Nick Glass of TeachingBooks.
net interviewed Monica Brown
in her Flagstaff, Arizona, home
on July 7, 2014.
Grades
PK-6
Monica Brown
You are a professor of English who
has taught and written extensively
about US Latino and multicultural
literature, and you are also the
author of many award-winning
children’s books that focus on
Latino culture. How did early
experiences in your life serve to
shape the work you do now?
MB: My childhood was somewhat
unusual, but maybe not so unusual
at all. I was the daughter of an
immigrant. My mom came to the
United States from Peru when she was
about seventeen, and my father was
a third-generation immigrant: Italian,
Jewish, and Scottish. I was raised in
northern California in a really diverse
community and in a very multicultural
family. We were Peruvian, Jewish,
European, Nicaraguan, and Mexican.
My family came from all four corners
of the globe. Also, my mom was
one of nine children, so I had lots of
cousins who lived close by. I grew up
speaking English and Spanish.
30 • LibrarySparks • May/June 2015
When I was young, my mother told me that I was a citizen of the world,
and I think that, as a child, I thought of borders differently because I had
so many relatives who came north or went south from Peru. We had many
family members live in our house at different points in my childhood. I think
I had the sense that borders were somewhat artificial, that we were all family
regardless of where we were born.
Please talk more about your community growing up.
MB: I grew up in the Silicon Valley, and for the first eleven years of my life
we were in this lovely middle-class neighborhood where there was a large,
diverse population. When we moved to a more affluent neighborhood, that
wasn’t the case anymore. It was normal for my non-Latino friends to tease me
when my mom called me in yelling, “Moniquita, Moniquita!” Sometimes they
would mistake her for the maid, because there were almost no Latinos in the
new neighborhood. My mother had a very thick accent, so just being with
her, we certainly experienced moments when people were racist or made
racist assumptions, and that was painful. We also realized that in California
people have strong feelings about immigration.
I didn’t grow up feeling caught between cultures, but I did identify strongly
with my mother. She was this beautiful, creative Latino woman; Spanish was
her first language, and she and my cousins were my connection to Peru.
Were you creative as a child?
MB: I was always interested in theater growing up and in putting on plays,
going to carnivals and festivals. I was surrounded by paintings because my
mom was an artist. I liked to read and write. Books were incredibly important
MEET THE
AUTHOR
to me from a very young age, and
I suppose they became even more
important as I got older because I had
somewhat challenging teen years.
Books were my escape.
What were some of the things
you liked to read and write about
when you were young?
it’s about things that go bump in the
night, metaphorically and literally.
You entered college knowing
you’d major in English. How
did you arrive at that decision
so early?
MB: I really loved Dr. Seuss—
everything about his work, from the
absurdity of the plots to the humor of
the language to the illustrations. I also
loved a particular series of National
Geographic books that focused on
things like the forest or the moon and
on different worlds.
MB: I wasn’t a great scholar as a
kid, but I knew I had an aptitude.
I went to Catholic schools, and in
sixth grade I was put into a special
honors English program based on
my test scores. Then I got kicked out
because one of my teachers said
I couldn’t work independently or
focus. I was probably just a little too
wild and fidgety.
As a child, I rarely saw families like
my own depicted in books. We were
a global family, so what might have
been normal for picture books was
not normal for me. My cousins and I
were every shade of the rainbow. In
fact, one story that really stood out
to me when I was little was the story
of Esther from the Bible, because she
was this beautiful olive-skinned, darkhaired character.
That experience didn’t deter me from
books, though. When I was a senior in
high school, I read One Hundred Years
of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez,
and it changed my life. It was the first
time a writer had ever captured in
words what I thought about family
and culture and magic and language.
That book was probably the reason
I went into college having already
declared my English major.
I liked making up my own stories. One
of the things I discovered through
writing is that creativity is great, but
sometimes your imagination can
be scary, too. So that’s something
I sometimes address in my own
children’s books nowadays. My next
Marisol McDonald book is called
Marisol McDonald and the Monster, and
Please talk about your
graduate studies.
