One of the things I learned from wedding planning is that you have to be your own judge of success. I learned this the hard way because wedding planning is a really wonderful profession for people pleasers and, as a younger woman, I was a Blue Ribbon people pleaser. But, you live by the sword, you die by the sword. I only vaguely remember the details of the location or the couple, but I remember one particular wedding. Everyone was absolutely ecstatic that we’d given them the night of their lives. A few days later, though, we received an email with a retraction: Their disgruntled aunt had called to complain; the whole event had been a “disaster.” By the time, a few years later, one of our grooms told his bride that she looked like a fat princess right before they went down the aisle, I knew better than to hang around waiting for compliments on a job well done. It was a great night—I know; I was there—but there was also no recovering from that.
If one were to lay me down on a sofa and analyze why I was such a people pleaser (and, believe me, someone has), it likely goes back to my grandparents. My grandfather Pop was a perfectionist who would make me study the dictionary and then walk around the apartment with it balanced on my head. (So that I didn’t get bad posture from hunching over and studying all the time, obviously.) If you were looking for someone to be unimpressed by your milestones, my grandmother Bobbie was the person to turn to. (Indeed, my friends still swap stories of times they shared an accomplishment with Bobbie just to be met with her famous “What do you want, a medal?”)
On the rare occasions when she was impressed—and I mean genuinely impressed (this almost always had to do with an academic achievement)—praise would quickly be followed by a warning: “Now don’t go around bragging about it” or “Nobody likes a show-off.” You get the gist.
After a childhood spent reading and balancing dictionaries, I’m no slouch (pun intended). I have great posture, and I work really hard at pretty much everything except for training my dog. That isn’t to say that someone—say, my brilliant editor here, or my agent or my publisher or a director—can’t give notes to make something better, but I don’t turn in work that I don’t feel good about.
When my novel was coming out into the world, I felt really strongly that it was the best version of that story that I could have written, and that I had worked my hardest to do all I could as an author to help get it out there. That doesn’t mean that great reviews or beautiful notes from readers or hitting the best-seller list aren’t amazing and don’t make me feel wonderful. It’s more to say that they are magnificent external affirmations of what I know: that I left it all on the dance floor, so to speak.
But what I was never really cured of, mildly to my detriment, is my aversion to talking about these validators and successes. A very thickly Brooklyn-accented voice honks in my ear “Enough already! Just say thank you and move on.” Social media, the tool for amplification that it is, is my torture. Hearing my bio read before an event makes me die a little bit inside (except for the New York Times best-selling-author part; that feels great every time).
Modesty is great, right? I mean, I guess. Lizzo isn’t Lizzo because she made a song that said “I’m 75 percent that bitch.” I don’t regret that I didn’t start writing until I was 40, because wow, do I have a lot of stories now, but a large reason why I didn’t start sooner was because it felt obnoxious to proclaim such a wild ambition. Indeed, when I told my friends, a few people said, “But as a hobby, not as a thing to do, right?” And I said, “Of course, just as a hobby,” despite that not really being my intention, because otherwise Who does she think she is?
And that is what people say. And not just about me but about women in general. We love women who have succeeded—Oprah, Nancy Pelosi, Beyonce, Secretary Hillary Clinton. We are deeply suspicious of women trying to succeed, especially if they are trying to succeed more: Candidate Clinton, Candidate Kamala Harris, Beyonce when she went solo, Lizzo.
It was only when I got into the Iowa Writers’ Workshop that I felt I had the permission to say I was going to write a novel, and it was only after I was actually paid to write a screenplay (the adaptation of said novel) that I began to add screenwriter to my bio. And even still, I remember that the first time something I published had screenwriter in my bio, I got texts from acquaintances and relatives saying, “Screenwriter, eh? Good for you; fake it ’til you make it!”
I was more amused than embittered by that, largely because the idea of me claiming anything without finger-in-the-wound-of-Jesus-like proof is so out of character. But it’s out of character because it isn’t just my grandmother who thinks women claiming their fierceness is obnoxious, but society in general. It is so deep-seated, and we’ve internalized it. Though I can speak only for myself, I suspect I am not alone when I say that for years, I shrunk myself to fit a version of me whose size didn’t make anyone feel uncomfortable—me included.
About a year ago, I started being approached by talent managers. Two of them came to New York to meet me while we were in pre-production on the pilot for my novel adaptation, which I co-executive-produced as well as wrote. I did all of this while I was still finishing my MFA, getting my first novel ready for publication, writing a film script, doing occasional nonfiction magazine writing, and working (slowly) on a second book. (Not bragging; facts.) And yet, when these two experienced, seasoned professionals sat across from me with lofty ambitions for what more could be achieved in my career, I looked at them like they were crazy and said, with a totally straight face, “Oh, I could never do any of that.”
The past couple of weeks have been big ones for me (indeed, it was my torturous internal debate about whether I should share some of this news that led me down this very train of thought). Right before Memorial Day, it was announced that I’m being honored as the Arts and Culture Ambassador at the National Puerto Rican Day Parade this Sunday. For a Puerto Rican and a New Yorker, it’s hard to imagine a greater honor. Over Memorial Day weekend, some 27 years after my grandparents dropped me off in Providence and warned me not to come back “stuck up,” I was elected a trustee of my alma mater. My book was named a summer read by The Washington Post and a best-of-2022 (so far) by Time magazine and Barnes and Noble. And this past week, the thing that I’m probably proudest of: I finally hired those managers I met with more than a year ago.
I’m proudest of that because, yes, the external affirmations of my work are amazing; being recognized by my community and my alumni peers is amazing. But hiring talent managers is me doubling down on me. I’m pushing back on hardened habits and leaning into instinct. The reason I hadn’t hired them yet was not because I don’t have ambitions, or because I don’t have more to say, but because it felt immodest to say that I believe I am capable of even more. Because Bobbie’s granddaughter is still mildly afraid of coming across as someone who “thinks she is,” even though, deep down, I’ve always known: I’m 100 percent that bitch.
P.S. If you’re in New York City on Sunday, June 12, come see me ride in the back of a convertible along Fifth Avenue wearing a big, shiny sash and doing a wave like the queen that I am! Or, you can always watch it on ABC.
