About this episode
Elizabeth Acevedo is a beloved poet and author, celebrated for winning prestigious honors like the National Book Award, the Prinz Medal, and the Pura Belpré Award. She also held the title of Young People's Poet Laureate. And on a personal note, she is one of my all-time favorite authors. Elizabeth is renowned for her young adult novels, including “The Poet X,” “Clap When You Land,” and “With The Fire on High,” along with her recent adult novel, “Family Lore.” Her writing vividly explores her Afro-Latina heritage, delving into themes of identity, family, and the relentless pursuit of dreams.
In this episode, we discuss Elizabeth’s secret mentors (and mentees), and some of the spurns she has encountered within the literary community. She reminisces about Friday nights in her apartment building, reflects on the importance of names, and ruminates about what her future may hold. She even shares her original rap name!
“I cannot do an interview without talking about who I come from as it pertains to the writers who have influenced my work because their fingerprints are all over [it].” - Elizabeth Acevedo
In an interview, we may hear Elizabeth Acevedo’s singular voice, but she assures us she is not alone. Elizabeth reminds us that she is part of a lineage and an amalgamation of many voices. She, like all of us, represents those who came before her, those whose books she devours, those who have shaped her life, and those who inspire her. A Greek chorus, if you will.
In fact, when I asked Elizabeth about her personal journey, she called on her community and family at every phase—the community that raised her and continues to nurture her. Elizabeth credits everyone, from the neighborhood boys who encouraged her to spit bars at the local corner store to the teacher-mentors, with being essential to her rise as a critically acclaimed author and international slam poet star.
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True to her poetry roots, in her reading challenge, Novels Through Poems, Elizabeth has compiled a list of books that tell stories through poetry. Learn more and download Elizabeth’s recommended reading list below!
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This episode's Featured Librarian is Tammy McIntyre. Tammy served as a library media specialist in Gwinnett County, Georgia, for many years and now works with us at Beanstack! She shares a memorable interaction with a student that continues to resonate with her, highlighting the vital role the library plays as a community space.
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Connect with Jordan and The Reading Culture on Instagram and Facebook, and subscribe to our newsletter at thereadingculturepod.com/newsletter.
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Listen to the full episode, “Always in the Room: Elizabeth Acevedo on Ancestors, Neighbors, and Secret Mentors,” on Apple, Spotify, Podbean, Amazon Music, or wherever you get your podcasts. Like what you hear? Please leave a 5-star review, subscribe, and share with someone who will enjoy it!
Whatever you do, keep reading!
Contents
- Chapter 1 - Who Is Here
- Chapter 2 - It Takes a Village
- Chapter 3 - The House on Mango Street
- Chapter 4 - Paying it Forward
- Chapter 5 - Novels Through Poems
- Chapter 6 - Featured Librarian
Author Reading Challenge
Download the free reading challenge worksheet, or view the challenge materials on our helpdesk.
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Links:
- The Reading Culture
- The Reading Culture Newsletter Signup
- Elizabeth Acevedo
- Elizabeth Acevedo - "Hair"
- The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros | Goodreads
- Follow The Reading Culture on Instagram (for giveaways and bonus content)
- Gwinnett County Public Library
- Beanstack resources to build your community’s reading culture
- Jordan Lloyd Bookey
View Transcript
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Elizabeth Acevedo:
I cannot do an interview without talking about who I come from as it pertains to the writers who have influenced my work because their fingerprints are all over.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
Don't look now but there's a crowd of people clustered behind you. Your family and friends are there, your best teachers and coaches, a career model or two, your ancestors going all the way back. And isn't that character from the movie you love and your friend's sister who always let you borrow her clubbing shoes? We bring them all along with us, the ones who led to us and made us and shaped us, a little like our personal Greek chorus, strengthening us when we're striving, advising us when we're at a crossroads and maybe bearing their teeth when someone says we don't belong. Today, we talk to an author celebrated for her one-of-a-kind poetic voice. But as you'll hear repeatedly, she never stops giving credit to her own chorus whether it's the literary icons she reveres or the cashiers from her old neighborhood grocery.
Elizabeth Acevedo:
Anytime I would go to the bodega to get an egg and cheese and they're like, "Yo, you got to rap. What you got from me? Let me hear something."
Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
Elizabeth Acevedo is a decorated poet and author, having won the National Book Award, Printz Medal, the Pura Belpré Award and having served as the Young People's Poet Laureate. Elizabeth also happens to be one of my favorite authors of all time. She's best known for her powerful novels like The Poet X and Clap When You Land and her more recent adult novel, Family Lore. Elizabeth's work dives deep into the heart of her Afro-Latina experience, exploring themes of identity, family and the fierce pursuit of dreams. In this episode, we discuss the importance of community and individuals in nurturing young talent, what it's like to offer support as an adult and why names hold such importance in Elizabeth's stories. Oh, and speaking of names, we'll also hear about what she went by in her rap days.
Elizabeth Acevedo:
No, we're not going to talk about that, come on.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
Yes, we are. My name is Jordan Lloyd Bookey and this is The Reading Culture, a show where we speak with diverse authors about ways to build a stronger culture of reading in our communities. We dive deep into their personal experiences and inspirations. This show is made possible by Beanstack, the leading solution for motivating students to read more. Learn more at beanstack.com and make sure to check us out on Instagram @thereadingculturepod and subscribe to our newsletter for bonus content at thereadingculturepod.com/newsletter.
Oh, and a quick note, there was a recording error on Elizabeth's end at the beginning of the episode. In about five minutes, we're going to go from decent audio to great audio so hang tight for that. All right, onto the show.
Hey, listeners, are you looking for a fun, easy way to track your reading and earn cool rewards? Well, meet Beanstack, the ultimate reading app used by a community of over 15,000 schools, libraries and organizations nationwide. Are you an avid reader? Check with your local library to see if they offer Beanstack for free. A parent? Ask your child's teacher if the school library already uses Beanstack. And if you are an educator searching for a fresh alternative to accelerated reader, Beanstack is the perfect tool to cultivate a thriving reading culture. Ready to turn the page? Visit beanstack.com to learn more.
I was thinking about you because today it's the anniversary of my grandmother's passing a few years ago. I've been really thinking about her in re-reading Family Lore, I'm reading this book and I just have been thinking so much about her because she herself had many chapters of her life and different husbands and so forth.
Elizabeth Acevedo:
Yeah, yeah, sure.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
And just the importance of all these voices in Family Lore and in all of your writing. I wonder, what ancestors or people that, when you come to sit down in a room, who do you bring with you?
Elizabeth Acevedo:
Well, first thank you for sharing that with me. And I don't know my father's side of the family at all, he has one cousin who lived in New York who I know. I never met his father, I met his mother when I was six months old and have pictures with her as a baby but she passed when I was five. And then my mom's side, I knew my grandfather, my grandmother is still alive but no great-grandparents, very few great uncles or great aunts. And so, it's interesting because, when I think about bringing my ancestors into the room, I think about Mama Mercedes who's my father's mother, I think about Papa Feli who is my mother's father and I say their names because I knew them and they knew me and they held me and there's something, I think, special to that. And then I just think of the pantheon beyond them who maybe didn't physically touch me but who I feel very guarded and I feel very held and I feel like my ancestors are bullies and they just open every door that I want to walk through.
And so, it's a very just large request like I wish you peace, I wish you ease. And so, I say the names that I know and then I just acknowledge that so many folks are looking out for me and that they are often in the room when I'm in the room. And it's helpful because I'm often in rooms where I don't always feel welcome, where I don't always feel were made for me and so being like, "[inaudible 00:05:58], we here as tribe."
Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
We are here.
Elizabeth Acevedo:
So, [inaudible 00:06:02].
Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
We're all around you. Yeah.
Elizabeth Acevedo:
Yeah, yeah.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
Today do you, and even with the accolades and your position in this literary world, do you sometimes still find yourself feeling like you need them around you in that way?
