Yamile Saied Méndez

Yamile Saied Mendez: When I talk to fellow writers and creatives, we always come to the conclusion that those difficult times are the ones in which we need stories the most because stories connect us. When life feels uncertain,

Jordan Lloyd Bookey: we all search for something to help guide us, a way to channel our energy and navigate the chaos. Books can help us stay the course and help us remember that there will be calm after the storm.

Yamile Saied Mendez: They help us, again process what is happening, have a better outlook into the world, and they remind us that life is a wheel. And humanity has been through countless cycles of, you know, ups and downs. The things that seem so dire now won't be this dire forever. Eventually, there is an upswing. And so I always needed that reminder and it made me think that my young readers need that reminder as well.

Jordan Lloyd Bookey: Shamile Saeed Mendez is a best selling author whose work spans children's, young adults, and adult fiction. You may know her from her book, Furia, the 2021 Puerto Belpre winner and Arisa's You book club selection. Her books have earned widespread recognition, including the Cybill's award and the Americas award. Born and raised in Rosario, Argentina, yes, also the hometown of beloved soccer player Lionel Messi, or should I say football player, and now living with her husband and 5 children in Utah, Shamile's journey as a writer has been largely shaped by her own experiences at important moments of transition. In this episode, Shamile reflects on the role of storytelling during these pivotal moments.

From her early years under a brutal dictatorship to the learning curve of writing in a second language, she shares how her personal life transitions, both big and small, have influenced her work and connected her to readers navigating their own moments of change. She also tells us about how she cried as an adult when her husband gave her the Christmas gift she had given up as a child. 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. Our 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 at the reading culture pod and subscribe to our newsletter for bonus content at the reading culture pod dot com forward slash newsletter. Alright. Onto the show. Hey, listeners.

Are 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. Let's talk a little bit about what life was like in those in those early in your some of your earliest memories there and what your household and and all that was like.

Yamile Saied Mendez: Yes. So, I had a really happy childhood. I'm the oldest of 4 siblings, but we're very close in age. And so we were all really little, but I felt already so much older than my siblings. And my life revolved around books because that was my obsession.

I was a very early reader. I always say that perhaps my mom encouraged my reading because it kept me occupied, and then it helped keep my little siblings occupied because I would read to them all

Jordan Lloyd Bookey: the time.

Yamile Saied Mendez: Everything that I read, I would distill it and then tell it to them or read my books to them. And we spent a lot of time at the soccer fields because my 2 brothers played soccer for the local club. So all of our weekends were spent at the fields. Of course, my sister and I didn't play. Back in those olden days, girls didn't play soccer in Argentina.

And so with the other sisters or the younger siblings of my brother's teammates, we would play in the unoccupied fields

Jordan Lloyd Bookey: Yeah.

Yamile Saied Mendez: Or makeup games. So I'm a child of the nineties, so always outside. Yeah. My mom worked, and so my siblings and I were always outside, although we grew up in an apartment, but there were fields and a lot of empty space around our neighborhood. And so it was a very idyllic, I will say now looking backwards, because back in those days on TV, we had only the 2 channels, and it was a very limited, you know, variety of things to watch.

So one of my very favorite things to watch on TV was the cartoon of the book Heidi, which Heidi had been the first book that I read on my own. So it immediately became my favorite. And it's funny how it happens because even though it is the first book that I read on my own, and I had other books that I read that made, I would say, a bigger impact in my life. When I go back and look at the story, Severin, I can see a lot of Heidi in different stories. Like, in The Beautiful Game, the relationship with the grampy grandpa.

You know? And Yeah. And then I always have to have a pet. I don't

Jordan Lloyd Bookey: feel like I remember the story of Heidi. It's like I can picture it. I can picture the story, but I don't so she lived with her grandfather as well?

Yamile Saied Mendez: So she was a girl from the Swiss Alps. Nothing in common with me from the Argentine Pampas. I had never seen the mountain until I moved to Utah. She becomes an orphan, and her aunt, who's in charge of her, takes her to live with her grandpa in the mountain. And everybody's super scared of the old man in the mountain, and then Heidi is just outside all day with the goat and her friend, Peter.

Jordan Lloyd Bookey: Shamili's childhood had its fair share of play and joy, but it was also marked by a heavy dose of responsibility.