MB: I read all sorts of literature in
college. During my senior year, I
took a Chicano literature class. The
professor of that class said to me, “You
know, Monica, you’re a really good
writer. Have you thought about grad
school?” I hadn’t thought about it
even once, but all it took was that one
professor to put the idea in my head,
and it wouldn’t leave.
I was politically active in college,
and I decided I wanted to study the
literature of resistance, written mostly
by Latinos and African Americans
and other people struggling for civil
rights. That reading fueled my interest
in multicultural literature. I got my
master’s degree, and then my PhD, in
US Latino literature. My dissertation
was on the Chicano, Chicana, and
Puerto Rican urban narrative, or gang
narrative. A lot of my dissertation
was influenced by the time I spent
teaching at-risk youth in inner-city
Boston while I was a grad student.
Today you are a full-time
professor as well as a writer.
MB: I’m a professor in English at
Northern Arizona University, where
I teach US multiethnic literature.
My specialties are US Latino literature
and African American literature.
I teach courses in Mexican American
literature and Latino women
writers. I teach a survey of African
American literature and multiethnic
literature. So I’m an Americanist and
a multiculturalist, and my scholarly
book is on Puerto Rican and
Chicana literature.
Almost a decade ago, my writing
life started to shift and evolve. Now,
I no longer do traditional scholarship.
I now put 99 percent of that energy
into creative writing and into talking
about literacy, bilingualism, and race
in children’s literature. I guess that’s
critical work and scholarly work,
but it’s from a different perspective
and not confined to the academy.
I want to reach actual children, and
I want to reach their teachers because
they’re the ones who put books into
children’s and principals’ hands.
These are the people who make
and create curricula.
My professional writing life has
completely shifted. I still teach
Latino literature, but I create it too.
Please talk about the importance
of multicultural literature. Who
are multicultural books for?
MB: I think multicultural books—
books depicting diversity—are
incredibly important, and I think
they are for everyone, whether
you’re reading from within a culture
or outside of it. There is so much
ignorance in the world. Ignorance, in
May/June 2015 • LibrarySparks • 31
cultural traditions, and I think that
helps students feel more valued.
You write both fiction and
nonfiction multicultural books
for children. How do you
approach these genres?
my opinion, leads to racism, and that
can be very harmful.
I also think that multicultural children’s
books can act as a bridge for teachers
and students. Our younger ethnic
minority population is exploding,
but I would venture to guess that
those students aren’t always exposed
to teachers from within their ethnic
group. I think that when a teacher can
share a story written by someone from
[the students’] culture that addresses
themes that are relevant to Latino or
African American or other minority
kids in the classroom, it allows for
a moment of cultural pride and
exchange. And I want to note that this
doesn’t have to happen only during a
designated period of time, like Spanish
Heritage Month.
It’s important for us all to remember
that there are many types of
knowledge, and one type is
experiential knowledge. I think that
should be honored in the classroom,
because our ethnic minority children
are multiply literate. They often have
to navigate different communities,
different languages. I’d like to see
elementary school teachers and
librarians affirm that multiple
literacy and bilingualism by making
more multicultural and bilingual
books available. The language of
instruction, of course, is English, but
just having these other books present
acknowledges other linguistic and
32 • LibrarySparks • May/June 2015
MB: As a children’s writer, I have
two bodies of work, and in some
ways they represent different ideas
or ideals for me. On the one hand, I
have children’s biographies, which
are a deep pleasure to write. I think
they offer models for young readers
of individuals whose lives were well
lived or somehow transformative.
These models include people like
Gabriel García Márquez or Pablo
Neruda who achieved great things
through language, or people like
Dolores Huerta and Cesar Chavez
who achieved great things through
political activism.
Many of the people I write about
came from very humble beginnings,
and I think that’s what’s so remarkable
about their stories. For example,
Gabriela Mistral was the daughter of a
single mother in Chile, but she went
on to help shape education in Mexico.
