Category Latinx Literature

Jan 13 2014

To Be Accurate in Writing, Recognize Truth While Reading

By Cindy L. Rodriguez

As a reading teacher, I often tell my students that the best way to become a better reader is to…wait for it…read. Seems obvious, right? And, of course, the best way to become a better writer is to write. After all, the more you write, the more you produce, the more you learn about writing and about yourself as a writer, and the more you improve.

During our “Road to Publishing” series, we focused on the writing process because, let’s face it, if the writing doesn’t get done, you’re not going to finish your book and become a published author. But, today we want to stress that to become a better writer, you also need to read. A lot.

This may seem obvious to many of us, since most writers I know buy more books than they could ever possibly read in a lifetime, but I’m thinking of my students and other young people who may become future novelists. I often hear students separate reading and writing, as in,”I like to read, but I hate to write” or “I love to write, but I hate to read.”

In response, I offer this quote from a text I use with my college composition students: “Reading and writing function much like breathing in & breathing out. They are inextricably linked” (McQuade/Atwan).

To be a better writer, you must read. Obviously, you read to do the necessary research, and you read within your genre to know what’s been done and what’s popular. But at some point, you’ll also start to read as a writer.

I was always an avid reader, but once I started to write a novel, I read books differently. Of course, at times, I just want to relax and escape and enjoy a good book. Oftentimes, though, I now read as a writer. I notice the structure of the work, vivid descriptions, great dialogue, and chapter endings that keep me reading. I underline beautifully crafted phrases and catch when someone is telling instead of showing. I also wonder if telling is fine in that moment or if my editor would have marked it with a note.

Reading and writing are linked, no question. And, since this is a place where we celebrate and highlight Latin@s in kid lit, I’ll further suggest that if you plan to write Latin@, then you should read Latin@, too. Every conference session I’ve attended or blog post I’ve read about diversity in children’s literature has emphasized the importance of being accurate and respectful when writers venture into territory outside their personal experiences. To be accurate and respectful in your writing, you have to recognize truth and respect while you read.

Part of our site’s mission is to promote literacy and the love of books within the Latin@ community and to encourage interest in Latin@ children’s, MG, and YA literature among non-Latin@ readers. In other words, we want everyone to read and write more Latin@ Lit. To support this, we are adding to our book lists, hosting a year-long reading challenge, and highlighting certain titles in our new weekly feature called “Libros Latin@s.”

Whether you’re reading for research, pleasure, or to become a better writer, we encourage you to add some Latin@ titles to your TBR list this year.

Here are some of the books we’re reading:

Mexican WhiteBoy     La Linea     Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe

Secret Saturdays     Confetti Girl     Under the Mesquite

What are you reading?

Jan 9 2014

Book Review: Sammy and Juliana in Hollywood by Benjamin Alire Sáenz

SammyBy Cindy L. Rodriguez

DESCRIPTION FROM THE BOOK JACKET: A young adult novel Latino-style–the year is 1969. America is at war, Hollywood is a dirt-poor Chicano barrio in small town America, and Sammy and Juliana, about to head into their senior year, are in love.

MY TWO CENTS: Sáenz creates strong main and supporting characters long remembered after finishing the novel. Sammy’s voice was spot-on as a teen boy who grapples with the personal issues all teens do–friends, love, fears and hopes for the future–while also dealing with poverty, racism, and the Vietnam War era. Sáenz brilliantly mixes Spanish and English, local “neighborhood” issues with larger social issues like drug addiction and homophobia. While Sammy and Juliana are in love, as the book blurb states, this is not a traditional love story. Something tragic happens shortly into the novel that ends the love affair. I won’t spoil it, but the relationship was short-lived, and Sammy spends the rest of the novel dealing with this loss and many others. If you’re looking for something light-hearted with a happy ending, this one’s not for you. Sáenz left me feeling what it’s like to get pounded by life, as Sammy was and as many people are.

