Today we’d like to introduce you to Hope Daniela.
Alright, so thank you so much for sharing your story and insight with our readers. To kick things off, can you tell us a bit about how you got started?
Truthfully, I cannot remember a time in my life where I wasn’t writing. Not to say there weren’t points in my life where I didn’t take breaks. Those months I can remember vividly, mostly because I wasn’t able to process much life. Writing for me, whether it be short essays or poems, goes beyond this technical documentation of my life for me. It’s meditative. It’s brutal. It’s complex. But it is mostly mine in a way nothing else has ever been. This practice started somewhere on the carpeted floor of my childhood home in Orange County. Cramping my own hand, hunched over, face deep into a composition book probably labeled “DO NOT READ!”. Writing was, and continues to be, this tool for me to take full ownership over certain feelings and experiences while also completely releasing them and submitting everything to the situation or the emotions. As a little sister constantly fighting with her older siblings, instead of maybe apologizing, I’d write a story about them getting trapped in quicksand and that was how I’d get over the situation. As a young girl who didn’t always live under her mother’s roof, I was more than capable to write about it to process these confusing questions I had. It shocks me now as an adult. Stories became this escape for me, a boost of morale, a reason to stay up ten extra minutes past my bedtime to plead to my dad that wanted to read him my story– when really what I wanted was ten minutes of his attention which I craved desperately. As an adult woman experiencing heartbreak and reinventing her life in LA, I have seen writing as something that could be used more as a tool to not only connect to myself as much as it is to connect with others around me and with the city itself.
I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
Maybe this is a redundant answer a lot of artists will use, but I think overcoming the challenge of ego and fear is one of the hardest things. Especially with work like mine that can become so personal. I have had to really check myself over the last few years of “Who am I doing this for?” and I think the moment the answer is anyone but myself– I must come to a full stop. I think it is clearer to us as to what we are made for than we make it. The quicker we admit that to ourselves, I think the quicker life starts. Humility as an artist has seemed to be more of a reason for me to hide than a reason for me to stay honest. I hope I am making sense here. At a certain point, writing felt like a pretty self-glorifying exercise because of glamourized humility. I felt was required to almost downplay my work for others to care. I don’t think it truly clicked for me that it was as necessary for me to advocate for what I love doing as it was to do it until I had a conversation with a friend who encouraged me to host an event for the release of my second book. I had spent most of the Summer while living in New York enamored by him and his ability as a young filmmaker to just get shit done and I was almost embarrassed I wasn’t. I had this constant rebuttal of “It’s not that big of a deal.” or “It’s not that good of a book” that seemed lazy and unnerving. I spent over a year working on this book that was massively important to me, yet I brushed it off in conversation as if it wasn’t even real because of my fear of how it would be perceived. Or my fear of taking myself “too seriously” and that being embarrassing. Once that clicked, I went all in and finished the book by November and hosted an event in Echo Park to sell the first 50 copies of my book and even do a live reading which a year ago would have felt impossible. I can’t believe how many people cared but what was mostly shocking was how much I started to care. I think when you are working on something that is being done by hundreds of other people around you in your community, it can become this excuse to not take yourself seriously anymore because everyone else does it– what makes mine so important? But it really is so important, I can’t express how badly we need everyone’s art.
As you know, we’re big fans of you and your work. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about what you do?
My latest book is titled Can This Be Okay? This is written on a post it note that lives on my grandma’s mirror in the Upper East Side. I saw it for the first time in April of 2021. I was nineteen. Had just moved to LA and was in love with a guy I hardly knew. This phrase didn’t hold any weight to me at the time— just one of Grandma’s little notes left around the house. Life felt perfect, not just ok. I didn’t have to bargain with God every morning. I’m twenty-three now, I’ve left behind that life and home I built in LA, one I thought was going to be mine forever. I’m no longer in love with someone and some life I tricked myself into thinking was mine. Everything has changed, me included. I ask myself every morning if this life can just be okay, if this can be enough. Begging for my own body and my own heart to just be ok with how life has turned out. I took two years off from writing for reasons I can’t justify but I’ve never been so fueled or so proud of creating as I am now. Life has been slow and easy and good. This project has brought a lot to surface. Mostly that all is ok again, finally. This book covers three years of my life divided into five parts. Twenty pieces. A heartfelt collection of essays that delve into the journey of self-discovery through the lens of love, identity, heartbreak, and personal growth. This coming-of-age narrative weaves together stories of relationships and resilience, offering a powerful exploration of finding yourself while navigating life’s challenges as a young woman in LA.
Where we are in life is often partly because of others. Who/what else deserves credit for how your story turned out?
It’s funny because I had a dream last night about this question. Maybe I was stress dreaming but I was at an interview table, and I was asked this. My response without hesitation went to my grandmother, Stephanie Ross. An intense and smart lady. I can only hope to become half the woman she is but also half the writer. At minimum we have two calls a day. She is so involved in my life and who I am and who I want to be, and I think it is so important to have someone like that on your team. God, she is so chic and funky and cool, it kills me. My dedication to my book was to my dear friend Zoe who sat with me for hours in her New York apartment as we literally cut and rearranged certain pieces. My ability to believe in myself most days was borrowed from hers. But really all the friends and family who have allowed me to keep toothbrushes in their medicine cabinets and never not picked up the phone over the last 2 years– that’s really who is responsible. None of this would exist without them.
Also, film. I do not think I would write without the gift of cinema.
Pricing:
- my book is $20 on my website
Contact Info:
- Website: https://canthisbeokay.univer.se/?fbclid=PAZXh0bgNhZW0CMTEAAaYf6iDIGD3T0GtS0zp-NGYZU882xANxVcjZLeIzTZ6eGk1cwtle5LeSpkU_aem_XAB9cnkhcvlc2t_D5DkClA
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/hopedanyelluh/
Image Credits
B&W film by Samuel McIntosh