My children’s biographies are also a
way for me to augment the historical
record, to fill in the holes with stories
that aren’t necessarily [included] in
the history books or taught in social
studies. Consider the stories of the
United Farm Workers movement. I
want children to understand the story
behind the food and the vegetables
they eat because I think we should
honor our laborers, honor the people
who put food on the table.
The nonfiction part of my writing
is one that I’ve really enjoyed. The
other part, my fictional stories and
characters, are a delight to write
because they’re so freeing. I’ve gotten
a great deal of pleasure from creating
Marisol McDonald as a child who is
a nonconformist. Her stories explore
what it means to be a little different,
to see the world a little differently, to
maybe experience teasing because of
that difference, but then also to find
the resolution and the self-love to
move forward and be okay with it.
In Side by Side/Lado a Lado: The
Story of Dolores Huerta and Cesar
Chavez/La Historia de Dolores
Huerta y Cesar Chavez, you write
about Cesar Chavez, as well as
Dolores Huerta, who is someone
readers may not be familiar with.
MB: I’m very proud of Side by Side. At
the time that I published that book,
there were several books about Cesar
Chavez, and there should be, because
he’s a hero. But there was not a
single picture book about Dolores
Huerta, and she was his partner,
his cofounder of the United Farm
Workers movement.
I wanted to place her alongside
him in history, and that’s part of the
inspiration for the title, Side by Side.
Doing so was incredibly important
to me because, in Dolores Huerta,
kids can see a woman who is a
leader, a political leader, an organizer.
I also think it’s important that kids
understand that this is a real story of
hope. In Side by Side, I had to write
about difficult things as sensitively as
I could. I had to portray the realities
of farmworker life—the poisons, the
chemicals that affected their health,
the tools that hurt their backs, and
MEET THE
AUTHOR
the reasons why it was necessary
to collectively organize and make
working conditions better. But I also
had to incorporate their hope.
In My Name Is Gabito/Me llamo
Gabito, you write about the life of
Gabriel García Márquez, whose
work had a profound effect on
you as a teenager.
MB: Yes, it was Márquez’s book,
One Hundred Years of Solitude, that
influenced me to become an English
major. Much later, I realized there
were no children’s books about this
man who was a Nobel Prize–winning
author and who helped shape a
whole genre of literature called
magical realism. I wanted to introduce
him to young readers.
Part of my preparation for writing
My Name Is Gabito was reading his
memoir, and it turned out that,
for me, his memoir was not as
pleasurable of a read as his fiction. He
had a complicated life, and in the end,
it was his work in magical realism that
inspired me most. Writing about [his
writing] was a journey of discovery
for me because I wasn’t sure how I
was going to introduce this complex
literary concept to children. There
are so many ways to articulate it and
debate its origins—the surrealists and
lo real maravillos, the marvelous real.
But then I had the happy realization
that explaining it to children is the
easiest thing in the world, because
children can hold the real and the
magical in the palm of their hands
together, and [those two things] are
not necessarily in conflict.
I decided the best approach would
be to make this a book about the
imagination. I wanted to engage
children and say, “Can you imagine
a man with enormous wings falling
from the sky? Can you imagine a
magic carpet ride? Can you imagine
a trail of yellow butterflies singing
songs of love?” In this way, I was
able to pull from One Hundred Years
of Solitude and allude to it in the
children’s book, yet really make [my
book] about words and having an
imagination that is big and great and
wild. And I got to work with illustrator
Raúl Colón, which was amazing.
Please talk about My Name
Is Celia/Me llamo Celia. What
challenges did you encounter
writing this biography of
Celia Cruz?
MB: Celia Cruz was incredible, and I
loved writing this book about her. In
some ways, it wrote itself, in that her
personality and her nature to perform
were so infectious. She brought
people a lot of joy with her music. Her
beginnings were incredibly humble,
and, as an Afro-Cuban, she had to
deal with racism and overcome a lot
of prejudice. But she sang with joy,
and she helped shape salsa music in
the United States. She was a leading
female vocalist.
