SATA
ENTRY TYPE:
WORK TITLE: My Two Border Towns
WORK NOTES: Common Sense Media
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE:
WEBSITE: https://davidbowles.us/
CITY:
STATE:
COUNTRY: United States
NATIONALITY: American
LAST VOLUME: SAAS
Pure Belpre honor winner, 2019 https://www.commonsensemedia.org/book-reviews/my-two-border-towns
RESEARCHER NOTES:
PERSONAL
ADDRESS
CAREER
WRITINGS
SIDELIGHTS
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
MBR Bookwatch Aug., 2018. Michael Dunford, “Feathered Serpent, Dark Heart of Sky: Myths of Mexico.”.
Kirkus Reviews Aug. 15, 2018, , “Bowles, David: THEY CALL ME GUERO.”.
Children’s Bookwatch Apr., 2019. , “They Call Me Guero: A Border Kid’s Poems.”.
Kirkus Reviews May 1, 2020, , “Bowles, David: BATTLE OF THE BAD-BREATH BATS.”.
Kirkus Reviews June 15, 2020, , “Bowles, David: RISE OF THE HALFLING KING.”. p. NA.
Children’s Bookwatch Nov., 2020. Bowles, David. , “Rise of the Halfling King.”.
Publishers Weekly vol. 267 no. 52 Dec. 21, 2020, , “The Sea-Ringed World: Sacred Stories of the Americas.”.
Booklist vol. 117 no. 9-10 Jan. 1, 2021, Leeper, Angela. , “The Sea-Ringed World: Sacred Stories of the Americas.”. p. 61.
Kirkus Reviews Feb. 1, 2021, , “Bowles, David: THE IMMORTAL BOY.”.
Booklist vol. 117 no. 11 Feb. 1, 2021, Cohen, Stephanie. , “The Immortal Boy.”. p. 47.
Publishers Weekly vol. 268 no. 25 June 21, 2021, , “My Two Border Towns.”. p. 131.
Kirkus Reviews July 1, 2021, , “Longoria, Margarita: LIVING BEYOND BORDERS.”. p. NA.
Booklist vol. 117 no. 21 July 1, 2021, Pino, Kristina. , “The Witch Owl Parliament.”. p. 57.
Kirkus Reviews July 15, 2021, , “Bowles, David: MY TWO BORDER TOWNS.”. p. NA.
Kirkus Reviews Aug. 1, 2021, , “Bowles, David: THE WITCH OWL PARLIAMENT.”. p. NA.
Booklist vol. 117 no. 22 Aug., 2021. Paz, Selenia. , “Mis dos pueblos fronterizos.”.
Booklist vol. 117 no. 22 Aug., 2021. Agudelo, Jessica. , “Living beyond Borders: Growing Up Mexican in America.”. p. 51.
Publishers Weekly vol. 268 no. 38 Sept. 20, 2021, , “The Witch Owl Parliament (Clockwork Curandera #1).”.
Publishers Weekly vol. 268 no. 48 Nov. 24, 2021, , “My Two Border Towns.”. p. 35.
Publishers Weekly vol. 268 no. 48 Nov. 24, 2021, , “The Sea-Ringed World: Sacred Stories of the Americas.”. p. 88.
BRIEF BIO
David Bowles is a Mexican American author and translator from south Texas, where he teaches at the University of Texas Río Grande Valley. He has written over two dozen award-winning titles, most notably They Call Me Güero and My Two Border Towns.
His work has also been published in multiple anthologies, plus venues such as The New York Times, Strange Horizons, Apex Magazine, School Library Journal, Rattle, Translation Review, and the Journal of Children’s Literature.
Additionally, David has worked on several TV/film projects, including Victor and Valentino (Cartoon Network), the Moctezuma & Cortés miniseries (Amazon/Amblin) and Monsters and Mysteries in America (Discovery).
In 2017, David was inducted into the Texas Institute of Letters. He now serves on its governing council. In 2019, he co-founded the hashtag and activist movement #DignidadLiteraria, which has negotiated greater Latinx representation in publishing.
David’s literary representation is Taylor Martindale Kean and Stefanie Von Borstel of Full Circle Literary. His Hollywood representation is Sandra Ávila of Inclusion Management. Follow him on Twitter and Instagram: @DavidOBowles
Books
ADULT NOVELS
THE PATH (space opera)
The Blue-Spangled Blue (March 2021)
The Deepest Green (July 2021)
The Rising Red (coming summer 2022)
The Swirling Black (coming summer 2023)
Lords of the Earth (October 2016)
YOUNG-ADULT NOVELS
[Hearts of Fire and Snow]. Co-authored by Guadalupe García McCall (coming 2024 from Bloomsbury)
The Moon Conch. Co-authored by Guadalupe García McCall (coming 2023 from Bloomsbury)
The Prince and the Coyote (coming September 2022 from Levine Querido)
MIDDLE-GRADE NOVELS
The Chupacabras of the Rio Grande (The Unicorn Rescue Society, #4). Co-authored by Adam Gidwitz. Illustrated by Hatem Aly. (April 2019)
GARZA TWINS Series (middle-grade fantasy)
The Smoking Mirror (March 2015)—#1. 2016 Pura Belpré Honor Book
A Kingdom Beneath the Waves (April 2016)—#2
The Hidden City (September 2018)—#3
Wings Above the Burning Earth (forthcoming)—#4
The World Tree (forthcoming)—#5
PICTURE BOOKS
My Two Border Towns (September 2021)—illustrated by Erika Meza. School Library Journal Best Books of 2021, New York Public Library Best Books of 2021, Kirkus Reviews Best Picture Books of 2021, the Association for Library Service to Children (ALSC) Notable Children’s Books of 2022, Children’s Book Council (CBC) and the National Council for the Social Studies (NCSS) 2022 Notable Social Studies Trade Books for Young People, 2022 Tomás Rivera Mexican American Children’s Book Award.
CHAPTER BOOKS
13TH STREET Series (illustrated by Shane Clester)
Battle of the Bad-Breath Bats (July 2020)—#1
The Fire-Breathing Ferret Fiasco (July 2020)—#2
Clash of the Cackling Cougars (July 2020)—#3
The Shocking Shark Showdown (November 2020)—#4
Tussle with the Tooting Tarantulas (April 2021)—#5
Fight with the Freeze-Ray Fowls (August 2021)—#6
MYTH AND LEGEND
Feathered Serpent, Dark Heart of Sky: Myths of Mexico (May 2018)—Kirkus Reviews’ Best YA Books of 2018 That Feed Imaginations; 2018 Texas Institute of Letters Award for Best Young Adult Book
Ghosts of the Rio Grande Valley (September 2016)
Border Lore: Folktales and Legends of South Texas (June 2015)
Creature Feature: 13 Frightening Folktales of the Rio Grande Valley (December 2013)
Mexican Bestiary (2012)
POETRY
A BORDER KID’S POEMS Series
They Call Me Güero (October 2018)—2019 Walter Dean Myers Honor Book for Outstanding Children’s Literature; 2019 Pura Belpré Honor Book; 2019 Claudia Lewis Award for Excellence in Poetry; 2019 Tomás Rivera Mexican American Children’s Book Award, among other accolades.
They Call Her Fregona (coming fall 2022 from Kokila)
Shattering and Bricolage (June 2014)
GRAPHIC NOVELS
CLOCKWORK CURANDERA series
The Witch Owl Parliament (October 2021)—#1, illustrated by Raúl the Third. Winner of the 2021 Jean Flynn Award for Best Young Adult Book from the Texas Institute of Letters.
