Archive for the 'Children’s' Category

Forgetting Children Born of War

Published on August 8, 2010 in Children's, Social Issues, South Africa, teenagers, violence, war and writing. 0 Comments Tags: , .

In the coming months, readers of my blog will be treated to a lot of thoughts on children and war, since I’m editing a collection of essays on the topic. You’ll also be treated to a lot more thoughts on South Africa, since my second novel, THIS THING CALLED THE FUTURE, a coming of age novel  based in South Africa, is being released in April 2011.  

For those who want to read my thoughts on the new book by scholar R. Charli Carpenter Forgetting Children Born of War, the review was published on Feminist Review, August 1.

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The Red Coat

Published on April 1, 2010 in Children's, U.S.-Mexico Border, Uncategorized, violence, women and writing. 0 Comments

My essay, “The Red Coat,” appears in Rough Copy today. Here’s a teaser:

When I was eight, my family moved from Albuquerque to El Paso.

An adventure! my mother said. Why, if you want to go to Mexico, you just walk across a bridge, and there you are!

We learned how to count in Spanish, celebrated Christmas, packed the U-Haul, and moved south during the worst snow-storm the area had seen in decades. My parents rented a house with aqua blue and pink shag rugs in a Mexican-American neighborhood and, just after the New Year, I entered third grade at my new school.

As the classroom door clanged on my mother’s departing back, I glanced shyly at my classmates, an ache in my chest, the kind of ache you have when you haven’t slept long enough. I shrugged my red coat closer and tried to sort through the excited chatter, Spanish and English mixing into one glorious smattering of unintelligible sound as the classroom absorbed the presence of this white girl, the only one in the class.

READ MORE on Rough Copy.

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Books I Read as a Child that I’d Love to Re-Read

Published on March 10, 2010 in Books & News, Children's, children's literature and writing. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , , .

 

When I was ten, we visited De Smet, South Dakota, one of the places where Laura Ingalls Wilder grew up. I visited recently, and they’ve created a really cheesy visitor’s center there with all kinds of activities and farm equipment that are not historically accurate. But in the 1980s, during my first visit, all you could see was the Surveyor’s House from By the Shores of Silver Lake, the property with the 5 trees that Pa planted, and the house Pa built in town many years later. There was lots of “scope for imagination” (as Anne of Green Gables fame always used to say) and I came back from that trip and told my mother, “I’m going to be a writer when I grow up.” I didn’t have much money to buy a souvenir; all I could afford was a short slip of paper that included Laura Ingalls Wilder’s signature. I treasured that photocopied signature for many, many years, as a tangible connection to this writer I admired so much and whose life I envied. (Her life seemed so much more interesting than the tumbleweeds, dirt, dust, and broken-down trucks littering front yards in El Paso, Texas.)

A few years ago, I took a trip to Prince Edward Island to visit Anne’s land. Boy, was I ever disappointed. Maybe I expected to be transported back a century, to the time when L.M. Montgomery wrote about. But mostly, I was bored by the flat farmland; I was shocked that it took about an hour to traverse the island by car and then what was left to do?; and, most of all, I was disappointed by the clap-trap tourist stuff that has invaded that island and turned it into a mecca of cheap souvenirs and crappy Anne-related paraphernalia.

And, by the way, L.M. Montgomery never once mentioned the ginormous mosquitoes everywhere, not in any of her books, all of which I have read.

The mystery is sort of gone once you visit a place and realize it’s nothing like what you read about in the books.

And yet….I still want to go to those places. The magic of the places I read about as a kid filled me with such longing.

What are the children’s books I’d love to be able to go back and read for the very first time again, to feel that mysterious urgent heartbeat against my ridge cage as I read, devouring buttered Saltines, licking the butter and salt off my fingers and losing myself in another time and place?

There are too many to name but I’d love to hear other people’s thoughts. Here are a few on my list:

Stuart Little by E.B. White

Anne of Green Gables by L.M. Montgomery

Little House on the Prairie by Laura Ingalls Wilder

A Ring of Endless Light by Madeleine L’Engle

Heidi by Johanna Spyri

Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson

Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry by Mildred D. Taylor 

Harriet the Spy by Louise Fitzhugh 

The Witch of Blackbird Pond by Elizabeth George Speare 

The Sign of the Beaver by Elizabeth George Speare

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No girls in Dr. Seuss?

