En Pocas Palabras. Javier J. Jaspe
Washington D.C.
“The 2023 National Book Festival was held in the
nation’s capital at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center on Saturday,
August 12, from 9 a.m. to 8 p.m. Several programs were livestreamed, and video
of all talks can be viewed online shortly after the Festival’s conclusion. Mark your
calendars now for next year’s National Book Festival, scheduled for Aug. 24,
2024.”
EN: https://www.loc.gov/events/2023-national-book-festival/about-this-event/
Una lista completa de los autores que participaron en
el Festival Nacional del Libro de 2023
(FNL2023) puede verse EN: https://www.loc.gov/events/2023-national-book-festival/authors/
La serie que iniciamos hoy se refiere a escritores de origen
latino que participaron en el FNL2023. Su objeto no consiste en realizar un
análisis de su obra, sino el de publicar material encontrado en Internet
relacionado con la misma y sus autores, para lo cual nos servirá de guía el
propio Website del FNL2023 en inglés: www.loc.gov/bookfest. Los
textos de Internet se transcribirán en itálicas, en español o inglés, según sea
el caso, con indicación de su fuente. Esta primera entrega se refiere a la
escritora Jennifer De León.
Jennifer
De Leon
"Jennifer De Leon is the author of the novel “Don’t Ask Me Where I’m From” and the essay collection “White Space: Essays on Culture, Race and Writing.” She is also the editor of the award-winning anthology “Wise Latinas: Writers on Higher Education.” De Leon’s work has appeared in Ploughshares, The Iowa Review and Michigan Quarterly Review. She is currently an associate professor of creative writing at Framingham State University and a faculty member in the creative writing and literature master’s program at Harvard University. De Leon’s new young adult novel, “Borderless External,” will be featured at the 2023 National Book Festival"
Conferencia/entrevista
2023 National Book Festival: Teens & the World's
Injustices: Lesa Cline-Ransome & Jennifer De Leon
Video: https://www.loc.gov/item/webcast-10969/
Website de la autora: https://jenniferdeleonauthor.com/
Referencia biográfica en este Website:
EN: https://jenniferdeleonauthor.com/about/
“About
Born in the
Boston area to Guatemalan parents, Jennifer De Leon is the award-winning author
of the YA novels, Borderless,
featured on the TODAY show, and Don’t Ask Me Where I’m From. She is also the author of White Space: Essays on Culture,
Race, & Writing,
which won the Juniper Prize from the University of Massachusetts Press. She is
currently working on two children’s picture books—So Many Gifts, and a
biography of Nobel Peace Prize winner, Rigoberta Menchú. Jenn is also the
editor of Wise Latinas: Writers
on Higher Education,
an International Latino Book Award-winning anthology. As an Associate Professor
of Creative Writing at Framingham State University and faculty member in the
Creative Writing & Literature Master Program at Harvard University, she has
published prose in over a dozen literary journals including Ploughshares, Iowa Review,
Michigan Quarterly Review,
and more. She is also a contributor on NPR.
Jenn graduated from Connecticut College with a double major in International
Relations and French, earned a Master of Arts in Teaching from the University
of San Francisco’s Center for Teaching Excellence and Social Justice while in
the Teach For America program, and later, a Master of Fine Arts in Creative
Writing from UMASS-Boston. She has received several awards and residencies from
organizations across the country, including the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference,
Hedgebrook, Macondo, VONA, Associates of the Boston Public Library’s
Writer-in-Residence Program, and the City of Boston’s Artist-in-Residence
Program.
Jenn is the founder of Story Bridge, LLC, which aims to bring people together
from all walks of life to shape, share, and hear each other’s unique stories.
Every Story Bridge participant walks away with new, unforgettable connections.
Jenn currently makes her home outside the Boston area with her husband and two
sons.”
Connect with
her online @jdeleonwriter or www.jenniferdeleonauthor.com
Reportajes / Entrevistas
Raising a Reader Authors Jennifer De
Leon
EN: https://raisingareaderma.org/jennifer-de-leon/
“Jennifer De Leon is the author of
the novel Don’t
Ask Me Where I’m From (published by Simon &
Schuster/Caitlyn Dlouhy Books in 2020) and the essay collection White Space: Essays on Culture,
Race, and Writing (winner of the Juniper Prize and published
by UMass Press in 2021). She is also the editor of the anthology, Wise Latinas: Writers on Higher
Education (winner of the International Latino Book Award and
published by the University of Nebraska Press in 2014).