Robots of the Republic—#2 (forthcoming)
The Green Realm—#3 (forthcoming)
TALES OF THE FEATHERED SERPENT series
Rise of the Halfling King (October 2020)—illustrated by Charlene Bowles. Kirkus Reviews’ Best Middle-Grade Graphic Novels of 2020; the Center for the Study of Multicultural Children’s Literature (CSMCL) Best Multicultural Children’s Books of 2020; 2021 Texas Library Association Little Maverick list; 101 Great Books for Kids List of 2020, Evanston Public Library
STORY COLLECTIONS
Chupacabra Vengeance (February 2017)
Strange Texas Tales That Never Die Volumes 1-4 (October 2014)
The Seed: Stories from the River’s Edge (2011)
TRANSLATIONS
Le dicen Fregona (forthcoming 2022)—the Spanish version of my book They Call Her Fregona.
La víspera del Orgullo (forthcoming 2022)—A Spanish translation of ‘Twas the Night before Pride by Joanna McClintick. Illustrated by Juana Medina.
El Parlamento de Lechuzas—the Spanish version of my graphic novel The Witch Owl Parliament (coming October 2021)
El ascenso del rey enano—the Spanish version of my graphic novel Rise of the Halfling King (September 2021). New York Public Library Best Books of 2021.
Mis dos pueblos fronterizos—the Spanish version of my book My Two Border Towns (September 2021). Illustrated by Erika Meza. New York Public Library Best Books of 2021. Winner Premio Mejor Libro Infantil/Best Spanish Language Picture Book Award for 2021 (Bank Street College’s Center for Children’s Literature).
The Immortal Boy (March 2021)—A translation of No comas renacuajos by Francisco Montaña Ibáñez.
The Sea-Ringed World: Sacred Stories of the Americas (February 2021)—A translation of Diccionario de mitos de América by María García Esperón. New York Public Library Best Books of 2021. Awarded a Batchelder Honor Award by the American Library Association. Selected by the Children’s Book Council (CBC) and the National Council for the Social Studies (NCSS) as one of the 2022 Notable Social Studies Trade Books for Young People, selected for the IBBY (International Board on Books for Young People) Honour List 2022. Won the 2021 Souerette Diehl Frasier Award for Best Translation from the Texas Institute of Letters.
The Route of Ice and Salt (January 2021)—A translation of La ruta del hielo y la sal by José Luis Zárate. New York Public Library Best Books of 2021.
Me dicen Güero (November 2020)—the Spanish version of my book They Call Me Güero.
Snake Poems: An Aztec Invocation (March 2019)—Translations into Nahuatl of Francisco X. Alarcón’s original poems for this 25th anniversary reprint of his seminal collection.
El verano de las mariposas (July 2018)—A translation of The Summer of the Mariposas by Guadalupe García McCall.
Flower, Song, Dance: Aztec and Mayan Poetry (August 2013)—2014 Soeurette Diehl Fraser Award for Best Translation.
David Bowles is a Mexican American author from south Texas, where he teaches at the University of Texas Río Grande Valley. He has written several award-winning titles, most notably THE SMOKING MIRROR and THEY CALL ME GÜERO. His work has also been published in multiple anthologies, plus venues such as The New York Times, School Library Journal, Strange Horizons, English Journal, Rattle, Translation Review, and the Journal of Children's Literature. In 2017, David was inducted into the Texas Institute of Letters.
David Bowles
https://davidbowles.us/
Novelist, poet, and educator David Bowles was born to Mexican American parents and raised in the Río Grande Valley. He earned his BA, MA, and PhD from the University of Texas–Pan American. The cultural traditions of the American South, Southwest, and Mexico inform his work across genres. He is the author of the poetry collection Shattering and Bricolage (Ink Brush Press, 2014) and translator of Flower, Song, Dance: Aztec and Mayan Poetry (Lamar University Press, 2013), which won the 2014 Soeurette Diehl Fraser Award for Best Translation from the Texas Institute of Letters. Bowles’s works of fiction and folklore include The Seed: Stories from the River’s Edge (Absey & Company, 2011), Creature Feature: 13 Frightening Folktales of the Rio Grande Valley (Overlooked Books, 2014), Border Lore: Folktales and Legends of South Texas (Lamar University Press, 2015), the Mexican kaiju novel Lords of the Earth (Severed Press, 2016), Chupacabra Vengeance (Broken River Press, 2017), and Feathered Serpent, Dark Heart of Sky: Myths of Mexico (Cinco Puntos Press, 2018). Bowles’s young adult fantasy trilogy, the Garza Twins, includes the novels The Smoking Mirror (IFWG, 2015), selected as a Pura Belpré Honor Book by the American Library Association, and A Kingdom Beneath the Waves (IFWG, 2016).
Bowles is editor of the Along the River anthology series, the re-illustrated Stories That Must Not Die (National Education Systems, 2012), and Donna Hooks Fletcher: Life and Writings (VAO Publishing, 2012). Bowles has served as editor of the magazines Flashquake and La Noria Literary Journal. His weekly column, “Top Shelf,” was awarded a citation for journalistic excellence from the Texas Associated Press in 2015. In 2017, he was inducted into the Texas Institute of Letters. He currently teaches at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley.
Recent Work
David Bowles
A Mexican-American author, poet, and translator, David Bowles is a life-long resident of deep South Texas, where he teaches in the Literatures and Cultural Studies department of the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley. There are multiple strands to his literary work—for which he has been inducted into the Texas Institute of Letters—all braided together around the ever-present ribbon of Mexico.
David focuses mainly on middle grade and young adult fiction, using the tools of science fiction, fantasy, and horror to explore the Latino experience. Among those titles are the middle-grade fantasy The Smoking Mirror (IFWG) and They Call Me Güero (Penguin) — both Pura Belpré Honor Books — Feathered Serpent, Dark Heart of Sky, an epic rendering of Mexican myths (Cinco Puntos Press), The Chupacabras of the Rio Grande in the Unicorn Rescue Society series (Dutton) with Adam Gidwitz, and the 13th Street chapter book series (illus by Shane Clester, HarperCollins), a Latinx Stranger Things for kids ages 5-9 starring three cousins who find themselves fighting strange creatures in a spooky alternate world. David’s debut picture book in English and Spanish editions, My Two Borders Towns and Mis dos pueblos fronterizos, illustrated by Erika Meza is out now and They Call Her Fregona (Kokila/Penguin) coming in fall 2022. Check out the cover reveal here!
Having grown up on the border, David has been fascinated with local legends and folklore since he first heard the story of la Llorona from his grandmother Marie Garza. To honor and preserve that tradition, he has published several collections of retold tales, among them Border Lore (Lamar University Press) and Ghosts of the Rio Grande Valley (The History Press). This exploration of regional lore drew David to the culture and history of Mexico. He began to focus on the study of indigenous philosophy and legend, studying Nahuatl—the language of the Aztecs—to better access primary sources. In 2014 the Texas Institute of Letters awarded his book Flower, Song, Dance: Aztec and Mayan Poetry (Lamar University Press) the Soeurette Diehl Fraser Award for Best Translation. He continues to translate pre-Colombian texts for various journals, and Feathered Serpent, Dark Heart of Sky, his epic rendering of key Mexican myths, is just out from Cinco Puntos Press . David’s poetry and fiction has also been featured in multiple anthologies and magazines such as Rattle, Apex, Strange Horizons, Journal of Children’s Literature and Translation Review.
Visit David on the web at http://davidbowles.us or follow him on twitter @DavidOBowles
Meet David Bowles, author of They Call Me Güero
May 6, 2019
David Bowles is an award-winning writer and poet, reviewer and translator, elected to the Texas Institute of Letters in 2017. He teaches children’s and young adult literature at the University of Texas Rio Grande. Living in Texas on the border of the United States and Mexico with his family, he not only embraces his Mexican-American heritage, he explores it in his writing.
I first met David Bowles through his books for young readers. I had the opportunity to meet him in person at the 2019 Walter Dean Myers Awards program in March. (This memorable event is sponsored by We Need Diverse Books and the Library of Congress.) He not only spoke on a panel with the other honorees, but also to groups of students in separate programs. I was struck by his unique perspectives and insights — some of which he shares here.
