Hijas Americanas

So I set up posts to be published everyday while I was away but I just realized that it was a fruitless endeavor because none of them published. I promise all new posts next week- sorry for the curveball!

I know I have mentioned that my dad used to take me to the library every Saturday morning when I was a kid and let me check out however many books I wanted (and also let me take as long as I wanted).  We would then go to the grocery store where he bought me a box of peanut brittle and I read all the way home in the car because I just couldn’t wait.  I read while brushing my teeth (still do), read under the covers with a flashlight (still do when my bedside light puts BF over the brink), read in the car, tried to read at the table, read walking across the house.  It was like a Dr. Seuss story really.  I can read in the car, near or far, on the bus, despite your fuss, in the store, while doing chores.  You get the picture.  I give books to kids as presents all the time.  It’s my thing, really, and I have a group of favorite kid books that get sent everywhere (and then I forget if I have given this book or that book to this child or that child or… again, another Dr. Seuss story could be written but I’ll resist the urge).  Suffice to say: I love books, love reading, love giving kids books, worry about whether or not kids are reading enough, could kiss JK Rowling for making kids voracious readers again even if I haven’t read one sentence of a Harry Potter book. 

So when I see the 2008 Kids and Family Reading Report come across my computer screen, I had to investigate.  Are kids reading?  Here’s the scoop: 

68% of children think it is extremely or very important to read for pleasure

82% of children between the ages of 5 and 8 like or love reading for pleasure

55% of teens between the ages of 15-17 like or love reading for pleasure

90% of respondents believe that they need to be a strong reader to get into a good college 

25%  are “high frequency” pleasure readers (reading daily)

53%  qualify as “moderate frequency” readers, reading for pleasure between one and six times per week

 When children were asked why they do not engage in more pleasure reading, the top answer selected was “I would rather do other things,” followed in frequency by “I have too much schoolwork and homework,” and “I have trouble finding books that I like.”  Boys outnumbered girls by 10% in all age categories in stating that they had trouble finding enjoyable books.

Parents who read frequently were found to be six times more likely to have children that read often, compared to those who read infrequently. Around one quarter of parents (24%) said they read frequently.

82% of parents responded that they wished their children read more for fun, with nearly the same percentage citing reading skills as one of the top three most important skills for their children to possess, along with critical thinking and math skills.

I have spent this weekend remembering and honoring great men– those I know and those that I don’t. 

I was walking into my house on Friday night after a long day at the Alltel store when my cell phone rang.  It was my husband calling to tell me that Tim Russert had died.  The news made me so sad.  I have had a long crush on the news men of NBC in general.  It started in high school when I developed a wicked crush on Tom Brokaw.  My economics teacher brought in a tape of the stocks portion of the nightly news every day.  She always paused it while Tom was speaking, and he would be frozen in front of our classroom with his mouth frozen in an awkward place.  The football player who sat behind me would say, “Do you still dig him?”  at those moments.  ”It’s not just because he’s handsome,” I would reply, “It’s because of what he knows!”  At the beginning of the Iraq war, when David Bloom, the Weekend Today Anchor, died of deep vein thrombosis while covering the war in Iraq as an embedded solider, I wept openly.  I hated it for his family and hated it for the world of journalism and every one of us who trusted him to give us the news without filter.  I felt the same way Friday night with this news about Russert. 

On Saturday morning, I turned on my television just as Weekend Today started a tribute to Tim Russert.   I poured my cereal, ready to take some of it in.  And then I happened to glance at my e-mail.  And the first sentence of the first email in my inbox undid me.  My college roommate and one of my dearest friends wrote a late night email telling me and a handful of her other friends that her father had lost his valiant fight with cancer.  What I see next in my mind’s eye is not from my own eyes.  It is removed from me, I am the proverbial fly on the wall watching the girl in the grey t-shirt move.  My Blackberry dropped from my hand, hitting the tile floor in the kitchen, skidding, but I didn’t realize that then.  I turned from the kitchen, ran outside, gasped for air, my eyes darting everywhere and nowhere.  BF rounded the corner of the house.  “What’s wrong,” he asked, running towards me.  I told him, but then I spun round and round on the porch.  ”I don’t know what to do.”  It was too early to call my friend.  I had gotten up early to run before the mercury crept too high.  I walked round and round the house, waiting for the clock to creep up to a decent hour to call my girl.  I cried. Later, I found the cereal floating in its bowl, the Blackberry across the floor. 

