ALYSIA
INTERVIEW AND PHOTOGRAPHY BY Y.A.M.
IMAGE EDITS BY THERESA ABEGUNDE
FEBRUARY 15, 2021
Alysia Allen is the older sister I wish I had.
What was scheduled to be a one-hour interview ended up being a four-and-a-half-hour story-swapping session, as Alysia recounted tales from her experiences in America and abroad that were familiar to me: coming across the linguistic entitlement of English speakers visiting a non-English speaking country; learning at a young age that your mother’s idea of a babysitter was the library; being ignored in public by a (racialized) White guy who didn’t want his peers to know he was romantically involved with a (racialized) Black gal; having your intellect consistently challenged by professors who subscribed to the delusional ideology of skin tone supremacy; going to therapy to address trauma; reflecting on the centuries-old diabolical exploitation of enslaved Africans, and the inconceivable fortitude of your grandmothers and grandfathers from generations past; and planting the seeds of change in one’s corner of the world by way of the written word.
While I did not record the entirety of my visual tête-à-tête with the high-spirited and globally-minded founder of Mocha Girls Read, I invite you to dive into the first hour of our chat, as Alysia shared critical considerations regarding our nation’s empathy engine, race-based monolithism and a few lessons learned on the journey to launching a 10-year-old (!) book club that she didn’t intend to function beyond L.A.
Fortitude & Gratitude,
Y.
Q + R
01 The first thing you do when you wake up?
02 Describe your life in three words.
03 What are two things most people never assume of you by looking at you?
04 Tell me your top three pet peeves.
05 How do you deal with pain?
06 What’s the worst advice you’ve been given?
07 What’s the best advice you’ve heard?
08 Who or what gives you hope?
09 What’s gonna keep you up tonight?
10 Why do you believe reading is important?
11 Why is it critical to have a book club like Mocha Girls Read?
12 One mistake you made when you launched MGR?
13 One practical tip you’d like to share with independent creatives?
14 One significant lesson you’ve learned during your journey?
15 The most important thing you’d like to accomplish this year?
16 When was the last time you cried?
17 What's your greatest regret in life?
18 Would you share a memory that impacted you?
19 Who do you have a tough time forgiving right now?
20 What’s something you’re really proud of?
21 What's been the most frustrating part of living abroad?
22 What's been the most rewarding part of living abroad?
23 What’s the one thing you don’t have right now that you crave?
01
YAM The first thing you do when you wake up?
ALYSIA Hit the snooze button. After that, I get up and try to do five minutes of meditation if I'm not running late.
02
YAM Describe your life in three words:
ALYSIA Different, optimistic and challenging.
03
YAM What are two things most people never assume of you by looking at you?
ALYSIA I've lived in three countries. First was South Korea, then Egypt and then Japan. And, I collect library cards.
04
YAM Tell me your top three pet peeves:
ALYSIA [People putting] negative adjectives on situations, faster than they'll put a positive one. Like, the way people define the neighborhood as a poor, sketchy or bad neighborhood. And you're like, “No! It's an underserved neighborhood.” The other pet peeve is people making broad judgments about other people based on sex, gender – everything! They just assume out the gate they know your story. They don't even know your name, but they [believe they] know your story, which is weird. My last one is people that put limitations on themselves.
05
YAM How do you deal with pain?
ALYSIA That's always a work in progress…Different pain has different solutions. So, it all depends. It may be just shutting down for a minute, coming into your center and having your quiet time. And if it takes a week, then it takes a week. If it takes a month, then it takes a month. Do what you gotta do. If it's eating ice cream, then eat the ice cream; it's not a lifestyle change. It's just a moment change. And I'm very pro go-see-a-therapist, especially for Black women. We need to start talking about mental health surrogate helpers, where there's a counselor, a pastor, a mental health therapist – all of the above count. I call it my diva team!
06
YAM What’s the worst advice you’ve been given?
ALYSIA This is like a double-edged sword, because we've all heard this – you’ve gotta work twice as hard as everybody else.
I feel like it did a disservice to a lot of Black women, because we start working twice as hard on everything else but ourselves. And we do twice as much for everybody else.
…Living your best life has nothing to do with working hard. I wish people had said, “Work smarter than others. Not harder.”
So, I feel like that is the worst advice I was given, because people never explained it. They just said, “Because you're Black, you need to work harder.” Well, you gotta work out that sentence a little more, you know? ‘Cause it's to the point where [Black] women and their physical health are in jeopardy in this country from working harder than everybody else.
…There are a lot of people thriving in this country from doing nothing – from being so mediocre. But they're very smart at the way they're working, and that's the difference.
07
YAM What’s the best advice you’ve heard?
