One of the beautiful things about the Latin X list is that you have 10 writers.

All come from different experiences.

What drives you?

What's that push to me?

My culture represents a North Star that I can kind of follow it like I'm trying to be the artist.

Both my parents weren't allowed to be.

They know how complicated it is being Latin X in this country.

We've been here were indigenous.

This is our home.

I feel like now people are willing to pay attention.

Hi, everyone.

I'm Barbara Suarez.

My pilot script user name was featured on the 2020 Latin X TV list, and I'm here today with my husband Griffin jury and we're going to talk about my journey, my writing, my heritage.

So when I first met you, one of the most incredible things about you was your wild story as to how you got to L.

A.

And how we got to meet.

I was born in Brazil.

I was born and raised there until I was 13.

Then I moved to the UK for my dad's job and kind of moved back and forth between Brazil and the U.

K for a few years because I actually hated living in the UK Living in London.

It's a very diverse place, but I don't feel that immigrants are treated particularly nicely there.

I don't know if it's better in America.

When I finished high school in the UK, that's when I decided that I wanted to study film.

I did not have any family in the U.

S.

I had never had anyone in my family who had done film eso.

I really had no reference other than I just loved film and TV and I want to be a filmmaker.

So I moved to America when I was 18 on my own to go to film school at Florida State, which was another interesting experience because it was moving from London to Tallahassee.

They call it talla nasty for a reason on then I looked really right after that.

The journey wasn't simple because as an immigrant, there are so many limitations, so I actually had to move back to Brazil for a bit in 2014 after I was done with college and come back here a year after and go back to school, you know, for for screenwriting.

And here I am today.

Working writer.

How did you maintain your cultural identity?

Living in these three vastly different.

It's always a struggle between individuality and kind of being like the mainstream person that everyone else is.

So I mean, how did they maintain it?

Keeping in touch with my childhood friends, who I still talk to almost everyday, then talking to my family, going back to Brazil every year.

However, I will say When I go there nowadays, there's a lot of things I don't understand and no longer understand.

It's a weird thing because when I go there some things, they're weird.

And then when I'm here, obviously something's air weird.

So what happens is you don't really belong to either place, and you have to kind of accept that there is no more home.

That the idea of home belongs in the past belongs to.

When I was a kid and I lived with my family and that was home, and now it's kind of fluid it's wherever I am, and I bring with me all the experiences from all these places.

It's kind of the way to survive and being a writer and being in the U.

S.

In general, have you had to contend with people asking about your heritage or assuming you speak Spanish, for example?

Yeah, a lot of people don't even know that Brazil Countess Latino because I think Latino is widely considered the same thing as Hispanic.

However, there are very few countries that are Latino but not Hispanic, and Brazil is one of them.

People always assume that I speak Spanish or they just assume, for example, that we Mexican food, even though the first time that I ate a burrito was when I moved to the U.

S.

Had anything, I had no idea what a burrito waas.

I think Latinos, the whole we are very similar were very warm people.

But it does bother me a little bit that, you know, we do have that individually that that gets a little bit erased.

For example, um, the two biggest actors Brazilian actors who are famous here are Bagni Motta and Alice Braga.

They're both famous for roles where they play Hispanic drug dealers.

That's how we're perceived is as the same as like a Columbia and Mexican.

To white people.

It seems like it's all kind of the same.

And the way that place to my writing is that I wander, I'll do I write a Brazilian character if I'm writing a script for an American audience or do I just right?

You know, a Mexican character that is, um, or something that people here can understand better, and I actually have done both.

So I wanted Teoh talk to you about user name.

Central character is Brazilian, but the story isn't that she's Brazilian or Latina characters.

Eso User Name is a cyber thriller about a hacker who is hired toe work at an AI talent agency, which is Impersonating a C G I instagram celebrity.

So that's not a script about being Latino on the surface, anyway.

I wanted to make her Brazilian because I am Brazilian, and I think that any story that has a little next lead can be universal.

And what was really important to me with this script in particular is that it's a genre script.

It's a cyber thriller which are genres that are normally associated with like white men like The Matrix, for example, their male centric genres, for the most part, and they never really have a diverse female lead.

And I really wanted to make sure that minded because I feel like women like those stories, too.

And that story could easily have a Latino female lead and still be what it is.

You know, I was so grateful and honored to get on the list with that script.

For that reason, I think there is an assumption that if you are white, you can write about anything, and no one's going to say, Wait, you can't write about that But if you are Latino, everyone expects you to write about being Latino.

Is there this kind of driving responsibility that you feel for representing so Latin voice for your Latin heritage?

When I was in film school for undergrad, all of my characters were white men.

All of my leads were white men, and I never thought that there was a problem with that because I grew up watching movies about white men written by white men and nothing against white men, you know, But they are the people who get to write these things that we grew up watching.

We who don't even grow up in America.

Then when I got older, I was like Wait a minute, like something's wrong here because there are plenty of people to write those movies already.

Who's writing the ones about people like me?

So when I came to that realization and kind of discovered more of my own identity, I decided to Onley write scripts about Latin X females.

And that's what I have done ever since without breaking out your dictionary.

Can you tell me what it means to you to be Latin or Thio drawn Latin heritage?

This is something that you think about a lot more when you leave your country, because when you were there and you are a Brazilian person growing up in Brazil, you don't think how I am Brazilian and this is what I am.

And this is what everyone else is.

Anyone can look Brazilian.

Literally.

Anyone I see on the street here could be Brazilian, because that's how diverse Brazil is.

I only really started thinking about my identity when I moved here, and I started to realize that that I was different, You know that I came from a different place, and writing is such an instinctive thing that you wanna use the words that come from the soul, you know?

And if you don't have those cultural references in your mind is very hard.

And I try to see that as a strength because that means I'm able to see the world through different lenses.

Yeah, I think that covers all the topics that I wanted to talk about.

Having a conversation.

Yeah, of course.

Thank you for talking to May.

This was great.

And thank you guys.

And we're celebrating Latching Heritage Month on.