Danielle Montalvo, also known by her artist name J de laVega is an upcoming author, artist and illustrator with ADHD. She is currently based in Southern California. Dom had the pleasure of sitting down with her to discuss neurodivergence in children’s literature, and what success means to her.

When J de laVega talks about success she is quick to stress how success is a very personal situation and varies from person to person. For her explanation of success, she cites a very touching story about how her book Petunia Brown touched the life of a young girl.

“A couple of weeks back in October, one of the little girls who read my first book Petunia Brown, [said] she loves the character. She had to pick a character to do for Pumpkin Day and she decorated her pumpkin as Petunia Brown, and she did her report on my book. That to me is success.

“If you can touch that one person with your work and change that one person’s life, then you are planting the seeds for a tree you’re not gonna see, to me that’s success. I don’t have to see the endgame of it, but if I plant the seeds for the tree that is what is to me.”

Despite the colourful and joyous nature of her books, her career hasn’t been an easy ride. She is particularly transparent about the hurdles she faced before publication and how she used those experiences to improve and adapt.

“My goal for 2021 was to fail as much as possible,” she says. “I crunched the numbers, and on average, it takes about a hundred rejections to get a deal, to get an agent. So, I said I’m going to run through those one hundred. I’m going to get as many rejections as possible and that’s what I did. I had moments of close calls with agents but those did not work for me morally, so I had to step away from it.”

Even though she took a noble approach to the rejections, there would be times where publishers and agents would lead her on only to drop her weeks later.

“I wrote those books out of frustration,” she admits. “Like no, I can write a book. I can write a standalone story. I wrote them out of that anger. Behind those books, once I come back and I edit them, I look at it and really try to determine what is this book about, at the core?”

As a member of the neurodivergent community herself, J de laVega identified a gap in children’s literature – there seemed to be little to no books about young children of colour with conditions like autism, ADHD, and OCD.

“One thing not spoken about, especially in the POC community, is a lot of things like ADHD are swept under the rug. Its common for people to use the term ‘oh that’s a white people thing,’ and it’s frustrating because I have ADHD and my children do and you have to approach them in a different way. You cannot expect them to learn in a world where that’s not how they function.

“So, behind every story, yeah it’s made for kids, but I’m in the back poking parents like ‘hey! I’m talking to you!’

Even though the young writer may be rocking the boat in both literary and POC communities, it’s clear that this doesn’t phase her if it means she can help children feel represented in the books they read.

“I am here to confront people,” she says. “I love children, they’re amazing. It frustrates me when people say they don’t like kids. Kids are perfect, it’s the adults that destroy their dreams and put pressure on them. It’s the adults that are the issue. I am here to poke the bear and be like hey this is a problem, let’s talk about it. I want people to talk about it, I want people to be angry at me. It might not be how you were raised but that doesn’t make it right.

“In the mental health community specifically, there seems to be this association that trauma can be looked at as culture. “That’s the way my parents did it, that’s the way their parents did it, suddenly trauma becomes culture, and we need to break that cycle. So, if I have to be the one that people are angry at, then I am absolutely fine with that if it makes them stop and think that we need to change, we need to do better.”

Navigating life with neurodivergence is difficult as it is, yet J de laVega admits the strain was heightened due to differing cultural ideas.

“It was a struggle for me, I struggled with ADHD amongst other things. When I had my son, I promised myself that I was gonna do better. My parents were not bad parents, they were only parenting with the tools they were given. I’ve had this discussion with them.

“Me being able to recognise this and having my son who is fifteen now and glorious and amazing, I said I would do better. I was not always perfect, but I worked hard every day and I did the work. Doing the work means reading books, joining seminars, that means confronting things that are absolutely uncomfortable and finding better ways and trying new things and maybe failing and forgiving yourself. It was hard. He was actually the one that pushed me into writing. This has been a beautiful outlet to have these discussions and come in an empathetic way, not everyone has been in the position that I am, not everyone has done the work I have to be at the level I am. I’m trying to come from an empathetic place.”

2021, Danielle reveals, has been her year, but argues that was the result of confronting rejection head on.

“I actually have an accountability folder on Facebook that’s public, so you can come and look at all my rejection letters. And I do it because I don’t want people to say ‘oh it wasn’t that hard for her bla bla bla.’ People that follow me know that before I wrote my first book, I was working graveyard shifts at Walmart and it was awful.

“Here are people telling me I’m not good enough. Here is me losing an agent or losing another agent or losing a publisher. It is not a straightforward path. You have to be emotionally and mentally resilient and that there are going to be people out there who want to tokenise what you’re doing. You have to have the ability to accept that and move on.”

Her message for aspiring authors and creatives is truly inspiring.

“Visibility creates possibility,” she says. “If there isn’t a story, a comic, a song out there, that represents who you are, if it isn’t out there yet…write it. if there isn’t artwork that looks like you draw it. Don’t just accept that this is the status quo. 7% of children’s literature in 2018 was Latino focused. The numbers were horrendous, and it was also a monolith because like woah all Hispanic people are the same? There wasn’t anyone that looked like me when I was growing up. None of the books looked like me and I hated that.”

She reveals that by the time she read a book with an actual Black character she was already in eighth grade.

“It was Beloved, and it was very not appropriate, and it was traumatising. Beautiful book but not appropriate for a twelve-year-old. If you feel there isn’t representation, then go forward and make it happen.

“You’ve just got to keep pushing. Find your people, find your tribe, find your community – and that’s the most important thing, find your community – you can’t stand alone.

“You have to make a decision if you’re fed up and you have to make a decision to whether you’re willing to stand in the spotlight, because that comes with a lot of consequences. Here’s the thing, you don’t have to stand in the spotlight in order to make a difference. You can be someone who serves others in order to make a difference. If you like writing songs you don’t necessarily have to sing them, you can do artwork for someone else, you can be a ghost-writer.”

She goes onto emphasise the value of working without the pressure of a spotlight, arguing the necessity of learning to be a good follower before attempting to take on a leadership position.

“Everyone wants to be a leader, but no one wants to be a follower and we need followers, it is important to be a follower. We put focus on everyone being a leader but not everyone is capable of being a leader. So, when placing yourself in this position you have to recognise whether or not you’re in a position to be a leader and if you’re not that’s okay. Maybe sometime down the line you will be ready to be that leader.”

Since starting her career, J de laVega has humbled her expectations and decided to write not for critical acclaim but because the story she is writing matters. Instead of aspiring to write a thought-provoking classic, she claims her writing goals revolve around writing her truth and representing a community which isn’t normally represented in children’s literature.

When asked about what she has learnt about herself since being published, J de laVega reveals one thing she struggled with is inflexibility. Initially, when her publisher Michelle argued that one of her stories would make a brilliant early reader graphic novel, she was quick to shut down the idea. Yet later, she grew to fall in love with the depth the form would add to her story.

Finally, J de laVega leaves us with an important message to neurodivergent individuals:

“There’s space for you – don’t let anyone make you feel or think otherwise. There’s absolutely enough space for you. If someone doesn’t want you to sit at the table honey just bring a folding chair and shove your way in.”

Words: Jay Mitra // Interview: Dom Smith

Listen to the interview below: