Author Bites - Ashley Hope Perez on Characters

Ashley Hope Perez's THE KNIFE AND THE BUTTERFLY hit my like a ton of bricks, to be horribly cliche. For a book where I didn't feel all that much for the MC, it really had an impact on me I think because the story in and of itself was it's own character and Ashley really made it come alive. It's because of that that I asked her if she'd stop by to say a few words. Lucky me she said yes! She even included an excerpt from THE KNIFE AND THE BUTTERFLY and I have to say, this particular passage actually made me really not like Azael for how unwilling (or incapable) he was of seeing a bigger picture, of seeing context. It's really telling of his character when he feels that being hungry and Hispanic is far worse than being white and molested. But if you stick with it, you get to see just how his perspective changes. And I can tell you I'm so glad I did.

Now without me hijacking anymore of this post, I'm turning it over to Ashley. Thanks for stopping by, Ash!

When I was writing the first draft of The Knife and the Butterfly, I alternated between Lexi’s point of view and Azael’s. I loved working in two such different voices, but I had the nagging feeling that the story, too, was divided.

In the end, to move forward with the novel, I needed to choose: whose story was it really? Who owned the narrative and gave it its center of gravity?

As I was thinking about this question, there were some developments in the events that inspired The Knife and the Butterfly. (Yes, I am yet another author finding subtle and not-so-subtle inspiration in the news, beginning with an actual gang fight between MS-13 and Crazy Crew and continuing with The Houston Chronicle’s reporting on what happened to some of the participants.)

I can’t say too much about the news without spoiling things for those of you who haven’t yet read the novel, but here’s what’s important: the media was still talking about the girl who inspired Lexi, while the consequences of the fight for the boy who inspired Azael—and lots of boys like him—were all but forgotten. (For those of you who have finished The Knife and the Butterfly, all you have to do is google “Ashley Benton” and “Houston” to see what I mean.)

Anyway, it began to feel increasingly important that I get inside Azael’s head and stay there—not pulling back from even the most vexing aspects of his self and his macho persona. I realized that, when I was alternating between Azael and Lexi’s points of view, I tended to dodge certain things in Azael’s sections because I could. Once I embraced him fully as my narrator, I had to come to terms with a few unsettling things and get over myself.

For example, what does a male teenager do if locked up with a LOT of time on his hands? I couldn’t ignore one obvious answer (blech, I know), but I also discovered lots of other answers. Like Azael’s drawing, which becomes increasingly important in the story. And then there are his memories of taking care of his sister and his efforts to bond with anyone around him, from the inmate across the hall to the man who delivers the meals. Crucially, though none of that is enough to occupy Azael all of the time. Despite all his resistance, he begins to care about Lexi because he can’t not think about her. She can’t get Azael out of her head, either, although the reasons are a little different.

Lexi’s journal entries are still part of The Knife and the Butterfly (Azael gets his hands on her notebook), but our journey “into her head” is much briefer. I put that phrase in quotation marks because Lexi, like Azael, is putting on an act—even when she is talking only to herself. In many ways, their journeys run parallel, but we see Lexi’s development in miniature via the journal. Lexi’s choices matter to the outcome of the story, but what matters more is Azael’s willingness, finally, to see her as a person, not dismiss her as a girl or an enemy.

Azael is sometimes irritating, sometimes vulgar, sometimes caring (like trimming his little sister’s fingernails… major awww there), but always human. To give you a little taste of his voice in The Knife and the Butterfly, here’s a bit from the part of the novel where Azael is just beginning to read Lexi’s journal:

I don’t want to feel sorry for her, not even when I read about her sicko dad messing with her. I want to tell Lexi to forget the boo-hoo, poor-little-white-girl bullshit. She’s never been hungry. She’s never gotten a beating. She’s never been on the run from la migra or the CPS. She’s never had to pack a baby sister off to California just to keep her safe.

But reading Lexi’s notebook also makes me think how everybody is off the record in a way. Not just fools like my pops who didn’t get their papers straightened out. Not just dropouts like me and Eddie wanting to stay out of the system. I mean that whole part inside of you that nobody else even knows is there. There’s a Lexi that talks trash to Janet, a Lexi that crosses her arms in group, a Lexi that writes in her journal. But there’s also this Lexi that nobody knows about, a Lexi inside of Lexi. That’s how somebody can be getting high or going to church but at the same time still feel like a seven-year-old kid locked out of the swimming pool. That’s how I can be clicking Eddie in, kicking the shit out of him but somewhere deep inside feel that I’m still his hermanito. Down there, there’s a little guy who just wants us to go home and make some ketchup sandwiches.

You may not be in the mood for ketchup sandwiches, but I hope I’ve given you an appetite for The Knife and the Butterfly. If you’d like to read more excerpts and insights about the novel, check out this page from my website or just cruise over to your fave bookstore and ask for it.