TEACHING TIPS: This book has many issues worth pursuing in the classroom: immigration, poverty, grief, drug-use, discrimination based on race and sexual preference. Parts of this novel could easily be used by teachers in different ways. I say parts because I don’t believe every novel used in class needs to be read cover-to-cover. A history teacher, for example, may want to zero in on certain aspects of a novel, but may not want to handle elements typically taught by an English teacher, like character development or symbolism.

The thread about the Vietnam War could be pulled from the novel and used to complement nonfiction pieces in high school history classes. The character Pifas is drafted and students protest the war by wearing black arm bands and staging a sit-in in the school cafeteria. These were among the most memorable moments in the novel. The conversation between Sammy and Pifas about being drafted is emotionally gut-wrenching, and my heart sank when Gigi gets out of the car and falls to her knees in reaction to news about Pifas.

English teachers could use nonfiction pieces about any of the novel’s issues to attack author’s craft, investigating the differences between an objective, factual version of events versus a fictionalized one. Students could then choose an issue from the novel that is still relevant today (hint: all of them) and write two short versions of an event, one as a nonfiction writer would and the other as a fiction writer would.

LEXILE: 390

AUTHOR: (information comes directly from Cinco Puntos Press and University of Texas at El Paso)

Benjamin Alire Sáenz was born in 1954 in Old Picacho, a small farming village outside of Las Cruces, New Mexico. After graduating from high school in 1972, he entered the seminary. He was later ordained a Catholic priest, but left the priesthood three and a half years later. At the age of 30, he entered the University of Texas at El Paso. He later received a fellowship at the University of Iowa. In 1988, he received a Wallace E. Stegner Fellowship in poetry from Stanford University. In 1993, he returned to the border to teach in the bilingual MFA program at UTEP.

Sáenz is an award-winning poet and author of books for children and young adults. His first YA novel, Sammy & Juliana in Hollywood was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and won the Americas Book Award, The Paterson Prize, and the JHunt Award. It was named one of the top ten Young Adult novels by the American Library Association and one of the top books of the year by the Center for Children’s Books, The New York Public Library, and the Miami Herald.

His other YA novels are:

He Forgot to Say Goodbye   Last Night I Sang to the Monster   Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe

FOR MORE INFORMATION about Sammy & Juliana in Hollywood, visit your local library or book store. Also, check out Cinco Puntos Press, IndieBound.org,  Goodreads, Amazon.com, and Barnes and Noble.com.

Jan 6 2014

A New Year = New Goals and Features

Happy New Year, Feliz Año Nuevo, Feliz Ano Novo from Latin@s in Kid Lit!

We’re excited to begin our first full year online. With this new year, we have added features and ambitious personal goals. First, though, let’s recap our last few months.

We launched on Sept. 16,2013,  to coincide with National Hispanic Heritage Month. Since then, we have published 20 posts, which included our “Road to Publishing” series, guest posts, and Q&As.

We gave away 12 awesome books during our 12 Days of Christmas Giveaway, and we’ve had more than 4,000 hits from visitors all over the world. Our top 10 countries are: U.S., Canada, Philippines,UK, Netherlands, Puerto Rico, Mexico, Uruguay, Spain, and Ireland. Our single best day was when we posted a Q&A with illustrator Juana Martinez-Neal, and our most popular post overall was about our 2014 Reading Challenge.

The Reading Challenge will be a year-long project. We’ll check-in on our participants and post links to reviews of books by/for/about Latin@s. So far, we have 22 official participants, although many others have spread the word and given us positive feedback. We’d love for more people to join us, which you can do any time during the year.

We were planning to craft a post about why it’s so important to support diversity in kid lit not only in general, but specifically through our purchasing and reading choices. But, then Kayla Whaley did it so well, we reblogged her post. If you haven’t read it, you should. She makes the point so well. We can SAY we support diversity in kid lit, but we should also DO something about it. What we all can do is be more conscious of what we buy, borrow from the library, read, and review/share.