ALYSIA In Japan, there's a style of pottery called Kintsugi, where they take pieces of broken pottery and weld it together with gold. So, they always talk about how this is the way you should fix your broken self – with gold, and not to fill yourself with glue. Alcohol to soothe your pain is glue. Whereas affirmations and therapy are gold. [We live in a culture where] it’s all about the glue to make you look whole. The thing I love about Kintsugi, most of all, is that it talks about how once something is broken, it loses value. So, when you make it with gold, you've made a whole new vessel that was different from this one, and it's worth more than it started out being.
08
YAM Who or what gives you hope?
ALYSIA Book club and my family.
09
YAM What’s gonna keep you up tonight?
ALYSIA Book club and Netflix.
10
YAM Why do you believe reading is important?
ALYSIA Reading is important, because it builds your empathy muscle… And I think that's what we're missing. We've lost that muscle of being empathizing of people that we don't know by not taking the opportunity to listen to other people's stories, whether it's sitting down and just listening, and whether it's via audio book or word-of-mouth.
The whole process of storytelling is about building empathy, and I feel that when people don't see eye-to-eye, it’s because somebody in the conversation is not empathizing. You don't have to agree. You don't have to like it. You don't have to be on the same plane. You just have to take a moment to empathize a little bit, and it will be a game changer.
11
YAM Why is it critical to have a book club like Mocha Girls Read?
ALYSIA We are probably one of the very few book clubs that is a Black book club for Black women that doesn't just read Black books. We got a lot of heat for that, but [the book club is] specifically about that one thing. The funny thing is, they expect Black people to have one singular experience. And when a story does not have physical violence, [or does not have the] this-woman's-a-single-mom [narrative] – it’s like, we can't have anything else! We can’t be a multi-faceted culture.
Yes, we're Black women, but we all come from different backgrounds. We all have different experiences because we are different. We all have different stories. Some of us didn't grow up in neighborhoods where everybody looked like us. Some of us were the only Black girl or Black person in the whole school, or the whole neighborhood…For us to empathize with each other, we need an opportunity to come together to talk about things, and books are great conversation starters.
12
YAM One mistake you made when you launched MGR?
ALYSIA I was not prepared for this – what it is now. I was not prepared for 8,000 members across the country. I was not prepared for 2,000-something members online. I was not prepared!
I thought 12 women were gonna come together in L.A. and chitchat about books, and that was gonna be it. I did not know! [Laughs] Next thing I know, I started getting emails from women in other states [who said], “I wanna start a chapter.” In my head, I was like, ‘Yeah, sure, no problem!’ and I let them do it. Then I was like, ‘Wait. What you're doing needs to be on brand with what we're doing.’ And when I figured that out – got them all on brand – then I was like, ‘Wait, this is a company!’
…It never crossed my mind, honestly. Ten years ago, it started off as a blog. And the blog caught on fire immediately. Women were constantly talking to me about books they were reading that were outside of the urban fiction genre that they were just stuck into. And I was like, ‘Oh, so this is a thing!’ [Laughs]
13
YAM One practical tip you’d like to share with independent creatives?
ALYSIA When you're doing a project that's creative, it's you by yourself. The number one thing that has helped me is being a part of groups with others that are creating things by themselves.
I belong to this organization where we meet every two weeks to talk about our wins and our struggles. It’s like a little support group, and so that way, you're not working in a void. You know? You're still working, but now you have – not necessarily accountability…you just have somebody if you need to vent.
You have a group of people that get it. When you are in that group of people – that group of creatives doing their thing by themselves – and then you come together, it helps to know, ‘Hey, I'm not really alone.’
14
YAM One significant lesson you’ve learned during your journey?
ALYSIA I have to say Mocha Girls has been a blessing. It's been a complete, 100 percent blessing. Every single person, every single woman and every single member that I've met has somehow blessed me, whether it's just a simple conversation – and you feel like your cup got filled – or major donors that are financing this thing…It was an unexpected blessing.
The thing I did not see coming was that – when you choose a path and you start walking down that path, you don't need to see the end. You don't need to see the goal. Just keep going and sometimes, the blessings are along the journey. It's not about hitting this thing – this finish line. It's not about a gold medal. It's about enjoying this journey and taking a moment to look at, and appreciate all these blessings along the way.
15
YAM The most important thing you’d like to accomplish this year?
ALYSIA For the book club, I just want us to be able to get to a point where we can start paying the women; I want to move them from volunteers to part-time employees. I want them to have an income for the work that they've been doing. So, that is my biggest goal for Mocha Girls, and that is hopefully coming from sponsorships, grants and donations.
16
YAM When was the last time you cried?
ALYSIA Last year. It was in the midst of my burnout…I would say it was around May, and it was the best.
17
YAM What's your greatest regret in life?
ALYSIA Stress. [Laughs] Letting people stress me out [and] letting myself get stressed.