Elizabeth Acevedo:
Oh, yeah, for sure. I think I feel there are clearly ways that I have established a career that feels really good and I garner a lot of respect in the spaces that I'm in but I don't know how much of it is that I just moved through the world with a little chip on my shoulder in terms of how I feel welcomed. And if that's just imposter syndrome, if that's coming from a background where I often felt like I don't match up in terms of socioeconomics or in terms of education or in terms of language that these other kids have access to, that I am scrambling to try to teach myself all the things that they just know or have access to, if I just still carry that with me. I think it's also maybe partly that I choose to step into modes of writing and creation that are very hybrid.
And so, I think folks have a lot of speculation around the work that I make, I was a spoken word artist and so it wasn't, oh, she's a poet, she's a spoken word artist. So, I didn't get the, oh, she's a poet poet and I had to of fight to be spoken word is a kind of poetry and I write a lot of different kinds of poetry. And then when I wrote YA, it's like, "Oh, but she's writing novels in reverse and, what, is that really a" ... I think there's just a lot ... I had an editor tell my agent when we were on submission for the Poetics, it just feels like broken prose and so you have to be like, "I studied and worked really hard on my craft."
Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
Wow. Broken prose? I never heard that story. Okay, wow.
Elizabeth Acevedo:
I don't know if I've ever said that story, to be honest with you. But it's I have these moments where I realized, because I am moving through a lot of different genres and modes and for different audiences and age groups, I don't think it's always easy to say, yeah, she belongs here. I think people often are like, "Oh, should she get the invitation? Doesn't she move over there?" And so, maybe I'm making that up but it has felt like there have been moments where it's like, "Is she really an adult writer or is she writing for YA? She has this one book that she put out." I think there's a little bit of where does Elizabeth Acevedo belong and then there's my ... And my ancestors being like, "Here," wherever here is.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
Where she's right now.
Elizabeth Acevedo:
Wherever my feet are.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
Yeah, that's where she belongs.
Elizabeth Acevedo:
Right.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
Yeah. Well, her feet are now currently in Washington, D.C. but Elizabeth still considers herself a New Yorker at heart.
Elizabeth Acevedo:
Yes. I live in D.C., I am a New Yorker. And that's no shade to D.C., it's just what I am. Yeah, yeah, I don't lose that.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
Okay. Want to just talk a little bit about your earlier childhood, what life was like in your household.
Elizabeth Acevedo:
Yeah. I was born and raised in a neighborhood right by Columbia University and so there's this behemoth of affluence and education that was all of two, three blocks away. And I was also born and raised in a neighborhood that had a lot of drugs and gangs and marginalized folks that I think were trying to figure out how social advancement and up upward mobility could work with very few resources. And so, it was this juxtaposition that was very, very clear. I think sometimes people don't realize how much children get and see but you walk four blocks and there's a Haagen-Dazs and there's a Saboros and there's these young people in their Columbia hats and sweaters moving through the world with a level of safety that, if I just go one avenue over, it is not that. It is very much I think I learned how to be on guard, how to be very aware of everyone moving around me and who was safe and who wasn't safe and how to stay safe. Safety was just such a huge part of how I had to navigate my neighborhood.
And so, I knew very early on that there were two worlds or many worlds that a space is permeable in that way or impermeable sometimes because I couldn't access Columbia, I could just see it.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
Right.
Elizabeth Acevedo:
And be like glass.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
The glass there or something.
Elizabeth Acevedo:
Exactly, yeah. There's this whole other place where the concerns are different than the concerns here. And yet, despite that, very joyous childhood. I loved the neighborhood I grew up in, I loved that we would turn on the fire hydrants in the summer and run through them and had our own personal sprinklers, I loved that the neighborhood community board would do trips to Bear Mountain and the lake and take all the little hood kids and we were just experience upstate New York for a bit. There was just so many ways that the elders around us loved us and wanted us to have joyous moments and birthdays and occasions and we had flags and we had block parties every single year and you got to try out to be on the neighborhood team that would dance at the block party and that was always such a competition. And if I only knew how to heel toe, I would get on it this year. It was also just a really beautiful and-
Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
Like a tapestry.
Elizabeth Acevedo:
Yeah, exactly. I think a lot of how I write and what I write and who I write is still influenced by juxtapositions of recognizing who moves through what spaces how and also this celebration of the people that I know deserve to be written about.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
Did you have siblings? You have two siblings or three?
Elizabeth Acevedo:
Two older brothers. Two, mm-hmm.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
Okay, interesting. And also, you write so much about women, okay. So, were you close with them?
Elizabeth Acevedo:
We are four and eight years apart, respectively, we were very close. One of my brothers is ill and so it makes it a little harder to be close to him because of the particular mental illness that he has. And my other sibling who's eight years older but we're pretty close. Especially because we're the children of immigrants, there were ways that we had to rely on each other to make sense of the US.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
Yeah, [inaudible 00:13:02] stuff, yeah.
Elizabeth Acevedo:
Yeah, because what was happening at home. We're like, "Yeah, that sounds good but New York is not that." But if we-
Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
Like what? What kind of things?
Elizabeth Acevedo:
Oh, my gosh. Just the politics of school and of bullies or being bullied or fights or how do you defend yourself. My parents are all like, "Girls don't fight and girls don't defend themselves, you just got to be good and be quiet." And I'm like, "Bro, that is not what's going to work." My brother's like, "All right, so this is how you put your fists up and this is how you throw a punch and don't break your knuckles." So, it was this difference of we know what spaces you're occupying and how to survive those spaces and how to defend yourself that our parents who grew up in going to rigid Catholic nun-led schools where they just had to sit and be quiet and got their hands wrapped with rulers. It's ... Yeah.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
Yeah, not wrapped with rulers. But it does sound like you had this really vibrant, caring community with all these people around. Your brothers, your neighbors, yeah.
Elizabeth Acevedo:
Oh, yeah. And I think people will see them in the books. Caridad's best friend's mother or, in Clap When You Land, there's a moment where a doña on the fifth floor is calling out to them in the street. And so, even the names, the reference is Ms. Santos who works at your high school, these were all figures from my neighborhood and from my upbringing and from church that my mom was friends with. And the lady who made everyone's birthday cake who lived next door and she was the cake lady. They show up. They were joyous figures who held us alongside our moms who braided my hair when she's too busy. Go to Ms. Gladys down the street and I'm like, "Okay. Ms. Gladys, can you braid my hair?" She's like, "I guess." A lot of hair.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
Sure. All right, come on. I mentioned this in the intro but it's worth saying again that, whenever I ask Elizabeth about herself, she talks also about all of the people around her. Her community and their support have brought a lot to her life and that's something she clearly values and honors in her work. And the people she honors in her work are also in part responsible for it. Elizabeth took to writing early and, by trusting those around her, she was guided on a path that made that passion her life's work and it all started with rap lyrics.
Elizabeth Acevedo:
I realized that writing was a way to ask the questions I didn't know where or how to ask when I was probably eight and that's when I began writing songs mainly. And just you're little when you're eight so it was mostly like, "Why don't dolphins kill dolphins but people kill people?" Actually, dolphins are very violent and very territorial but eight-year-old Liz didn't know the politics of dolphins. But these questions of what is it about us that makes us violent, what is it about us that makes us hurt each other or desire things that the other person has, already asking these questions based off of what I've seen. And I don't know why it came out through music or maybe that's not true. I grew up in a very musical household, we listened to merengue and bachata, my parents played music all of the time, especially on Friday nights, it was a thing.
Friday nights, my father would, we had these huge sound speakers and he would get his CDs out and it was like he would just have a concert and you could hear it through the whole building so he was playing for everyone. And then he and my mom would go to bed and my brother would turn on his little stereo that he had on his, they shared bunk beds, and so his top bunk and then we would listen to house and hip hop and dance. So, my exposure to music as a form of storytelling began very early on and I think that's why it came out in song first. And then I really fell in love with hip hop and realized that I could get more words into a song that way. And by 12, I was writing raps every single day, just filling up marble notebooks with rap lyrics and verses and just everything based on the world I was seeing.