To further celebrate Latin@ kid lit, we are adding a new feature on Thursdays called “Libros Latin@s.” These will be “book talks” of children’s, middle grade, and young adult books that are written by or feature Latin@s. The book talks will include: information about the book and author, teaching tips, Lexile level (if available), other books by the author, and links for more information.

Sujei Lugo, our newest member and a children’s book specialist, will handle the picture book “book talks.” She is also beefing up our Children’s Book Lists with English, Spanish, and bilingual titles. Because of her additions, we have split the category into two sections! We encourage authors, editors, and publishers to alert us about titles we should add to any of the lists.

In addition to working on the site, we each also have personal and professional goals. Here they are:

Yoda WisdomZoraida: In 2014 my motto is “Do or do not, there is no try.” It’s a reminder to myself to do my very best. Plus, wisdom from Yoda never hurt anyone. I’m going out with an adult contemporary romance proposal, as well as a YA urban fantasy that centers around a family of Brujas. If there is time (*has a Jesse Spano moment*) I want to revisit the first YA I ever wrote, about a rebellious Ecuadorian girl who turns her quinceañera upside down.

Then there’s the non-writing stuff: have a six pack (the ab kind, not the beer kind), go to the beach, visit Disney for my birthday, learn to play the ukulele (I already bought one), make more art (the painting kind), and you know, fall in love.

Also, Zoraida’s The Vast and Brutal Sea (The Vicious Deep 3) comes out July 1, 2014!

Stephanie: My resolution is to write a picture book for my daughter.

Ashley: Writing goal: take 15 minutes a day to plant and water seeds for novel #4. Personal goal: cook a wider variety of foods (using menus from “The Fresh 20”). Academic goal:  finish and defend my dissertation.

Cindy: Writing: I will do whatever’s needed to support my debut novel, which will be in production this year! I’ll also revise my second book and get it ready for submission. Reading: I’ll read 12 or more Latin@ kid lit books and as many debuts from the OneFour KidLit crew and ARCs from the Fearless Fifteeners. Personal: I’d like to lose 10-20 pounds, and as Zoraida said, you know, fall in love.

Lila: My resolutions are to finish the middle-grade novel I’m working on, to read 12 or more Latin@ kid lit books, and to lose ten pounds. Guess which will be toughest?

Quote for 2014

Best wishes to everyone this new year! May you reach all your goals and may all your dreams come true!

Dec 23 2013

On Privilege and (a Lack of) Diversity on My Bookshelves

This is an excellent post from Kayla Whaley who has joined our 2014 Reading Challenge. She makes a great point about supporting diversity by choosing to diversify her bookshelves. Saying you support diversity in kid lit is great. Doing something, like reading more books by and about POC, is even better! Thanks for joining us, Kayla!

Dec 19 2013

The Road to Publishing: a Q & A with Andrew Karre of Carolrhoda Books

On Tuesday, Ashley Hope Pérez laid out what it’s like to work with rock star editor Andrew Karre , editorial director of Carolrhoda Books, Carolrhoda Lab & Darby Creek. Today, we have a bonus post, a Q&A between Ashley and Andrew, the last piece in our “Road to Publishing” series. We hope it’s been helpful! All of the posts can now be found if you click on the “The Road to Publishing Series” tab on the menu.

Ashley: What are the rookie mistakes you see first-time authors make during the editorial process?

Andrew: Rushing revisions. There are no points for speed. Although I hope I’ve learned enough to anticipate this and prevent it.

Ashley: What qualities make you look forward to working with an author again on a future project? Any deal-breakers?

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

Andrew: A spirit of adventure. The authors I most enjoy working with are excited about the process. They like to use me as a sounding board, as a stress-test for their work. They want to hear my questions and suggestions, but they’re quite capable of going an entirely different direction. I’m not interested in authors who unquestioningly adopt my view of YA fiction. I’m interested in authors who will engage with it and articulate their own. In many cases, editing is a bit of a friendly struggle between the author and me wherein my goal is to lose in an interesting way that highlights the author’s strengths.

Ashley: In what way(s) does your approach to the editing process differ from other editors you know or have worked with?