Yamile Saied Mendez: My mom was a house keeper at somebody's house and a nanny. I was the 2nd mom. My sister and I, she's 3 years younger than me. She's the 3rd child of the family. And we always joke that we were, you know, housemakers at 11 years old, because we cooked and we cleaned and we got ourselves to school, but our mom I don't know how parents did it back in the olden days, but we were so obedient because we never missed school.

Although there was nobody there to send us off and make sure sure we were on time, and that our uniforms were in order. So but I was very much like a second mom to my siblings. But at the same time, I had a beautiful relationship with my mom and a lot of respect because she was working so that we could go to school and have an education and a better life. Yeah.

Jordan Lloyd Bookey: Did you have to pay to go to school in Rosario? There was like, what was the was it public or private kind of education?

Yamile Saied Mendez: So public school in Argentina is wonderful all the way up to college. We lived in a more humble neighborhood, so our public school wasn't very safe. And so my mom sent me to a private school. It was Catholic, all girls school, and my brothers went to the equivalent boys school. It wasn't expensive, though.

Sometimes when people from the US hear private school, they imagine it's super exclusive. You know, it was very economical for American standards. But, you know, it provided me a better education, and I always feel like that was the greatest gift that my mom could give to me because being surrounded by girls, I never got the message that girls weren't supposed to be good at math or science, and I excelled in those subjects. I loved math. I went to the Math Olympics to Oh, yeah.

The national level.

Jordan Lloyd Bookey: Really?

Yamile Saied Mendez: Yes. And my friends from all the way from 3rd grade to 12, they're still some of my best friends to this day, and we talk at least weekly. Wow. And so those were relationships that really changed the course of my life.

Jordan Lloyd Bookey: I was wondering about strong girls, strong young women. Is that's such an important just recurring theme. And from your short stories to your middle grade now to, you know, young adult, all these books, and I just wondered, like, if you always were sort of questioning a system or messages that came to you. But it sort of sounds like maybe, no, maybe you actually just didn't maybe those messages actually weren't communicated besides on the soccer pitch,

Yamile Saied Mendez: I guess. Argentina has a very rich heritage of women leading the country. Like, we've had 2 women presidents and even Eva Peron, who is this cultural icon. She wasn't the president. She was the first lady, but she had more power than her husband, the president, back in the 19 sixties.

And all my teachers were women, and a lot of the authorities in my life were women. My mom was a very strong presence in my life. But at the same time, there were environments in which that wasn't the case, like, on the soccer pitch even though it was women administering the local club where my brothers played. And so there was that dichotomy right there, you know, that there were some aspects of the game that the girls were not welcomed in. And although in some aspects, they were because there were girls that played soccer, but there was a bad association, you know, to them, like a bad image.

They were the tomboys or the rebels of society.

Jordan Lloyd Bookey: Mhmm. Other names you don't wanna say? You're right.

Yamile Saied Mendez: Yes.

Jordan Lloyd Bookey: Yes. We'll use our imaginations. I know. I was a child in the eighties. So yeah.

Yamile Saied Mendez: Right? And so, you know, it's not that my mom didn't let me play because she was this horrible, oppressive person, but just, you know, she knew that there was no future for me in that. So she encouraged my reading, my writing, my education. I went to English classes. Like, some kids in the US would go to piano or singing.

I went to English twice a week with my sister. And so she encouraged more of that. But that image of the strong girl and women was very present all my life. And so that's why it comes very naturally

Jordan Lloyd Bookey: to me. So interesting and really, really shows up in your work. You know? Okay. So speaking of learning English at a young age, I wanted to know what the experience was like for you and your sister.

I've heard that it was not all serious all the time.

Yamile Saied Mendez: Yes. So my sister and I made up this big Latin, and we pretend that it was English. And my mom, you know, it always crack up. And finally, she sent us to English classes. My sister didn't continue.

She got bored, but I loved learning English. And back in those days, because Argentina had just come out of a dictatorship and a war with England, a lot of things were censored, and a lot of media that was originally in English was all translated into Spanish. Mhmm. And so I just had this fascination with English, maybe because it was so forbidden and so different. I went to English, and the classes weren't moving as fast as I wanted to.