Tell us about your background and how it led you to become interested in writing.
I grew up in a Mexican American family — led by my grandfather, Manuel Garza, and my grandmother Marie (a redheaded woman of French-Irish extraction who had taken to Mexican culture like a fish to water in her early 20s). It was Marie’s second marriage — she’d left the man who’d wedded her at 16 and come to South Texas, only fall in love with Manny. They married on the sly in Mexico two years after my father’s out-of-wedlock birth. They had three more children—my aunt Linda Garza and uncles Michael and Daniel — establishing a relatively happy border clan.
But their cuentos … oh, such dark and twisted tales! A blend of Southern Gothic and Colonial Mexican emerged from Marie’s powerful imagination, and all her children grew up to be storytellers as well. When I was a little kid, all those spooky folklore captured my mind and heart. I wanted more. My grandmother Garza — Mimi, we called her — eventually tired of my constant pleading. “Learn to read, boy,” she said at last. “Books have tons of stories. And there are thousands waiting for you on the library shelves.”
So I bugged my mom to teach me to read. She did, and by the time I was 5 years old, I was devouring books. Not many years later, I realized that this was what I wanted: to take my family’s stories and turn them into books. To evolve from storyteller to author.
What drew you to writing for children and young adults?
When I was a middle school teacher, I was in the midst of writing “the Great American Novel” (while doing my MA). But I had a group of struggling students whom I finally reached by taking the scary folktales that had thrilled me as a kid and turning them into short stories with literary devices. My students were hooked, and I realized that it was my calling.
What would you like others to know about life along the border as it gets so much attention these days?
Life here is much like it has always been. We are a tight-knit community of loving families living as best we can, seeking happiness and peace. There’s no crisis here, just people being people, falling in love, getting married, having kids, dreaming what dreams their hearts permit. Were we to be left alone, to manage our transnational community without so much interference, we’d be fine. We have systems for absorbing those who flee nightmares to the south. They fit within our neighborhoods and schools. This is no post-apocalyptic wasteland. It’s the Magic Valley.
Middle school is kind of a border — between childhood and adolescence. Can you talk about why you chose that age for your lead character, Güero?
When I started writing poems in the same voice I had used for "Border Kid," an image began to form, then a character. I didn't dictate his age … it just emerged organically from the process. Soon "he" was telling me about his 7th grade year, and I knew that he was 12. It was pretty magical, actually.
You’ve written They Call Me Güero: A Border Kid's Poems as a novel in verse. How did you come to write a novel in this form? What was your process?
The book’s genesis was the poem “Border Kid,” commissioned by Sylvia Vardell and Janet Wong for their anthology Here We Go! (put together in response to the anxiousness kids of color were feeling at Trump’s election). The speaker of the piece is a Chicano kid living on the border who goes with his dad to the little town on the Mexican side. When they’re driving back, the border fence makes the boy sad, but his dad reassures him that it cannot stop his heritage “from flowing forever, like the Río Grande itself.”
That poem got reprinted in the Journal of Children’s Literature, and when I was inducted into the Texas Institute of Letters in April of 2017, it was one of the pieces I read before the members of TIL. Afterward, Bobby Byrd of Cinco Puntos Press approached me and said, “If you can write another 50 poems in this kid’s voice, I want to publish that book.”
So I did. At first, however, there were multiple sections, only one of them telling the story of the unnamed protagonist / speaker and his 7th-grade year. Other sections were about celebrations, traditions, music, poetic forms, etc.
It was Bobby Byrd (working as editor of the book) who realized it wanted to be a novel-in-poems. When he pointed this out to me, I pouted for a bit, and then re-read it all. He was right. There was a story that wanted telling.
Once we decided that the collection was going to be a short novel instead, Bobby Byrd asked me to restructure the poems, putting everything in chronological order. Then we took stock, pulling out what didn’t fit the sort of loose plot and making note of the gaps in the narrative. At the end of the day, we realized that — in wanting to appeal to boys ages 9 to 13, a group notorious for not liking poetry — we needed narrative poetry, action, overarching plot, etc.
With that in mind, I then set myself to creating more poetical vignettes to fill in the gaps and address those needs. Before long, the book took on the basic shape it has now.
Weird thing is … I’m usually a HUGE plotter. Like five-thousand word outlines and so on. But this project just grew organically. My mental Güero composed the poems he needed and wanted to compose, and in doing so, he traced his journey through this very difficult year of 2018. All Latinx folx who have lived through its ups and downs as well will probably feel themselves reflected in his own struggle and celebration.
What does poetry do that distinguishes it from other forms of writing?
In They Call Me Güero, the teacher Ms. Wong says, “Poetry is the clearest lens for viewing the world.” The relative brevity, density, and musicality of poetic language allows a writer to express complex ideas in memorable snippets.
And there are characteristics of poetry that make it perfect for young people. It’s a bridge between music and literature, and the playful way in which it shapes language lets kids see how beautiful, melodic, fun and impactful words can be. It is dense, condensed when compared to prose, occupying less space but saying more. As a result, it lends itself to being re-read again and again (something students should learn to do) and rewards close analysis. It can be read out loud, chorally, helping struggling readers and ELLs without shaming them.
In my own life, poetry really impacted me when I was a kid. As an 8th grader, I had a teacher named Bill Hetrick who pulled the lid off of poetry for me, revealing how incredibly powerful it was as a lens for understanding the world and my place in it. Later, when my dad abandoned our family thousands of miles from our hometown, it was poetry that helped me to survive the darkness: reading it, writing it.
Later, as a middle-school teacher, I had a group of boys who just didn’t respond well to the literature we were reading. So I brought in “Oranges” by Gary Soto, a poem in which they could see themselves reflected, adjacent to their own cultural experience as Mexican American kids. It was hugely successful. They identified with the boy in the poem. I was able to get them to try writing about their own lives, to find the “orange” in their own personal stories.
When did you become aware that your red hair and freckles were "different"? How have your ideas about “fitting in” changed over your lifetime?
I always knew I was light-skinned. My family never let me forget it. There’s a paradox to being light-skinned in a culture that is somewhat colorist because of colonialism but that is also marginalized by the larger hegemony of White (non-Latinx) privilege. You simultaneously benefit from being coded or presenting White and get “othered” because of your membership in the marginalized group. Two options seem to present themselves to güeros as a result: betray your culture and adopt the White identity (risking being rejected by ‘true’ White folks) or double-down on your Latinx heritage. Most of us go with the latter, though our complexions are a constant reminder that the structure of the world gives us more power than others in our culture. Finding a way to use that power to advance our common cause is vital in psychological wellbeing of güeros, frankly, and I a lot of my childhood was spent in this internal battle.
You’ve had a long interest in traditional literature, particularly the folklore of Mexico and the border. In fact you’re retold Mexican myths in The Feathered Serpent. Tell us about that.
To clarify, the stories I learned from my grandparents Marie and Manuel Garza (and other uncles, aunts, etc. from the Mexican American side of my family) are border legends that—while certainly rooted in our culture—have only tenuous or obscured connections to pre-Colombian myth. An example would be the Wailing Woman or Llorona, whose parallels in Aztec lore (the vengeful spirit once called zohuaehecatl) are unfamiliar to nearly every Mexican-American in the US. Cultural and religious colonization, shifting national borders, social marginalization: all these factors have worked together to decouple present folklore from indigenous past.
When I got to college (first in my family to do so), I happened to take both an anthropology and a world literature course during the same semester. They exposed me to the literary/scientific value of my family’s legends and their connection to the vast mythology of pre-Colombian Mexico. Though I couldn’t fault any particular individual for the erasure, I was certainly indignant, and decided to “double down” on my Mexican American identity (and, yes, though many of my ancestors are Anglo, I identify Latino). I think this happens to a lot of college-educated Chicanos: feeling our identity has been struck down (to borrow a phrasing from Star Wars), we decide to become more mexicano than anyone could possibly imagine, heh.