Andrew: It’s hard to say. I only have second-hand information about how others edit. I tend not to write editorial letters. I prefer to write voluminous marginal notes and have lots of phone conversations (or lunches, whenever possible). Maybe that’s unusual? My goal in a markup is to highlight the places where an author is at the height of her powers and then challenge her to meet that standard throughout.

Ashley: Boundary-pushing is arguably your editorial signature. How does that priority influence the guidance you offer authors during the editing process?

Andrew: I don’t really think about that when we’re editing. Editing is about realizing and reconciling a manuscript’s potential and its author’s vision. It’s about pleasing the two of us, first and foremost. Insofar as we worry only about the limitations inherent in the manuscript, I guess the desire to be unbound is present.

Ashley: Beyond writing (and revising) a novel into its best possible form, what should authors be doing from the time they sign their contract to the time of the book’s release?

Social-media-for-public-relations1Andrew: There are a few practicalities every author should take care of–at least by that point if not sooner. Acquire all your digital real- estate. By that I mean, register a useful domain name, grab a good Twitter handle, etc.  Even if you can’t see how you’ll use them, at least you’ll have them. The only one of these that costs anything is the domain, and that’s cheap. Then, read your contemporaries. And if you can, interact with them as a colleague and fellow traveler. Join the conversations online in much the way you’d join a dinner party conversation: wait for your opening, and take it graciously when it comes. Be interesting, first and foremost. It’s not about selling.

Ashley: I distinctly remember a come-to-Jesus talk we had about social media some time between revisions for What Can’t Wait and the book’s launch day. I remember feeling very overwhelmed. Now, four years down the line, I can see lots of benefits from the relationships that I’ve established by existing online and at least intermittently being present in Twitter and other spaces.

At Latin@s in Kid Lit, we’re working to draw more attention to great books for younger kids as well as teens. What are some of your favorite books to read to or with your boys?  Do their preferences ever surprise you?

Andrew: Henry (5) loves nonfiction at the moment. He loves processes and technical details so we read a lot of things in that vein. I really loved Building Our House by Jonathan Bean. In the coverage of the death of Charlotte Zolotow, we discovered her Over and Over, and that’s been fun.  I still enjoy reading Goodnight Moon to Edmund (18 months).

Ashley: What’s one book that you hope to find in your stocking this holiday season?

Andrew: I still haven’t read NW by Zadie Smith and I generally enjoy her work.

Ashley: Any thoughts on the current state of publishing with regard to the percentages of works by/for/about Latin@s?

Andrew: It seems to me that the level of awareness of the need among publishers is high, as is the desire to find and break out new voices. High enough? I don’t know if it’s possible to say. I know I’m encouraged.

Dec 16 2013

The Road to Publishing: One Take on Working with a (Rock Star) Editor

By Ashley Hope Pérez

In articles and blog posts about breaking into the world of publishing, the lion’s share of attention goes to the writing craft, getting an agent, and securing a book deal. But what happens after those hurdles have been jumped? What can writers expect from their editors once the deal is sealed? And what will editors expect from writers?

The Knife and the ButterflyBecause writer-editor relationships are endlessly varied, I don’t actually have the answers to these questions. In fact, as I started writing this post, I realized that the only thing I am really qualified to talk about are my experiences working with Andrew Karre, my editor at Carolrhoda Lab. Andrew bought my first two novels, What Can’t Wait and The Knife and the Butterfly, in a two-book deal back in 2009, and now I am in the beginning stages of working with Andrew on a third novel. I can’t say what it’s like for other writers, although you can find some descriptions of authors’ experiences with editors, my favorite being the five perspectives offered up here. What Can't Wait

For the editor’s perspective, check out this post from Scholastic imprint editor Cheryl Klein, who also has a book on editing YA. Andrew will stop by the blog on Thursday to toss in his two cents on editorial work; if you want to balance some of my gushing below with more objective reporting, you can read this feature on him in Publisher’s Weekly.

Enough preliminaries. Here’s the scoop I can offer on working with my editor.