You know? And so my dad brought me once an English Spanish dictionary, and I taught myself a lot of English with the help of the dictionary. And it had

Jordan Lloyd Bookey: Wow.

Yamile Saied Mendez: A phonetic guide on how to pronounce things, but that was a double edged sword because I learned how to pronounce things, you know, like, how I English doesn't make sense. Right. The rules change all the time. Yeah. That's correct.

So it wasn't until I was in college that my roommates taught me that I wasn't really tired. I was tired. Yes.

Jordan Lloyd Bookey: Were you a writer?

Yamile Saied Mendez: Yes.

Jordan Lloyd Bookey: Was that sort of something where you were journaling or writing stories? Was that a part of your childhood?

Yamile Saied Mendez: I started writing my own stories when I was about 7.

Jordan Lloyd Bookey: Oh, okay.

Yamile Saied Mendez: And they were always sad and tragic. The first one that I have, Ben Maria, was, like, a princess whose grandfather had died, and my grandpa had just died. So, you know, like, it kind of explains my pattern of filtering life or processing life through writing. Right? That's something that I've always done.

A lot of the things that I wrote growing up were just what we would call fan fiction now. You know? Yeah. Like, more Heidi fan fiction. Yeah.

There was a series by a Brazilian author that I loved. It was the adventures of little nose and and her cousin. And although there is this rivalry in soccer because of, you know, with Brazil, I learned to I was obsessed with Brazil as a child because of this series. The author is Monteiro Lobato, who wrote a lot of the classics, in the children's classics in Brazil. Yeah.

A lot of the other things that I've read growing up were books by Argentine authors. Argentina has a very rich tradition of literature, and people know Borges, but he's not the only one. Marie Elena Walsh, she's the one who wrote pretty much all the nursery songs that Argentine children sing to this day. She won very prestigious awards like the Astrid Lindgren Award in the seventies.

Jordan Lloyd Bookey: Yeah.

Yamile Saied Mendez: As far as I know, she's never been translated into English, but that's everything that I've read growing up. And so I from an early age, I knew that stories had that power to show you new worlds and teach you things that you hadn't even imagined were possible. And you can get an appreciation and a love for different cultures just, you know, through stories.

Jordan Lloyd Bookey: Yeah. I love that. And it sounds like all the books that you grew up reading, like Marjalena Walsh and so on, really obviously shaped your love for storytelling or, you know, reading stories. So I'm curious how you shifted or if you always knew that you wanted to tell your own stories and, like, how you turn to being a writer yourself.

Yamile Saied Mendez: That's usually what happens after I read and read and read. I had this desire to tell my own stories, but I didn't have a community of writers in Spanish. I didn't have anybody that I could exchange pages with or talk about writing. But there was a very robust community of aspiring writers in Utah, where I lived, where I had moved. And so I started going to a writer's group every week.

And at the time, I had an idea for a girl who wants to become a professional soccer player from Rosario, and that book ended up becoming my book, Furia, that wouldn't come out until 2020. And this was 2,006 when I started writing. Wow. And so sometimes when people ask me, why did you write it in English originally? And I always say because I was learning how to become a writer.

Mhmm. And I needed that support network of a community. And back in those days, there wasn't social media still in 2006 that I could find a Spanish speaking community. I do have that now. Even in person in Utah, I am part of this wonderful community of authors who are writing in Spanish.

But more than the language, it's a group of other people who share the experience of being immigrants in a country, writing in a language that is not our mother tongue. And sharing our experiences vary depending on where we're from and what situation in life we're in right now.

Jordan Lloyd Bookey: Did you process that transition through writing? Do you see that in any of the writing that you did at that time?

Yamile Saied Mendez: Yes. Perhaps not necessarily in Furia, but there is a short story in an anthology called Come On In. And my short story, Family Above Everything, perhaps that is the most autobiographical story that I've ever written because it is about a girl leaving her family to go to college and and having the, you know, the excitement and being happy to be able to do that, but at the same time, feeling torn for leaving her family behind and not knowing when she will see them again. And that was all completely taken out from my experience. And, you know, it's not something that I process right away because I wrote that short story, I will say, in 2019, perhaps.

