

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