She graduated from Connecticut College with a double-major in
International Relations and French, earned a Master of Arts in Teaching from
the University of San Francisco’s Center for Teaching Excellence and Social
Justice while in the Teach For America program, and later, a Master of Fine
Arts in Creative Writing from UMASS-Boston.
She has received
several awards and residencies from organizations across the country, including
the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, Hedgebrook, Macondo, VONA, Associates of the
Boston Public Library’s Writer-in-Residence Program, and the City of Boston’s
Artist-in-Residence Program. Her short story, “Home Movie,” originally
published in The Briar Cliff Review, was the 2015 One City, One Story pick
as part of the Boston Book Festival (30,000 copies were distributed around the
city), and her stories and essays have appeared in over a dozen literary
magazines and anthologies, including: Ploughshares, Iowa Review, Michigan Quarterly Review,
Guernica, and Best Women’s Travel Writing. De Leon is a winner
of the 2016 Walter Dean Myers Grant, awarded by We Need Diverse Books, and
named a 2020 Latinx Trailblazer by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.
After a decade
teaching in Boston Public Schools, she is now an Assistant Professor of English
at Framingham State University and a faculty member in the MFA Program in
Creative Nonfiction at Bay Path University. Jenn makes her home outside the
Boston area with her husband and two sons. Her next YA novel, Borderless, is
forthcoming in August, 2022. Also on the way are two children’s picture books—So Many Gifts, and
a biography of Nobel Peace Prize winner, Rigoberta Menchú.
You can connect &
learn more about Jennifer @jdeleonwriter on Instagram and Twitter or at her
website: www.jenniferdeleonauthor.com”
Jennifer
De Leon’s ‘Don’t Ask Me Where I’m From’ Looks at Latinidad Through the Eyes of
Today’s Youth
EN: https://www.shondaland.com/inspire/books/a33627076/jennifer-de-leon-dont-ask-me-where-im-from/
“De Leon talks to Shondaland about how her experience as a public
school teacher helped her write her debut novel.
BY VIRGINIA
ISAAD PUBLISHED: AUG
18, 2020
“Don’t ask me where I’m from” is a proclamation the Latinx
community is all too familiar with, and it’s also the title of Jennifer De Leon’s debut novel. The
book centers on Liliana Cruz, a first-generation Latina teen dealing with major
life changes, like transferring to a predominantly white high school and
dealing with the disappearance of her father. In the coming-of-age tale,
Liliana grows to understand and embrace her bicultural identity and discover
her voice as an aspiring writer.
I wrote the book I needed as a
young person.
Inspired by De Leon’s experience as a former teacher in Boston
Public Schools, Don’t Ask Me Where I’m From deals with racism,
immigration politics, code switching, and microaggressions through the lens of
a high school teen navigating new experiences at home and school. The story
takes place in Liliana’s inner city neighborhood in Boston and Westburg, the
wealthy and predominantly white suburban high school she attends due to the
city’s Metropolitan Council for
Educational Opportunity program, which enrolls thousands of students of color from
Boston in predominantly white school districts. It’s through this program that
Liliana is exposed to a different way of life that gives her opportunities
unavailable to her before but also exposes her to racism and stereotyping from
her white classmates.
Born to Guatemalan parents, De Leon grew up not seeing herself
reflected in literature and took the opportunity to write the Latina
protagonist she yearned to see when she was young. De Leon is also the second
author to receive the Walter Dean Myers grant award from We Need Diverse Books (Angie Thomas, author of The Hate U Give, was the first).
Ahead of the release of Don’t Ask Me Where I’m From, Shondaland spoke with De
Leon about how her time as a public school teacher influenced her writing, what
she has in common with her protagonist, and what was most difficult about
writing her novel
VIRGINIA ISAAD: How did your time as a public school teacher in
Boston influence you as you wrote this book?
