In this interview we hear from Melania Luisa Marte, a Dominican-American writer, poet, and musician born in the Bronx and based in South East Texas. From authoring the soulful poetry collection, Plantains and Our Becoming, to creating haunting new worlds with a Black Nuyorican character in the forthcoming YA fiction anthology, Can’t You See It’s Coming?, Melania approaches craft bending genres while drawing from our histories and power within. This conversation explores her artistic approach and revisits her prose rooted in resistance and soil. From nurturing plantains to mango seeds, to creating poems that “feed and have our people full,” we lean into Melania’s world and wisdom. 

HL: How are you approaching poetry and art as a writer in the age of AI?

MLM: A lot of writers are so frustrated with AI and the concept of someone taking your ideas or studying your writing to try to duplicate it for consumption. For me, I’m not really afraid of that, because I know what that writing looks like when it doesn’t have a soul and when it doesn’t have a soul, it doesn’t hit the same way, because a robot cannot feel what you’re doing. You have to have a pumping heart, you have to have a soul, you have to be in a body that feels. And so, I really want writers to tap into what keeps them alive, what makes them feel good, what makes them feel their highest most godly self and to honor that. Honor that feeling, those goosebumps, your heart beating when you write something, those heartbreaks, those little instances of tremors and anxiety, and anger, or passion, or love, all of that is what makes you a great writer and a great artist.

HL: What was it like writing your poetry collection, Plantains and Our Becoming?

MLM: I had the privilege of being in the Dominican Republic. Anybody who’s ever been to the DR, they know it’s a party, you know? It’s an experience. It’s beautiful, it’s grounding, I mean it’s my own paradise. I can’t speak for everybody. We all have different experiences, and yes, there are lots of uncomfortable moments, and I definitely dealt with having to de-romanticize, really sit with the day-to-day realities of what it’s like to live on an island that is still living the aftereffects of colonialism but it was beautiful. At the time, I was farming plantains, so it was beautiful writing these poems as the plantains were growing up because when we planted them, they were little baby plantains. My partner and I, then we conceived a baby thanks to these plantains, because we were just having so much love happening around us, it was just beautiful. 

I feel like I’m someone who lives my life in such a way that I want to grow old which I know in this day and age, many folks are afraid of, but not me. I actually have seen so many of my elders, my grandmothers—one of them is still alive and the other one passed, but they lived! They lived. They lived their dreams, they honored their life in whatever capacity and whatever limits they overcame—they lived, and I want to live and continue to live, and God willing, make it to old age. To look back on my writing, on my stories, on what I lived, and say, “I did that.” I was brave enough to love. I was brave enough to write. I was brave enough to perform my art. I was brave enough to discover things about myself that I didn’t even know until I wrote them and experienced them and learned about them.

HL: Your poem, “On the Subject of Cardi B” is timely as we see the Dominican Bronx queen conclude a successful tour this year. Likewise the public holds opinions in seeing a liberated Afro-Latina woman take up space unashamedly. Can you talk more about why you wrote that poem for Cardi B?

MLM: I mean, you’re gonna have haters. I don’t want to be so simple about it, but you’re gonna have haters. Not everyone’s gonna like you. I wrote that poem for Cardi B because I think she honors her whimsy. And for some of us, our whimsy looks a little ghetto and that’s okay! I grew up in the projects, my whimsy and someone else’s whimsy who grew up in the suburbs are different kinds of whimsy. But I think I deserve, as a human being, to explore all pockets of my identity. Yes, I don’t live in the projects anymore, so maybe I have a different understanding of how I show up, and maybe I navigate the world a little bit differently now but I still have parts of myself that loves wearing chunky hoop earrings, and loves twerking, and loves a good rap song that’s completely disrespecting my humanity but also reminding me of my joy.

I think we have to lean into the ying and the yang of our identities and folks have a problem. This is why I like to talk a lot about respectability politics, because a lot of respectability politics is rooted in misogynoir, is rooted in seeing Black women as a product, as a mule, as something that needs to conform to what you tell it to conform to. And the second a Black woman says, “Actually, I have agency. I have free will. This isn’t the 1900s. We’re in the 21st century, and I’m a 21st century Black woman, and I get to choose.” I wrote that poem defending Cardi B and her reality, where she comes from, because so many of the women I know come from that space where they are objects of obsession. They are objects of oppression as well and they are fighting to be able to show up as their authentic selves. 

HL: We are living through challenging times in the art world as we’ve seen censorship on the rise and even more towards LGBTQ+ artists and artists of color. There is a strong backlash to our truths and storytelling right now, culturally. How are you doing your own art in this world?

MLM: For me it’s about not meeting the times, but rising above it. I’m not going to stop writing. I’ve decided this is what I want to do and this is what I’m good at. So I am going to continue to find my people, find my readers, wherever they are, and there’s a lot of them. Just because politically this country has decided it wants to be ignorant, that doesn’t mean that ignorance has to be the norm, right? That we have to continue to allow it to happen. We know who others voted for and who others did not vote for. We know, and so we have to find our people, our community, and make sure they’re fed in full, and make sure their spirits are intact. And so I write with the understanding that I need my girls to be good. I need my girls to have the reading materials they need, so that when they go out into the world, they have what they need, and they feel fed and full. I feel so blessed, honestly, because I have an amazing group of readers. I have women writing dissertations. Like, I have women who are, like, “I’m finna get my PhD in this and this and this.” I have had the honor of inspiring these women and feeding them what they want to see more of. You’re in her DMs? But she’s quoting me in her dissertation. Like we are not the same. I am so inspired that our girls, our women, our guys too, our folks—they are not just gonna sit there and take it. They are like, “Nah. I’m finna eat. I’m gonna do what I need to do, and I’m gonna keep pushing the world to where it needs to be, to a more equitable world.”

Melania Luisa Marte is a Dominican-American writer, poet, and musician from New York. She is the author of Plantains and Our Becoming. Her viral poem “Afro-Latina” was featured by Instagram on their IGTV for National Poetry Month and has garnered over nine million views. She has also been featured by Ain’t I Latina?, AfroPunk, The Root, Teen Vogue, Telemundo, Remezcla, PopSugar, Refinery29, and elsewhere. She currently lives with her partner and children in Southeast Texas. You can follow her journey at @MelaTocaTierra.

Heidi Lepe (she/her/ella) is a Honduran and Mexican-American writer and storyteller based in Los Angeles, California. Her work is featured in De Los by the Los Angeles Times, Bicoastal Review, Altadena Poetry Review, HipLatina and FIERCE by Mitú. Heidi is a creative nonfiction alum of PEN America’s Winter 2025 Emerging Voices Workshop. She is also an advisor for the Central American Historical and Ancestral Society of California (CAHAAS) committed to preserving and sharing Central America’s rich history, culture, and art.