In my case, that meant going down the rabbit hole of my cultural heritage, exploring familiar legends in greater (often scholarly) detail (a good chunk of my work comes from this), and then moving beyond the border into Mexico proper, visiting different regions, discovering the particular stories of that area. Then I went even deeper as I saw the glimmer of myth in those folktales, studying the fragmentary record of pre-Colombian belief. I studied Nahuatl, the language of the Nahua people that we now call “Aztecs,” translated their poetry, read their words as recorded after the Conquest.
In my case, I never set out to collect myths. But they gathered in my heart, if I can wax poetic, and I perceived in their frayed edges what felt like the large weft they belonged to. Knowing what they had done for me, how I felt healed after decades of exploration, I wanted to share the tapestry I saw with first other Mexican Americans, taking up the mantle of storyteller and sitting down before my community, convoking them to join with me in this remembering. But I also hope that people just on the edge of that circle of metaphorical firelight will read these tales and better appreciate the often-erased and often terrible beauty of Mesoamerica and her many children in Mexico and the US.
You’ve written with Adam Gidwitz, a fantasy for younger readers that incorporates a lesser-known creature from Mexican lore. Tell us about the book. How does it incorporate your interest in traditional literature?
Once Adam had decided to use his position and power to craft a series of books co-written with writers from marginalized communities, he knew he wanted to do one set on the border (he has a great relationship with students in Laredo), featuring chupacabras as the cryptid (each book has a different creature in need of rescuing). When he approached Matt de la Peña, wondering who might be the best collaborator for that book, Matt immediately said, “Mexican American? Border? Chupacabras? Middle grade? You need to talk to David Bowles.” Or words to that effect, heh.
So Adam reached out to me and I agreed! Working together was really fantastic. We hit it off well, and once I’d outlined the story and we’d revised that outline with the rest of the team, we set about alternating two to three chapters. Writing that way helped us to maintain a rhythm and voice that was true to the other books. But ours was indeed quite different, more politically charged by virtue of its setting. Early on we realized we couldn’t avoid talking about the border wall and misconceptions about border folk, so we took a different tack: we centered that controversy and met it head-on in a compassionate way that kids will be able to understand.
The book itself takes the main characters — Elliot and Uchenna, guided by their teacher Professor Fauna, who established the Unicorn Rescue Society as a young man—to the city of Laredo, where a dead cow leads them to think a chupacabras may be on the prowl. But the city is also in turmoil because of the building of the wall, and the trio find themselves allied with the Cervantes family. Together, they track down a young chupacabras that has been cut off from its pack by the environmentally destructive construction. There’s lots of humor and adventure, but also a serious message about what it takes to bring a community together.
What is diversity in literature and why is it so important?
Ultimately, “diversity” means “verisimilitude.” When books for kids look like the real world around us, with the same breadth and variety of people, then our work will be done. At the moment, however, we are far, far from that goal. Around 3700 books are published each year for kids and teens. Only 800 feature protagonists of color, when in reality 50 percent of school-aged youths are of color. Until that disparity is gone, we will have to fight to see more books published — especially #ownvoices — that center the experiences of children of color.
Everyone has a story to share. What can Americans learn from the voices and stories of immigrants?
Like all voices of specific people from specific places, the stories of immigrants tell us so much about their particular lives and values, their hardships and dreams, their culture and families … And in the discreet details of that apparently very different world, we find the human, the universal, a mirror in which our souls are reflected back, festooned with other colors and clothes, but just as beautiful.
We learn to love our neighbor, and that is how we learn to love ourselves.
What writing advice do you like to give to students, particularly immigrant and bilingual kids?
Write what you know. Write what matters to you. Tell the tales only you can tell, in the words that only you can use. There will be an audience for it, I promise. Somewhere, someone is hungry for your stories. Someone needs them. They will change someone’s life forever.
You have to put what’s in your heart on to that page or that screen. It takes courage, more than you might imagine. But I believe in you. You’re brave enough. Write it down.
___
And this is just what David has done so successfully in his writing. Many thanks to David Bowles for taking the time to thoughtfully answer these questions. I look forward to what’s next from David Bowles!
David Bowles is a Mexican American author from south Texas, where he teaches at the University of Texas Río Grande Valley. He has written several award-winning titles, most notably The Smoking Mirror and They Call Me Güero. His work has also been published in multiple anthologies, plus venues such as The New York Times School Library Journal, Strange Horizons, English Journal, Rattle, Translation Review, and the Journal of Children's Literature. In 2017, David was inducted into the Texas Institute of Letters.
David Bowles
USA flag (b.1970)
David Bowles is an American poet, translator and author.
Genres: Children's Fiction
New Books
September 2022
(hardback)
They Call Her FregonaSeptember 2022
(hardback)
The Prince and the Coyote
Series
Garza Twins
1. The Smoking Mirror (2015)
2. A Kingdom Beneath the Waves (2016)
thumbthumb
Unicorn Rescue Society (with Adam Gidwitz)
4. The Chupacabras of the Rio Grande (2019)
thumb
13th Street
1. Battle of the Bad-Breath Bats (2020)
2. The Fire-Breathing Ferret Fiasco (2020)
3. Clash of the Cackling Cougars (2020)
4. The Shocking Shark Showdown (2020)
5. Tussle with the Tooting Tarantulas (2021)
6. Fight with the Freeze-Ray Fowls (2021)
thumbthumbthumbthumb
thumbthumb
Tales of the Feathered Serpent
1. Rise of the Halfling King (2020)
thumb
Path
1. The Blue-Spangled Blue (2021)
2. The Deepest Green (2021)
thumbthumb
Novels
The Prince and the Coyote (2022)
no image available
Omnibus
Castle of Horror Anthology Volume Two (2019) (with Michael Aronovitz, Tony Bloodworth, David Boop, John Helfers, Jason Henderson, P J Hoover, Sam Knight, Sarah Stegall, Stephen D Sullivan and In Churl Yo)
thumb
Collections
Feathered Serpent, Dark Heart of Sky (2018)
Castle of Horror Anthology Volume One (2019) (with Mario Acevedo, Jessica Lee Anderson, Kevin J Anderson, Jason Henderson, Leanna Renee Hieber, P J Hoover, Guadalupe García McCall, Lara Parker and Tom Waltz)
Castle of Horror Anthology Volume Three: Summer Lovin' (2020) (with Jason Henderson, Leanna Renee Hieber, Tricia Hoover, Sam Knight, Alethea Kontis, John Peel, Bonnie Jo Stufflebeam, Jo Whittemore, Drew Wolle and In Churl Yo)
They Call Me Guero (poems) (2021)
They Call Her Fregona (poems) (2022)
thumbthumbthumbthumb
thumb
Picture Books
My Two Border Towns (2021)
In Conversation: David Bowles and Erika Meza
Sep 14, 2021
Comments Click Here
David Bowles is the author of many books for young readers that center Mexican Americans in the borderlands, including the award-winning They Call Me Güero and the 13th Street series. Bowles currently lives in Donna, Tex., and teaches at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley. Erika Meza is the illustrator of Balloons for Papa; born in Mexico, she now resides in Nottingham, England. In Bowles’s debut picture book, My Two Border Towns, illustrated by Meza, a boy and his father take a trip to The Other Side/El Otro Lado, spending time with family and friends. We asked the collaborators to discuss their creative process, and their personal connections to this transnational community.
RELATED STORIES:
More in Children's -> Authors
More in Authors -> Interviews
Want to reprint? Get permissions.
FREE E-NEWSLETTERS
Enter e-mail address
PW Daily Tip Sheet
subscribeMore Newsletters
David Bowles: Hey, Erika! It’s weird to chat when we’re in such different time zones, heh.