My challenge in writing her biography
was to find words and language that
honored her musicality. I wanted to
translate that music into language. I
wanted her biography to be infused
with the joy, the movement, the
lyricism of her life. And I think I was
ultimately able to do that because
kids really love the boom, boom,
booms and the clap, clap, claps and
the shake, shake, shakes!
Your fictional picture-book series
about Marisol McDonald focuses
on a girl whose idiosyncrasies are
an important part of who she is,
but they don’t always make sense
to everyone else.
MB: Of all the characters I’ve created,
Marisol is the closest character to my
own biography, and she is my delight.
She grew out of a joke that arose
from a discussion I was having with
my cousins about some comments
that were made to us at one time that
were a bit racist and ignorant. Marisol
was partly inspired by experiences like
that, but there’s more to her than that.
Whenever I try to talk about the
creative process, it can start to sound
metaphysical, and I don’t want to
sound that way. But I do think there’s
some magic in it. For me, Marisol is a
magical character because she’s funny
and different and exuberant and
sensitive. And, very luckily, she has a
family and teachers and other people
in her life who support those parts of
her personality. Not all children have
support like that during difficult times,
so I wanted them to have at least a
fictional model for it.
I’ve written a couple of articles in
school library journals about how
there are very few depictions of
children who come from multiethnic
families, and I think the lack of literary
representations like these almost
renders these kinds of families and
kids invisible. So it was personally
important to me, too, that I create
Marisol to acknowledge my own
children’s and family’s experiences.
Your picture books have been
illustrated by a wide array
of artists with very different
perspectives and backgrounds.
May/June 2015 • LibrarySparks • 33
them in strange places, and she has
a diary as well. I guess she’s what
people would call a tomboy. The
series is her story and the story of
her family.
MB: My texts have been paired with
some of the best illustrators working
today, who come from many different
places. I’ve also had the pleasure and
honor of working with illustrators on
their debut children’s books. Rafael
López was already an established
editorial illustrator and an amazing
muralist, but his first picture book was
ours together. The same went for John
Parra. It was so special to work with
new Latino artists who have gone on
to become incredible forces in the
field of children’s literature and art.
How would you describe your
body of work for children and
what you’re trying to do with it?
MB: I want all children to have safe,
happy, affirming childhoods. But I
know that’s not always possible, so
I would like my books to provide a
feeling or an experience of joy or
safety or happiness when children
open them. That would be my goal.
When I was younger, books carried
me through tough times and gave me
an outlet for pleasure, creativity, and
imagination. So if my writing can make
a child happy or make a child feel
respected or affirmed or emboldened
for however long they spend with one
of my books, then I will feel satisfied
and fulfilled.
You have a new chapter-book
series coming out that focuses on
a character named Lola Levine.
MB: I’m really excited about it. The
title character is Jewish and Peruvian,
and she’s a soccer fanatic and a writer,
too. She likes to write notes. She leaves
34 • LibrarySparks • May/June 2015
The development of this series was
interesting for me. I was talking
with my agent and telling her that
I wanted to write a chapter-book
series. As we were talking, I was
thinking to myself that I already had
Marisol McDonald, so I really couldn’t
do another book with a biracial
character. And then I realized how
ridiculous that was. I was limiting
myself. How silly of me to think I
could create only one—what a token
mentality. So I decided to create Lola,
who has lots of energy and lots of
passion, and she’s really, really funny. I
guess humor is important to me, and
I think it compels young readers.
The first book in the series is going
to be called Lola Levine Is Not Mean,
and the second is Lola Levine, Drama
Queen. They’ll come out in 2016.
Your books have won a diverse
array of awards, including the
Américas Award, the Christopher
Award, the Pura Belpré Honor,
and the Tejas Star Book Award.
MB: Being recognized in the form of
awards is incredible. I think awards
like the Américas Award and the
Pura Belpré Award have done more
for Latino writers and illustrators, in
some ways, than any other awards.
The librarians on the committee are
Latino, and they are literacy activists.
