Today we’d like to introduce you to Harriyanna Hook.
Hi Harriyanna, thanks for sharing your story with us. To start, maybe you can tell our readers some of your backstory.
I’m an entertainer and entrepreneur. I’ve always loved making media and designing since I was a little girl, and I am the kind of person who likes to be in charge. I wouldn’t say I’m bossy, though, I am just a good leader, and because of this, it gave me the drive to create my own things. I grew up not having much, so I figured out how to make the best of what I had. That’s what gave me the drive to create my own things. Growing up, we couldn’t afford vacations and such, so I would write and draw pictures of what it would be like to go on one. I did nail art designs from what I liked.
I find it funny how people know me for different things. Some know me for my Tumblr blog, some know me for my designs, some know me for my YouTube, and some know me for modeling and cosplay. My Youtube channel has over 100,000, and it’s where I talk about things from my childhood, along with family entertainment that people tend to overlook and don’t take seriously. I have two self-published books, and that was something I dreamed of since I was a little girl. I always loved playing dress-up as a kid, and it’s why I’m a cosplayer now. I guess you never outgrow certain things, haha.
Overall, I do so many things, and I’m glad I didn’t just limit myself to one. If I did that, I wouldn’t be where I am right now. I still have a long way to go career-wise, but I have come this far and I refuse to give up on my dream and myself.
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
Nope, not at all. Aside from people who I don’t know being mean to me, I also have plenty of personal struggles with the career path I decided to go down. Sometimes I product I put so much work into doesn’t sell. Sometimes a video I spent weeks putting together underperforms. The sponsorship and conventions I would apply to would reject me. I don’t book the acting gigs I really want, ones I put my everything into during the audition process. While this has plenty of up, it has many downs just as well. Sometimes I’m up until 4 am getting my homework completed (as a college student) because I was caught up with work for that entire day. Sometimes I have to put work on pause to ensure I finish my French studies (as I have been studying the French language since I was 14). Oftentimes I would have to turn down a day out with my friends because I’m super busy. Also, I have been grieving over the death of many of my family members (including my own mother), so sometimes I just shut down and can’t do much. But I eventually pull myself together and get back to what needs to be taken care of.
While this type of employment has many down, I still wouldn’t trade it for the world. There will always be some negatives with whatever you do, but the positives outweigh it.
Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?
Whew, where do I start? I do so much, haha. Let’s start with YouTube, what I’m best known for, and then I’ll work my way down.
On YouTube, I make videos about nostalgia, children, and family entertainment with the issues I find within those spaces. My videos fall under the umbrella of media studies. Issues within old and media created for all ages then to get overlooked, and I think it’s crucial that we learn about them. Mostly, my channel is pretty educational but fun because I put a twist on learning. Like yeah, we are gonna talk about the subject of race, but we are doing it with a cartoon you all know and love. You have to get creative with things in order for people to listen.
Moving from that, I love to write, always had since I was around nine years old when I created my own version of the book “If You Give a Mouse a Cookie” and as I have gotten older, I used writing as a way to talk about the hardships I faced growing up and such. Writing is something I have to do, it’s a form of self-care. I have two self-published books for purchase, “You’re Not Crucial,” which is a novella about my experience working in the American film industry as an extra, and “My Lady: Perfidy,” a tragic love story that I got the help from three of my talented friends to collaborate on the photobook with me. I am currently in the process of creating another novella, which will be more about the subjects I speak about on my YouTube channel. Creating books is a dream I wanted to achieve since wrote that “If You Give a Mouse a Cookie” parody since I was little, and because of this, it’s one of the things I’m most proud of.
As I want my own series, I have two in production, both are fan series. “The Progenies”, is a Descendants live-action fan series about the lives of the students at the school the franchise takes place in, but I put a twist on it by including more characters of color and LGBTQ representation. While “The Progenies” is still in production, we do have a good chunk of material for people to go ahead and check out. The story isn’t complete but I was proud of myself to raise enough funding to get something for it created. My other series, which isn’t out yet is called “Justice for Nino” is a Miraculous Ladybug comic dub fan series that focuses on the adults in the universe. “Justice for Nino” is kinda funny because it was just meant to be a novella (that can be read online for free) but when I showed it to my friends, I realized it was some of my best work and I wanted to do more with it. It’s being adapted into a comic, that part of it is out to the public. If everything goes according to plan, the first episode should be out around the end of December 2022.
When it comes to my shop, I mainly create things that I would like companies to make merchandise for. Let’s face it, plenty of big corporations are not going to invest in making bonnets, durags, lipglosses, gold chain necklaces, and bamboo earrings for their shows and movies, so I decided to do that for myself. I put spins on the things the characters in shows and movies wear and make them to my liking.
How do you think about luck?
If it weren’t for that one video I made about Dan Schneider’s show, I would not be where I am. I’m just keeping it real. That video is how so many people found my channel, and I took the attention I had gotten from that video and ran with it. I didn’t want that video’s attention to be my 15 minutes of internet fame and that be the end of that. I went through my notes and created more videos about my thoughts on Nickelodeon, Disney Channel, and Teletoon series to get the audience I got from that video to stay. I plugged my Instagram page and my shop into my YouTube videos. And it worked; I took something that blew up and knew that if I wanted to keep that, I had to work to make it last a while.
Contact Info:
- Website: harriyannahook.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/harriyanna/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/harriyanna
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@harriyanna
- Other: https://harriyanna.tumblr.com/
Image Credits
Photographers: Art Dodger @artdodger and T’Shauna Henry @creativittea Makeup :beautybychata