Erika Meza: I know. Especially being aware that everything is being recorded, haha :D
And clearly every emoji too.
Bowles: I’m hoping that illustrating a book about the border helped you with any homesickness you feel being so far from Mexico and the borderlands.
Meza: It seriously did. I found myself coming up with ideas for it in the U.K., in the middle of a pandemic—and then painting it all in Dublin. But hey, since there was a Mexican restaurant nearby, at the end it was pretty much like being transported back home. Particularly when the text was bringing to painful life the longing for tacos! You did a tremendous job, man.
Bowles: Aw, thanks! I’m hoping that kids who are from the frontera but who live elsewhere will be reminded of the beauty and wonder of their homeland—and that kids who are here will smile to see themselves represented—while people outside the borderlands (who may have a negative impression of the area because of the news and political grandstanding) will find themselves wishing they lived here (or at least finding a new appreciation for why we do).
Meza: That is spot on. And you’re touching on two elements that I kept in my head throughout the whole process. First, a lot of my friends in school were terrified (I’m not exaggerating) when I told them we were moving to the border. I was 16, and they were convinced this was the end of my life—and yet I found a community that was so open and so diverse, that I was actually freer than I had ever been to be myself.... I *had* to make sure it was represented.
The other thing: how on earth did you manage to keep the balance between the authentic and the general? I’ve been longing to ask you, specifically, about the use of language. The Spanglish we know as *the* border language can be confusing for people who aren’t used to it, and a book needs to be understood by anyone...and yet you masterfully wield it throughout!
Bowles: Part of that comes from teaching bilingual Latinx literature (and reading a lot of it, heh). There’s a great book, Multicultural Literature for Latino Bilingual Children, with chapters that explore the ways in which Spanish is deployed effectively or not in picture books (and elsewhere). Striking a balance is definitely tough, because on one end of the spectrum there’s tokenism, just sprinkling Spanish in randomly, and on the other end is hyper-realism, which as you intimate would be confusing for non-bilingual (and even some bilingual) kids. But reading lots of great examples of authentic but pared-down code-switching/translanguaging has helped me greatly. I always ask myself, “Can this passage both be understood by non-bilingual kids and make bilingual kids feel represented linguistically?” Our editor, Joanna Cárdenas, was a huge help in fine-tuning that balance, by the way.
Meza: Yeah, on that front I need to send a massive thank you to the team. Both Joanna and Jasmin Rubero, our art director, were perfect, and knew exactly what we were referencing throughout. Working with them made me aware of the shortcuts I had learned to take when drawing for other publishers. I’d unconsciously sanitize some aspects of what I was drawing, and then I’d be surprised (yet delighted) when they’d write back and ask for me to make it more the way it actually is. Specifically, I don’t know if any other team would’ve allowed me to do what I did when our characters reached the border bridge.
Your text asked for the car to get parked, if I recall correctly. And I figured my mom, while queuing to cross the border, would’ve not parked, but just sent me out into the traffic since the cars are moving painfully slow anyway—so I was soooo nervous about the sketch. I sent a paragraph-long explanation of what the boy was doing... then Joanna and Jasmin just went, “Perfect. Let’s go with that.” I was in awe.
Bowles: I love that anecdote! Yes, in reality, while you can pull a car closer to the pedestrian walkway, you can’t actually “park” on most international bridges (though when you’re sitting in line for three hours, it feels like you’re parked for most of the time, hahaha). We literally see people constantly getting out of their cars, wandering down to another person’s vehicle to say “hi,” buying water or snacks from vendors (on the Mexican half), getting fed up and heading down the pedestrian walkway (leaving the driver by themself... lots of older couples fighting in line, I bet, heh). But for outsiders, that’s got to seem super dangerous (though it really isn’t at all). That kind of support for telling the real story of people in this transnational community is what made Kokila the right fit for this book, I think.
Part of that real story (in that it tells the capital-t Truth about our region) is showing how border kids have to grapple with situations that parents elsewhere deliberately shield their children from, like the refugee crisis. My own children (now grown) and the students in our local schools are deeply aware of immigration issues, the wall, refugees, etc. So depicting that reality in a way that echoes their young perception of injustice and makes it easier for parents everywhere to broach the subject with little kids was really important to me. It requires a deft hand, and our team understood that well.
Your art was key in making that happen! How did you approach that twist toward the end when the story shifts to the refugees?
An interior from My Two Border Towns, illustrated by Erika Meza.
Meza: Ha—I must admit that you gave me the key. Very early on, on the second spread, the text made reference to “the sound of cumbias.” The line was dropped in one of the edits, I think, but it allowed me to think of both sides of the border as colors, as music. And the third act, when we reach the refugees, needed to retain the warmth and the vibrancy of the Mexican ”song” I was painting, but change into a much more “cinematic” tune. And so, I started to think in terms of a movie, if that makes sense. I wanted there to be a sort of big reveal. I focused back on the kid, made sure to show him full-length but not where he was going... until I had the big spread showing the refugee camp. If one looks back, one realizes the bridge has been kept in the background for a few images hinting at its importance. I wanted it to remain friendly, but to be fairly real, because you had managed to keep it that way in the text! (Yet another compliment I’ve been wanting to throw at you—otra flor!).
Bowles: Thanks! I loved that cinematic approach, and the fact that you didn’t go the desultory, depressing route (which was a big temptation I had to fight against). Because I wanted this book to primarily celebrate the joy and beauty of being a kid from a transnational community, I was nervous about how the third act might undercut that light happiness. But my descriptions were informed by my own experience meeting refugees along the bridge and getting to know them. Bit by bit I learned of their indomitable spirit and refusal to be broken by the journey they were making to a better life for their children. Since they retained an essential positive outlook on their lives despite all they’d gone through, it was easier to depict them for young readers, if that makes sense. Everyone here knows it’s an injustice to make them camp out in Mexico, but border folks are nothing if not patient. Governments and policies “controlling” our region change quite often, and we’ve learned to wait out the bad times.
Meza: That is so true; in a way, it took for me to be removed from the border (when I moved to Europe) to be able to fully appreciate the resilience that comes with the territory. Times may be bad, the dollar may get more expensive, and yet you still have an overall attitude of finding joy in everything and anything. Anything becomes a joke, everything becomes a reason to celebrate or tease or be playful... it is contagious, and you catch it as soon as you land in the place. Which, I reckon, explains why this book *had* to be a celebration, even though we are dealing with such stark subjects. But that makes it perfect for a picture book!
Bowles: Totally. That’s why your metaphor of music that threads through both sides of the border is so apt. Things are bad? Fire up the grill, put some cumbias on, and invite the extended family over! Music, fellowship, just human warmth—that’s what gets us through anything. Comunidad. Familia. And I think we put that across well in My Two Border Towns.
Meza: That, and “Ando Bien Pedo” by Los Recoditos. I fired up that tune every morning in Dublin to get the work day started in the right mood.
Bowles: HAHAHA! Perfect. Hey, you talk about the perspective that comes from being removed from the border. I’m intrigued by the notion that a certain distance is necessary to write about or illustrate something that is otherwise really close to our hearts. The more time I spend away from the border (at our house in Oaxaca, on the road for book tours, etc.), the more I appreciate what I have here, the better I’m able to fully grasp the specialness of this place. I remember being 19 and wanting to “irme a la fregada,” to flee from what I then perceived as a backwater no-man’s land. But here I am 32 years later, more in love with it than ever.
Meza: That’s it. I was constantly trying to be somewhere else. I think the border brings with it a feeling of being in limbo, of being in transit—and when you’re not really going anywhere, you feel like you should be. It is such a complicated creature—and it is not until you are actually away from it that you can really see the special beauty in the raw, blunt nature of the place. At the moment, my family is looking at moving out and going somewhere else in Mexico... and I feel like I will still need to religiously visit, as if on pilgrimage, if only to see how different (and how very much the same) it is each time I go. It is home!