JENNIFER DE LEON: I can’t imagine having written this book without
learning from my students, specifically in Boston Public Schools. As I wrote my
many drafts, I heard them in my ear, I could see them walking down the streets
of Jamaica Plain as they ate chips and laughed or went on Snapchat. As a
teacher I got to know my students on an academic level, certainly, but also on
a personal level. Many of them confided in me and they shared their fears and
concerns, like a parent in prison or a sister getting pregnant and their joys
like a parent coming home from prison, or a sister giving birth to a healthy
baby.
VI: Two years ago Massachusetts was named the worst state for
Latinos and Boston has the largest population of Latinos in the
state. How did Liliana's story highlight their struggles?
JDL: Oh, wow. I did not know Massachusetts had earned that title.
I’m not surprised. Boston is an extremely segregated city, as far as racial and
economic diversity is concerned. My parents moved to Boston in the 1970s and
when I was two years old, they moved the family to a suburb about 30 minutes
away in Framingham. Every weekend we spent driving into Boston to visit with my
grandmother and tías and tíos and cousins. Monday morning I returned to another
reality.
I grew up navigating two worlds, and never quite feeling like I
belonged in either. So I wanted Lilliana to experience this code-switching in
the book, this kind of moving in between, sometimes from one sentence to the
next, and other times literally — from one street to the next. In the novel I
wanted to show how there are so many walls, again, literally and figuratively.
I think Boston can be especially difficult for Latinos because it
is so spread out, and again, it is so segregated. There is no real “center” in
the sense that, oh, Latinos live here and we shop here and we work here. Sure,
there are pockets, but in general, it is a lonely place — or can be — if you
venture even a bit outside of your neighborhood. So when Liliana does just that
— she faces a cold reality that the world is indeed a much bigger, sometimes
harsher place than she’d ever known it to be.
VI: The undocumented community is described as living in the
shadows and Liliana herself is initially in the dark about her parents’ status.
What inspired you to create their backstories and struggles?
JDL: I wanted to tell one true story, even if in fiction. In
other words, I wanted to really go a mile deep, not wide, and show how
deportation can affect one teen girl, one family. This particular story is not
every Latinx girl’s story, nor is it meant to be, and so in writing Liliana’s
story I really wanted to add nuance to what may be read as a “single story” in
the media, that of a family affected by deportation. In sharing these
characters’ backstories and struggles, I hope to give readers more context.
VI: Liliana is her parents’ American dream, in a sense. Can you
talk about developing her character as both Latin American and American?
JDL: These are such great questions! Liliana is definitely
navigating worlds and identities. For the first time in her life, she is
realizing that her story is part of a larger story. Her parents emigrated from
Guatemala to Massachusetts. Her grandparents and great grandparents are from
Guatemala. She is the first generation in her family to be born in the United
States. Seeing herself within this context — again, for the first time — is a
powerful moment. I guess that’s why these stories are called coming-of-age.
I wanted to develop Liliana’s character as someone discovering and
developing her identity, which includes being Guatemalan and American. I did
not want to paint a character who only assimilates — she certainly tries to do
just that in the beginning of her journey — but ultimately one who is proud of
where she comes from, and if anything, wants to know more and more about her
history, all while feeling empowered to pursue multiple opportunities in the
United States, including educational opportunity. She doesn’t have to choose.
VI: The racism the METCO students
encounter feels like it was taken out of today's headlines, in particular the
Black Lives Matter discussions and the ignorance surrounding immigration. What
do you hope readers take from the candid conversations in the book?
JDL: I
hope readers get a sense of the real conversations teens are often having about
race, and that the racist comments and actions by some characters in the book
are sobering to some degree, for those in the dark or those living in extreme
denial, and as refreshing to other readers. Perhaps for those not used to
seeing such candid conversations on the page, even if they know they happen in
real life. I also hope that young people, in particular, can see different
perspectives because there is a diverse cast of characters here and ultimately,
that they will be inspired to act for positive change. We don’t know how many
activists are waiting to be fired up and motivated and if it’s one story, one
book, one character that can ignite that fire — then I feel my work is done.
I wish people understood that the
Latinx community is not a monolithic one.
VI: You reference Enrique's
Journey throughout the book, which
details the harrowing journey across the border. What other sources did you
draw from as you wrote this book?
