Latinx and Latin American Profiles

Frederick Luis Aldama

• Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Press
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9780822982951
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: North American Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

Children's and young adult literature has become an essential medium for identity formation in contemporary Latino/a culture in the United States. This book is an original collection of more than thirty interviews led by Frederick Luis Aldama with Latino/a authors working in the genre. The conversations revolve around the conveyance of young Latino/a experience, and what that means for the authors as they overcome societal obstacles and aesthetic complexity. The authors also speak extensively about their experiences within the publishing industry and with their audiences. As such, Aldama's collection presents an open forum to contemporary Latino/a writers working in a vital literary category and sheds new light on the myriad formats, distinctive nature, and cultural impact it offers.

THE AUTHORS AND ARTISTS

JORGE AGUIRRE

Born and raised in Columbus, Ohio, to parents from Colombia, Jorge Aguirre is the author of Giants Beware! (2012) and Dragons Beware! (2015), graphic novels illustrated by Rafael Rosado in their Chronicles of Claudette series aimed at young readers. Jorge also produces and writes TV programs for kids. He created the show Goldie and Bear (2015) for Disney Junior. He writes for Nick Jr., PBS, and Sprout, among others. He has won several awards, including the Cybils Award for elementary- and middle-grade graphic novels. Giants Beware! was nominated for the 2013–14 Texas Bluebonnet Award.

FREDERICK LUIS ALDAMA: You’ve dedicated a good deal of your adult life to creating stories for children, whether in graphic novel or animation formats. Did you always know this is what you would do in life?

JORGE AGUIRRE: I knew from a young age that I wanted to write stories. At first, I wanted to write comic books; later I wanted to write for and direct films. I ended up following the film path at Ohio State. This path eventually led me to TV animation. A friend had sent a script of mine to her friend, Ligiah Villalobos (writer of La misma luna), who at the time was the story editor on Nick Jr.’s Go, Diego, Go. It was a new show from the creators of Dora the Explorer. Ligiah liked my writing sample; she hired me to write some episodes and gave me a lot of advice along the way. That was my first major gig writing for kids’ TV. I discovered that I really enjoyed it, and I think I have a knack for it. It’s fun, but it’s harder than it looks. Writing my graphic novels has been a natural—and awesome!—progression from my TV animation work.

FLA: Was there a particular experience that awoke you to writing and pursuing the writer’s life?

JA: When I was a junior at Bishop Watterson, a Catholic school in Columbus, I had an English teacher who awoke in me the bug for writing for people other than my friends or myself. She was a teacher but also a poet, and she was the first adult I ever knew who wrote. There was a bar on High Street called Larry’s, where a lot of graduate students hung out, and this teacher read her poetry there. While other friends were sneaking into bars to drink beer, I was sneaking in to hear poetry readings. This teacher had a big influence on me.

FLA: What were some of your big literary influences?

JA: Gabriel García Márquez’s Cien años de soledad is a big one for me; it’s such a beautiful and sad book. I find myself returning to its pages every couple of years. Another one that had a big impact on me and that I continue to revisit is Piers Anthony’s fantasy novel, A Spell for Chameleon. Both of these books create fantastic worlds and explore really interesting characters.

FLA: You went to law school?

JA: Sadly, yes. It’s tough trying to tell your immigrant parents who sacrificed a lot for you that you want to be a writer. My parents loved and supported me, but pursuing a life as a writer scared them. They discouraged it. I internalized their fears. After I graduated from OSU, I went to Latin America for five months to “find myself.” I remember I was on a bus in Bogotá, and I felt like I had no direction. Suddenly I heard a voice tell me I should be a lawyer. It made perfect sense there on that bus, contemplating my life. But, boy, was it a mistake.

I realized I took the wrong path in life on my first day of law school at Georgetown University. I was miserable. I knew I shouldn’t be in law school. But I stuck it out for a full year. Partly because I’m an idiot. Partly because I was scared. And partly because of pride. I wanted to prove to my parents that I could do it. It was a difficult year. But I kept writing, even during this period. I never lost sight of the writing.