And my writing at first, I think, was less about safety and more about questions and about trying to make sense of what is happening. And I don't know how to ask my parents, I don't know where in school to ask this but my journal lets me ask those questions. I think, by the time I got to high school, it became more about love and boys and relationship. I had so many poems to so many-
Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
You're angst.
Elizabeth Acevedo:
All of the angst, yeah. But the practice of writing daily and of always trying to challenge myself to keep making, I think I established that as a middle schooler and just continue my ... I kept a journal, it was just in poetry rap form, it was very styled.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
Did you perform? Were you saying them for anybody?
Elizabeth Acevedo:
Around eighth grade, I would say I started ... I would polish a piece up. I had a sense of some of these are more just for me and some of these can be read out loud. By the time I got to high school, I had a teacher, we were doing the organization fair and she was the poetry club teacher. She started the poetry club, Live Poet Society, and she's like, "Are you interested?" I'm like, "Well, I'm not really a poet, I'm a rapper."
Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
Did you have a rap name? Did you have a name?
Elizabeth Acevedo:
Oh, we are not-
Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
Did you go by anything?
Elizabeth Acevedo:
Of course but, no, we're not going to talk about that.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
Come on.
Elizabeth Acevedo:
Oh, my gosh. Oh, I was such a nerd, Jordan. So, there was a game, Final Fantasy, that my brothers loved playing and there was a character named Yunalesca so my name was Ladylesca because she was the summoner of souls.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
Okay.
Elizabeth Acevedo:
So, that's what I do with my raps, I will summon-
Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
Summon people's souls with your raps.
Elizabeth Acevedo:
Listen, at 13, you really think that is a great name. You feel very confident.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
Ladylesca.
Elizabeth Acevedo:
Ladylesca.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
Okay, Ladylesca. So, you joined the poetry club.
Elizabeth Acevedo:
Right, back to the original-
Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
That was your secret, that was your secret.
Elizabeth Acevedo:
No, yes, I joined a lot of different writing groups and there was one group in particular where they were also very into video games and rapping and battle rapping. And so, they also had very lovingly crafted names around these kinds of figures so they knew. But not in school, in school it was just Liz. But I joined the poetry club, it was just such an incredible space where I'm listening to other people and I think that's where safety began, where I realized my poems didn't have to be impressive, my poems didn't have to necessarily always push back. Watching what other people were writing about loosened what I thought a poem could be, it didn't only have to be rap, it could break form and it's also where I began performing at school.
And this teacher, Abby Lublin, encouraged us all to sign up for the New York City Poetry Slam which was almost 500 kids tried out every single year and that was where I first really discovered Slam and the competition of using spoken word so my performance really ramped up. I had been performing in these kind of informal ciphers and circles but this was now a different level of performance.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
I will pause here to mention that Elizabeth's level of performance got very high. She eventually won the actual National Slam Poetry Championship, performed at Lincoln Center, Madison Square Garden and a slew of other international venues but all of that was still a few years off at this point.
Elizabeth Acevedo:
And then in middle school I had a teacher, Phil Bildner, who was an author and writes middle grade books and he was my sixth and eighth grade reading language arts teacher.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
Yeah, that's wild.
Elizabeth Acevedo:
And Phil was the first teacher that had us keeping journals. And so, he would read my poetry and I have notebooks with his comments on-
Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
Oh, my God, the dialogue. Oh, wow.
Elizabeth Acevedo:
... this is really great, yeah, or why is the voice so sad, why is the narrator upset. This is special, tell me more. But he, I think, knew very early on and, even when I graduated and went to high school, he would come to my poetry events. And so, I had, I think, really strong mentors and teachers and that's not even talking about the teaching artists I met later once I began performing. But the adults in my life that I was around, I just got so lucky. Down to the neighborhood dope boys who made space for me in their ciphers and also would keep other people like, "Nah, don't mess with her."
Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
Yeah, like your protection, yeah.
Elizabeth Acevedo:
Yeah. But anytime I would go to the bodega to get an egg and cheese and they're like, "Yo, you got to rap. What you got for me? Let me hear something." And so, you get that little boost, I'm like, "Yeah, I'm 12 and I'm cool and they want to hear what I got to say," that's amazing.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
That is amazing.
Elizabeth Acevedo:
I'm 12 and I'm cool and they want to hear what I have to say. At that age, to have that many different kinds of people, I just so lived a charmed life in terms of how many people told me again and again what you are making matters to us and it's special. I don't know that it was phenomenal either, I think that's the beauty of it. Some of it was terrible but they just ...
Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
Yeah, but maybe. But they've seen a lot, you've seen a lot when you're a teacher especially. You know because you taught middle school, you know when you see something that stands out.
Elizabeth Acevedo:
In English, my name means hope. In Spanish, it means too many letters. It means sadness, it means waiting. It is like the number nine, a muddy color. It's the Mexican records my father plays on Sunday mornings when he's shaving, songs like sobbing. It was my great-grandmother's name and now it is mine. She was a horse woman too, born like me in the Chinese year of the horse which is supposed to be bad luck if you're born female. My great-grandmother, I would've liked to known her, a wild horse of a woman, so wild she wouldn't marry until my great-grandfather threw a sack over her head and carried her off just like that as if she were a fancy chandelier. That's the way he did it. And the story goes she never forgave him, she looked out the window her whole life the way so many women sit their sadness on an elbow.
I wonder if she made the best with what she got or what she's sorry because she couldn't be all those things she wanted to be. Esperanza, I have inherited her name but I don't want to inherit her place by the window. At school, they say my name funny as if the syllables were made out of tin and hurt the roof of your mouth. But in Spanish, my name is made out of the softer something like silver, not quite as thick as my sister's name, Magdalena, which is uglier than mine. Magdalena, who at least can come home and become Nene but I'm always Esperanza. I would like to baptize myself under a new name, a name more like the real me, the one nobody sees. Esperanza as Lisandra or Maritza or Zizi the X. Yes, something like Zizi the X will do.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
Elizabeth found herself welcome in her community, she found herself welcome at school and among her neighbors but the place she had yet to feel welcome and seen was in books. That changed when she was first introduced to The House on Mango Street. Published in 1984, The House on Mango Street was Sandra Cisneros's debut novel and is widely considered a modern classic in American and Chicano literature. In the book, Cisneros draws on her own experience as a Mexican-American growing up in Illinois and creates the character of 12-year-old Esperanza Cordero coming of age in Chicago. The scene we just heard from has Esperanza reflecting on the duality of her Mexican-American identity as well as the lineage of women she comes from and the power a name has in forging one's identity. When did you read this book? Did Phil teach this?
Elizabeth Acevedo:
So, I think this was actually in seventh grade and I think it might've been one of the first books where there was a Latina protagonist. I didn't even know what kind of city Chicago was and here I am reading about this very Chicano Chicago. And so, being like, "Oh, and what is a Chicano? How is that different than a Dominican or a Puerto Rican which is mainly the groups that I knew?" So, it was finding this way in and ways that felt really familiar in ways that also like, "Oh, I didn't know that," it just opens it up. But I also think there was just so much value in being like, "This is the kind of book we read as a class." We read Mice and Men in seventh grade and I'm like, "Okay," but it's that felt like the kind of book that you read in school. This very-
Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
It's a school book.
Elizabeth Acevedo:
... Americana, that's a school book.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
Yeah.
Elizabeth Acevedo:
So, then you get House on Mango Street and it was just like, "Oh," these stories are also deserving of this kind of academic rigor and approach and that was really moving. And I write a lot about names. It was so funny because I was flipping through the book looking for-
Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
Yeah, you go into it in the people's names. Yeah, which is-
Elizabeth Acevedo:
I know.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
Yeah.
Elizabeth Acevedo:
And I was looking for a different passage and, when I saw this one, I saw all the lines I had underlined like songs like sobbing, so many women sit their sadness on an elbow. Yeah, I think the myth of our names and how it either shadows us or bolsters us is big and maybe this was one of the first books that made me really think that.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
Names are something that Elizabeth talks and writes about a lot, they're something she loves. Names can hold hidden layers of meaning and connection to our communities, ancestors and origins. And while this is part of why Elizabeth is so fascinated by them today, her obsession started off a little bit more simply when she was still a kid.
