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In keeping with my blog’s strong support of the #WeNeedDiverseBooks campaign, for a while I have wanted to interview illustrator Yuyi Morales. I think from the words and photos YuYi shares today, you will see the important stories and influences … Continue reading →

Celebrating Hispanic Heritage Month, our website currently features Juan Felipe Herrera’s personal essay, “Apartment Heritage”, in which he beautifully reminisces about his relatives’ one-bedroom apartment in San Diego, where he lived with his family in the 1960’s. The essay uses the apartment as a metaphor for his identity formation, contrasting the life inside it — an “invisible library of culture and family histories”— to the life outside— “that uncanny, whirling splish-splash of chaos, unfiltered, untold.”

Much of Herrera’s work is autobiographical, and two of his books, Downton Boy (Scholastic. Ages 12+), winner of the 2007 Tomás Rivera Mexican American Children’s Book Award, and Upside Down Boy, illustrated by Elizabeth Gómez (Children’s Book Press. Ages 4-8), were inspired by his childhood as the son of migrant workers in the 1950’s. His family experienced what many thousands of others do who choose or are forced to leave their homeland to search for better, more secure lives.

For many years Herrera traveled with his parents through the small farming towns of California’s Central Valley, changing schools with the seasons, always the “new boy,” always yearning for stability. Stability, however, brought its own set of conflicts: between languages; between old and new; between tradition and change. In Downtown Boy, his mom worries about the lure of life in the city’s barrio, and urges him to stay “close to home.” But where is home when you have been moving around for so long?

With so many influences and so much to reconcile and draw from, it’s no surprise that Herrera not only became a poet, writer and performance artist but also founded bilingual theater, music and poetry troupes that travel the world, telling and singing stories of pride in heritage—and in newness.

Herrera’s recent poetry books for adults have been enthusiastically reviewed in The New York Times.

For more by other writers about Latino migrant workers, their struggles and accomplishments, see The Circuit, Harvesting Hope, Esperanza Rising and First Day in Grapes.

Wild stuff is happening in the cosmos--a heads up for any of you folk who are evenly remotely sensitive and may be feeling it. I wrote about this in my psychic blog.

I've been forced to rest and lie low and I couldn't resist blogging at this time! I'm having deep urges to play with clay! Coincidently, my daughter brought me play-doh. Remember play-doh? Now something I am artistically not good at is working with clay. So, I am thinking that is the perfect thing to play with right now. I am also wanting to paint. I have a big canvas I bought that is just sitting there waiting. A great book I found at the church of Barnes and Noble is Finding Your Voice for painters. Love the writer's style of writing and the art is wonderful, especially the art of Peggy McGivern. She's someone I'd love to have over for tea to talk color and composition.