Mostly, I spent yesterday thinking about her great, amazing father– a former lawyer turned farmer with a passion for education and civil rights who had gone from school board member to state senate chairmen of education.  I had met him before ever meeting his daughter.  And I had liked him so much, I knew that I would like his daughter when she later walked on to our freshmen hall and moved into the room next door.  We would become fast friends and the farm that she grew up on would become a place where her parents always welcomed us– treating us as their children, feeding us bountifully, asking us about our lives and dreams, taking us out for 6 am horseback rides and mid-afternoon skeet shooting.  Her dad knew that my dream was to be a teacher and he and I could talk education tirelessly– before I ever became a teacher and long after my secondary education teaching career was done.  He was a liberal man with a mind that was expansive and a heart that was even bigger.  And he asked the hard questions, did the hard things, led the right way, even when anything else would have been easier.  The rest of the day, pain stung my nose and throat, tears rolled down my eyes without my realizing they were there.  I booked my ticket to Mississippi, packed my bags, rented a car, downloaded directions.  My parents called to say not to worry about driving to South Carolina to see them for Father’s Day because they wanted me to have more time before leaving for the farm, but that would be the antithesis, really, of what these moments remind you about life.  So we enjoyed a great Saturday night dinner with my father-in-law for Father’s Day and then jumped into the car Sunday morning to drive to South Carolina to celebrate my dad with my family.  My friend, her brother, and their families had spent the last seven weeks with her family in Mississippi, honoring her father’s life while it was still being lived.  That’s an amazing thing, isn’t it?  To have the chance to tell a person that has mattered so much to you absolutely everything you have loved about them over time and to be given the chance to just sit and hear their advice, reflection, and wisdom. 

I am on the way to the most beautiful place in my world to be with some of the most loving and passionate people in my world in order to celebrate a great man who lived his life with conviction and passion, compassion and purpose, wisdom and a sense of justice.  I am broken open by my ability to see my dear friend and to just hold her and listen.  I am humbled already by the stories that I will hear, the love that will be shared, the sheer beauty and strength and wide open love that is this family.  What do I cherish is the question that I posed on here this time last week.  Tonight, that answer is both so long and so short.  I cherish good fathers.                               

I love reading non-fiction, especially memoir, and especially memoir that just spills it and in really lyrical language, too.  Perhaps it reminds me of the moment when my first MFA advisor, Jamie Manrique, told me that he thought I needed to dtich poetry and write non-fiction. 

“I’ve heard you tell a story and you are good at it,” he said, squinting at me.  

“I can’t write non-fiction,”  the terrorized twenty-something in me replied. 
“Why not?  I know you have something to say,”  he responded. 

“Well, yeah, but it would piss my mom off,” i answered.  

He looked at me, unfazed.  “”You need to write like your mother is dead,”  he said.  I recognized those words.  Maybe Alice Walker had said them in some memoir I had read of hers? 

“Yeah, but my mom’s not dead and she’s a strong-willed Puerto Rican woman,”  I answered.  

Ultimately, Manrique lead me to prose like a horse to water and the pieces of my work that I most love are the ones that I have written when I have forgotten who might read it and just said what needed to be said.  There’s something to the beauty and urgency and realness of memoir– the reminder that all of our otherness captured in writing just offers readers the company they thirst for, the perspective that feeds their hunger.  They remind us that we live, really, not so that we can be solitary creatures in our purpose but so that we can share.      

So, given that I love memoir, imagine my delight when I came across this clever list on the Entertainment Weekly web-site that tells you what book lets you go along on the adventure of “eating every thing possible in China” or “being a hip hop dancer”.  Check it out and choose a book to read on a topic you never thought you’d pick and see what happens.       

byoo-tee: the quality in a person that deeply satisfies mind, body, and soul. 