Bowles: Yup! Now that our kids are grown, my wife and I have been discussing selling this house we built and have lived in for 25 years. The place we’re considering moving to? El Paso. We just can’t leave the border completely behind. It’s too much a part of who we are and how we live our lives.
My hope is that you and I, with this book, will transmit even just a fraction of the way we feel about that transnational lifestyle to a larger readership. I want people to stop imagining the border to be a post-apocalyptic wasteland where cartels roam like mutants in the Mad Max movies. We’ve been managing ourselves wonderfully for several hundred years, long before this was part of the U.S., and it sure would be nice to be trusted to take care of those who need care. Our time-worn, durable systems for accommodating newcomers can handle the load—if the demagoguery and hate speech would just stop.
Meza: Indeed. Hopefully, little by little, we can start reclaiming the narrative and, by telling our own stories, maybe start defining our identity in our own terms more and more. Although granted, I expect that it will never stop being complex nor multi-layered... it is the border, after all :)
Bowles: Así es. And one of the greatest gifts it’s given me has been the chance to go on this journey with you, amiga. Thanks so much for being my partner on this book! What a ride, huh?
Meza: Thanks to you, for writing it and for believing I could bring it to life. Y, ¡lo que nos falta! :D
Bowles: Hopefully we’ll get on the other side of this pandemic and present somewhere together. I owe you tacos and several beers!
Meza: I will hold you to that ;)
Bowles: In the meantime, I’ll see you virtually soon. Cuídate mucho.
Meza: ¡Y tú! Abrazos grandes, and speak soon!
Bowles: Hasta pronto. BYE! :D
Meza: <3
My Two Border Towns by David Bowles, illus. by Erika Meza. Kokila, $17.99 Sept. 14 ISBN 978-0-593-11104-8
INTERVIEW: DAVID BOWLES + GUADALUPE GARCÍA MCCALL ON TRANSLATING A NOVEL INTO SPANISH
APRIL 24, 2018 LEEANDLOWBOOKS 1 COMMENT
Six years ago, we released Summer of the Mariposas from our Tu Books imprint. Set in Texas, Summer of the Mariposas is a Mexican retelling of the Odyssey, but it’s also a celebration of sisterhood and maternal love. It went on to win numerous awards, including the Andre Norton Award for Young Adult Science Fiction and Fantasy Finalist, Lone Star Reading List, and the Amelia Bloomer Project – Feminist Task Force.
Now, we’re excited to say that this beautiful story has been translated into Spanish! We’re releasing El verano de las mariposas this May, and it will be our first young adult novel to be translated into Spanish. We interviewed author Guadalupe García McCall and translator David Bowles on the translation process, what it was like working together, and their upcoming projects.
el verano de las mariposas
El verano de las mariposas is our first young adult title that has been translated into Spanish. David, what was the translation process like? Did you go page by page?
David Bowles: I’m such a huge fan of the book, which I actually teach as part of a college course on children’s and adolescent literature. Since I’ve read it so many times, I first talked to Guadalupe about some global issues (more below). Then, yes, it was pretty much a matter of translating a page at a time. I kept two windows open on my screen: a PDF of the English original and a Word document into which I typed the Spanish translation as I re-read the book.
Within the Spanish language, there are several different dialects. David, did you and Guadalupe talk about certain phrases or words that are specific to Mexico?
DB: Before I even began translating, Guadalupe and I talked extensively about the voice she wanted for Odilia. The trick was to capture the rhythms and nuances of Border Spanish (as spoken in Eagle Pass/Piedras Negras) while also retaining the literary flair of the English original. Odilia is a well-read young woman, and her English sparkles with poetry as well as adolescent angst. That was the balance I had to strike with the translation. Now, as a Mexican-American from the border, I’ve been bilingual all my life, and both Guadalupe and I are conversant in the Standard Spanish of Mexico as well. But the Texas-Mexico border is quite long, you may have noticed, and where I’m from, we use some terms differently from Guadalupe’s bend of the river. So the revision and editing process became a fine-tuning of Odilia and her sisters’ voices, making sure that the words I put in their mouths would naturally be there. It was a delightful if delicate process, complicated and enriched by the work of our copy-editor.
Guadalupe García McCall: David and I had a lot of conversations regarding word choice. One of them came when he had to decide what to call the “girls” in the book. Odilia just calls them girls, but we have several words for that. The top contenders were “niñas” and “muchachas” both of which could apply. However, “niñas” is too young, more like “tweens,” but the girls range in age between 10-15, so had to go with “muchachas” because that is more like “teens” and, except for Pita, the term fits most of the girls’ personalities (if not age range). There were other funny moments when David would ask me about specific words that I considered too “street-smart” for the girls, who are, in my opinion, naïve to the ways of the world. Their odyssey into Mexico and the past changes that, and although their delicate, sensitive way of looking at the world changes, they never truly become hardened. If anything, they are “refined” by their quest. David was very sensitive about that. He would send me little messages on FB asking advice about specific words and phrases.
EL VERANO block quote
What was one of the biggest challenges with translating El verano de las mariposas? Were there any passages that were particularly hard to translate?
DB: Other than finding the right voice for Odilia, the toughest part was translating jokes that involved wordplay (and there are many). I was constantly popping onto social media to message Guadalupe with questions and ideas. She’s a great collaborator, and luckily doesn’t appear to sleep, so she was usually available! Along these lines, we also had to find amusing equivalents for the twins’ quasi-vulgarities, where they’ll almost say a bad word before shifting into some idiosyncratic silliness. I think we made some good choices. At the very least, they cracked me up!
GGM: I want to add here that I think David’s rendition of Summer of the Mariposas is quite lovely. I have to applaud him for always checking in with me on the nuances of the language and my writer’s purpose and intent as he translated. He did a fantastic job of capturing the beauty of the landscape and the layers of meaning in the text. As I was looking it over, before it went back to Stacy Whitman, I kept reading it out loud and sobbing. It is momentous to hear my work translated into the language of my heart.
Guadalupe, do you plan on having any of your other books translated into Spanish as well?
GGM: I would love to have all of my books translated into Spanish. David and I have talked about having him translate Shame the Stars and [the forthcoming] All the Stars Denied someday. However, I think I want to attempt to translate Under the Mesquite myself. There is something about translating poetry that really appeals to me, and I want to see if I can capture the rhythms of Lupita’s voice in Spanish. Maybe, if I do it justice, Lee & Low can put it out for the 10th anniversary edition in 2021.
What new projects are coming up for both of you?
DB: I’ve got a book on Mexican mythology and a collection of middle-grade poetry coming out this year. I’m also super stoked that next year Tu Books will be publishing the YA graphic novel I’ve been working on with Raúl “the Third” González: Clockwork Curandera. Featuring an awesome Latina protagonist, it’s a riff on the Frankenstein story, set in an alternate 19th-century Mexico where Mesoamerican magic and steampunk tech exist side-by-side.
GGM: Well, I actually took on the task that everyone I know has been wanting me to attempt for years. I wrote a picture book. It’s out on submission right now with my agent, Jill Corcoran, so we’ll see what happens. I think this year has been all about growing for me. My first short story to ever be published, “Rancho Nido,” is coming out next month—a Kaiju origin story I wrote for Kaiju Rising, Age of Monsters II. I’m very excited about it. I have Alana Joli Abbott to thank for that. She asked me to write it for her, and I took it on because it was something that wasn’t in my radar, and, well, I love a good challenge. Attempting a Kaiju story actually spawned a YA work-in-progress I’m labelling my “Borderlands Kaiju Novel.” Although, I have no idea if it’s any good. I’ll find out as I continue working on it. Lately, though, I’ve been experimenting with a creative non-fiction writing piece based on the Texas flood of 1954. But that’s a super sensitive and personal project. I’m taking it slow, see where it leads me.
