FEATURED POST: THE PROMISE IN BOOKS by Lilliam Rivera

This week our featured post comes from Lilliam Rivera, an award-winning writer and young adult author of The Education of Margot Sanchez and Dealing in Dreams (Simon &Schuster). 

Original Post Date: May 15, 2019

Source Link: https://www.literacyworldwide.org/blog/literacy-daily/2019/05/15/the-promise-in-books

This article originally appeared in the May/June issue of Literacy Today, ILA’s member magazine.

There’s a vivid memory I have from when I was 6 or 7 years old. My mother, Ana Maria Rivera, holds my hand while pushing a stroller with my baby brother tucked inside. My other hand holds tight to my other brother while my older sister holds on to the other side of the stroller. Four of us children in total, all under the age of 8. A tiny caravan walking the wide Bronx, NY, streets.

I remember passing the fire engine house, waving to the firemen as they cleaned their trucks, and I remember my mother pressing tight to my hand as we crossed the busy streets. Our destination was the public library, roughly 15 blocks away from the housing projects where I spent my childhood. I couldn’t wait. 

The wooden steps that led up to the library were long, or perhaps they seemed that way back then. How my mother managed to climb the stairs of the library with the stroller and all of us beside her I can’t even fathom, but she did it without much of a hitch. As we entered the library, everything smelled old and musty and it was so very quiet.

I entered the silence with excitement and wonder. 

Inside, the librarians prepared to read a story aloud. There was barely anyone there, so we took up most of the front row. My legs dangled from the wooden chair as I sat there enraptured, completely in awe of what the librarians read.

Afterward, Mami allowed us to check out one book each. I browsed the shelves wondering which book to choose, the gift that will take me to a new world, my ticket to enter another wondrous place. I grew more and more anxious trying to decide.

“You can’t make a mistake here,” Mami said. “We’ll be back and you’ll be able to pick another book. I promise.”

At home, we sat in the living room as my mother prepared dinner for everyone. When she was done, Mami pulled out her word puzzles as we read. And although her English wasn’t up to par, in that she couldn’t figure out what the words meant on the pages of my book, it was enough to be seated next to her on that small couch, reading together. 

My mother grew up in Corozal, Puerto Rico, a small town located in the mountainous area of the island. She was one of 12 children. There are few pictures of her childhood, even fewer of her as a teenager. My mother could attend school only until the third grade. She had to help take care of her younger brothers, and that is where she would spend most of her working life—being a caregiver to young kids. Her loving ways with young people eventually led her to leave Puerto Rico and move to New York. 

My mother’s story may not seem remarkable or unusual, but I find empowerment in the subtleness of her migration story. How she left her family to start anew in a sometimes cold and hard city without understanding the language. My mother is not a very verbal woman. She’s quiet and strong. It’s in her quietness that I find strength in my own writing. 

My latest young adult novel, Dealing in Dreams (Simon & Schuster), is set in the near future where girl gangs rule the streets. Sixteen-year-old Nalah and her crew, Las Mal Criadas, use violence to gain status. Access to literature and information is controlled by only a select few. Books are such a rarity in this world that they are found only in the markets and nightclubs. There is a scene in my novel where Nalah ventures outside of her city and reads a poem that transports her back to a time when she was certain her father must have read those same words to her. The words she reads are like ghosts, nudging her back to family and hope. 

The past few years have been an exciting time for children’s books. So many diverse books have been published, garnering awards and hitting The New York Times best-selling list. The conversations have shifted to spotlight different voices, but has it been enough? 

According to The Cooperative Children’s Book Center, 215 kids’ books published in 2017 featured “significant Latinx characters and/or content,” with only 73 books written by Latinx authors. Most can agree how vital it is for young people to see themselves reflected back, but these numbers beg the question: Who gets to tell our stories? I can’t help but wonder how transformative the trips to the library may have been if the books I picked featured a Puerto Rican girl like me. 