How do you define beauty?  It is a question I asked every single participant in the research for Hijas Americanas.  Not one of the women used a physical attribute to describe what they found beautiful.  Their defintions centered on the way people celebrated and nurtured their brain and spirit and how they cared for the vessel that took them through life.  It was eye-opening and made quite the statement and so I wanted to do something that honored that statement that so many women were making.  Enter the byoo-tee tee, a fair labor t-shirt that lets you show the world your healthy outlook on beauty (or the healthy outlook you are working on fully embracing).  All of the proceeds from the $20 tee go to support Girls on the Run International, an organization that is working in over 150 cities to help girls escape the girl box society has become too good at putting them in.  We can help them overcome the challenges we faced as girls by providing for the programming at Girls on the Run International as they explode through more communiies and countries.  I just checked out the t-shirts and there are just 38 left!  Wanna make sure you get one of the remaining tees?  Shoot me an e-mail at hijasamericanas@gmail.com with your color and size preferences and we’ll work out the payment and delivery details.       

In the natural organic tee, fitted version-  5 smalls, 7 mediums, 1 Large, 3 Extra Larges

In the natural, organic loose version- 1 XXL, 1 XXXL

In the grey, vneck loose version- 1 medium, 9 Large, 10 XL     

I was just cleaning out the sent items from my e-mail inbox and came across this Q&A sequence from August 2006– just as I had wrapped the first draft of Hijas and was headed into the editing.  I know some folks are really interested in the process of how a book becomes a book so I thought I would share this Q&A.   

Tell us about your experience in writing this book. For instance, how long did it take? Where did the original idea come from? What research did you do? Was there anyone who was particularly helpful in researching/writing the book?

I left my undergraduate years assuming that I would be a high school teacher for life.  What I found in the school where I taught, where many of my students were lower-middle class, first generation American and bilingual (an interesting echo of my own upbringing), was that few of my students had a voice.  I wanted to learn exactly how to get at voice through a medium I loved which was writing and so I applied for MFA programs in Creative Writing with the intention of learning how to instigate voice through writing as an educator without even thinking about personally pursuing publishing.

I realized two things as I studied.  The first is that my mission in life is to give voice to those who are voiceless.  Sometimes that is by using my own voice (in writing and speech) to express what I am hearing from those who are scared to publicly share their experiences and sometimes it is by empowering the voiceless as a teacher, friend, or mentor to speak their truths.  The second thing that I realized is that writing is a natural extension of my life’s commitment to advocacy, community, and activism.  It is those realizations that made publishing become interesting to me– realizing that there are so many important things that need to be heard in the world and one tool for that exposure is publishing.  Putting some things in print can inspire movement, change, and compassion.

I initially approached Seal Press about publishing a collection of essays I wrote in graduate school called Giving Up Beauty that detailed my experiences with ethnic identity, body image, and beauty perception.  Brooke Warner responded quickly, but asked if I would be interested in exploring those themes in a more global sense.  I took a few weeks and then pitched her this idea because  I am very much interested in having my vocation not just be about putting my own voice out there but, instead, getting many voices out there.  The work of people like Eve Ensler really inspires me, and I was thrilled to have the opportunity to bring the range of the Latina experience to the world’s conversation. 

The book required me to find Latinas around the country who could participate in both the survey and the interviews and the ability to use the internet to network through Latinas was invaluable.  I also studied past dissertations and books that were written about the themes of the book.  Two research assistants in my first four months of work on the book proved invaluable in helping me find research, develop the survey and questionnaire, conduct interviews, and begin writing.  I started my research in January 2006 and began writing in early May 2006.  I finished the first draft in September 2006 and then spent two months editing.   

The CDC just released national statistics on health-related behavior among high school students in 2007.  I talked about these statistics for the Charlotte area earlier this year.  Today, I am sharing some of the national findings on Hispanic youth behavior.  Their primary concern about these numbers is that they indicate that Hispanic youth are not making the same progress in reducing unhealthy behaviors as white or black youth. 

