Drew Afualo is more vulnerable than ever in her debut book ‘Loud’

Drew Afualo is ready to get vulnerable.

That’s one of the reasons the influencer and the internet’s “Crusader for Women” decided to write a book. She already has a podcast, The Comment Section with Drew Afualo, and a platform on TikTok with more than 8 million followers. But something about the space on a page and the necessity of self-evaluation drew her to writing a memoir.

“I was pretty open and vulnerable considering how I typically am publicly,” Afualo tells Mashable ahead of its release on July 30. “That’s a big shift for me.”

Writing a book wasn’t always on her radar, though. In fact, when her team first pitched it, she was pretty uninterested.

“Initially, I didn’t even think I could write a book because I didn’t think anything I had said up until that point was worth a book,” Afualo says, adding that her manager encouraged her to consider it anyway. She was worried that because she isn’t an expert in a scientific field, she didn’t have enough to say — then she decided to lean into a book that’s part self-help, part memoir. It felt right to her. “I think it just fits my niche very well.”

In her debut title, Loud: Accept Nothing Less Than The Life You Deserve, Afualo talks about feminism, racism, family, life online, and more. Afualo sat down (over Zoom) with Mashable to discuss her writing process, her career trajectory, and MySpace.

Mashable: How do you describe this book to people?

Drew Afualo: Typically, I like to say it’s more in the self-help category. I think, more than anything, it’s extremely anecdotal, as opposed to many self-help books. I feel like most self-help — at least the ones I’ve read — are very statistical. They’re very scientific, which I love. Mine is more life experience.

I just didn’t wanna write exclusively a memoir because I’m only 28, so I felt like I hadn’t lived a life long enough yet to warrant that more. But I thought talking about my own lived experience and my journey through unpacking a lot of my internalized biases leans more toward self-help.

What do you feel like you can accomplish in a book that you can’t on TikTok or on your podcast? Why write this book at all?

Part of what I really was looking forward to accomplishing with the book was the fact that on TikTok and on my podcast, I’m also a comedian. I love to make silly jokes. I love to banter; I love entertaining as a whole. My platform has been wonderful in the sense that I’ve been able to almost put a pill in cheese and give it to my dog. Teach people about misogyny and patriarchy and bigotry as a whole in a way that’s digestible and entertaining. And I think that’s wonderful. If I’m their first intro to wanting to unpack it and learn more about it, I think that’s wonderful.

Please don’t stop at me. For the love of God, please don’t stop at me. It goes so much deeper than me. The book is an opportunity for me to expand a lot more in a way that’s a lot more erudite and driven by historical facts. It’s driven by a lot of things that I feel like you should know. 

Like what?

For example, how fatphobia is so grossly intertwined into many different facets of bigotry, but it’s also important that we diagnose it and recognize it and, more importantly, break it. That’s what I talked about in the book, how I lean more towards body neutrality than body positivity. I think body neutrality just works a lot better for me, personally. I don’t want to pull anything from my body other than gratefulness and thankfulness that it works and it keeps me alive.

The book was an opportunity for me to give [my audience] a lot more information that I can’t really be as snappy and entertaining within 45 minutes of my show or in a two-minute TikTok.There is the attention span that you’re fighting against when you’re making content online. The book was just a way for me to expand a lot more and give people a much more nuanced understanding of why I think the things I do and why I believe the things I do.

You start the book with a quote from Nelson Mandela: “If you talk to a man in a language he understands, that goes to his head. If you talk to him in his language, that goes to his heart.” Why did you choose this quote to start it off?

I usually say that when speaking to your oppressor, you have to speak in a language they understand. A lot of times, it’s violence. And I know for a fact I didn’t make that up. I was trying to find who actually said it, and I couldn’t. But there are a lot of Nelson Mandela quotes that I love. 

When people fight oppression, it takes many different forms. And a lot of times, the only forms that are ever remembered in hindsight are nice ways or what people perceive to be nice. I really admire Nelson Mandela for many reasons. I thought this quote was perfect because it is exactly what I’ve been trying to communicate.

I usually say that when speaking to your oppressor, you have to speak in a language they understand.