Published on March 2, 2010 in Children's, children's literature, women and writing. 0 Comments

Here’s an intriguing article about the almost complete lack of female characters in Dr. Seuss books. You know, I never really noticed that before….

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My Childhood Hero

Published on November 12, 2009 in Children's, fear, feminism, power, public schools, rape, sex and women. 0 Comments Tags: .

Like many girls my age, I had a crush on the Bionic Woman while I was growing up. My bicycle was slathered with stickers that I had gotten somewhere, and I remember impassioned arguments with my older brother about who was better: the Bionic Woman or Wonder Woman. But as it turned out, the Bionic Woman was not my childhood hero. My childhood hero was tall, skinny, blonde, and about 9 years old. His name was Michael. 

Michael and I were on a soccer team together in El Paso called “The Thunderbirds.” I was the only girl on the soccer team, something that had never been a problem until the day my old all-guys soccer team, The Braves, showed up to play us one Saturday.

I had played with The Braves the previous year and, though I never felt particularly welcomed as a girl on the team, it had been mostly okay.

Except for one day.

That was the day Abel, who went to my school, told my teammates about what he and other boys at my school liked to do to me on the playground.

How they would chase me, surround me as a group, and take turns humping me through my clothes. From behind, forcing me to bend over. As I was lying on the ground. Mounting me if I tried to remain standing.  

In other words, they mock-gang-raped me, on a daily basis, for months.

And after hearing that, I was fair game for The Braves, too. Soccer practice became a Russian roulette of possible torture, of boys pressing themselves up to me from behind and pumping their groins against my bottom whenever we stood in line for some soccer drill.

I was eight years old.

I never told anyone.

On the day the Braves came to play The Thunderbirds, I arrived later than usual. Both teams were gathered together under a tree in Crestmont Park, the home field for The Thunderbirds. They all turned to watch as I approached, this line of boys, one team dressed in blue, the other in orange. Then, with one accord, they turned their backs on me.

I sat down and the teammate I sat down next to scooted away hastily as the other boys giggled, “Oooooohhhhh, gross.” My teammates and the players on The Braves stood up, moved quite a few feet away, and sat down again—leaving me very much alone under the tree.

I had no idea what the problem was, but it was clearly sexual in nature, something waaaaaaay beyond “cooties,” something that suggested they would be contaminated by my presence. The leering looks they threw my way from a distance made me feel dirty beyond belief.

I wondered if the boys on The Braves had told the boys on The Thunderbirds that they had “done it” with me. I wondered what they had said. I knew it was bad, whatever it was.

I held it in, because that’s all I could do. You don’t break down in the middle of a situation like this. No, you break down later. Privately. And you never, ever, ever mention it to your parents.

We only had half an hour before our game, though the way the boys were treating me made it seem like hours and hours and hours were going by. The coach tried to put us into lines to kick balls into the goal. Nobody would get into my line. If I stepped into a line, everybody moved to the other line.

I stood in my line all alone, bravely kicking ball after ball towards the goal. The two lines were supposed to take turns. So I took turn after turn after turn, returning to my invisible line, only to find a ball waiting for me.

The coaches tried to change the routine, suggesting we pass the ball to each other before we kicked it towards the goalie. But nobody would kick the ball to me and I was the only person in my line, so they decided we could keep doing what we were already doing.

Like the teachers on my playground who could have stopped the mock gang rapes I experienced on a daily basis, my coaches did nothing.

They heard the sexual taunting and they did nothing.

This went on, like I said, for what felt like hours. I was wondering how I was going to make it through the game. I was wondering about future soccer practices. For some reason, it never occurred to me that soccer, unlike school, was voluntary. If I had to endure the boys and what they did to me at school, I figured I had to endure it at soccer practice, too.

And then Michael, my shining angel of strength, deliberately moved from the other line to stand behind me.

My teammates were vocal and loud as they shouted at him, as they told him how disgusting he was to come even within inches of my flesh.

But he stood behind me in that line and jeered back. “You’re being stupid,” he said.  And I have never ever ever felt so grateful for another person’s bravery as I did at that moment.

I don’t know what kind of person Michael became. But in that moment, at least, he bucked the crowd and became my hero.

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What Saved You From the Monster in the Closet?

Published on September 23, 2009 in Books & News, Children's, Family, children's literature and fear. 0 Comments

Last night as I waited for my husband to come home from teaching a night class, somebody rattled my doorknob and rang the doorbell. The puppies galloped to the door, woofing and panting and barking, sounding a lot bigger than they really are. I thought maybe it was Chris at the door. He likes to get the dogs hyped up when he comes home by doing things like that. Still, it was dark so I checked through the window before opening the door and didn’t see anybody standing there. Nervous, I went around shutting all the windows in the house. Just in case.