JDL: I
read a ton — nonfiction, fiction, articles, interviews — including work by
Reyna Grande, Francisco Jímenez, and Ted Conover. I also watched documentaries
and films, including Which Way
Home and Sin
Nombre [which followed unaccompanied migrant children]. I spent
time interviewing students and teachers in the METCO program as well. In
addition, I spoke to family members and consulted my journals from my time
living in Guatemala.
VI: Liliana shares how frustrating it is when she's asked where
she's from and they also discuss the complexities of Latinidad. What do you
wish more people knew about the Latinx community, and what can people do to be
better allies?
JDL: I wish people understood that the Latinx community is not a
monolithic one. Yes, we share so many commonalities on levels of language,
culture, family traditions, etc., but just the same, there are as many differences
between someone who identifies as Puerto Rican vs. Mexican vs. Guatemalan vs.
Venezuelan, and so on and so forth. I think the best allies are ones who listen
and engage and educate themselves and at the same time understand that a Latinx
person — especially a first or second or third-generation Latinx person — is
not the “expert” on his/her/their culture and is learning as well.
VI: What was the most challenging
aspect of writing this book? What has been the most rewarding?
JDL: Most
challenging: responding to my mother’s question of, are you done yet? No,
seriously. I write about this a lot in my essays/nonfiction, but as a
first-generation college graduate and the first writer in the family (as far as
I know), I spend much time explaining things, and as any writer knows, writing
is hard to explain in terms of traditional parameters such as hours, payment,
timelines. Art doesn’t really work that way, and that’s been challenging to
explain to my parents. But they are extremely supportive. And so I guess that’s
the most rewarding part — knowing that they came to this country 50 years ago
and that just one generation later I am able to achieve my dream. That’s crazy
and amazing and I don’t take a single drop for granted.
VI: You and your heroine share
certain qualities (both of you are Guatemalan writers). How much of this
character and her story is autobiographical, and what was it like sharing those
parts of yourself especially as young Latina heroines are still uncommon in
mainstream literature?
JDL: Yes!
I love this question. I could write a memoir in response to this question, but
I guess I’ll summarize by saying that I wrote the book I needed as a young
person. If I had experienced this “mirror” in literature at a young age, who knows?
So I wrote what I hope is a mirror for young Latinas, but then also a window
for those working with Latinas — teachers, librarians, mentors, etc.
Liliana and I share so much — we
were both born in Jamaica Plain. We both grew up speaking Spanish and English
and navigating two different worlds, and often being the only Latinx person in
the class. Her father is Guatemalan; my father is Guatemalan. Her mother is
Salvadoran, but my mother is also Guatemalan. I grew up in a suburb of Boston,
so I was not in the METCO program, but sometimes people mistook me for a METCO
student. Both my parents had become U.S. citizens before my sisters and I were
born, so deportation did not play a role in our family’s story in the way it
does for Liliana. I definitely loved creative writing, as Liliana does. I did
not make miniature cardboard houses — wish I had, though!
VI: In the book they discuss six
word autobiographies, what would be yours?
JDL: Don’t
ask me where I’m from, obviously!
Virginia
Isaad is a lifestyle and culture writer based in Los Angeles with bylines in
Bustle, Elite Daily, HipLatina, Remezcla, and Mitu. She speaks fluent Spanglish
and works to amplify the stories of Latinx communities. Follow her on
Twitter @virginiaisaad.
Q&A: Jennifer De Leon on her new YA novel ‘Borderless’
“I really hope that this book finds
its way to readers who might have a singular vision or image of what a migrant
person is."
April 25,
2023
EN: https://www.boston.com/culture/books/2023/04/25/borderless-jennifer-de-leon/
“Jennifer
De Leon started writing her new novel, “Borderless,” in 2018.
She was pregnant with
her second son at the time and watched in horror as images emerged of parents
being separated from their children at the United
States border under the Trump administration’s “zero tolerance” policy
immigration policy.
“I felt this urge to march in the streets and join all of these
rallies,” De Leon recalled in an interview with Boston.com. “But I was very
pregnant and really could not. And so I thought, what other way can I
contribute? How can I use my voice?”