But, those are feelings that were simmering inside me. And until I put them down on that story, I didn't realize, you know, that I had been keeping them inside me for all that time.

Jordan Lloyd Bookey: Although Shamile was inspired by many incredible authors from a young age, growing up in Argentina in the 19 seventies eighties meant there were limits on what books were Yes. Sort of how you described it because you're you were sort of like coming into probably what you really remember as it was coming to a close. And like you said, it probably took, I don't know, perhaps we're about to see in this country.

Yamile Saied Mendez: Well, and that's the thing. Yeah. It's been almost 50 years since the beginning of the dictatorship. It started in in 1976, and still the country is struggling with a lot of things that stem from that. Growing up, although I started school already during the democracy, it took a long time for democracy to trickle down to school.

And so during the dictatorship, so many authors were banned, and a lot of authors had to they were exiled

Jordan Lloyd Bookey: Mhmm.

Yamile Saied Mendez: From Argentina. Alma Maritano, Marie Elena Walsh were 2 authors who had to either stop writing or move to another country. Madeline Laroche lived in France and in Europe for many, many years just to be safe. And so the books that we used to learn how to read and write were these primers that had abstracts or excerpts of stories. And sometimes I would get so immersed in the story, and I didn't I never even knew how it ended or who had written it or what the title was of that piece.

And then later on as an adult, I was able to put all this information together. I know that a lot of the books that and stories that I love belong to Alma Maritano or Laura Devetach, who was the daughter of Russian immigrants. And they wrote about everyday things. But for the government, there were dangerous topics because they talked about freedom and the right to read and write, and those were all things that were threatening for the government.

Jordan Lloyd Bookey: So they would take small parts of their, like, excerpts of their work so that you didn't get the full message, but you loved these little pieces of them.

Yamile Saied Mendez: Yes. And so a lot of the things that I wrote at that age were kind of like finishing the story that I got a glimpse of.

Jordan Lloyd Bookey: That's so fascinating. I've never, I've never heard a story like that, you know, on the show. I think it's so interesting because, you know, from an American perspective, a US perspective, I think of Argentina is really looming large and our collective imagination of what, you know, what life was like during those dictatorships. I'm thinking of, like, the, you know, madres of the Plaza de Mayo and so on. And, you know, it just occurs to me that during your own childhood and your own coming of age, and when you're kind of beginning to conceive of yourself maybe as a writer, you know, it was actually a dangerous time to be a writer in Argentina.

You know? I mean, authors were physically exiled or

Yamile Saied Mendez: The unlucky ones were disappeared. Right. There's an author who wrote this incredible science fiction novel, El Edermauta, the Ed or Not. And I I bring it up because Netflix is doing a series that's coming out next year.

Jordan Lloyd Bookey: Oh,

Yamile Saied Mendez: cool. And he was disappeared along with 4 daughters, 2 sons in law, 2 grandchildren, and there are some of the 30,000 people that were disappeared that, to this day, we know nothing of.

Jordan Lloyd Bookey: Yeah.

Yamile Saied Mendez: And so that is part of the cultural trauma that has affected me in my life, even though nobody in my family was a victim directly. But in our society, it's such a big wound that, of course, it affected how I think about story, how I think about writers and teachers and librarians who were so brave to still share these stories even if they had to photocopy them or tell them orally until they became part of the myth Yeah. Of our country.

Jordan Lloyd Bookey: You must have a very like, a broader lens in a way for what's happening right now around book bans in this country.

Yamile Saied Mendez: Yeah.

Jordan Lloyd Bookey: Because it's like I think you are descended from people who have really lived and experienced, and you have, like you said, this sort of, like, inherited trauma that you have seen are the real extreme of the extreme. I think it's the extreme of what it could be. Right? Yes.

Yamile Saied Mendez: But I feel like sometimes we feel like those stories are so foreign to us. Okay. It happens in another country. Yeah. It happened half a century ago.

But democracy is so fragile, and we do have to protect it in every generation because it's so easy to forget that those rights were very difficult to attain. Mhmm. And so, yes, I am very involved with Authors Against Book Bans, which is a national organization that creates awareness of the book banning that is happening in the country right now in the US. And in Argentina, there's also book banning starting Yeah. Again Yeah.