FLA: What came next?

JA: After I left Georgetown Law, I moved to New York to work for the film director Jonathan Demme (that’s a long story). Now, through all this I had been talking to my friend, Rafael Rosado. Rafael is the artist and co-creator of the Chronicles of Claudette. I had taken a scriptwriting class back at OSU. The professor picked my script for Rafael to direct and make a film. Rafael did a talented job of working with my terrible script. We became great friends after that. We always wanted to collaborate on something. We thought it would be a film, and we talked about it through all the years leading up to law school, New York, etc.

FLA: What has your experience been writing for the mainstream? You write shows for Disney Channel, and you and Rafael create the Chronicles of Claudette series for First Second, an imprint of the large Roaring Book Press.

JA: With my TV work, I’m constantly trying to maintain my own vision as I navigate the needs of the large corporations which employ me. It’s a challenge. But it’s also tremendously rewarding. My work has much wider exposure than if I were working on something more independent. But there’s a difference between working for TV and a book publisher. I really enjoy writing for TV, but I have to take into account an incredible amount of feedback from the various stakeholders, from the network to educational consultants. Sometimes I get notes back on an outline for a TV show that is longer than my outline. But through all that you have to keep it magical for yourself and fresh. Creating the graphic novels is a purer reflection of my own creative voice than the TV shows. Creating the Chronicles of Claudette series for First Second allows me a lot more freedom. Our editor, Mark Siegel, gives Rafael and me a lot of creative space to tell the stories we want to tell, while also giving us valuable direction.

FLA: Where do you see yourself being able to push envelopes and take risks?

JA: The biggest risk I take is my choice every day to write for a living. I never succeed fast enough for me to be happy, and I never fail fast enough for me to quit. I just plug away. I don’t romanticize writing as a profession. I don’t call myself an “artist.” I’m just a low-level functioning narcissist with lots of stories that I want to tell, and I write and work every single day to push something forward.

FLA: TV shows and your graphic novels both involve collaboration. Can you speak to this?

JA: The collaboration between Rafael and me on the graphic novels is based on friendship. So we have a lot of fun with it. It’s about trying to entertain and challenge each other, and it’s very much based on a back-and-forth rooted in a deep friendship. Neither one of us has an agenda aside from telling great stories. We get very helpful guidance but a lot of freedom from our editor, Mark Siegel.

With the TV shows, my voice is up in front, but there are lots of other voices in the room with you. Generally, I’ll get notes from like five or six people. Everyone approaches it from his or her own priorities. The network wants to reach the widest number of kids possible; the educational consultants want to enrich the story as much as they can; Standards and Practices wants to make sure you don’t send the wrong message. These relationships can be great when you’re working with a lot of talented people. As it often is. But let’s face it: it’s never a joy to get a stack of notes on your work. Some notes you agree with, some you don’t, and some just aren’t articulated well enough for you to understand what they mean. Whatever the case, you try as best you can to be true to that initial story idea you fell in love with but at the same time accommodate everyone’s needs. The trick is to negotiate the committee’s demands in a way in which I can keep my voice and vision alive.

FLA: What’s your process for stepping into the emotional and sensory landscape of the child?

JA: Children approach the world from the point of view of joy and wonder. Once I tap into that feeling in myself, I find my voice pretty quickly. I have to hold at bay my adult cynicism. There’s nothing cynical about either my graphic novels or the TV shows.

FLA: Giants Beware! is set in the Middle Ages and features a girl action hero. Where do you see yourself as a Latino? Where is the Latinoness in your work?

JA: The Chronicles of Claudette series doesn’t feature Latinos front and center, but, because it’s created by two Latinos, this vision and experience do inform how we approach our stories. With Giants Beware! and Dragons Beware! we steer away from stereotypes and turn archetypes on their head. One thing you get when you grow up as an outsider—as a Latino kid of immigrants—is this keen sense of observing others and their prejudices and then imagining how to turn these upside down. We try to do this with our series. For example, our books have a grizzled warrior type, but we remade him into a blacksmith-warrior-father who’s disabled (he lost two legs and a hand in a dragon battle). Claudette’s best friend, Marie, aspires to be a princess, but not just any princess; she wants to use her smarts and diplomacy to bring peace between monsters and people. And, with Claudette, we’ve created an atypical warrior. She’s short, small, and a girl with an outsized personality. All of these characters attempt to thwart expectations and stereotypes. They grow organically from our experiences as Latinos.