The former Boston
Public Schools teacher and current associate professor of English at Framingham
State University, whose own parents immigrated from Guatemala, felt pulled to
write a story about a young girl in Guatemala who loves her life and doesn’t
imagine ever having to leave.
That pull was the
foundation for the protagonist, Maya, in De Leon’s new YA book, “Borderless,” which
publishes Tuesday.
“She’s just living her
life,” De Leon said. “She’s got her mom, her best friend, her love interest,
her great school. And then over a series of events, she needs to flee the
country. And so I imagined — what would it take for a 16-year-old girl, say, to
leave everything she knows behind and risk her life to come to the United
States? That’s where the story really kind of started, in the thick of all
that.”
De Leon, whose other
works include the 2020 novel “Don’t Ask Me Where I’m From” and the 2021 essay
collection “White Space: Essays on Culture, Race, and Writing,” spoke with
Boston.com about her new novel, what she hopes people take away from the story,
and what was most challenging about working on the project.
This interview has been edited for clarity and length.
Jennifer
De Leon: Yes.
So I read several books, amazing literature on the border and books that engage
with the themes and realities of people crossing the U.S.-Mexico border,
whether it’s fiction, nonfiction, poetry. I watched documentaries. I read
several policy papers and found myself skimming and skipping to the part where
migrants were interviewed and really kind of drilling down to the details on
the sensory level and what anecdotes and threads I could put into the larger
novel.
But the biggest
research I did was travel to McAllen, Texas, and interview migrants who had
recently crossed the border and had been detained in detention centers there.
[They] had been seeking asylum, and they were released and staying at the
humanitarian respite center there in McAllen. It’s run by the Catholic Church,
and the goal is to help migrants feel human again and really restore that
dignity. Give them a hot shower, food, a change of clothes, help them make
phone calls and get on a bus, usually a Greyhound bus or something similar, to
their sponsors in other places in the United States.
What was it like to do those interviews?
Well, you know, like I
said, I read some reports and read literature and heard stories, you know,
within my own larger family. But there was nothing that could have prepared me
for stepping into that respite center. From the outside, it looked like any
other building. It looked like a nursing home; I think it was a nursing home.
There were these purple doors, and I remember it was very quiet. Like when I
opened them, I just remember that. That was my thought: ‘It’s so quiet.’ And
there were so many people — all recent migrants and then a few volunteers. And
the silence is what struck me.
I felt almost like
they were so tired and so spent and drained from their journey that they weren’t
going to spend an extra ounce of energy if they didn’t have to. And they were
standing in lines; they were waiting. They were sitting with volunteers with
laptops, they were wearing clean clothes, but it was used, donated clothes, so
there were some odd-fitting items. And I just took in all these details, and
then hearing their stories from them — I couldn’t write fast enough.
Why did you settle on YA for telling this
story?
This is my 20th year
teaching. … Being a teacher is as much a part of my identity as being a writer.
I love writing YA for lots of reasons. It’s so voice-driven, and the plot tends
to move faster than some of adult literary fiction. I find it way more
accessible. Really, though, what I love is that young people read YA. And as a
teacher, I just kept thinking, how many students, myself included as a young
person, didn’t know about what was happening at the U.S. border. My own parents
are immigrants from Guatemala, and I had very little knowledge of the extent to
what is going on. And really, it just felt completely right — I don’t know how
else to put it — to put this story into a YA novel. Because so many young
people, if they only rely on the images they see on certain media channels,
then they’ll get that single story of Central American or Mexican
migrants.
But this was a way to
disrupt that single story.
The book starts with a prologue and then kind
of counts down to the event of fleeing the country, which really builds a lot
of suspense and anticipation for the reader. What were you thinking about when
you put together that structure? Why was it important to have that?
That’s a great
question. I mean, again with my teacher hat, I think about my students who
would pick a book for independent reading or something similar in class, and
they would judge a book by its cover and they would judge a book by the first
page. And it was that first page that if it didn’t hook them, they would go on
to the next thing or they would ask for a hall pass or a pass to the nurse when
they didn’t need one. And I don’t know why that’s just completely baked into
me. As a writer, I’m like, I have to interest the reader on the first page. So
that’s why I love using prologues. I love the boomerang structure of starting
with a high-intensity scene, but then going back and picking up that scene
about halfway through the book. And I found that structure would work for for
enticing the reader, but then going back and having the reader understand, what
got this character, Maya, to this particular point in time.