What happens after you sign the contract with a publisher? Waiting. Waiting. Waiting. I remember expecting to hear from Andrew the day after the contract was signed, but often there’s a considerable lag (months, friends) between sealing the deal and getting the feedback that will guide the revision. Editors are working on dozens of projects—all in different stages—at any given point. The good ones are expert at juggling these demands and giving each project what it needs.

Isn’t it painful to be told how to revise? To start with, I have to say that Andrew is as close to my “ideal reader” as I expect ever to find. With all three novels, he has grasped the essential aspects of the projects as well as (or better than) I did myself. This fact secures my total confidence in his intuition and editorial recommendations; on top of that, I’ve benefitted from his ability to see subterranean connections that invited development as well as other missed opportunities. So even what might have been “pain” in the process invariably felt crucial to the mission of making the book what it was meant to be.

keep-calm-and-revise--718I should also say that the thought of revision is what gets me through the agony of drafting; revision is my happy zone, where things finally come together. I don’t mind cutting scenes or paragraphs or sentences that I love. I don’t mind writing new material. I don’t mind collapsing subplots, ditching characters, or even radically altering the point of view for 100,000 words of prose. I don’t mind because when Andrew tells me to do these things, I instantly see how much sense they make. For me, Andrew’s vision manages to expand the story’s possibilities while also clarifying what needs to be done to achieve those possibilities.

How, specifically, does the editing happen? I’ve often heard writer friends discuss the editorial letter, which I’m told is a fairly formal write-up of all the things that need to be done in revision for a manuscript to be acceptable to the editor. (More discussion of the editorial letter and an example here ) The editorial letter reflects the major first pass of editing and defines the focal areas for the main revision, after which (everyone hopes) it will be mostly scene- and sentence-level rewriting.

Unless I have suffered some serious memory loss—which is possible since I gave birth to my son during the early editorial process with What Can’t Wait—I don’t think I’ve ever gotten a formal editorial letter from Andrew. Instead, we tend to have several hour-longish phone calls where he tells me what his instincts are as far as what could or should change in the manuscript and why. Perhaps what is most important to me about how these things go is that the “why” is always intimately linked to the internal logic of the novel or its essential characteristics (as opposed, for example, to trends in the market or notions of what teens can “handle”). These conversations generally entail multiple epiphanies on my part and copious note-taking. The macro-level feedback from the phone calls comes along with scene-by-scene feedback via comments and edits in Word.

After responding to the major editorial feedback (over 2-5 months), I submit to Andrew my “final” manuscript. Once he reads and accepts it, I get the second half of the advance (the first half comes with signing the contract). There is still some back and forth and perhaps even some more substantive changes, but all the major pieces are in place. There will be at least one more full read-through with comments to address before the book goes to the next stage of copy-editing (line-by-line stuff and the standardization of things like “OK” for “okay” according to the publisher’s house style), which is done by wonderful people who work under Andrew.

2-14Book-MakingWhat’s next? Then the book goes into production, and a while later (3-6 months) I get an email with galleys that give an idea of what the manuscript will look like as a “real” book. There will also be drafts of jacket copy, which I’m glad I don’t have to write, and cover designs. With What Can’t Wait, I wasn’t in on anything until after the final cover was chosen; with The Knife and the Butterfly, I saw about a dozen preliminary designs and got to weigh in on their relative merits. From contract to the printing of advance reader copies, the process has taken between a year and two.

Any words of advice for those on the road to publishing? The truth is that—at least for your first book—you will have little say in who your editor is. Your agent will submit the book where she or he thinks it’s a good fit, and if an editor bites and makes a reasonable offer, your agent will advise you to accept. There is no room in this process for mailing editors personality tests to check for compatibility.

What you can do is embrace the editorial process as an opportunity to discover more about your novel and your work as a writer. I find that the writer-editor dynamic—inevitably centered on the book—creates an amazing triangle of insight inside of which all kinds of possibilities for the story come into focus. I hope that’s the case for many other writers, too.