Latin America

The Gatekeepers

October 22, 2008 by Jess in America, anti-immigration, art, Books & News, censorship, Cultural categories, education, El Paso, Juarez, Las Cruces, Latin America, latino/a, literature, politics, power, publishing, race, Social Issues, teenagers, U.S.-Mexico Border, writing, Young Adult | 2 Comments

My previous post about The Cool Kids reminded me of the panel I organized for REFORMA’s National Conference in September. The panel consisted of the only 3 y.a. writers that I am aware of who have ever had a published young adult novel set in El Paso, Texas–J.L. Powers (me), Benjamin Alire Saenz, and Claudia Guadalupe Martinez; more depressing still, or perhaps more exhilarating still if you want to be unique, we are among only a handful-and-a-half of y.a. writers who have set our novels on the U.S.-Mexico Border. We were discussing why there are so few novels for teenagers that are set on the peripheries of our nation. Now, by peripheries, I don’t mean necessarily the borders, because teenagers in Minnesota are still growing up in mainstream society, whereas teenagers in El Paso are definitely not!

Benjamin Alire Saenz began to get quite excited as he discussed how the gatekeepers in the book world–agents, editors, publishers, and then librarians, teachers, and booksellers–have ghettoized literature about latinos set in a predominantly latino world such as El Paso. He mentioned how one of his books received a review that said something like “even though Saenz’s novel is set in El Paso, its themes resonate with the human condition, with things people everywhere grapple with.” (I’m paraphrasing.) Ben wanted to know why nobody ever writes a book review that says “even though so-and-so’s novel is set in New York, its themes resonate…etc. etc.” Ben sure knows how to stick it to The Man! I love the fact that he has remained faithful to his values, of writing about Latinos, of writing about El Paso, from El Paso. That fame and fortune aren’t why he writes.

I’m still young enough that fame and fortune seem elusively tantalizing. But when I really reflect on it, it’s nice not to be completely in the limelight. I remember remarking to Sara Zarr once that I wished my books sold as well as hers, and got as many reviews as hers, and she just said, “Careful what you wish for.” Touche!

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Facing Two Worlds: Growing Up On La Frontera

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

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Inside the Eloy Detention Center

May 12, 2008 by Jess in America, Cultural categories, immigrant rights, Latin America, latino/a, politics, Social Issues, television | 6 Comments

This short video clip shows the inside of a detention center for immigrants who are waiting to be deported or waiting for a trial to see if they will be allowed to remain in the U.S. According to the news report, there is a failure of due process of law; there is a failure to give detainees access to legal counsel; and there is a failure in oversight and monitoring of what goes on inside. Complaints by detainees who claim they are abused are reviewed by the very people being complained about, with no outside monitoring. Like Guantanamo, it is evident that people can disappear inside these institutions for months or years without anybody knowing where they’ve gone and without any way for them to contact their families or lawyers.

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children’s writers + middle class white women

May 7, 2008 by Jess in Books & News, Children's, Cultural categories, El Paso, Latin America, latino/a, politics, Social Issues, U.S.-Mexico Border, Uncategorized, writing, Young Adult | 4 Comments

I might not make any friends with this observation, but I’m also *really* not trying to piss anybody off when I say that lately it has struck me that so many children’s writers are middle class white women. There is a class, race, and gender correlation that is hard to ignore and hard to explain (though maybe the answer is obvious to everybody else?) I think part of it may be that middle class white women have at least enough spare income and spare time that they (we?) can afford to take the time to write. Maybe also the idea that  literature promotes a certain cultural and intellectual and moral reality that is important for children to imbibe through story is an idea that middle-class-white-women are particularly susceptible to.

I know quite a few children’s writers, and almost all of them (including myself) have been and are white middle-class women. I say this, but then I just looked at wikipedia’s list of “important” children’s writers and it’s true that there are an awful lot of men on that list. Still, I would venture to say that most of the writers on that list are white. Jacqueline Woodson isn’t on there. Neither is friggin’ Mildred Taylor, for God’s sakes, and if she isn’t on the list of important children’s writers, then there’s something wrong with the list. (Not that wikipedia is the end all be all! and yet! and yet!….)

I would like to see more publishers willing to take a risk and publish men and women of color who write for children. Hell, I would like to see more men and women of color write for children, which is in part the subject of my panel, Y.A. YA!: Writing Y.A. Fiction for Latinos, featuring Claudia Guadalupe Martinez and Benjamin Alire Saenz and moderated by me, to be presented at the Reforma National Conference this coming September.  

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First Narco-State

March 9, 2008 by Jess in Africa, drugs, Latin America | Leave a comment

The Guardian reports on how Guinea-Bissau, a former Portuguese colony, has become the world’s first declared narco-state…suggesting that Europe’s hunger for cocaine may destroy West Africa “again” the way its hunger for slaves destroyed it up through the 19th century.

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