Which seemed like something that we had agreed on, that would never happen again. We said nuncamas. Yeah. And it is happening.

Jordan Lloyd Bookey: Yeah. Yeah.

Yamile Saied Mendez: A writer never forgets the first time he accepted a few coins or a word of praise in exchange for a story. He will never forget the sweet poison of vanity in his blood and the belief that if he succeeds in not letting anyone discover his lack of talent, the dream of literature will provide him with a roof over his head, a hot meal at the end of the day, and what he covets the most, his name printed on a miserable piece of paper that surely will outlive him. A writer is condemned to remember that moment because from then on, he is doomed and his soul has a prize.

Jordan Lloyd Bookey: That passage, which is a little darker than many on this show, comes from The Angel's Game by Carlos Ruiz Saffon, first published in Spanish in 2008 and later translated into English. It captures the moment a writer crosses a threshold from writing for passion to writing for publication and how that exchange marks them forever. Whether it's for a few coins or a few words of praise, that moment holds weight. Shmila knows this feeling, and she's had moments like that of her own.

Yamile Saied Mendez: I loved it so much because this story is about a writer

Jordan Lloyd Bookey: Yeah.

Yamile Saied Mendez: And how he struggles to get his name on the cover of a book. And it really resonated with me because I had started writing. I had received a few words of praise that, yes, your writing voice is very strong and and powerful. And so I had my incentive to keep pursuing this dream that seemed so unreachable and and far away, but eventually became a reality. We writers, we all put a price to our soul.

Because it is a little bit of our soul that we're sharing.

Jordan Lloyd Bookey: You have had a couple of, like, these big partnerships. It was Reese's Book Club, right? Do you feel like it changed your approach to writing? Or oftentimes, people talk about they win the Newbery. It's like, oh, god.

I hope you have the next one lined up because it can be stressful or whatever. Like, so I just wonder with that it was, like, probably a pretty big transition point in your writing career.

Yamile Saied Mendez: Absolutely. Especially because that book, Furia, that was part of the Reese Book Club and then won the Pura Belpre award, and it's been translated into a lot of languages, gave me the opportunity to reach an audience that I, that, to me, seemed unreachable. That book came out in 2020 again. During the worst of the pandemic, my book tour was canceled, and I was feeling, oh my gosh, this book's gonna go nowhere. And then this happened, which was incredible, but it does put this pressure on a person's shoulders when you have to write.

Because when you're actively drafting, you cannot be thinking about your editor or the public or for this new book to achieve the same Notoriety or whatever. Thresholds. It has to be its own theme, but it is very difficult to leave all those things on-site and just write the story. But I am grateful because being part of the Reese Witherspoon Book Club also gave me, again, for me, community is very important. It gave me this sisterhood of the other Witherspoon writers.

And we have a group together. We plan retreats or we exchange advice, and we cheer each other on, or boost our covers when they're revealed, or we go to each other's tour stops. So it gave me also this wonderful community and this incredible support network. And so, it's been fantastic.

Jordan Lloyd Bookey: I was thinking about how, Furia did come out. It came out during the pandemic. And that was just like this, you know, national moment of great uncertainty for us as, like, a global community. You know? And then in so many ways, there was just, like, a lot of uncertainty.

And I think it's, in a way, it's, like, on brand, I guess, for you because a lot of your writing really a lot of your stories, I should say, really center around these moments, these moments of uncertainties, moments of change in a you know, especially in a young woman's life. What are your thoughts about, you know, sort of writing through those moments and that the, like, importance of those, like, hinge moments, I guess, in your writing?

Yamile Saied Mendez: I think about that a lot too because also, you know, usually, yes, we go through these difficult moments, like, for the pandemic, specifically as a community worldwide. But, personally, individually, everybody was going through such difficult times.

Jordan Lloyd Bookey: Yeah.

Yamile Saied Mendez: And in like, in my family, we lost 2 grandparents in the space of 5 months, and so many other people went through similar situations. And and just the isolation, and for me not being able to go back and visit my my siblings for a long time, that really took a toll on me. And the things that I turned to to make sense of the world or or what was happening or to entertain myself, to take my mind away from that were stories that other people had written and also the stories that came to my mind during those during those times. And so I won't lie and say that through those difficult times, sometimes I wondered, what what am I doing? Like, is this even important?