• No significant change occurred in the percentage of Hispanic high school students who had ever had sexual intercourse.  In 1991, 53% of Hispanic youth reported having had sex.  In 2007, that number is 52%.  In both 1991 and 2007, 17% of Hispanic youth reported having four or more sexual partners during their life. 

• Hispanic students were the most likely to attempt suicide, use cocaine, heroin or ecstasy, ride with a drive who had been drinking alcohol, or go 24 hours or more without eating in an effort to lose weight. 

• Hispanic students were the most likely to say they did not go to school on occasion because of safety concerns, were offered or sold illegal drugs on school property, or drank alcohol on school property. 

• Positive findings for Hispanic youth included:  students in 2007 were more likely to wear a seat belt at least some of the time than Hispanic youth in 1991, were more likely to use a condom than Hispanics in 1991, and were using cigarettes, drugs, and drinking less than in 1991.  They were also riding in the car with a drunk driver less than Hispanic youth in 1991. 

 So how do we make positive progress in health-related behaviors among Latino youth?  Self-medicating and being self-destructive are signs of stress and are desperate ways to cope.  Growing up Latino in the United States—especially in this time of narrow-minded and narrow-sighted immigration backlash- is not easy.  Navigating dual and sometimes conflicting cultures can lead to behaviors that seem to make one feel better or forget for just a moment, but those behaviors don’t solve any problem.  We have to teach our young people resiliency, the power of and way to self-satisfaction, and appropriate coping skills.  So often we don’t name the elephant in the room.  But the elephant in this room is that this country can be incredibly difficult to navigate if you are disempowered or marginalized.  It can lead you to marginalize your own self.  It is only when we- as friends, mentors, parents, educators, and community members- resist the urge to marginalize, categorize, degrade, and empower our young people to do the same that we can be the world that we imagined.  But that is the big picture, and we must start in our little world.  If you are a parent, stop today and have a meaningful conversation with the children and young people in your lives—no matter your background, no matter their background.  And build on it daily.  Those conversations are the roots of our rebirth because we cannot be great as a global community until we bring out one another’s greatness.  And if you are not a parent, think about what you can do to change these numbers, how you factor into your community.  It is time for all of us to be inspired—by the disappointment of what happens if we aren’t passionate, if we don’t channel our best person and the hope of what is possible if we do.        

Another tool I use regularly when I teach journaling classes is Three Small Questions.  They really aren’t small questions at all but what I want from the participants is small (read: brief) answers.  Workshop participants leave with a workbook that has all types of prompts including a long list of small questions.  They are asked to choose 3 questions a week to answer everyday.  It’s great if they can answer them on the page, but it’s also fine to answer the questions while they are in the shower or on their commute.  Today, I am encouraging you to take the Three Small Questions Challenge.  Ask yourself these questions for seven days in a row so that you can see how your answers change or don’t change over the course of time and then act accordingly.  I’ll explain this more after we look at this week’s three small questions.   

What do I cherish? 

What might I do differently? 

What do I need right now more than anything else? 

Here are my answers: 

What do I cherish?  Being with loved ones. 

What brought me joy today?  Having wonderful friends over for dinner to discuss Plan B by Anne Lamott.   

What do I need right now more than anything else?  Plan my week in a deliberate fashion in order to get everything done before going to the beach next week!    

Feel free to share your answers here today and/or everyday this week.  And watch your answers so that you can learn from them. For example, if one of my answers this week to What do I cherish? is “my family” and, yet, I haven’t talked to my parents in a week, I need to reflect on that incongruency and engage in different actions.  If for three days straight I say that I need sleep more than anything else then the question becomes why am I not giving myself what I need.  Use these three small questions to find a balancing center in your life this week!     

A friend once asked me why I dated someone that she thought ill-suited for me not long after I graduated from college.  It was a casual relationship, truly a dating relationship, we would go to minor league baseball games, out to dinner, to movies, cook together, once every few weeks.  I had told him when he first asked me out that my priority was teaching and that if he was looking for a girlfriend, I wasn’t the girl.  He told me he was happy to just date casually if that’s what I needed/ wanted.  He wasn’t who I would spend the rest of my life together, I knew, but I still liked enjoyed our time together. 