Elizabeth Acevedo:
Both my brothers have a middle name and then my parents were like, "Oh, Americans don't do middle names," so I don't have a middle name.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
You don't have a middle name?
Elizabeth Acevedo:
No, and I love names.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
Wow.
Elizabeth Acevedo:
I wanted a real long, luxurious maybe I can pick and choose which middle name I'm going to-
Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
I thought you might have four.
Elizabeth Acevedo:
No.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
I thought you might be a four person. You're a two?
Elizabeth Acevedo:
They played me, Jordan, they played me. No middle name and then, in addition to that, they couldn't decide on a first name. I think my father wanted Veronica but that was his ex-girlfriend's name and my mom was like, "No, we're not doing that."
Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
Not having that.
Elizabeth Acevedo:
And I think they just went with Elizabeth because Elizabeth Taylor and Queen Elizabeth, I'm like, "Oh, you all played me so hard." It was generic, I think it was last minute we got to put something on the birth certificate.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
Oh, dang.
Elizabeth Acevedo:
I love my name but I had a lot of different kinds of nicknames which was lovely. And I think a good name lets you be many versions of yourself depending on how people know you. Elizabeth, I was Ellie at home, I was Ellie on my basketball team, my best friend calls me Lizzie so I had lots of versions. But man, they really try to play your girl.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
[inaudible 00:28:32] name for Elizabeth Taylor, no one will see that coming.
Elizabeth Acevedo:
Right.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
Okay. Queen Elizabeth.
Elizabeth Acevedo:
The least Dominican.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
Okay.
Elizabeth Acevedo:
All right, Paris. But you know what? Maybe there was safety there, right? Maybe there were just what's a name where people will know how to say this? And they were right, there was always at least two or three other Elizabeths in a class. They were right.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
Yes, I know. Okay, anyways, on the topic of names and voices, what about the collective voices of authors? Do you see any of that coming through your work especially with some of those things that you reference that you read in middle school?
Elizabeth Acevedo:
So, one of the reasons I picked this book is because it was really important when I was in middle school. And then, when I taught middle school, there was a passage that I taught by Sandra Cisneros and I thought it was in this book and I can't find it now but I flipped through it and I saw that in it and it really hit me like, "Oh, I'm obsessed with writing about people's names and I'm obsessed with characters who are curious about their inheritance of a name." And who knows how I internalized this book and didn't even know that that was coming through. And I, for sure, think it's true for Lucille Clifton, I think it's true for Toni Morrison, I think writers bring a writer in and, when they decide, oh, this is a part of artistic lineage in which I'm writing, you carry that in your work.
It's why the idea of invention, when we come to literary works, is a funny concept. I cannot do an interview without talking about who I come from as it pertains to the writers who have influenced my work because their fingerprints are all over without us even knowing. We're having this conversation, I'm like, "Oh, look at that. That's where my obsession with names was probably rooted." It's in the DNA of a writer, who you read and had an impact and you may not even have it nailed down, you're not aware that it's there.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
Elizabeth now finds herself on the other end of this relationship, her work has become an inspiration to young readers and writers alike. And even before she became an influential author, she was already passing on guidance and support as an eighth grade teacher in Prince George's County Maryland. I asked her how it felt to hand her students those books that had been revelations for her when she was a middle schooler.
Elizabeth Acevedo:
It was really special to say to young people American letters are yours and American letters have always been yours. And having Meg Medina, having Sandra, having many people that I could point, Julia Alvarez, that I could point to and say here are all the ways that writers have been writing for you for a very long time. And it requires more work maybe to find them or requires someone who's very intentional but that doesn't mean that the kinds of stories that were written with you in mind don't exist. I don't think I always got it right as a teacher and I was a very young teacher, I did a teaching program and so I came straight from college and I know that I made a lot of mistakes but I think that earnestness of wanting my young people to have a lot of exposure to a lot of books and I had a lot of young people who were like, "I'm just not a reader. Miss."
You hear that and it seems cliché as something like, "All right, the kids in this," but they really did just think reading is for someone else. I just want to make it through my school career until I get to 18 without having to ... And when you think of just how joyous, how fruitful, all the things that can happen when you read and just how much we love stories, I am like, "No, if you love story, maybe there's just a way in that we haven't found." And I think that I did with remarkable heart, just try to find a way in for every young person in front of me to a book or an author that they would feel wrote something for them.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
Yeah, definitely have done that. I feel like you've probably achieved a lot of the things that most writers dream of. You've won all these awards, you were named the Young People's Poet Laureate, books have been bestsellers. What for you is left on your writer's bucket list?
Elizabeth Acevedo:
This is tough, I don't think I've ever just been asked. I think one of the best pieces of early advice I received, and it might've been from Jason Reynolds, it was look for the writers who have mapped a life that feels like the kind of life you would want to walk. Don't let yourself get caught up on social media, don't let the voices of ambition and this ... Just find the people. And so, I have what I consider imaginary mentors and I have imaginary mentees in that there's no formal or, not imaginary, secret. I have secret mentors who don't know they're my mentors and secret mentees who I try to look out for who don't know they're my secret mentees.
But I think my secret mentors, Julia Alvarez who is working on a new book now, published the book last year, I'm pretty sure she's 75 or 76 and she will tell you I plan on writing until the day that I die, I plan to be working on work. This is my work, this is what I am doing here, I hope to get better and sharper. I already feel like ideas move differently, there was a ferociousness with which I wrote when I was young and, even I read sometimes passages from the Poetics and I have to think about how that book was made, I was just such a different writer and there are ways that the language was alive and vibrant because of that. And there was a way that, I think, I have a better grasp of story and I'm changing and so I think it's going to have to be, all right, how do I continuously grow.
And I look to Jackie Woodson and I think Jackie is a writer who opens doors for other writers. She, to me, is just the epitome of someone who is a connector and who is constantly thinking, all right, I am successful and how does that success assure in more people and just really looks out, I think, for young writers and people who are new to the industry and is just so loving. And I want to think about, beyond the work, what will I leave that will hopefully allow for other writers to tell stories in ways that maybe they wouldn't have access to and so I don't know what that looks like. I don't know if it looks like Baldwin, like what Jackie has started, I don't know if it looks like ... I don't know yet but I do know that what I think is next is lots of books until the day that I die, I don't think I'm going to be the kind of writer that retires.
Hopefully, I'll always retain a sharpness that allows me to be relevant and that allows the words to be powerful and I hope that I also know when it's time to say, "Oh, you know what? There are other writers and it's my turn to actually just read some books and maybe make space." And I think I try that now, make space always, there's always space to be made.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
True to style, Elizabeth's reading challenge pays homage to her poet credentials.
Elizabeth Acevedo:
The theme is novels through poems. I'm not going to say verse because I do have The House on Mango Street which I think are poems or pieces but not necessarily verse, we call them prose poems. Long Way Down by Jason Reynolds, Bright Red Fruit by Safia Elhillo, All the Fighting Parts by Hannah V. Sawyerr, Brown Girl Dreaming by Jacqueline Woodson and Ari Tison's book Saints of the Household.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
And which of your books would you like to include?
Elizabeth Acevedo:
Oh, let's include Clap When You Land.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
You can find Elizabeth's reading challenge and all past reading challenges at thereadingculturepod.com.
This episode's featured librarian is Tammy McIntyre, a library media specialist in Gwinnett County, Georgia for 13 years who now works with us at Beanstack. She shares a memorable interaction with a student that continues to resonate with her, highlighting the vital role the library plays as a community space.
Tammy McIntyre:
So, I had a student who identified as LGBTQ and she would come in and she was not publicly out but she would come in and she would say, "I want to book with characters like me." And she'd whisper it to me and I'd be like, "All right, I got you," and I would go and find them. And she would come in pretty often but not always for books. I actually don't think she loved reading that much, I don't think she was a huge fan of reading but she loved to come to the library and we would talk about whatever. I was with her for sixth, seventh and then eighth grade was my last year at that school and she told me, "I just want you to know the only reason I'm still here is this library."