I'm just writing my little stories in my room, and the world is falling apart. But when I talk to fellow writers and creatives, we always come to the conclusion that those difficult times are the ones in which we need stories the most because stories connect us. They help us, again, process what is happening, have a better outlook into the world. And they remind us that life is the wheel, and humanity has been through countless cycles of, you know, ups and downs. The things that seem so dire now won't be this dire forever.

Eventually, there is an upswing. And so I always needed that reminder, and it made me think that my young readers need that reminder as well.

Jordan Lloyd Bookey: They do. I think that's harder for young people to

Yamile Saied Mendez: Yes.

Jordan Lloyd Bookey: It's hard for all of us, to be honest, to see that, like, long arc that you're or, you know, cycle. Yes. It's hard for anybody really when you're in it. But I think especially for like teens and tweens, it's, it is very hard to see that to pull back, you know?

Yamile Saied Mendez: Yes. And during those difficult times, there is that natural feeling of loneliness. It feels like we're the only people going through a specific situation. But when we read or when we share a story, we realize that we're not alone, that other people have gone through it even if just getting your period while wearing white pants. You know?

Other people went through it, and they survived. And you're gonna survive too, and you're gonna be okay. And if you haven't gone through that situation, it can give you more empathy and compassion for people who do. So, again, it opens your eyes and your heart for other perspectives that are different from your own. And in the end, that is why stories are so powerful to connect us to each other Yeah.

Because they help us see the world from a different point of view.

Jordan Lloyd Bookey: You know, I agree with that. And I'm sure you've, like, personally had a lot of readers connect with your books. I was just wanting to hear if you have any stories of how you've really seen the impact on a reader or readers that you can share.

Yamile Saied Mendez: Yes. I was just at the Austin Book Festival last weekend, and it's always a fantastic event. I love it. And I was presenting at this panel talking about Power for Girls and how the festival was organized. There were kids from 6th 7th grade who were introducing the authors and our stories.

Jordan Lloyd Bookey: Oh, I love it.

Yamile Saied Mendez: And the the child that introduced my my book was a girl, and she introduces my character, Valedi, and says, and she plays in an all boy team and gets her period during this super important game. And then she paused and said and looks at the audience and says, and I know what that feels like because I've been the only girl in an all voice team for a long time. And it was just a simple statement, but good friend of mine was in the audience. So she was in tears, and later she told me, do you understand the impact that that story had on that one child, that she could see her situation reflected in a book? And perhaps Valeria and this girl have very different backgrounds and challenges and and families, but they have that in common.

So this girl saw herself in the story at this certain point, and that makes it all worth it.

Jordan Lloyd Bookey: So special. I love that. And I just like the idea of being there. And I think it's, like, there's so much of these moments, like, these pivotal changes in young people's lives. You know, there's, like, so much complexity of emotion.

And I think your books really like, they capture that complexity. What do you draw on, you know, to show that? What are you drawing from to really represent that emotional complexity? From observation. So I've been lucky that

Yamile Saied Mendez: I get to watch my children go through these spirits in life, which reminds me of my experience going through these difficult times in life and and having all these emotions. So I remember what it's like to be 11 years old, and I go back to that place. And I and I feel like that's why I love writing for middle grade because I feel a little bit of my soul got stuck in those in that time period. Perhaps because I was such an avid reader, I was a thoughtful child, and I remember the thoughts and the feelings that I had going through puberty or watching how my experience was different from that of my classmates or or even my sister. My sister was very, very young when she got her first period.

It was such a different experience. And and I remember everything, all the emotions. And I feel like as it is for a lot of older sisters. Right? I felt so mature for my age.

And now looking I was 11. I was a little kid.

Jordan Lloyd Bookey: And Right.

Yamile Saied Mendez: Right? And then it's that moment that I was I still wanted to play, you know, jump rope with my friends or run or go swimming, but then there is this all these other things to take into the consideration when you're and also, like, my family was poor. You're growing up and your mom can't keep up with buying, you know, clothes. I will fit you.

Jordan Lloyd Bookey: Oh my god.