My mother is 82 years old now and she still lives in the Bronx where I grew up. Now that I live in Los Angeles, I try to visit her as much as I can. When I do, she usually has a book or two of mine to sign for her various doctors or neighbors. She hasn’t read my latest book, Dealing in Dreams, or my debut YA novel, The Education of Margot Sanchez (Simon & Schuster). The books haven’t been translated to Spanish— not yet, anyway. 

When she can, Mami attends my events, always sitting in the front row. It’s such an honor for me to continue this oral tradition she presented to me so many years ago in that library, where she kept her promise to me to return for more literary magic, as we did again and again.

THE BOOKS THAT CHANGED MY LIFE by Susie Potter

I did not grow up in a home equipped with “literature.” My single mother, who had barely finished high school, liked to flip through true crime books, so we had a few of those on the shelves, but their gory photos turned me off. My older sister, however, had once loved to read. Later, with more of her time engaged with boyfriends, she’d retired her books to a battered blue suitcase in the attic.

Lucky for me, I loved to explore the attic, trying on the dusty clothes and looking at tattered photographs. I was hungry for adventure, and I found it when I uncovered that suitcase. Inside, there were books I actually wanted to read—books with young girls on the cover, books with big words and the occasional picture. I didn’t know it at the time, but when I lugged that blue suitcase down the pull-down attic stairs, I carried my future with me.

The first book to come out of the suitcase was Beezus and Ramona by Beverly Cleary. Through this book, I met practical, stern-faced Beezus who had to contend with a wild-eyed little sister named Ramona. And, when I put the book down, luckily for me, there were many more. I zoomed through Ramona the Pest, Ramona the Brave, Ramona and Her Mother, Ramona and Her Father, and Ramona Forever. It was in these books that I came across the word “davenport,” an old-fashioned word for sofa. And, lo and behold, my third grade teacher asked in class one day if anyone knew what that same word meant. Waving my hand wildly in the air, I explained its meaning and won a beautiful gold sticker. “I bet you anything,” she told the class, “she learned that word from a book.”

Thanks to my adventures with Ramona and the first real praise I’d earned in school, my desire to continue reading was set in stone. I begged my mother to buy me more books by Beverly Cleary, and done with those, I moved on to Harriet the Spy at my sister’s suggestion.

Louise Fitzugh’s book introduced me to plucky Harriet, who spied on her neighbors and jotted her observations down in a secret notebook, all as her preparation for an imagined future as a successful writer. Of course, like every child who reads this book, I vowed to do the same…though nothing of much interest seemed to happen in my neighborhood. Still, Harriet taught me that, to be a writer, you had to observe the world around you- take it in and learn from it, allow it to change you. Years later, reading the book as an adult, I would discover the literary allusions and the true brilliance of the story- a brilliance I might never have been able to comprehend had I not developed a love for reading at a young age.

And while Ramona and Harriet stuck with me as strong female role models, it was The Baby-Sitters Club series that really changed my life. These books were about four young girls—desperately old and cool at their ripe age of 13—who started their own babysitting business and became successful entrepreneurs in their own right. They taught me that girls can do anything they want to, and I never forgot this lesson when I became a woman myself.

Years later, working my first real job, my boss was talking about how she was trying to get her daughters to read. “I have a whole box of old Baby-Sitters’ Club books at home,” I said, “you can have them.” She wrinkled her nose at me. “Oh no,” she said, “I want my girls to read real books.”

I was taken aback, a bit offended. Those were real books—their impact on me had been real. Here I was, the first person in my family to graduate college, an English professor teaching at a college when once the mere notion of attending one had seemed an impossible dream. I knew that had happened because of the books I’d read as a child, but now suddenly they weren’t good enough.

Sadly, this was not the last time I would encounter such an attitude. Just recently, a colleague told me that others had snickered at my choices for “favorite books” on the department website. But, I’m okay with that. As Meg Ryan’s character explains in You’ve Got Mail, “When you read a book as a child, it becomes a part of your identity in a way that no other reading in your whole life does.” She’s absolutely right. These books I so loved may not be classified as “great literature,” but they are great to me. They are great in the impact they have had on me and in the way they have shaped me as a person.