“But why is that?” My long-time friend asked.  And it only took one second for me to answer. 

“Because he doesn’t have any pre-conceived notion of who I am from being around me when I was in high school, or in college, or as a high-school teacher, or anything else.  He just knows me right now as who I am when I spend time with him.” 

I recognized in this answer that one of the personas that I wanted to have in my life was that of a fun-loving girl without the pressure I put on myself to save myself, my family, the kids that I taught, the world.  Sometimes I just wanted to be and dating JD allowed me a place to just exist without any expectation.  It made me realize that part of what I wanted in my life was at least some time that didn’t have to be product or purpose centered.

It’s incredibly hard for me not to be productive or purposeful all the time, but it is a necessary part of the creative process and I think just plain old human evolution to rest, to observe, to just be.  I am wrapping up my first week of my semi-sabbatical and I have just ambled along with my tasks this week in a way that is unfamiliar.  There wasn’t a single deadline to meet this week which allowed the week to unfold very organically, even willy-nilly.  I worked a little on my syllabus for the body image class I am teaching this fall, worked some on Circle de Luz items, did some scratching (a great word that Twyla Tharp uses to describe brainstorming) on a book project that I want to write the proposal on soon.  I even “skipped school” to go to a movie– this from a girl who never skipped school as a student and certainly not as a teacher.  Nurturing your inner creative is a funny thing.  You think that you should stuff it with things and then it will produce.  But that’s not it at all.  Your inner creative needs room to just be, to scratch a little here, bend a little there, formulate outside of your conscious knowing.  Then- in a flash- in the shower, during your commute, or on your run, it delivers a strike of lightening across your mind and you say, “Of course!”  I am making room right now for the lightening to strike: scratching and being, reading and sitting.  I am nurturing the little idea roots in my head to come out as whatever they want.  I am giving them room, the way that JD did for me years ago.             

You know that one of my goals this summer is to get in a lot of reading.  This one has been on my shelf since it came out in 2005.  I loved Traveling Mercies by Anne Lamott, another book of essays that share faith as a common theme.  Below is my review from Good Reads and then some additional thoughts below on my favorite passages from the book– just for this blog.   

Plan B: Further Thoughts on Faith by Anne Lamott

rating: 4 of 5 stars
I love Anne Lamott’s non-fiction. She’s honest, even when it reveals her cranky or crazy or vulnerable side, which just goes to show that she’s not cranky or crazy, just vulnerable to a strength (as opposed to that saying, she’s whatever to a fault). She says the things some think and gives a sense of hope, even when things feel hopeless. I especially liked her frankness about teenage Sam, the war, and her mother, and perhaps my favorite piece was her commencement address. That said, lots of pages got notes (good writing advice, underlines, etc) and I look forward to going back and making note of those in my own reading journal.

View all my reviews.

Good writing advice: 

from the essay, Sam’s dad:  with writing, you start where you are, and you usually do it poorly.  You just do it- you do it afraid.  And something happens. 

from the essay, holy of holies 101:  I know that with writing, you start where you are, and you flail around for a while, and if you keep doing it, every day you get closer to something good.    

On death: 

from the essay, untitled:  I have survived so much loss, as all o fus have by our forties… Rubble is the ground on which our deepest friendships are built.  If you haven’t already, you will lose someone you can’t live without, and your heart will be badly broken, and you never completely get over the loss of a deeply beloved person.  But this is also good news.  The person lives forever, in your broken heart that doesn’t seal back up.  And you learn to dance with the banged-up heart.  You dance to the absurdities of life; you dance to the minuet of old friendships. 

On life: 

from the essay, untitled:  I became more successful in my forties, but that pales in comparison with the other gifts of my current decade- how kind to myself I have become, what a wonderful, tender wife I am to myself, what a loving companion… I run interference for myself when I am working, like the wife of a great artist would- “No, I’m sorry, she can’t come.  She’s working hard these days, and needs a lot of down time.”  I live by the truth that “No” is a complete sentence.  I rest as a spiritual act.