Yamile Saied Mendez: Yeah. You know? That was and there's nothing you can do to stop yourself from growing. You want to grow up. And so there were a lot of bittersweet moments, and and I remember them like they happened yesterday.

So I feel like that's why I'm able to tap back into them and then give them to my characters. Bless their hearts.

Jordan Lloyd Bookey: You know, one of the, the bittersweet moments that I I think I read about was, like, the story about your younger brother, who everyone loved, and a a story from Christmas time, like a a gift that you bought him. Would you would you mind telling us that story?

Yamile Saied Mendez: When he was about 7, the country was going through a really difficult time and, my parents always had precarious jobs. My dad was a taxi driver. My mom was, you know, a nanny and a housekeeper for a rich family, and a lot of the money that they earned went for for our education, you know, and our daily living expenses. But it was Christmas time and we older children knew that there would be no money for presents. But my little brother wanted a bike.

And it was the only thing he's ever really wanted other than a soccer ball. Because all his life, he always received soccer balls or soccer jerseys or soccer cleats, you know? He wanted a bike. And so we told my mom, I I don't even remember that conversation but it was very clear that we would be okay if he was the one that got the bike. So on Christmas night, because in Argentina Noel or Santa Claus comes at night.

On 24th, right at midnight, people usually go outside to watch the fireworks and then you come back inside and there are presents under the tree. And so there were little letters for for all of us, but there was a bike for my brother and we were all so happy. We were all delighted and the next day, in front of my of our building there was this huge parking, place and I remember his little friends taking turns to push him, to teach him how to ride a bike because he was 7, he didn't know how to ride 1. And and my students and I, like, even to this day, we're all in our forties. There's no resentment.

That's one of our happiest memories because he was happy.

Jordan Lloyd Bookey: No. That's a story. I just love it. And it says so much about your life and values and no bike, but a beautiful story.

Yamile Saied Mendez: And I did get a bike as an adult. My husband gave me a bike when I think the year that I turned 30, he He surprised me with one because he knew the story. And I was so emotional. And I I was if he was 7, I was 12. That little 12 year old, you know, I of course, I wanted a bike too, you know, but I knew better than to ask because I knew my mom couldn't buy one for each one of us.

Jordan Lloyd Bookey: You've gotta be kidding me. That's, like, the best story. I had no idea that he did that. Oh, how beautiful. And so interesting you bring up your mom because the other the other question, I wanted to ask you about is so there's this quote from that I wrote down here, and it just it really it stopped me in my tracks the first time I read it, and it did again when I read it this time, and it reads as follows.

I smiled and ran to the field to sing the wordless song of the captive women who roared in my blood. My ancestresses had been waiting to sing for generations. I was their medium. And I wonder, like, thinking to your mom and these stories and, you know, who do you view yourself as a medium for? Like, do you view yourself in the way that Camila did?

And if you could speak to that a little.

Yamile Saied Mendez: I always say that it's my name on the cover of the book or the books, but it's also I got here through the sacrifice and the work and the effort and the hope of my mom, who only had a 10th grade education. But she loved books and stories. And she wrote all her life, and I was able to go through her journals and beautiful writing and be inspired by her beautiful writing. But she, for her name, has never been on the cover of a book. And my grandmothers, whom were very young moms and also seemingly didn't have a voice, but I come from them.

And as well as my great grandmothers, recently, I was going through some ancestry records, and I found the records of my great great grandma who came from Yugoslavia. And her name was Elena, and she died at age 43 in childbirth for her 11th child in 9 years. And I was telling my children, we know her name. When she was born, where, when she died, where, and I can only imagine the struggles that she went through in her life. And I I also want to imagine the love and happiness that she experienced, but I don't know that.

I she didn't leave anything written. Right? Yeah. So I can't know from her. But I hope I hope that what I'm doing is giving voice to all these women that came before me that didn't have the chance to have an education or write books because they were busy moms or there were other things that they were doing.

But without them, I wouldn't be here today.

Jordan Lloyd Bookey: Much like she has navigated many of life's challenges with unwavering spirit, Shamile's reading challenge celebrates protagonists who exemplify similar resilience.

Yamile Saied Mendez: Okay. Indomitable characters. That's how I titled my challenge. Because what all these books have in common that I have chosen, they're mostly middle grade. They have unforgettable characters that go through difficult challenges to accomplish the things that they set out to do at the beginning of the book.