Looking back, I don't know if she meant I'm still here at this school which is pretty transient school. Maybe her parents were talking about putting her somewhere else and she was like, "No, I want to stay because I love going to the library." I don't know if she meant that or here, here. I'll never forget that moment with her and of course I was just like, "Oh, I love you. Of course I'm so glad you're here as well," and gave her a hug. She'll never know that that just completely rocked everything, my world, really, in thinking about how I treat students and staff members and just being that welcoming space for them.
And especially, I think, we as librarians and educators have a really good opportunity with kids who get in trouble a lot. It's, when you walk in the door, it is a fresh chance, okay? I'm not going to hold it against you that you got a referral or have been in ISS or OSS, I can just love you the way you are and treat you with all the dignity and respect you deserve. So, that was a foundational moment, I think, in my teaching career when she said that.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
This has been The Reading Culture and you've been listening to my conversation with Elizabeth Acevedo. Again, I'm your host, Jordan Lloyd Bookey and currently I'm reading Labyrinth Lost by Zoraida Cordova and The Door by Magda Szabo. If you enjoyed today's episode, please show some love and give us a five-star review, it just takes a second and really helps. This episode was produced by Jackie Lamport, Elena Guthrie and Lower Street Media and script edited by Josiah Lamberto Egan.
To learn more about how you can help grow your community's reading culture, check out all of our resources at beanstack.com and remember to sign up for that newsletter at thereadingculturepod.com/newsletter for special offers and bonus content. Thanks for listening and keep reading.
I cannot do an interview without talking about who I come from as it pertains to the writers who have influenced my work because their fingerprints are all over.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
Don't look now but there's a crowd of people clustered behind you. Your family and friends are there, your best teachers and coaches, a career model or two, your ancestors going all the way back. And isn't that character from the movie you love and your friend's sister who always let you borrow her clubbing shoes? We bring them all along with us, the ones who led to us and made us and shaped us, a little like our personal Greek chorus, strengthening us when we're striving, advising us when we're at a crossroads and maybe bearing their teeth when someone says we don't belong. Today, we talk to an author celebrated for her one-of-a-kind poetic voice. But as you'll hear repeatedly, she never stops giving credit to her own chorus whether it's the literary icons she reveres or the cashiers from her old neighborhood grocery.
Elizabeth Acevedo:
Anytime I would go to the bodega to get an egg and cheese and they're like, "Yo, you got to rap. What you got from me? Let me hear something."
Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
Elizabeth Acevedo is a decorated poet and author, having won the National Book Award, Printz Medal, the Pura Belpré Award and having served as the Young People's Poet Laureate. Elizabeth also happens to be one of my favorite authors of all time. She's best known for her powerful novels like The Poet X and Clap When You Land and her more recent adult novel, Family Lore. Elizabeth's work dives deep into the heart of her Afro-Latina experience, exploring themes of identity, family and the fierce pursuit of dreams. In this episode, we discuss the importance of community and individuals in nurturing young talent, what it's like to offer support as an adult and why names hold such importance in Elizabeth's stories. Oh, and speaking of names, we'll also hear about what she went by in her rap days.
Elizabeth Acevedo:
No, we're not going to talk about that, come on.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
Yes, we are. My name is Jordan Lloyd Bookey and this is The Reading Culture, a show where we speak with diverse authors about ways to build a stronger culture of reading in our communities. We dive deep into their personal experiences and inspirations. This show is made possible by Beanstack, the leading solution for motivating students to read more. Learn more at beanstack.com and make sure to check us out on Instagram @thereadingculturepod and subscribe to our newsletter for bonus content at thereadingculturepod.com/newsletter.
Oh, and a quick note, there was a recording error on Elizabeth's end at the beginning of the episode. In about five minutes, we're going to go from decent audio to great audio so hang tight for that. All right, onto the show.
Hey, listeners, are you looking for a fun, easy way to track your reading and earn cool rewards? Well, meet Beanstack, the ultimate reading app used by a community of over 15,000 schools, libraries and organizations nationwide. Are you an avid reader? Check with your local library to see if they offer Beanstack for free. A parent? Ask your child's teacher if the school library already uses Beanstack. And if you are an educator searching for a fresh alternative to accelerated reader, Beanstack is the perfect tool to cultivate a thriving reading culture. Ready to turn the page? Visit beanstack.com to learn more.
I was thinking about you because today it's the anniversary of my grandmother's passing a few years ago. I've been really thinking about her in re-reading Family Lore, I'm reading this book and I just have been thinking so much about her because she herself had many chapters of her life and different husbands and so forth.
Elizabeth Acevedo:
Yeah, yeah, sure.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
And just the importance of all these voices in Family Lore and in all of your writing. I wonder, what ancestors or people that, when you come to sit down in a room, who do you bring with you?
Elizabeth Acevedo:
Well, first thank you for sharing that with me. And I don't know my father's side of the family at all, he has one cousin who lived in New York who I know. I never met his father, I met his mother when I was six months old and have pictures with her as a baby but she passed when I was five. And then my mom's side, I knew my grandfather, my grandmother is still alive but no great-grandparents, very few great uncles or great aunts. And so, it's interesting because, when I think about bringing my ancestors into the room, I think about Mama Mercedes who's my father's mother, I think about Papa Feli who is my mother's father and I say their names because I knew them and they knew me and they held me and there's something, I think, special to that. And then I just think of the pantheon beyond them who maybe didn't physically touch me but who I feel very guarded and I feel very held and I feel like my ancestors are bullies and they just open every door that I want to walk through.
And so, it's a very just large request like I wish you peace, I wish you ease. And so, I say the names that I know and then I just acknowledge that so many folks are looking out for me and that they are often in the room when I'm in the room. And it's helpful because I'm often in rooms where I don't always feel welcome, where I don't always feel were made for me and so being like, "[inaudible 00:05:58], we here as tribe."
Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
We are here.
Elizabeth Acevedo:
So, [inaudible 00:06:02].
Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
We're all around you. Yeah.
Elizabeth Acevedo:
Yeah, yeah.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
Today do you, and even with the accolades and your position in this literary world, do you sometimes still find yourself feeling like you need them around you in that way?
Elizabeth Acevedo:
Oh, yeah, for sure. I think I feel there are clearly ways that I have established a career that feels really good and I garner a lot of respect in the spaces that I'm in but I don't know how much of it is that I just moved through the world with a little chip on my shoulder in terms of how I feel welcomed. And if that's just imposter syndrome, if that's coming from a background where I often felt like I don't match up in terms of socioeconomics or in terms of education or in terms of language that these other kids have access to, that I am scrambling to try to teach myself all the things that they just know or have access to, if I just still carry that with me. I think it's also maybe partly that I choose to step into modes of writing and creation that are very hybrid.
And so, I think folks have a lot of speculation around the work that I make, I was a spoken word artist and so it wasn't, oh, she's a poet, she's a spoken word artist. So, I didn't get the, oh, she's a poet poet and I had to of fight to be spoken word is a kind of poetry and I write a lot of different kinds of poetry. And then when I wrote YA, it's like, "Oh, but she's writing novels in reverse and, what, is that really a" ... I think there's just a lot ... I had an editor tell my agent when we were on submission for the Poetics, it just feels like broken prose and so you have to be like, "I studied and worked really hard on my craft."
Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
Wow. Broken prose? I never heard that story. Okay, wow.
Elizabeth Acevedo:
I don't know if I've ever said that story, to be honest with you. But it's I have these moments where I realized, because I am moving through a lot of different genres and modes and for different audiences and age groups, I don't think it's always easy to say, yeah, she belongs here. I think people often are like, "Oh, should she get the invitation? Doesn't she move over there?" And so, maybe I'm making that up but it has felt like there have been moments where it's like, "Is she really an adult writer or is she writing for YA? She has this one book that she put out." I think there's a little bit of where does Elizabeth Acevedo belong and then there's my ... And my ancestors being like, "Here," wherever here is.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
Where she's right now.