You write a lot about feminism, sexism, and misogyny in the book. Did you read anything — memoir or feminist theory — in preparation? 

I have read lots of feminist theories and books prior to having a platform. But when writing my book, I didn’t read anything. The reason for that was intentional, and it was because I have a photographic memory, and I also have a sponge for a brain. So I feared that I would absorb things that were not mine and I would write them into my book. And so, to be very careful and cognizant of that, I haven’t read anything for the last year and a half while I have been writing this book. That was intentional on purpose because the last thing I would ever want is for any unintentional plagiarism to happen. 

What books would you recommend to people who read your book and are interested in delving into it more?

bell hooks. Roxanne Gay. Jessica Valenti is also wonderful. I spoke with Jessica Valenti in the very early stages of [having] my platform. There are incredible intersectional feminist authors, all of whom are far and away much more of an expert than I ever will be. Brené Brown’s books truly changed my life after I got fired. Not necessarily in the feminist vein, but more so in the mental health kind of vein, which I think go hand-in-hand in a lot of ways. Over the years, I’ve read so many wonderful authors that I was like, “Please don’t ever think that I’m the one-stop shop for this.” I am but a silly internet clown. That is who I am. So if mine is like, an intro, great. Please go read far more talented, far more informed authors other than myself.

I am but a silly internet clown.

Tell me a bit about your writing process.

I didn’t write anything longhand. I did right before I started writing the book — I did an op-ed for the Los Angeles Times. And when I initially did the op-ed, I did hand-write it. That kickstarted me actually writing my own book. But it was in pieces. I wrote very out of order.

My team, my literary agents, and my publishing team were like, “Give me 20 topics that are related to what you talked about online but things that you would like to expand on or have stories from your personal life that drove why you believe what you do and why your convictions are so strong and steadfast.”

From there, we whittled it down. Which ones seemed a little repetitive? Which ones needed their own chapter? Which ones could go inside another chapter? Once we had those topics lined out, my team would tell me, “Give me 3000 words on this,” or “Give me 1800 words on this.” That’s how the writing process went. But before we even started writing, they just listened to me talk for hours. We just recorded so many hours of me talking on Zoom with my team just about my life, from the very beginning until now, and going through all my different life experiences and stories that solidified my beliefs in certain things. And that shaped my perception and my perspective on things.

After that, it was just writing, writing, writing, editing, writing, writing, writing, editing. It gets very tedious after the initial thing is finished. I feel like my writing process was relatively tame compared to other people’s, whose books are probably harder to write.

I know that talking online is what you do, but that sounds exhausting.

It was a lot. It’s honestly quite boring in the sense of like, it’s not very interesting to watch happen. You’re just sitting and typing for hours. And as far as playlists go, I love listening to music when I write or when I’m reading. I like to listen to music. I like listening to music with lyrics. I know sometimes people don’t like listening to music with lyrics because it can be distracting when they read. I personally like it. I just have a very tame flow in my playlist. So they’re very soft songs. They’re very melodic. They’re very soothing. That’s the kind of music I like to listen to when I write.

You write about the relationship between gender and race in Loud. We know that gender is a racial construct. How has being Samoan shaped the lens that you use to criticize the patriarchy?

In multiple ways. The first one that I discuss a lot is that Samoan culture at its genesis, prior to being colonized, was matriarchal and is still very matriarchal in a lot of ways. Obviously, we are not immune to the effects of white supremacy and colonialism after it’s already happened to us. So, in modern times, we struggle with things that many other ethnicities struggle with: white supremacy, misogyny, homophobia, and transphobia. But prior to being colonized, that was not the case for my people.

I was raised in a home where women are equals, men and women do the same things, and we have the same responsibilities, and it’s a culture rooted in service. It’s giving with no expectation of anything in return, and it’s serving whether it’s the lord or your elders. That’s just where Samoan culture thrives; that’s the very beating heart of it. That’s how I was raised. That played a huge role in how I viewed respect and being treated like an equal.

It’s very rare that I get attacked by a misogynist that is not also racist. It’s a real hat on a hat, you know?