18
YAM Would you share a memory that impacted you?
ALYSIA I got my first boyfriend at 16, and he was White. During a therapy session, it came up. It wasn’t until then that I realized my perception of White men was completely dictated by my experience with him. In private, he wanted to kiss and be affectionate, but when we were in public and we were on opposite sides of the room, he would never acknowledge that I was his girlfriend.
I was 16 – you wanna have a boyfriend! I wanted that acceptance. All my friends had boyfriends, and [I thought], ‘Why can’t I?’ And so, you just go with it, just so you can maintain a little assimilation with your peers. I did that for a good year of dating him, and now as a 48-year-old woman, I see – well, I did before therapy – White men a certain way. And come to find out, it was all based off that experience of him being embarrassed to be in public near me.
So, I had major trust issues. I'm doing the full circle thing, ‘cause right now, the guy I'm dating is a White guy. So, having a relationship with somebody who at first you don't trust…and then, throw the fact that you run a major organization that's for Black women – people are like, “You're not Black enough, ‘cause you’re dating a White guy.” And you’re like, “Well, that has nothing to do with [the book club].”
19
YAM Who do you have a tough time forgiving right now?
ALYSIA White people. [Laughs]
The fact that we as Black people have to categorize them as – ‘Okay, you're the allies, so you go here. You’re the racists, so you go over there. And then you are all just ignorant in the middle, so we gotta figure out what to do with you.’ That one-drop rule and the paper bag test – all of that stems from them! 100 percent.
Our mentality as Black folks about what's beautiful and what's not has nothing to do with us. It’s being taught – generation after generation – that who has worth and who doesn’t [is based on beauty]. That has nothing to do with beauty, but we equate worth and beauty as the same. And, a human's worth has to do with – in this country – as close to White as you possibly can be. That’s why my answer is White people. Of course, not all White people. Mostly, it’s the Trump ride or die supporters.
Black people are amazing. I want them to know they are the most amazing, because there are very few races on the planet that could have survived what we survived. And come out on top, consistently. People are like, “What do you mean? We don't know where we came from.” We are a tribe unto ourselves. We don't need to know all of the backstory to know this story. We've created all of this. Everything that's sitting here now has a Black person's story and their name in it.
20
YAM What’s something you’re really proud of?
ALYSIA I am most proud of the fact that there are a couple of young people that I taught how to read. It’s just an amazing thing to see them learning their phonics, building words and then making those words into sentences and telling stories. And I firmly believe, if you teach a woman how to read, then you’ve now taught generations how to read.
One woman will always teach her children how to be literate. When there's a male dominating the household, and he does not put value behind reading, then that is where the hiccup will happen. I describe my mom as a shopaholic bookworm, ‘cause she loves shopping and she loves her books. [Because of her], I grew up in the library. And when we moved, I remember my mom took us to the library saying, “If you ever get lost, come here.” Women in the family push literacy among their children.
And you know what makes you realize [you’re illiterate, even if you read and write in English]? Live in another country that has a different alphabet system. People just assume everybody in the world speaks English…. Americans especially have that mentality…That rude American mentality that people talk about? It's real! They want everybody else to speak their language….They don't want to acknowledge that [they’re] now the illiterate part of that country's population, [because] now, it's [their] job to learn how to read. When I learned how to read in Korean, it was a game changer!
21
YAM What's been the most frustrating part of living abroad?
ALYSIA I’ve only had a frustrating experience in Egypt. We take for granted moving about our lives in the world – in the city – as we want without having a checkpoint, [and] without showing your ID to the armed security guard who's brandishing a full-on AK-47 at you when you're just going to the store. That's frustrating.
22
YAM What's been the most rewarding part of living abroad?
ALYSIA The most rewarding is when you're not a tourist anymore. When you get that invite – from this lady that you befriended – to her daughter's wedding, and they want you to be a part of the wedding ceremonies that lead up to the actual wedding…that is always rewarding to me.
23
YAM What’s the one thing you don’t have right now that you crave?
ALYSIA Intimacy.
I miss hugs and physical touch…COVID is taking that sucker away, hardcore. That's what I loved about the book club. We would get together at the end, and everybody's hugging each other. If you didn't hug anybody all week, you were getting a hug at the book club meeting! [Laughs] But now, that's gone.
I see my parents on the weekends – every Sunday, I go there for dinner – and I don't even hug them, just in case. It's just hard. A year of not hugging is kind of weird, and I miss it so much. And [I miss] the intimacy of being at work; we have to stay six feet apart from each other…[and] I miss standing shoulder-to-shoulder with people! [Laughs] I miss all of that human connection.
ALYSIA.
INTERVIEW AND PHOTOGRAPHY BY Y.A.M.
IMAGE EDITS BY THERESA ABEGUNDE.
FEBRUARY 15, 2021.