Ashleah Gonzales: On Inspirations from Youth, Romanticizing the Self, and Cool Girl Lit in Her Debut Poetry Collection, 'Fake Piñata'

I almost had a panic attack when I realized who Ashleah Gonzales was and that I would be interviewing her for her debut poetry collection, Fake Piñata (Rose Books, 2024). Of course, I knew her from the infamous Kendall Jenner boat read photo back in 2019, the photo that perhaps made reading cool again–cool, sexy, and something celebs did too just like us normal folk. I will admit I took a deep dive on Ashleah’s Instagram and fawned over her very chic outfits and the overall aesthetic, her vibe. Oh God, I hate myself.

But the thing about Ashleah Gonzales is that she’s a cool girl you can’t hate. Reading Fake Piñata felt like traveling back to myself in 2011, the year I graduated college and spent the summer (and subsequent fall and winter) chasing someone who didn’t love me and never would. I admittedly know not a whole lot about poetry, but the “empty days” that fill the book are full of feels. Gonzales captures the loneliness that comes from unrequited love, that perfect limbo of limerence we strive to sit in and sink into. Waiting for another becomes eternity, “...an eternity that’s entirely mine.”

To say Fake Piñata is a book of longing is to fall short. Fake Piñata lives in the space between desolation and isolation. It is an ode to sadness, to unoccupied time, to rejection and leaving and being left and to finding hope in the sky, in the ocean, in watching ducks in the water, of wading in the quicksand of memories.

It is the “x” you make on your skin with your own nail to relieve an itch.

Brittany Ackerman: Congrats on this gorgeous debut! I often feel really intimidated by poetry, as I think back to my grad school days in poetry workshop, never understanding the poems my peers wrote about birds and using all these wild symbols for everything. But your poems feel super accessible, or maybe that’s the wrong word. They feel open, like an open door, like a childhood bedroom. They bring about a sense of comfort despite their inclination toward longing.

Can you talk about this feeling and how you shape it in your work? It’s like meddling with a loose tooth—it feels good, but still, there’s blood.

Ashleah Gonzales: I tend to push on metaphorical bruises a lot, not to sound like a masochist, but I prefer to feel deeply and see how that is. With that in mind, I'd say I'm also someone who will find humor in situations even when they can be upsetting. My brain naturally goes there when I write. I push and search my memory spaces to see what comes out.

BA: Speaking of comfort, I loved your inclusion of a poem you wrote at age seven. Quite good for a third grader! Even then you had the impulse to write about waiting, being left, about holding onto something both beautiful and painful.

We often cringe when we go back and read our older work. I know that all my old prose was basically about a guy who played the whole cat and mouse game with me for eight years. I digress. But there’s something pure about tapping into a childlike mindset in our work, getting back to that space where we aren’t influenced by anything!

Do you attempt to access that mindset in your work at all? How do you think your writing has changed from young Ashleah to present day poet?

AG: When I writing, I'm not one to be in the mindset of ‘someone’s going to read this’ or ‘this is for someone or a purpose’ (lol) which sounds silly, but I think this allows for me to access this younger emotional self part since there’s seemingly no ‘risk’ or it feels safe. I've always loved to balance the light with the dark, as you can see from my young poem, and it’s interesting to see I don't think I’ve changed much there. Maybe I'm forever emotional!

BA: Following that thread, in Rebecca Solnit’s A Field Guide to Getting Lost, there’s a great metaphor about what children see vs. what adults see. She gives the example of the Grand Canyon and how kids often focus on the sticks and stones on the ground and like to play in the dirt, while the adults marvel at the grandiose view of the canyon. Neither perspective is wrong, per say, but as you get older, you shift your gaze from what’s in front of you to what’s “out there” and beyond.

How does poetry traverse these two spaces, these two points of view?

AG: Saudade ;) 

BA: There’s a lot of self in this collection. In “Skybrary,” the speaker says “...I promised to be careful with ‘I am’ statements.”Why do you think self-driven writing often gets equated with having a too large ego? Why has the self become taboo? Or are we wrong about that and we should continue writing ourselves into everything?

AG: Is writing self driven work taboo? Most of my favorite pieces of writing are written from a self-perspective. I can only speak for myself and it’s like, why not write from this truth if you’ve got the material? Why let a heart smash of sorts go to waste?

BA: Kind of on the opposite end of the spectrum here, pivoting to celeb worship. You’re familiar with the sudden cultural boom that happened when a certain someone was seen reading on a certain yacht and then books became part of the milieu. Personally, I didn’t care that it took a very hot, successful person to get us all interested in reading again, but some people don’t agree. Some even call it “the curse of the cool girl novel.” But what’s your view on cool girl lit?

AG: Cool girl is funny because I'll take it if it's getting books in hands and words in minds.

BA: How has your time as a top modeling agent influenced your writing? Or vice versa; does writing inform how you see trends and fashion and style?

AG: Having a hand in fashion and writing is interesting, the two are separate for me as themes, but one has allowed me time and space to create the other.  I travel a lot for my job, and have for about 10 years now. It just happened to be that I am incredibly inspired in transit and will write during that time. But as of now, that is the only place where those two meet.

BA: I love a good prompt, and I feel like your book truly inspired a few future writing inspirational jumping off points. For example, in “Not a Hexagon,” one might write a lover or another person as a shape.To end here, can you give readers a prompt based on a poem from your book?

AG: From the one line page: “Suddenly you became the loudest noise”  based on this poem, what's something in your days that has been incredibly loud that isn’t a sound?

Ashleah Gonzales is an American writer who lives in Paris. This is her first book.