My book that I would include and I was that I kept in mind that I would go along with this challenge is The Beautiful Game. Lupe Won Won't Dance, it features a girl who plays baseball, but that is such a small aspect of the book. I feel like Donna Barbayera does such a wonderful job at writing this spunky girl characters that are so endearing and funny, but so full of heart as well. Grow Up, Luci Zapata is by another Latina, Alexandra Alexandre. And Luci Zapata goes to Colombia, and then when she comes back she her friendship fell apart, her friendship with a teammate.

Isabelle in Bloom, my my Respicio, features a character who goes to the Philippines and gets in touch with her extended family and the culture of her family. And there is one book that is a little bit different from the rest, which is Ultra Violet because the main character is a boy. It's by Aida Salazar, who also wrote The Moon Within, which is on the list. And Aida does an amazing job at portraying these characters going through puberty.

Jordan Lloyd Bookey: You can find Shamile's reading challenge and all past reading challenges at the reading culture pod.com. And this episode's Beanstack featured librarian is once again Billy Allen, branch manager of Whitney Library in Las Vegas Clark County Library District. He is also 3 King Visions on YouTube, and more recently, he was featured on season 9 of Queer Eye. Congratulations again, Billy. Mister Billy, this time, tells us about a unique incentive that got the kids at his library to crush their summer reading goals.

Billy Allen: So I'll tell you something cool. So we did it 2 years in a row. So for the summer reading challenge, of course, courtesy of Beanstack. So I this is so funny. This is so funny.

So I'm like, look. We need to figure out a creative way to get more kids before they leave school and during the summer to register a beanstalk to complete the summer reading challenge. So one of my staff members said, Billy, I got an idea. I said, what is that? We're gonna get you slimed.

I said, oh, really? I said, let's do this. So we started brainstorming. I said, we're gonna do a slime challenge. So last summer, we set a goal of 300 completions at my library of completing the summer reading challenge, and we had my assistant branch manager and one of my librarians.

So at 75 completions, it had a face oh, I'm gonna send you a picture of this in the email of the the meter. So we had a meters throughout the whole library. So throughout the whole summer, when kids and adults are completing their summer reading channels, logging in the bean stack, the meter goes up. So you see my librarian's face, my assistant branch manager, and my face on the meter. So people are like, the kids are coming in like, I'm gonna get you slide.

And last summer, they surpassed the goals. We had over 575 completions. So I got slide

Jordan Lloyd Bookey: At your library?

Billy Allen: At my library.

Jordan Lloyd Bookey: Wow.

Billy Allen: I got slide Nickelodeon style on my stage, the real slide. My team made it. And what happened this year, I'm all about just sharing these type of ideas with my colleagues. So I had 5 other libraries in my library district. We made it a district wide slime challenge where we were doing Instagram reels and challenges like, hey Robbie, what you have with your summer reading, page?

And what happens is we got the community excited. The news picked it up. Everybody like, wow. I wanna see you get slimed. So the beanstalk stats are going through the roof.

So this year in August for our back to school fair, we gave out over 500 backpacks. We gave out over 43 haircuts in my library. We had different vendors and partners provide resources for the community. And at the end, they saw my executive director. We got Kelvin Watson slimed.

We got a Kelvin slimed, my library operations director, myself, and several other members of my staff. That's engagement of the community, and we're gonna present that in ALA next year.

Jordan Lloyd Bookey: This has been The Reading Culture, and you've been listening to my conversation with Shamile Saeed Mendez. Again, I'm your host, Jordan Lloyd Bookie. And currently, I'm reading The Women by Kristen Hannah and Will's Race for Home by Jewell Parker Rhodes. If you've enjoyed today's episode, please show some love and give us a 5 star review. It only takes a few seconds, and it actually helps the show, so please do it.

This episode was produced by Jackie Lamport, Mel Webb Wilkinson, and Lower Street Media, and script edited by Josiah Lumberto Egan. To learn more about how you can help grow your community's reading culture, please check out all of our resources at beanstack.com. And remember to sign up for our newsletter at the reading culture pod.comforward/newsletter for special offers and bonus content. Thanks for listening and keep reading.