Elizabeth Acevedo:
Wherever my feet are.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
Yeah, that's where she belongs.
Elizabeth Acevedo:
Right.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
Yeah. Well, her feet are now currently in Washington, D.C. but Elizabeth still considers herself a New Yorker at heart.
Elizabeth Acevedo:
Yes. I live in D.C., I am a New Yorker. And that's no shade to D.C., it's just what I am. Yeah, yeah, I don't lose that.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
Okay. Want to just talk a little bit about your earlier childhood, what life was like in your household.
Elizabeth Acevedo:
Yeah. I was born and raised in a neighborhood right by Columbia University and so there's this behemoth of affluence and education that was all of two, three blocks away. And I was also born and raised in a neighborhood that had a lot of drugs and gangs and marginalized folks that I think were trying to figure out how social advancement and up upward mobility could work with very few resources. And so, it was this juxtaposition that was very, very clear. I think sometimes people don't realize how much children get and see but you walk four blocks and there's a Haagen-Dazs and there's a Saboros and there's these young people in their Columbia hats and sweaters moving through the world with a level of safety that, if I just go one avenue over, it is not that. It is very much I think I learned how to be on guard, how to be very aware of everyone moving around me and who was safe and who wasn't safe and how to stay safe. Safety was just such a huge part of how I had to navigate my neighborhood.
And so, I knew very early on that there were two worlds or many worlds that a space is permeable in that way or impermeable sometimes because I couldn't access Columbia, I could just see it.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
Right.
Elizabeth Acevedo:
And be like glass.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
The glass there or something.
Elizabeth Acevedo:
Exactly, yeah. There's this whole other place where the concerns are different than the concerns here. And yet, despite that, very joyous childhood. I loved the neighborhood I grew up in, I loved that we would turn on the fire hydrants in the summer and run through them and had our own personal sprinklers, I loved that the neighborhood community board would do trips to Bear Mountain and the lake and take all the little hood kids and we were just experience upstate New York for a bit. There was just so many ways that the elders around us loved us and wanted us to have joyous moments and birthdays and occasions and we had flags and we had block parties every single year and you got to try out to be on the neighborhood team that would dance at the block party and that was always such a competition. And if I only knew how to heel toe, I would get on it this year. It was also just a really beautiful and-
Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
Like a tapestry.
Elizabeth Acevedo:
Yeah, exactly. I think a lot of how I write and what I write and who I write is still influenced by juxtapositions of recognizing who moves through what spaces how and also this celebration of the people that I know deserve to be written about.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
Did you have siblings? You have two siblings or three?
Elizabeth Acevedo:
Two older brothers. Two, mm-hmm.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
Okay, interesting. And also, you write so much about women, okay. So, were you close with them?
Elizabeth Acevedo:
We are four and eight years apart, respectively, we were very close. One of my brothers is ill and so it makes it a little harder to be close to him because of the particular mental illness that he has. And my other sibling who's eight years older but we're pretty close. Especially because we're the children of immigrants, there were ways that we had to rely on each other to make sense of the US.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
Yeah, [inaudible 00:13:02] stuff, yeah.
Elizabeth Acevedo:
Yeah, because what was happening at home. We're like, "Yeah, that sounds good but New York is not that." But if we-
Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
Like what? What kind of things?
Elizabeth Acevedo:
Oh, my gosh. Just the politics of school and of bullies or being bullied or fights or how do you defend yourself. My parents are all like, "Girls don't fight and girls don't defend themselves, you just got to be good and be quiet." And I'm like, "Bro, that is not what's going to work." My brother's like, "All right, so this is how you put your fists up and this is how you throw a punch and don't break your knuckles." So, it was this difference of we know what spaces you're occupying and how to survive those spaces and how to defend yourself that our parents who grew up in going to rigid Catholic nun-led schools where they just had to sit and be quiet and got their hands wrapped with rulers. It's ... Yeah.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
Yeah, not wrapped with rulers. But it does sound like you had this really vibrant, caring community with all these people around. Your brothers, your neighbors, yeah.
Elizabeth Acevedo:
Oh, yeah. And I think people will see them in the books. Caridad's best friend's mother or, in Clap When You Land, there's a moment where a doña on the fifth floor is calling out to them in the street. And so, even the names, the reference is Ms. Santos who works at your high school, these were all figures from my neighborhood and from my upbringing and from church that my mom was friends with. And the lady who made everyone's birthday cake who lived next door and she was the cake lady. They show up. They were joyous figures who held us alongside our moms who braided my hair when she's too busy. Go to Ms. Gladys down the street and I'm like, "Okay. Ms. Gladys, can you braid my hair?" She's like, "I guess." A lot of hair.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
Sure. All right, come on. I mentioned this in the intro but it's worth saying again that, whenever I ask Elizabeth about herself, she talks also about all of the people around her. Her community and their support have brought a lot to her life and that's something she clearly values and honors in her work. And the people she honors in her work are also in part responsible for it. Elizabeth took to writing early and, by trusting those around her, she was guided on a path that made that passion her life's work and it all started with rap lyrics.
Elizabeth Acevedo:
I realized that writing was a way to ask the questions I didn't know where or how to ask when I was probably eight and that's when I began writing songs mainly. And just you're little when you're eight so it was mostly like, "Why don't dolphins kill dolphins but people kill people?" Actually, dolphins are very violent and very territorial but eight-year-old Liz didn't know the politics of dolphins. But these questions of what is it about us that makes us violent, what is it about us that makes us hurt each other or desire things that the other person has, already asking these questions based off of what I've seen. And I don't know why it came out through music or maybe that's not true. I grew up in a very musical household, we listened to merengue and bachata, my parents played music all of the time, especially on Friday nights, it was a thing.
Friday nights, my father would, we had these huge sound speakers and he would get his CDs out and it was like he would just have a concert and you could hear it through the whole building so he was playing for everyone. And then he and my mom would go to bed and my brother would turn on his little stereo that he had on his, they shared bunk beds, and so his top bunk and then we would listen to house and hip hop and dance. So, my exposure to music as a form of storytelling began very early on and I think that's why it came out in song first. And then I really fell in love with hip hop and realized that I could get more words into a song that way. And by 12, I was writing raps every single day, just filling up marble notebooks with rap lyrics and verses and just everything based on the world I was seeing.
And my writing at first, I think, was less about safety and more about questions and about trying to make sense of what is happening. And I don't know how to ask my parents, I don't know where in school to ask this but my journal lets me ask those questions. I think, by the time I got to high school, it became more about love and boys and relationship. I had so many poems to so many-
Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
You're angst.
Elizabeth Acevedo:
All of the angst, yeah. But the practice of writing daily and of always trying to challenge myself to keep making, I think I established that as a middle schooler and just continue my ... I kept a journal, it was just in poetry rap form, it was very styled.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
Did you perform? Were you saying them for anybody?
Elizabeth Acevedo:
Around eighth grade, I would say I started ... I would polish a piece up. I had a sense of some of these are more just for me and some of these can be read out loud. By the time I got to high school, I had a teacher, we were doing the organization fair and she was the poetry club teacher. She started the poetry club, Live Poet Society, and she's like, "Are you interested?" I'm like, "Well, I'm not really a poet, I'm a rapper."
Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
Did you have a rap name? Did you have a name?
Elizabeth Acevedo:
Oh, we are not-
Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
Did you go by anything?
Elizabeth Acevedo:
Of course but, no, we're not going to talk about that.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
Come on.
Elizabeth Acevedo:
Oh, my gosh. Oh, I was such a nerd, Jordan. So, there was a game, Final Fantasy, that my brothers loved playing and there was a character named Yunalesca so my name was Ladylesca because she was the summoner of souls.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
Okay.
Elizabeth Acevedo:
So, that's what I do with my raps, I will summon-
Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
Summon people's souls with your raps.
Elizabeth Acevedo:
Listen, at 13, you really think that is a great name. You feel very confident.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
Ladylesca.
