Issue 2: Lunch Break

VALIDATE YOURSELF.

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Lunch Break

Featuring IsabellaMente

Lunch Break is a monthly segment in which we interview icons, creatives, and influencers frommarginalized groups. We ask them to take us to their favorite lunch spot to talk about their background,their creative process, and what it’s like being on the job.

Isabella is an artist, poet, and author currently based in Los Angeles, California. On her 20th birthday she self-published her first book 7,300 days before beginning her Creative Writing degree at the University of Southern California. Her love for storytelling began at a young age. She grew up listening to her father, a Danish immigrant, read her Scandinavian folk stories every night. Her grandmother, an Italian immigrant, put paint brushes in her hands as a little girl. Poetry is her most natural form of selfexpression, and she also explores photography, painting, film and illustration. Her thematic focus highlights femininity, sexuality, identity and consent.


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BTC: I know that you’re vegan, has being vegan affected you in any way of being more aware of your ethical decisions? IM: Being vegan has opened a door for me, like a light turned on. It was just a door of empathy, compassion, and also thinking about how everything you do in your life has causation, such as: your words matter, your choices matter; which is very evident in our political aspect of where we are right now, which is very connected to that. Being a vegan and being a writer is so intertwined for me, like it’s an identity. BTC: You recently went to Europe. Writing in a different country with a completely different level of security than being home must have been a new experience for you. How has it affected you as a writer, and how has it affected your writing process? IM: It’s interesting, writing for me is such a mirror of where I’m at - writing is an evolution of growth. In each place that you are, it’s almost like a mirror of that place. At the beginning of this year and last year, I was living at USC (University of Southern California, located in downtown Los Angeles) and I spent my time writing in the corner of my room. From there, I was all over Europe. To go from that very solitary practice to then open it up to the world was so exhilarating but also my balance was off because I didn’t have a routine with my writing - I would be in a train station, accessing thoughts and triggering myself, and then being thrown into the vortex of not knowing where I am. It was wild, but so fun. BTC: For sure! Like when you’re writing, it’s so easy to get into it and not even paying attention to what time it is or what’s going around you. IM: Now I know why the famous poets and writers lived in Paris. The month that I was there I kept thinking, “how am I gonna leave,” but at the same time, I had to leave because I know I kept accessing thoughts and I had to change it up or I’m gonna get stuck here. Have you heard of Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own? BTC: No, I haven’t!

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IM: It’s basically the discussion about how women and female writers need their own room in order to create, because we’re always under social pressures to have all of the different identities that we hold, and to have your own room that basically holds the whole essence of who you are. That’s how I felt this summer, because I didn’t have my own room for three months, and I was going crazy. I didn’t have my own sense of space, my own sense of time. So that is the main thing about the sense of superiority - I didn’t have one, and I had to create it. My room is so essential, that when I put you in my brain, I put you in my room. To be a writer and not have that, it means to not have that superiority and safety of your own mind. BTC: What’s your standard writing process, no matter where and when? IM: I did have a standard writing process before I left: it would be to come home, take a shower, and since I’m an air sign, water really helps my process because it grounds me and is also very freeing. Anyway, after a shower, I would light a candle, make dank food, get into bed, put on headphones, and just go for it. Now, I kinda just go for it. I’m not so much into a regimented routine with it. Which is definitely not how I would prefer it, and this year is so intense living at home, I’m writing another book, painting, have seven jobs; nothing is solidified. BTC: Your writing consistently has themes of womanhood and self-identity. Did you grow up secure and confident with yourself, or was it something you learned and would like to teach others?

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IM: I would definitely say that I’m a thematic writer. Womanhood and self-identity is where I began, and where I’m still touching on, but I think over time, in trying to preach empowerment, I lost it for myself. Which is weird, but it became something that was expected of me, and I began to lose that feeling. So this year, it’s been me trying to reconnect with those themes. I think as we grow up, we didn’t learn to become secure and confident with ourselves. All I’m trying to do with my art is to communicate with one other human being. Not to forcefully feel in any certain way, but whatever way is safe for them, because I don’t think we have any time during the day to ever feel. Nobody ever just sits us down and asks, “tell me how you’re feeling right now”, like “look me in the eye, express yourself”. So, in the act of exploring my womanhood and my identity, I’m hoping to call upon the viewer to do the same with me in a safe environment. BTC: Even on your Instagram, you let people write a poem in the comments, and the caption usually has something that sparks a follower to write something. IM: That’s it! That spark! I don’t think that there’s enough things in the media right now that spark us in positive ways. In magazines, in movies, what messages are sparking you that are authentic to your own self? And that’s what’s scary, to be that difference means making people feel in a way that they’re not used to feeling. They’re used to not feeling, seeing, or hearing in this way that allows them to be themselves, they’re used to being taught that they’re not enough, and I want people to know that they are enough. In life, we have to make choices: fear-based choices and fulfillment-based choices. Fulfillment based choices are more work, but you want to do it. When you follow your fear-based choices, you’re just doing it because you’re trying to see the future so far in advance, it’s filled with anxiety, and you can’t even access yourself. My biggest advice would be to give yourself the permission to feel and to create. BTC: And finally, we know you have a new book coming up. Could you tell us about some of the upcoming themes that we could look forward to?

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IM: 7,300 Days was “the roots”, the existence. This new book’s biggest goal is that I’m trying to analyze the people around me, and how they have formed me into the person that I am, and our existence is based on the people that have guided you, and who has gotten you here. It begins in very dark times, and I’m trying to arise from that. The biggest theme is empowering women, specifically young women, and that they have the voice to say “no”. Consent is a huge theme, and how that interconnects to your relationship with your family; consent is something that needs to be taught at a very young age, specifically with little kids, and that’s gonna arrive out of that. So, the biggest theme would be consent and validity. BTC: Thank you so much, Isabella! 


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