What would you say to someone who claims that we don’t need books in Spanish?EL VERANO block quote
DB: They are wrong on so many levels. Spanish is a beautiful, deeply lyrical language. Some of the greatest masterpieces in world literature were penned in that tongue. Given the number of Latinx readers in the US, especially Mexican American young people, it makes sense to have translations of popular, culturally relevant titles. For lots of US students, English is their second language, and having great books available in Spanish supports their education and success. Finally, many communities are recognizing the value of dual language education, so publishers do well to have offerings in multiple versions.
GGM: I think it’s so important to talk about this. We need books in Spanish because we have a lot of Latino parents in our country who want to read the books their children are reading in school, but the language is intimidating. Some speak it but don’t necessarily read it. Others, like my own parents, are monolingual. They would love nothing more than to have a copy of the books their children love in Spanish. I’ve visited schools where I’ve talked to parents who want to share Under the Mesquite with their own parents (the student’s grandparents), but they can’t, and that breaks my heart. Nobody should be deprived of reading a good book because they aren’t fluent in English.
Further resources
View the Teacher’s Guide for Summer of the Mariposas
Read the first three chapters of Summer of the Mariposas online here.
Check out Why Culturally Responsive Literature Matters in Middle and High School for Summer of the Mariposas.
Learn more about Guadalupe Garcia McCall in “Guadalupe García McCall: A Storyteller of Cultures and Odysseys” by R. Joseph Rodríguez and KaaVonia Hinton in SIGNAL journal, the Journal of the International Reading Association’s Special Interest Group: Network on Adolescent Literature.
guadalupe garcia mccall
Guadalupe Garcia McCall was born in Mexico and moved to Texas as a young girl, keeping close ties with family on both sides of the border. Trained in Theater Arts and English, she now teaches English/Language Arts at a junior high school. McCall lives with her husband and their three sons in the San Antonio, Texas, area. You can find her online at guadalupegarciamccall.com.
david bowlesDavid Bowles is a product of a Mexican-American family, and has lived most of his life in deep South Texas, where he teaches at the University of Texas Río Grande Valley. Recipient of awards from the American Library Association, Texas Institute of Letters and Texas Associated Press, he has written several books, most significantly the Pura Belpré Honor Book The Smoking Mirror.
SHARE THIS:
David Bowles on order among chaos and lifting the voices of Mexican Americans
"The real heroes are groups of people—families and communities—that stand in solidarity against great odds and use their love and collective will to enact change."
Saturday, February 16, 2019
Kristine Hall
Author David Bowles has published fourteen books since 2009, and his latest, They Call Me Guero, is winning ALL the awards, it would seem. Lone Star Lit caught up with David via email to get all (well, almost all) the scoop.
LONE STAR LITERARY LIFE: They Call Me Güero is EVERYWHERE right now: it’s the 2019 Tomás Rivera Mexican American Children’s Book Award winner, a Pura Belpré Honor Book, an honor book for the Walter Dean Myers Awards for Outstanding Children's Literature in the Young Readers category, a National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) Notable Poetry Book for children, and a Best Book of 2018 at Shelf Awareness. Feathered Serpent, Dark Heart of Sky: Myths of Mexico is on the best YA of 2018 list at Kirkus. I follow you on social media, and you seem genuinely blown-away as the awards are stacking up. What has this been like for you?
David Bowles: It’s definitely a dream come true. I’ve received awards before (for The Smoking Mirror and Flower, Song, Dance), but the reception of this little book has been humbling and energizing. Above all, I’m excited that the additional exposure will mean that it gets into the hands of more children—both Latinx and non-Latinx kids—which is ultimately the goal.
Why do you see the book as important to both those groups of young people?
For Latinx kids—especially Mexican American ones—it’s really important that they see themselves, their families, their culture as important subjects of literature, as worthy of being depicted in positive, uplifting ways. The present climate makes this need frankly poignant. When so many messages in society around you indicate that you’re a problem, a crisis, an unwanted burden … well, you need books, you need poetry, to counter that despicable depiction.
And frankly, that’s why non-Latinx students need books like this. They need to see the reality of their Latinx peers, to see them reflected in literature as three-dimensional, engaging individuals whose lives are rich and meaningful. Right now, an average of 3500 books are published each year for kids. Only around 100 are centered on the Latinx experience. That needs to change.
You are focusing on writing for young people. Was that a conscious decision on your part or a general metamorphosis in your work?
Definitely a conscious decision, though partially a metamorphosis that occurred before my first book was published. Throughout the late ‘90s and early 2000s, I was working on an adult science fiction series, but my experiences as a teacher of middle- and high-schoolers, retelling the legends my grandmother Marie Garza had told me when I was a kid, set me on the path to reaching out to young people through literature. My first book, The Seed, arose from that desire to craft YA fiction that tapped into our shared cultural traditions and spooky stories.
Of course, I have been writing for a general or more adult audience as well. There are stories I want to tell that don’t always fit the strictures of kid lit. But my main concern is writing for Mexican American youth and their peers.
The Smoking Mirror, a 2016 Pura Belpré Honor Book, is the first in your super-hero series about the Garza twins, Carol and Johnny. Since then, two more books in the series have been published, A Kingdom Beneath the Waves (2016) and The Hidden City (2018); two more are in the works, Wings Above the Burning Earth (2020) and The World Tree (2022). What challenges will the twins face in the next installments in the series and how have they developed to meet those challenges? Do you know if their story concludes with the fifth book?
From the moment I started the first book, I knew how the series would end. I have the very last chapter of the fifth book sitting in my head, and everything the Garza twins go through is pushing them to a particular point, to a decision that frankly will surprise many readers.
Without giving it away, I’ll say this: I’m convinced that individual power is not enough to combat chaos and destruction in our lives. The real heroes are groups of people—families and communities—that stand in solidarity against great odds and use their love and collective will to enact change.
Raw, naked power—the godlike abilities that Johnny and Carol will continue to accrue in books 4 and 5—is ultimately dangerous to wield at all. Like nuclear weapons, all such superpowers ensure is mutual destruction. And now I’ve probably said to much.
There will be lots of incredibly cool things along the way, mind you. Mesoamerican giants and elves and harpies. Gods, both dark and light. Betrayal, love, sacrifice. All a young teen could ask for from a fantasy series.
You are one of the authors working with Adam Gidwitz on a new middle-grade series from Penguin Dutton called The Unicorn Rescue Society. The Chupacabras of the Rio Grande will be published in April. How did this collaboration come about, and what has that process been like for you?
Once Adam had decided to use his position and power to craft a series of books co-written with writers from marginalized communities, he knew he wanted to do one set on the border (he has a great relationship with students in Laredo), featuring chupacabras as the cryptid (each book has a different creature in need of rescuing). When he approached Matt de la Peña, wondering who might be the best collaborator for that book, Matt immediately said, “Mexican American? Border? Chupacabras? Middle grade? You need to talk to David Bowles.” Or words to that effect, heh.
So Adam reached out to me and I agreed! Working together was really fantastic. We hit it off well, and once I’d outlined the story and we’d revised that outline with the rest of the team, we set about alternating two to three chapters. Writing that way helped us to maintain a rhythm and voice that was true to the other books. But ours was indeed quite different, more politically charged by virtue of its setting. Early on we realized we couldn’t avoid talking about the border wall and misconceptions about border folk, so we took a different tack: we centered that controversy and met it head-on in a compassionate way that kids will be able to understand.
They Call Me Güero and Feathered Serpent, Dark Heart of Sky: Myths of Mexico were both published by Texas institutions, the Byrd family and Cinco Puntos Press, in El Paso. How did your relationship with the Byrds and Cinco Puntos come about and what is it like to work with the publishers of such beloved authors as Benjamin Alire Sáenz?