I think another one is that Samoan people are genetically larger, whether that’s taller, bigger, fatter, or whatever you want to call it. So, having grown up around a very different kind of body type that was desired both in men and women and anyone else who didn’t adhere to a gender binary, that also plays a huge role because fatphobia is rooted in white supremacy and Eurocentric beauty standards. And so what’s beautiful in my culture, what’s desirable in my culture, is not what your beauty standards are.

Those are two huge things in my Samoan culture that have really informed my view on patriarchy and how white supremacy, misogyny, racism, homophobia, and transphobia are all so closely intertwined. It’s very rare that I get attacked by a misogynist that is not also racist. It’s a real hat on a hat, you know?

You’re posting constantly, you’ve got a podcast, and you wrote this book, all while being constantly affronted by sexist, racist men. How do you not just quit?

I’m stubborn. If anything is gonna make me quit, it is never gonna be a man.

Maybe that’s just me being petty until the end. But I think more than anything, and I’ve gone over in explicit detail in the book, I’ve done a lot of work to unpack and let go of a lot of my internalized biases and prejudice, both towards myself and others. So because I’ve done so much unpacking prior to doing this for a living, it’s done nothing but serve me. Letting go of male validation, specifically, almost makes me immune to having to hear that all the time. I do get an unbelievable amount of vitriol every single day of every single month of every single year. For the last three years, I’ve gotten some very violent hate consistently on all my platforms.

If anything is gonna make me quit, it is never gonna be a man, I’ll tell you that much.

So, I think unpacking all of that and letting go of male validation specifically doesn’t hurt me. I don’t draw any sort of strength or power from men who don’t know me telling me that they’re attracted to me. That makes me angry. That doesn’t fire me up; it truly triggers my prey drive to the point where I get angry and violent. I seek and want nothing from them, so their hate means nothing to me.

Have the platforms done anything to protect you from that vitriol? 

I am lucky enough now that my platform is large enough that I have wonderful people who can help if things get out of hand on the different platforms. They are very aware of my niche and the kind of hate I get. They do everything they can to help me, and I’m very appreciative of that. 

Unfortunately, that aspect of hate is something you just get used to with time. Even if I was the most PG, fantastic, superficial creator ever, I would still get hate. It’s unfortunately a reality of being an online person. That part I’ve just gotten used to, but I do have wonderful people who help me if something gets crazy.

Did you learn anything about yourself while you were writing this book?

I learned that I struggled a lot more with being vulnerable than I thought I would. I think because I’ve been an online person for so long now, I feel like I’ve shared so much of myself — which I have, to an extent. But then I realized in writing the book that there were many parts of myself I hadn’t really shared. I’ve shared that I can be mean. People got that part; they’re up to speed on that. But being vulnerable and very open and honest about certain life experiences, like my sister’s coming-out story and my thoughts on kids, those kinds of experiences that I detail in the book, were very hard for me.

But I have a wonderful team who gently, gently pushed me. They always assured me, “You don’t have to share anything that you don’t feel comfortable sharing, but if you give me a little bit more, if you really want to take me there, take me there.” We struck a wonderful balance, but I did learn that I struggled with the vulnerability part, which was a little shocking for me. 

We’ve got TikTok, we have a podcast, we have a book. What’s next?

Sleeping. [I] haven’t done that in a while. I would say going on my book tour, which is very exciting. And definitely going to do more standup, which is also very exciting. I’ve only done a little baby five, but I’m definitely getting into that. Hopefully, more stuff in the TV and movie area. The sky’s the limit. I’m gonna bleed into every platform and we’re never gonna stop hearing about me.

What do you remember as the first place you spent a lot of time online? Was it Neopets or Club Penguin?

I loved computer games when I was a kid. My sister and I liked My Scene. We loved Star Doll. As far as social media, the first social media I ever had was MySpace. I loved MySpace. I was so into MySpace.

Were you mean to men on MySpace?

Honestly, no. I thought I was just the coolest alive on MySpace. I don’t know why. Even though I was just copying everything my sister was doing when she learned how to code HTML.

Loud: Accept Nothing Less Than the Life You Deserve by Drew Afualo is out now via Auwa.

This interview has been edited for clarity.