I’m online, blogging from www.ashleyperez.com and on twitter (@ashleyhopeperez). Holler my way! I’d love to hear from you.

A Week with Carolrhoda Lab Review: The Knife and the Butterfly by Ashley Hope Perez

Published February 1, 2012.

Author website.

After a marijuana-addled brawl with a rival gang, 16-year-old Azael wakes up to find himself surrounded by a familiar set of concrete walls and a locked door. Juvie again, he thinks. But he can't really remember what happened or how he got picked up. He knows his MS13 boys faced off with some punks from Crazy Crew. There were bats, bricks, chains. A knife. But he can't remember anything between that moment and when he woke behind bars.

Azael knows prison, and something isn't right about this lockup. No phone call. No lawyer. No news about his brother or his homies. The only thing they make him do is watch some white girl in some cell. Watch her and try to remember.

Lexi Allen would love to forget the brawl, would love for it to disappear back into the Xanax fog it came from. And her mother and her lawyer hope she chooses not to remember too much about the brawl—at least when it's time to testify.

Lexi knows there's more at stake in her trial than her life alone, though. She's connected to him, and he needs the truth. The knife cut, but somehow it also connected. (goodreads.com)

I took a huge risk on THE KNIFE AND THE BUTTERFLY and gave it the benefit of the doubt. This whole gang, thug life thing, totally not my bag in the slightest. And characters like this? I pretty much don't give two shits about. But I am SOOOOO glad I took the chance because it ended being worth it and then some just for the ending. Like to the point of me being winded and speechless and not even moving worth it.

Azael is a thug. He's entrenched in gang life and quite frankly, until he really started breaking down in his prison cell and we start delving into his past I didn't feel much for him. He's a punk, someone that's starts ridiculous fights over some imagined blast to his or his friends' pride. At first I was really worried this would be a first for me: the first Carolrhoda Lab book I really didn't like. But once Perez started chipping away at the surface and really started getting into who Azael really was under that whole thug facade it became interesting. His life with MS-13 ended up being akin to addiction. Throughout the book he kept coming back to his girlfriend Becca and how he wanted to get clean for her, actually using those words. But it was always tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow. I ended up feeling bad for him because he is so young (15) and once his mom died his childhood pretty much sucked thanks to a selfish father that couldn't get over it enough to take care of his kids.

And then you have Lexi. I found the blurb just a touch misleading because I thought it was going to alternate POVs between Azael and Lexi but it sticks with Azael the whole time although we learn everything about Lexi through him and her journal. We don't really NEED to be in her head because we already kind of are when Azael is doing his observation.

What really bothered me was how quick Azael was to discount Lexi's problems because she's white. That really got under my skin and I wanted to slap him for it. Just because she's fair doesn't mean her life doesn't suck, and it certainly sucked. She was basically pseudo-raised by a mom in denial that had a revolving door of boyfriends, some of which abused her. She acted the only way she really knew how, through sexuality, and the gang life she sought provided her a bit of protection that she couldn't get at home with her mom. They were family where she didn't have any, except for her grandmother, who really tried. That's who Lexi warmed up to the most, that's where she looked to for encouragement or whether she should feel disappointed. Her mom didn't matter but her grandmother did.

The ending was so insanely sudden for me and hit me so profoundly that I actually gasped, my hands started shaking and I didn't know what to do with myself. I've said it before and I'll say it again: I'm not even halfway decent at picking up on twists in plots early in the story so I didn't see it coming AT ALL. And you know what? I'm glad. Because it took me aback so much that I think if I'd guessed before had, it would have ruined the story for me. It would have kept the story an okay story instead of launching it into FUCKING PHENOMENAL territory as it wrapped a rubber band around the whole thing and brought it all together. The ending really did it for me. If it had not ended the way it did I wouldn't have liked the book nearly as much. In fact I can't really imagine it ending any other way because it wouldn't have had nearly the same impact. Flabbergasted. Seriously.

THE KNIFE AND THE BUTTERFLY is not for the faint of heart. It's told through the eyes of a male MS-13 member (for those that don't know, it's a brutal gang based out of Los Angeles) and Perez is not shy about language, sexual innuendo or violence. It's all there, raw and uncensored for you to read and absorb. But she's written it so well that you'd think an actual member wrote it, that the story was coming from someone really living it. And in a way it did as it was inspired by actual events. Perez made me feel for someone that I would rightly brush aside, whose story I wouldn't have even considered before and I thank her deeply for that. Now I'm pretty much screwed because Azael's story was so phenomenal that I don't even know if anything else will compare. I don't know if I want it too.

Ban Factor: High - Gangs, swears, sex? Far too terrible for the eyes of banner babies.