I grew up afraid. I remember being scared to look in the mirror when I was alone in a room. I was afraid that I’d see a big, beefy-red face, a grinning lunatic, his hands closing around my throat as he throttled the breath out of me. I remember looking up, realizing I was alone in a room, and panicking, running screaming through the house. “Mom! Mom!”

Apparently, I wasn’t always a paragon of fear. My mother says that I changed from a happy-go-lucky little girl to a scaredy-cat about the time I turned four years old. The change was so dramatic, she thought maybe some of the teen boys on the block had molested me.

The fears changed as I grew older. When I was nine, I read one of those Chick Tracts  about a guy who was possessed by demons.Chick Track 3

God, that tract scared the bejesus outta me!  

That night, I couldn’t sleep, shivering in the top bunk of my bed in my room where I was alone, very very very very alone and very very very very very afraid.

 And…..I couldn’t sleep for months. Somehow, the idea that Satan could possess me—could be that intimately connected with me, could enter my body and spirit, could make me do things I didn’t want to do, could put me in danger, could (worst of all) make me desire to go to hell and then actually end up there!!!—took hold of my imagination at the deepest possible level and turned my life into a living hell for well over a year.

And this began my life-long intimate introduction to fear. Stomach-clenching, sweat-inducing, pure raw unadulterated fear, the kind you would feel if you were a young woman, alone in an alley in the middle of the night, facing three knife-wielding men who plan to have their way with you.

The terror would begin after lunch. Because after lunch, the day was a downhill march towards nightfall. To bedtime. To the time when I had to go to my room, alone, and face the horde of demons who occupied my stuffed animals, the dolls who sat innocently at the table in my dollhouse, the books on my shelves.

Chick Track 2This was no monster in the closet. Unlike the monster in the closet, who disappeared when the light turned on, this was real. Demons were there, you just couldn’t see them. The Bible said so. And all the reassurances in the world that God would keep me safe, that the blood of Jesus would protect me from this Evil that stalked me and watched me and drooled over me, night and day, just waiting for the chance to devour me alive, didn’t make me feel safe. Not one teensy, tiny little bit. The only thing that made me feel safe was the presence of another person. Somehow Satan seemed less real if somebody else was in the room.

But my brothers didn’t want to sleep in my room every night and they didn’t want me to sleep in their room every night. And my parents didn’t want me to sleep in their room either. (As a kid, I didn’t get that. As a married adult, I kinda do.)

And to be fair, I don’t think I shared the magnitude of the terror that gripped me with any of them. I was too frightened to utter the words out loud: “Satan spends every night in my bedroom, waiting for his chance to possess me.”

So I didn’t have people around to save me. Between me and the hordes of hell, I had a paper-thin prayer that I said over and over and over, trying to keep myself safe. The mantra went like this: Dear-Jesus-let-every-single-thing-in-this-room-worship-you-and-only-you-keep-Satan-away-from-me-protect-me-Jesus-protect-me-Jesus-protectmeprotectmeprotectmepleasepleasepleasepleasepleasepleasekeepmesafe…

The prayer was a lifeline between the time I had to turn out my light (9 p.m.) and the time my parents turned out their light (around 11 p.m.). That lifeline kept me afloat until their light went out. And then you know what saved me? Books. Books saved me.

I would creep out of bed and get a book, a safe book, a children’s book, one that wouldn’t contain demons or violence or anything unsafe. I would huddle in the very back of my closet, bathed in the harsh light of the light bulb. Or, better yet (because it made me feel less sequestered from the people I needed to be near me in order to feel safe), I would gently ease open my bedroom door and sit on the cold cement floor of the entryway just outside my bedroom.

I would read and read and read and read and read andreadandreadandreadandread (that reading was like praying, better than praying actually because it put me in a safe world with people, real people, and I wasn’t alone anymore). I would read and read until I was so exhausted (1 or 2 or 3 a.m.)—really, until I had inhabited another world long enough that I knew I could keep Satan at bay—that I could crawl back into bed and go to sleep.

And I would wake up at 6 a.m., to my father tickling my toes, and the cycle would begin all over again. Safe, only in the morning hours.