I was a child with no real hope, no real role models, no real future, but books gave me all of those things. Any book can do that if you let it. Based on my experiences, I believe that children should read. They should read what they want, within reason, and their literary interests should be encouraged and celebrated.

These days, I teach literature. I publish stories. I’m working on a novel. I am in love with words, with knowledge, with reading, and I owe it all to Ramona Quimby, Harriet M. Welsch, and the four founding members of the Baby-Sitters Club.

GET TO KNOW A CONTRIBUTOR: DEBORAH WRIGHT

Deborah Wright is a first-generation Wayne County native, mother to a three-year-old son, and Financial Sales Manager with First Citizens Bank.  She has 7 years of banking experience in addition to time spent in real estate, mortgage lending, and—the most challenging of all—being a stay at home mom.  When she’s not talking about money, she can usually be found with her son, engaged in a myriad of boy-friendly activities.  Hiking under green trees or finding a “piece of water” are her favorite pastimes, in addition to reading anything about everything to add to her brain-vault of odd facts.  A lifelong learner, she is excited to be a part of the Bank on Wayne program and its mission to educate our local community.

THE HEALING OF READING by Adore Clark

I inherited my love of reading from my father. Our home was always over-stuffed with books, to the point that my father built bookcases into the house. He didn’t just add a bookshelf, he actually built a massive bookcase permanently into the wall of our basement. Understandably then, my adoration for books and stories was never really a matter of if, but of when, I too would begin to overwhelm my parents’ house with a paper hoard. 

My paper hoard began in the third grade, when I got glasses. Finally, I could see that the black lines on the page could give me wonderful stories of magic and adventure, as well as feed my ever-increasing need for animal facts. Once I could see clearly, I read pretty much anything I could get my hands on, from books about every species of animal on the planet to stories about dragons and fairies. 

It wasn’t long before my school’s librarian became my favorite person, and I would drag my parents to the public library as often as I could. When birthday gifts became birthday money, then I would also drag my parents to the local book store. My father indulged this quiet obsession while my poor mother tried to temper it. She was probably concerned that her house’s furniture would be replaced with mountains of books. Her fears were not totally misplaced and, in addition, we began to battle it out over reading past bedtime.

As I grew, so did my love for reading. By the time I entered middle school, I was already reading on a high school level. Also, by this time, my relationship with reading had begun to change. Reading was not just entertainment, it was a healing force.

By the time I entered middle school, I was beginning a nearly decade-long battle with depression. At the time I did not have the tools or knowledge to understand what was happening to me. I lost interest in everything I had obsessed over before. My grades dropped. I was either angry or sad most of the time. I never went to see a professional but, thankfully, I developed two coping habits that helped: I began writing and, despite my lack of interest in anything else, I continued reading. 

Writing helped me to soothe my emotions and workout some of what I was feeling in positive ways. Writing gave voice to my emotions. And in those times when I had nothing to say, I turned to books. I buried myself within the pages of anything I could get my hands on. I spent even more of the little money I had on any books that I couldn’t get at the library. 

To feed my voracious appetite for reading, I branched out and started reading genres I never considered before like sci-fi. I fell in love with the characters I found in books and many times felt a kindred spirit with these people of ink and paper. I learned hard truths with friends, laughed at their antics, and cried when their stories did not end as I had hoped. Their struggles gave me the strength and courage to face my own. I felt understood by the characters and their authors and reached out on fansites to find others who loved certain series as much as I did. 

I know now that I was not the only one to discover the healing power of stories. Many fans discuss how their favorite stories and authors helped them get through tough times. We talk of how we find strength and hope within the pages of a book. The characters, though often fictional, face the same struggles as we do. When we read their stories, we connect with those characters. When they defeat their foes, whether those foes are villains or inner demons, we are encouraged and emboldened: we feel that the monsters in our lives can also be vanquished. As G.K. Chesterton said, “Fairy tales are more than true; not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten”.