Elizabeth Acevedo:
Ladylesca.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
Okay, Ladylesca. So, you joined the poetry club.
Elizabeth Acevedo:
Right, back to the original-
Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
That was your secret, that was your secret.
Elizabeth Acevedo:
No, yes, I joined a lot of different writing groups and there was one group in particular where they were also very into video games and rapping and battle rapping. And so, they also had very lovingly crafted names around these kinds of figures so they knew. But not in school, in school it was just Liz. But I joined the poetry club, it was just such an incredible space where I'm listening to other people and I think that's where safety began, where I realized my poems didn't have to be impressive, my poems didn't have to necessarily always push back. Watching what other people were writing about loosened what I thought a poem could be, it didn't only have to be rap, it could break form and it's also where I began performing at school.
And this teacher, Abby Lublin, encouraged us all to sign up for the New York City Poetry Slam which was almost 500 kids tried out every single year and that was where I first really discovered Slam and the competition of using spoken word so my performance really ramped up. I had been performing in these kind of informal ciphers and circles but this was now a different level of performance.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
I will pause here to mention that Elizabeth's level of performance got very high. She eventually won the actual National Slam Poetry Championship, performed at Lincoln Center, Madison Square Garden and a slew of other international venues but all of that was still a few years off at this point.
Elizabeth Acevedo:
And then in middle school I had a teacher, Phil Bildner, who was an author and writes middle grade books and he was my sixth and eighth grade reading language arts teacher.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
Yeah, that's wild.
Elizabeth Acevedo:
And Phil was the first teacher that had us keeping journals. And so, he would read my poetry and I have notebooks with his comments on-
Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
Oh, my God, the dialogue. Oh, wow.
Elizabeth Acevedo:
... this is really great, yeah, or why is the voice so sad, why is the narrator upset. This is special, tell me more. But he, I think, knew very early on and, even when I graduated and went to high school, he would come to my poetry events. And so, I had, I think, really strong mentors and teachers and that's not even talking about the teaching artists I met later once I began performing. But the adults in my life that I was around, I just got so lucky. Down to the neighborhood dope boys who made space for me in their ciphers and also would keep other people like, "Nah, don't mess with her."
Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
Yeah, like your protection, yeah.
Elizabeth Acevedo:
Yeah. But anytime I would go to the bodega to get an egg and cheese and they're like, "Yo, you got to rap. What you got for me? Let me hear something." And so, you get that little boost, I'm like, "Yeah, I'm 12 and I'm cool and they want to hear what I got to say," that's amazing.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
That is amazing.
Elizabeth Acevedo:
I'm 12 and I'm cool and they want to hear what I have to say. At that age, to have that many different kinds of people, I just so lived a charmed life in terms of how many people told me again and again what you are making matters to us and it's special. I don't know that it was phenomenal either, I think that's the beauty of it. Some of it was terrible but they just ...
Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
Yeah, but maybe. But they've seen a lot, you've seen a lot when you're a teacher especially. You know because you taught middle school, you know when you see something that stands out.
Elizabeth Acevedo:
In English, my name means hope. In Spanish, it means too many letters. It means sadness, it means waiting. It is like the number nine, a muddy color. It's the Mexican records my father plays on Sunday mornings when he's shaving, songs like sobbing. It was my great-grandmother's name and now it is mine. She was a horse woman too, born like me in the Chinese year of the horse which is supposed to be bad luck if you're born female. My great-grandmother, I would've liked to known her, a wild horse of a woman, so wild she wouldn't marry until my great-grandfather threw a sack over her head and carried her off just like that as if she were a fancy chandelier. That's the way he did it. And the story goes she never forgave him, she looked out the window her whole life the way so many women sit their sadness on an elbow.
I wonder if she made the best with what she got or what she's sorry because she couldn't be all those things she wanted to be. Esperanza, I have inherited her name but I don't want to inherit her place by the window. At school, they say my name funny as if the syllables were made out of tin and hurt the roof of your mouth. But in Spanish, my name is made out of the softer something like silver, not quite as thick as my sister's name, Magdalena, which is uglier than mine. Magdalena, who at least can come home and become Nene but I'm always Esperanza. I would like to baptize myself under a new name, a name more like the real me, the one nobody sees. Esperanza as Lisandra or Maritza or Zizi the X. Yes, something like Zizi the X will do.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
Elizabeth found herself welcome in her community, she found herself welcome at school and among her neighbors but the place she had yet to feel welcome and seen was in books. That changed when she was first introduced to The House on Mango Street. Published in 1984, The House on Mango Street was Sandra Cisneros's debut novel and is widely considered a modern classic in American and Chicano literature. In the book, Cisneros draws on her own experience as a Mexican-American growing up in Illinois and creates the character of 12-year-old Esperanza Cordero coming of age in Chicago. The scene we just heard from has Esperanza reflecting on the duality of her Mexican-American identity as well as the lineage of women she comes from and the power a name has in forging one's identity. When did you read this book? Did Phil teach this?
Elizabeth Acevedo:
So, I think this was actually in seventh grade and I think it might've been one of the first books where there was a Latina protagonist. I didn't even know what kind of city Chicago was and here I am reading about this very Chicano Chicago. And so, being like, "Oh, and what is a Chicano? How is that different than a Dominican or a Puerto Rican which is mainly the groups that I knew?" So, it was finding this way in and ways that felt really familiar in ways that also like, "Oh, I didn't know that," it just opens it up. But I also think there was just so much value in being like, "This is the kind of book we read as a class." We read Mice and Men in seventh grade and I'm like, "Okay," but it's that felt like the kind of book that you read in school. This very-
Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
It's a school book.
Elizabeth Acevedo:
... Americana, that's a school book.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
Yeah.
Elizabeth Acevedo:
So, then you get House on Mango Street and it was just like, "Oh," these stories are also deserving of this kind of academic rigor and approach and that was really moving. And I write a lot about names. It was so funny because I was flipping through the book looking for-
Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
Yeah, you go into it in the people's names. Yeah, which is-
Elizabeth Acevedo:
I know.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
Yeah.
Elizabeth Acevedo:
And I was looking for a different passage and, when I saw this one, I saw all the lines I had underlined like songs like sobbing, so many women sit their sadness on an elbow. Yeah, I think the myth of our names and how it either shadows us or bolsters us is big and maybe this was one of the first books that made me really think that.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
Names are something that Elizabeth talks and writes about a lot, they're something she loves. Names can hold hidden layers of meaning and connection to our communities, ancestors and origins. And while this is part of why Elizabeth is so fascinated by them today, her obsession started off a little bit more simply when she was still a kid.
Elizabeth Acevedo:
Both my brothers have a middle name and then my parents were like, "Oh, Americans don't do middle names," so I don't have a middle name.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
You don't have a middle name?
Elizabeth Acevedo:
No, and I love names.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
Wow.
Elizabeth Acevedo:
I wanted a real long, luxurious maybe I can pick and choose which middle name I'm going to-
Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
I thought you might have four.
Elizabeth Acevedo:
No.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
I thought you might be a four person. You're a two?
Elizabeth Acevedo:
They played me, Jordan, they played me. No middle name and then, in addition to that, they couldn't decide on a first name. I think my father wanted Veronica but that was his ex-girlfriend's name and my mom was like, "No, we're not doing that."
Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
Not having that.
Elizabeth Acevedo:
And I think they just went with Elizabeth because Elizabeth Taylor and Queen Elizabeth, I'm like, "Oh, you all played me so hard." It was generic, I think it was last minute we got to put something on the birth certificate.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
Oh, dang.
Elizabeth Acevedo:
I love my name but I had a lot of different kinds of nicknames which was lovely. And I think a good name lets you be many versions of yourself depending on how people know you. Elizabeth, I was Ellie at home, I was Ellie on my basketball team, my best friend calls me Lizzie so I had lots of versions. But man, they really try to play your girl.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
[inaudible 00:28:32] name for Elizabeth Taylor, no one will see that coming.
Elizabeth Acevedo:
Right.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
Okay. Queen Elizabeth.