They shine light on work that doesn’t
always get attention. I am so honored
that some of my books have received
those awards and that their illustrators
have received Pura Belpré honors.
[The awards] are also special because
sometimes, like in the case of the
Américas Award, the committee also
includes teachers, the people who are
in the trenches. So to be recognized
by them was very meaningful. And,
of course, the Tejas Star Book Award
is one of the most special I’ve ever
received because the children of
Texas voted on it.
What do you do when you
get stuck?
MB: That’s an interesting question
because, when I was a little bit
younger, I used to think writer’s block
was for people who had too much
time on their hands. Isn’t that arrogant
and awful? But after my mom died,
I realized, wow, it is possible to be
empty, to not have anything in you
that inspires creativity. I came to learn
that, for me, the best thing to do
when I’m stuck is to read the work of
someone amazing. I might read other
writing in the genre I’m working in or
read something else entirely. I also get
a lot of peace and renewal from being
in nature, so I go for walks in the
forest. Beaches, too, are places that
renew me creatively.
Finally, I try to have fun, because I think
when you write for children, you really
have to have access to joyfulness. I
try to surround myself with people
who have that capacity for joy and
creativity that children have.
What is a typical workday
like for you?
MEET THE
AUTHOR
MB: I’m a teacher, so I do a lot of
writing work in the summer, on the
weekends, and over winter break.
I usually can’t write on a day that I
teach, but luckily, as a professor, I
only teach a couple days a week. I
try to save Friday for writing and not
schedule classes; then my writing can
spill over into the weekend.
to newspaper journalists and
biographers. We spend a lot of time
on this, chatting about the different
types of work a person could do with
this one skill of using and writing
down words. And then I ask again
how many of them think they might
want to be writers, and I always get a
full house.
Generally my tendency is to wake up
and write. My mind is really active in
the mornings and less full of worries
or anxieties. Mentally, I can get to a
fun or funny place more easily at that
time of day.
I also love to arrive at my signings
dressed up really crazily, so they
see that I’m okay with being a little
different, just like my characters.
And isn’t that awesome, to be a little
different? That gives me a great deal
of pleasure.
You speak to a lot of educators.
What do you like to tell them?
MB: I like to share with them my
belief that children’s books can
enhance and even transform the
curriculum. To me, their ability to do
that is as important as any textbook
ever written. I think the very best of
literature, with its beautiful, inspiring,
and powerful texts, can electrify
students and engage them in ways
that exercises and test preparation
cannot. And, at the same time, I think
reading children’s books still supports
important skills like critical thinking
and interpreting.
When you speak to students,
what do you like to tell them?
MB: I love talking to students.
Children are so uncensored and
fabulous. I talk to them about
everything. I get a full range of
questions and a full range of answers
when we talk. I usually start our
conversation with a question like
“Do any of you think you might want
to be a writer when you grow up?”
There are always some, but not that
many, who say they do. Then I ask
them what they think a writer does or
what kinds of jobs they think a writer
could have. Then we start talking
about everything from song lyricists
and playwrights, to screenwriters,
Is there anything else you’d
like to say about your work
or multicultural literature in
general?
MB: When I think about why people
should care about multicultural
literature, I think in terms of change.
Change comes through education.
And I think the arts, whether we’re
talking about literature or music or
fine art, are among the most powerful
ways to move people to learn and
to change. I believe that diverse
children’s literature is one of the
ways we can model justice-oriented
citizenship for children.
I also think we should care because
there are some absolutely amazing
authors and illustrators of color out
there who may not have the easiest
access to publication. But they’re out
there, and we need to work to open
those avenues and encourage them.
When we do, we end up with new
and brilliant voices to learn from.
This In-depth Written Interview is created
by TeachingBooks.net for educational
purposes and may be copied and
distributed solely for these purposes
for no charge as long as the copyright
information remains on all copies.
For more information about Monica
Brown and her books, go to http://
teachingbooks.net/. Questions
regarding this program should be
directed to [email protected].
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LLC. All rights reserved.
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May/June 2015 • LibrarySparks • 35