FLA: You also wrote for Dora the Explorer—a show that many are critical of because of the token use of Spanish.

JA: The great thing about the Spanish in Dora is how it exposed kids to Spanish. I love the idea that a preschooler who maybe doesn’t know any Latinos or has never heard Spanish before is hearing Dora, a kid their own age, using Spanish in her regular conversation. It makes speaking different languages seem perfectly normal (which it is!). I learned a lot from working on Dora. It looks like a very simple, formula-driven show, but it was actually quite a difficult series to write for. We had some wonderful educational consultants on it who pushed us to do more on each episode.

FLA: Whether in TV shows or other mainstream cultural phenomena, Latino content seems to be more present?

JA: There’s a hunger by us Latinos to see ourselves in mainstream culture. I’m pretty sure there’s also a hunger on the part of Anglos and others to see different ethnicities and races represented in the mainstream. It’s boring to see the same blonde heads in every dang show. It’s something we are all ready for. However, Hollywood still has a way with whitewashing the ethnic experience: whether it be Latino, Asian American, African American, Native American, and so on. There’s a lot of ignorance in the entertainment field, and we still have a long way to go.

FLA: Yet it does seem like we’re living in a different moment than even a decade ago when it comes to the creating and distribution of Latino stories for children—and a diverse range of Latino content in mainstream media more generally.

JA: When I was a child, the only Latino I remember seeing on TV was Freddie Prinze in Chico and the Man. He was the lone Latino who spoke some Spanish and looked like me. I loved that. Today you do see a lot more color on TV: Telenovela, Jane the Virgin, Modern Family, George Lopez Show, Freddie, among others, all feature Latinos. And that’s a great start. I also think Hollywood is still learning that there are different types of Latino cultures besides Mexican Americans. Last night I caught an episode of Modern Family, and Sofia Vergara’s character’s family was coming over to visit. Her character (and the actress) is Colombian, but some of her family had on those Mexican ranchero hats. The producers of that show still need to learn some of the nuances between Latino cultures. We overlap, but we’re not the same. However, things are way better than they used to be. I mean when my kids grow up, they’re going to see a lot more people reflecting them in comics and books and TV and movies. Rafael and I are working on another graphic novel that features Latinos front and center. There are a lot more diverse stories getting told these days. I’m very optimistic.

WORKS BY THE AUTHOR

Giants Beware! First Second, 2012.

Dragons Beware! First Second, 2015.

FURTHER READING

Brenner, Robin. Review of Giants Beware! Horn Book Magazine, Sept.–Oct. 2012, p. 78.

Harris, Harper W. “Interview: Rafael Rosado and Jorge Aguirre Create Sequel to Beloved Giants Beware!” The Beat: The News Blog on Comics Culture, May 12, 2015. www.comicsbeat.com/interview-rafael-rosado-and-jorge-aguirre-create-sequel-to-beloved-giants-beware/. Accessed Oct. 27, 2016.

Karp, Jesse. Review of Dragons Beware! Booklist, vol. 111, no. 18, 2015, p. 43.

Monnin, Katie. “Giant Steps: Jorge Aguirre and Rafael Rosado on Their Book Giants Beware!” Graphic Novel Reporter, www.graphicnovelreporter.com/authors/jorge-aguirre/news/interview-080812. Accessed Oct. 23, 2016.

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Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Foreword. Magical Encounters with Latino Children’s Literature
• Preface. Our Stories Matter and We Matter
• Introduction. The Heart and Art of Latino/a Young People’s Fiction
• The Authors and Artists
• Afterword. We All Need Chocolate Factories and Casitas on Mango Street
• Index