Elizabeth Acevedo:
The least Dominican.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
Okay.
Elizabeth Acevedo:
All right, Paris. But you know what? Maybe there was safety there, right? Maybe there were just what's a name where people will know how to say this? And they were right, there was always at least two or three other Elizabeths in a class. They were right.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
Yes, I know. Okay, anyways, on the topic of names and voices, what about the collective voices of authors? Do you see any of that coming through your work especially with some of those things that you reference that you read in middle school?
Elizabeth Acevedo:
So, one of the reasons I picked this book is because it was really important when I was in middle school. And then, when I taught middle school, there was a passage that I taught by Sandra Cisneros and I thought it was in this book and I can't find it now but I flipped through it and I saw that in it and it really hit me like, "Oh, I'm obsessed with writing about people's names and I'm obsessed with characters who are curious about their inheritance of a name." And who knows how I internalized this book and didn't even know that that was coming through. And I, for sure, think it's true for Lucille Clifton, I think it's true for Toni Morrison, I think writers bring a writer in and, when they decide, oh, this is a part of artistic lineage in which I'm writing, you carry that in your work.
It's why the idea of invention, when we come to literary works, is a funny concept. I cannot do an interview without talking about who I come from as it pertains to the writers who have influenced my work because their fingerprints are all over without us even knowing. We're having this conversation, I'm like, "Oh, look at that. That's where my obsession with names was probably rooted." It's in the DNA of a writer, who you read and had an impact and you may not even have it nailed down, you're not aware that it's there.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
Elizabeth now finds herself on the other end of this relationship, her work has become an inspiration to young readers and writers alike. And even before she became an influential author, she was already passing on guidance and support as an eighth grade teacher in Prince George's County Maryland. I asked her how it felt to hand her students those books that had been revelations for her when she was a middle schooler.
Elizabeth Acevedo:
It was really special to say to young people American letters are yours and American letters have always been yours. And having Meg Medina, having Sandra, having many people that I could point, Julia Alvarez, that I could point to and say here are all the ways that writers have been writing for you for a very long time. And it requires more work maybe to find them or requires someone who's very intentional but that doesn't mean that the kinds of stories that were written with you in mind don't exist. I don't think I always got it right as a teacher and I was a very young teacher, I did a teaching program and so I came straight from college and I know that I made a lot of mistakes but I think that earnestness of wanting my young people to have a lot of exposure to a lot of books and I had a lot of young people who were like, "I'm just not a reader. Miss."
You hear that and it seems cliché as something like, "All right, the kids in this," but they really did just think reading is for someone else. I just want to make it through my school career until I get to 18 without having to ... And when you think of just how joyous, how fruitful, all the things that can happen when you read and just how much we love stories, I am like, "No, if you love story, maybe there's just a way in that we haven't found." And I think that I did with remarkable heart, just try to find a way in for every young person in front of me to a book or an author that they would feel wrote something for them.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
Yeah, definitely have done that. I feel like you've probably achieved a lot of the things that most writers dream of. You've won all these awards, you were named the Young People's Poet Laureate, books have been bestsellers. What for you is left on your writer's bucket list?
Elizabeth Acevedo:
This is tough, I don't think I've ever just been asked. I think one of the best pieces of early advice I received, and it might've been from Jason Reynolds, it was look for the writers who have mapped a life that feels like the kind of life you would want to walk. Don't let yourself get caught up on social media, don't let the voices of ambition and this ... Just find the people. And so, I have what I consider imaginary mentors and I have imaginary mentees in that there's no formal or, not imaginary, secret. I have secret mentors who don't know they're my mentors and secret mentees who I try to look out for who don't know they're my secret mentees.
But I think my secret mentors, Julia Alvarez who is working on a new book now, published the book last year, I'm pretty sure she's 75 or 76 and she will tell you I plan on writing until the day that I die, I plan to be working on work. This is my work, this is what I am doing here, I hope to get better and sharper. I already feel like ideas move differently, there was a ferociousness with which I wrote when I was young and, even I read sometimes passages from the Poetics and I have to think about how that book was made, I was just such a different writer and there are ways that the language was alive and vibrant because of that. And there was a way that, I think, I have a better grasp of story and I'm changing and so I think it's going to have to be, all right, how do I continuously grow.
And I look to Jackie Woodson and I think Jackie is a writer who opens doors for other writers. She, to me, is just the epitome of someone who is a connector and who is constantly thinking, all right, I am successful and how does that success assure in more people and just really looks out, I think, for young writers and people who are new to the industry and is just so loving. And I want to think about, beyond the work, what will I leave that will hopefully allow for other writers to tell stories in ways that maybe they wouldn't have access to and so I don't know what that looks like. I don't know if it looks like Baldwin, like what Jackie has started, I don't know if it looks like ... I don't know yet but I do know that what I think is next is lots of books until the day that I die, I don't think I'm going to be the kind of writer that retires.
Hopefully, I'll always retain a sharpness that allows me to be relevant and that allows the words to be powerful and I hope that I also know when it's time to say, "Oh, you know what? There are other writers and it's my turn to actually just read some books and maybe make space." And I think I try that now, make space always, there's always space to be made.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
True to style, Elizabeth's reading challenge pays homage to her poet credentials.
Elizabeth Acevedo:
The theme is novels through poems. I'm not going to say verse because I do have The House on Mango Street which I think are poems or pieces but not necessarily verse, we call them prose poems. Long Way Down by Jason Reynolds, Bright Red Fruit by Safia Elhillo, All the Fighting Parts by Hannah V. Sawyerr, Brown Girl Dreaming by Jacqueline Woodson and Ari Tison's book Saints of the Household.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
And which of your books would you like to include?
Elizabeth Acevedo:
Oh, let's include Clap When You Land.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
You can find Elizabeth's reading challenge and all past reading challenges at thereadingculturepod.com.
This episode's featured librarian is Tammy McIntyre, a library media specialist in Gwinnett County, Georgia for 13 years who now works with us at Beanstack. She shares a memorable interaction with a student that continues to resonate with her, highlighting the vital role the library plays as a community space.
Tammy McIntyre:
So, I had a student who identified as LGBTQ and she would come in and she was not publicly out but she would come in and she would say, "I want to book with characters like me." And she'd whisper it to me and I'd be like, "All right, I got you," and I would go and find them. And she would come in pretty often but not always for books. I actually don't think she loved reading that much, I don't think she was a huge fan of reading but she loved to come to the library and we would talk about whatever. I was with her for sixth, seventh and then eighth grade was my last year at that school and she told me, "I just want you to know the only reason I'm still here is this library."
Looking back, I don't know if she meant I'm still here at this school which is pretty transient school. Maybe her parents were talking about putting her somewhere else and she was like, "No, I want to stay because I love going to the library." I don't know if she meant that or here, here. I'll never forget that moment with her and of course I was just like, "Oh, I love you. Of course I'm so glad you're here as well," and gave her a hug. She'll never know that that just completely rocked everything, my world, really, in thinking about how I treat students and staff members and just being that welcoming space for them.
And especially, I think, we as librarians and educators have a really good opportunity with kids who get in trouble a lot. It's, when you walk in the door, it is a fresh chance, okay? I'm not going to hold it against you that you got a referral or have been in ISS or OSS, I can just love you the way you are and treat you with all the dignity and respect you deserve. So, that was a foundational moment, I think, in my teaching career when she said that.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey:
This has been The Reading Culture and you've been listening to my conversation with Elizabeth Acevedo. Again, I'm your host, Jordan Lloyd Bookey and currently I'm reading Labyrinth Lost by Zoraida Cordova and The Door by Magda Szabo. If you enjoyed today's episode, please show some love and give us a five-star review, it just takes a second and really helps. This episode was produced by Jackie Lamport, Elena Guthrie and Lower Street Media and script edited by Josiah Lamberto Egan.
To learn more about how you can help grow your community's reading culture, check out all of our resources at beanstack.com and remember to sign up for that newsletter at thereadingculturepod.com/newsletter for special offers and bonus content. Thanks for listening and keep reading.