“Stephanie Rodríguez: An Inspiring Latina Cartoonist Bringing the Bronx to Life”

“My life inspires me, my family, my friends, the people in this neighborhood.”

Writer and illustrator Stephanie Rodríguez grew up in the Bronx neighborhood of Kingsbridge and has chosen it as the setting for her first animated book, ‘Doodles from the Boogie Down’ with one goal…

“Give light to this place so that people know the culture that we have here in the Bronx,” Rodríguez said.

In the book, Rodriguez tells the semi-autobiographical story of Steph, a Dominican-American teenager who wants to go to an arts high school but faces many obstacles.

Like her protagonist, she also did not have the support of her friends who did not support her, and her mother, who raised her single, at first did not agree that her only daughter studied in Manhattan. Drawing from her own experience, Rodríguez talks about what it means to be the son of an immigrant.

“Having both cultures in your life and which one is more important or not is a lot for a child and I wanted to teach that history,” Rodríguez said.

Although she had no examples in the family, Rodríguez says that since she was little the world of art attracted her and she oriented her studies towards it, first at LaGuardia Community College and then studying Illustration at the School of Visual Arts University where she says she fell in love with cartoons as vehicle to represent your world. A world that does not always find a place in the world of art.

“I realized that there were no stories from Latinos of people who don’t look like me, I decided to do it myself,” Rodríguez said.

Upon completing his university studies, Rodríguez began writing short animated books and selling them independently.

In 2017, an editor at the Penguin Random House company saw her work on social media and hired her to write the book that she published in April of this year.

“I feel like (that) the book is like my baby and now it’s an adult and I have to release it to the world,” Rodríguez said.

Rodríguez is one of the few Latina cartoonists. Her mission is to inspire young people.

“It doesn’t matter if the people around you don’t understand the passion, they don’t understand what you want to be, focus and go directly and that’s it,” Rodríguez advised.