I will never know this for sure, but I am certain my fierce need to be a writer began sometime in the dim, dark hours of those many nights when I faced my fears by submerging myself in the worlds of children’s literature.

I love books because books saved me, literally.

I have said in the past that writing is prayer to me, for a lot of reasons which I won’t go into here. But it’s true that reading is a sort of prayer for me as well. This may be hard for people to understand, but not, perhaps, if they hear my story. 

Books are what saved me. Music saved my husband from the fears he battled with as a teenager—specifically, the music of Bob Marley. I’m curious what your fears were and what saved you.

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Saying no to sex, Christians, and charities…saying yes to the eternal Why?

Published on July 29, 2009 in Children's, Christianity, Cultural categories, Family, Social Issues, Young Adult, discipline, feminism, healing, religion, sex, teenagers and women. 2 Comments

My mother used to read books that had titles like People Pleaser: Learn How to Say No. She used to say this was a real problem for women—we struggle to say no, we want to please others. I don’t know if that’s really true for the majority of women, but my people pleasing mother certainly raised a people pleasing daughter. I feel tremendous guilt when I tell somebody, “No.”

 I was the 16-year-old teenager who didn’t really want to have sex with my boyfriend…but couldn’t say no. And once you’ve said yes to having sex with your boyfriend, how do you go back and say no? I tried but it was impossible. There’s a line in one of my all-time favorite short stories, “Lust” by Susan Minot, that describes it perfectly: “Then they get mad after when you say enough is enough. After, when it’s easier to explain that you don’t want to. You wouldn’t dream of saying that maybe you weren’t really ready to in the first place.”

 Why was I more afraid of saying “no” to my boyfriend’s insistent demands for sex than dealing with the emotional consequences of saying yes? Continue reading ‘Saying no to sex, Christians, and charities…saying yes to the eternal Why?’

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Bilingual Books For Kids: Commentary and Review

Published on October 26, 2008 in Books & News, Children's, book review and latino/a. 2 Comments

My article on “Bilingual Books for Kids” was just published in New Pages. You can read it here.

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Facing Two Worlds: Growing Up On La Frontera

Published on September 23, 2008 in America, Books & News, Children's, Cultural categories, El Paso, Juarez, Las Cruces, Latin America, Social Issues, The Confessional, U.S.-Mexico Border, Young Adult, immigrant rights, latino/a, literature, politics, teenagers and writing. 3 Comments

Here is the text of the speech I gave at REFORMA’s national conference last weekend, for those who are interested.

When I was a teenager growing up in El Paso, I was a voracious reader, consuming on average a book every day, most of them young adult novels. In all those young adult novels I consumed, I only encountered the world I was growing up in once, in a suspense novel by Lois Duncan. In the novel, a teenager’s sudden and mysterious death in Albuquerque draws his sister into a world of danger. To fulfill one of her brother’s debts, she ends up smuggling drugs across the El Paso/Juarez border. Okay, so….the world portrayed in that novel was not EXACTLY my world, my border, since I never encountered the harsh world of drug smuggling. But it was the closest I ever came to seeing my world in a book as a teenager. And it made it seem–well, exciting. Different.

My parents rather unusually chose not to live in the neighborhoods where other professionals gravitated. Continue reading ‘Facing Two Worlds: Growing Up On La Frontera’

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Smell of Old Lady Perfume–Interview with Claudia Guadalupe Martinez

Published on June 23, 2008 in Books & News, Children's, El Paso, Social Issues, Young Adult, book review, latino/a, literature, publishing, women and writing. 0 Comments

claudia-guadalupe-martinez.jpgRecently, I wrote an article for El Paso Magazine and interviewed Claudia Guadalupe Martinez, whose new young adult book Smell of Old Lady Perfume, is due out from Cinco Puntos Press in July.  I’m republishing the interview in its entirety here, since most of it couldn’t be used for the short article.

Q. What inspired you to write Smell of Old Lady Perfume?

Martinez Answer: My dad passed away when I was eleven. Back then, we didn’t really talk about it. We were kind of expected to be strong and not to burden my mom any further. When you grow up in a community where you have a lot of older brothers and sisters, they affect how you should act and carry yourself, and I remember them telling us to be mature about it and not be a burden to her and try to be strong, which is not very realistic for a kid that age. We just dealt with it internally, so when I started writing about it, it was an opportunity to deal with it externally. Continue reading ‘Smell of Old Lady Perfume–Interview with Claudia Guadalupe Martinez’

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