It seems like it is reflective, too, of the
idea that her life in Guatemala before needing to leave is what is central to
her story, that that is what she is losing. Right?
Right. Right. Because
oftentimes, when we see these images in the media, it’s almost as if migrants
lives start on the journey itself. And it’s like, no, no, no, no.
I
also want to also talk about the ending, without giving too much away. It was
so poignant to me. You present it as a very real scenario; there’s no
sugarcoating the situation. It might seem obvious, but why was it important to
you to have the ending be the way that you have it?
It’s the realness.
It’s contemporary, realistic, young adult fiction, and the realistic part is
what’s key. I wanted it to feel open in that sense of we don’t know what will
happen exactly to her afterwards.
I could have written
three chapters out. I could have written when she lands where she’s going and
meeting the person she’s supposed to meet. But it felt important to end with
this kind of new beginning. And it’s just also something I don’t always see in
migrant literature. Again, the story sometimes begins on the journey or when
they arrived — and these are absolutely relevant stories. So I was just trying
to do something a little different, I guess. I also was really excited to set a
book primarily in Guatemala. I’ve never read a young adult novel set in
Guatemala, so that was just exciting to me on a personal level.
What was the most challenging part of working
on this story for you?
To be honest, what was
really challenging was my own fear and doubt of getting it wrong. And I say
that, knowing that fiction and art in general, stories, they’re not like
mathematical equations that have an answer. Even knowing that, I felt this
immense pressure to get it right, whatever that meant. And I think sometimes
that can paralyze writers — not to say they shouldn’t do their due diligence
and do all the research and the interviews and revise, revise, revise. But
because there are so few books set in Guatemala, it felt extra important to me
to make sure that I did the story justice. Because it is fiction, but these are
real people who are crossing the border as we speak.
How does it feel now to have the book completed
and released out into the world? How do you feel having been on that kind of
personal journey, alongside the creation of the story itself?
This book took so much
from me in a different way than my debut novel and essay collection. Every book
is different. I know every author says that, but it’s true. I’m just so
grateful that this book is going to be out in the world. I meet young people at
school visits and doing library visits, and I have pitched the book to them,
shared a little bit about it. And now that it’s here and I can begin to hand it
to students and teachers and librarians, it feels great. It feels a little
surreal. Because it started with an idea and an image and a character, and then
it swells. It grows, and you write the full draft. I know that’s the process,
but every time it still feels kind of like magic.
Who do you hope reads this book?
I really hope that
this book finds its way to readers who might have a singular vision or image of
what a migrant person is and that this might broaden their definition and their
understanding of why people are coming to the United States, particularly from
Central America. And just give a wholeness and restore some of the dignity,
even if it’s through fiction, through story.
What do you hope readers will take away from
the story?
I really hope that they
take away the fact that this is a complex issue. And I hope this story helps
widen their scope and help them ask more questions — and feel empowered to do
so. I really hope this book sparks curiosity [in] the best way about what is
happening at the U.S.-Mexico border.
Creating Space for Immigration and Race: A Conversation with Jennifer De Leon, by Sara Campos
EN: https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/creating-space-for-immigration-and-race-a-conversation-with-jennifer-de-leon/
How My Mom Taught Me to Write…with Her Sewing MachineThe author of Borderless shares how a broken appliance brought back memories—and gratitude.
By Jennifer De Leon Published: May 15, 2023También puede verse:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1u4DIeDcB9M, Book of
the Day
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ChT3_X8mFYA, Latina
to Latina Podcast
https://latinxinpublishing.com/blog/2023/8/9/embracing-boundless-horizons-a-book-review-of-borderless-by-jennifer-deleon, Review
by Angie Ybarra
https://www.goodreads.com/blog/show/1911-jennifer-de-leon-celebrates-trailblazing-ya-literature
https://authorsunbound.com/jennifer-de-leon/
https://bookshop.org/contributors/jennifer-de-leon
https://www.simonandschuster.com/authors/Jennifer-De-Leon/147624574