Given the fact that they published four of Luis Alberto Urrea’s early books as well as many by Ben Sáenz, I am tempted to call them kingmakers. Both those men are role models for me, both as humans and as writers, and they are respected on an international level for their beautiful, important prose and poetry.
Cinco Puntos is one of the most important advocates of marginalized voices. Their books for kids have transformed lives in the Rio Grande Valley and can be found in so many classrooms. The Byrds are delightful, simple, loving people. Accomplished authors and translators themselves, they approach each project not just from a marketing or editorial vantage point, but as creative minds seeking to maximize the beauty and relevance of the work.
They are also really damn funny.
You were inducted into the Texas Institute of Letters (TIL) in 2017 and currently sit on the board. The newly elected TIL inductees were announced in January. What was it like for you to take part in the process of selecting new TIL members?
Humbling and exciting! Getting to know authors that I’ve perhaps heard of or whose work I’m somewhat familiar with, diving into their writing and background, realizing just what luminaries our state produces … it’s quite amazing. I feel so fortunate, and I take my responsibilities seriously. Of course, the joy you feel upon seeing them react to the announcement is also a rush. And given the diversity of the new crop of nominees and inductees, I’m not indifferent to the weight of helping to reshape the TIL so that it more accurately reflects the state of Texas letters in the 21st century.
You’re an assistant professor at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley. What are your goals in teaching Mesoamerican literature and, hopefully, the next generation of writers?
My goals in teaching kid lit and Nahuatl language and literature intersect with my goals as an author: to lift the voices of Mexican Americans, celebrating our culture in the US, its origin in Mexico, and Mexico’s roots in Mesoamerica. I want to normalize this long and storied heritage for students who have not been exposed to it in US schools, even those just scant miles from the border in communities that are majority Mexican American. We need more writers, yes. And we need more teachers using the books those writers craft. We need more Chicanos learning indigenous Mesoamerican languages, decolonizing their minds, integrating some of the highly developed pre-Colombian philosophy and science into their daily lives.
These things make us better people. They enrich and complicate the variegated traditions of North America, combat and interrogate the dominant US narrative.
The banner at the top of your website reads, “order amidst chaos.” Why did you choose that phrase to headline your website? What is particularly chaotic for you personally, and how do you attempt to impose order? Are you successful in the attempt?
For ancient Mesoamericans, the principal conflict in the cosmos wasn’t good versus evil. They would have found such a notion naïve. All things contain good and evil. Even the gods. Instead, chaos and order were the crux of things. The point of life wasn’t, however, to eliminate chaos. Without it, order was meaningless. Without destruction, nothing can be created. Without creation, there is nothing to be destroyed. Existence itself requires both. The conflict becomes a search for balance between them.
This sophisticated indigenous conception of the universe deeply moves me. All around us, deliberate destruction and inexorable entropy pull at the foundations of our lives. Being a human means not fighting that, but not giving in to it, either. Instead, we bend that entropy, repurposing the destruction into new creation, new order.
Every book I write is a reshaping of fading ideas into bright, novel configurations. They, too will darken and crumble. Before they are lost to oblivion, however, I trust—I must believe—that another will fan those embers and use the fleeting flames to forge something even more enduring.
This struggle happens within us as well. Gloria Anzaldúa wrote of the Coyolxauhqui process, the reassembling of broken selves. My book of poetry Shattering and Bricolage delves deep into that remaking of the self. One of the poems got quoted recently on Criminal Minds, in fact: "When wounds are healed by love / The scars are beautiful." The poem’s title is "Kintsukuroi," the name of a Japanese artistic technique in which a finished ceramic piece is deliberately broken and the pieces rejoined with silver or gold solder so that the brokenness becomes part of the object’s beauty.
When I first contacted you, you teased that there is big news on the horizon; are you ready and able to spill on it yet? If not (DRAT), what else do we have to look forward to?
While there is big news coming about a new series for young readers, that’s as much as I can say at present. But I do have a graphic novel coming from Tu Books in 2020: Clockwork Curandera, a YA reimagining of the Frankenstein story that blends indigenous magic with steampunk technology, set in an alternate northern Mexico/South Texas called the Republic of Santander in the year 1865. I also have a second graphic novel coming out in 2020 … that will be announced pretty soon.
I should also point out that the University of Arizona Press is re-releasing Francisco X. Alarcón’s Snake Poems in March, twenty-five years after its original publication. I helped fulfill the late poet’s dream by translating his work into Nahuatl for this special edition.
My mind is blown with all you have accomplished and are accomplishing. I need to ask some fluffy questions to decompress. Commence the Lightning Round...
Favorite book? Right nowThe Tale of Genji. Answer changes each year.
Number of books on your nightstand? eReader? A dozen.
Strange habit? Plucking stray long hair from my beard.
Interesting writing ritual? Listening to electronica and drinking coffee.
Funniest flaw? My kids assure me it’s my “dad jokes.”
Favorite quote? “I change myself, I change the world.” ―Gloria Anzaldúa
Something interesting that few people know about you? I’m a musician and singer with several independently released albums.
Pet peeve? Uh, very few trivial things bother me. But I do wish people would set off direct address with a comma.
Most underappreciated author/hidden gem author? Juan Sauvageau (Stories That Must Not Die)
Team Oxford comma? Not unless it eliminates possible ambiguity.
A Mexican-American author from deep South Texas, DAVID BOWLES is an assistant professor at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley. Recipient of awards from the American Library Association, Texas Institute of Letters and Texas Associated Press, he has written a dozen or so books, including Flower, Song, Dance: Aztec and Mayan Poetry, the critically acclaimed Feathered Serpent, Dark Heart of Sky: Mexican Myths, and They Call Me Güero: A Border Kid’s Poems. In 2019, Penguin will publish The Chupacabras of the Rio Grande, co-written with Adam Gidwitz, and Tu Books will release his steampunk graphic novel Clockwork Curandera. His work has also appeared in multiple venues such as Journal of Children’s Literature, Rattle, Strange Horizons, Apex Magazine, Nightmare, Asymptote, Translation Review, Metamorphoses, Huizache, Eye to the Telescope, and Southwestern American Literature. In April 2017, David was inducted into the Texas Institute of Letters for his literary work. Visit David Bowles on his website.
Latinx Horror: Interview with David Bowles
FacebookTwitterTumblrRedditLinkedInWhatsAppPinterestEvernoteGmailLiveJournalPocketYahoo MailShare
Photo by Paul Chouy
Biography
David Bowles is a Mexican American author and translator from the US-Mexico border, where he teaches at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley. Among his award-winning books are The Smoking Mirror, Feathered Serpent, Dark Heart of Sky: Myths of Mexico, Chupacabra Vengeance, Lords of the Earth, and the graphic novel series Clockwork Curandera. His work has also been published in multiple anthologies, plus venues such as The New York Times, Strange Horizons, Apex Magazine, and Rattle. Find him online at www.davidbowles.us.
What inspired you to start writing?
My Mexican American family (and our larger community) has longstanding, rich oral traditions. And in my family, there is no shortage of storytellers, from my uncle Joe Casas to my grandmother Marie Garza, who was the matriarch and a fountain of bone-chilling folktales that she would tell my cousins and me as we crowded around her in the living room of her rickety mobile home. That sort of cathartic terror—rooted in cultural / geographic specifics of South Texas and Northern Mexico, experienced with older loved ones surrounding me—was addictive. I realized early on that I, too, wanted to be a cuentista, sharing my own versions of those stories. As luck would have it, I also learned to read when I was five, and soon books became a second addiction for me. Gradually I came to realize that I wanted to write, but rooting my work in the sensibilities and source material of my family’s lore.
What was it about the horror genre that drew you to it?
When you come from an oppressed, excluded, or otherwise marginalized group, you learn relatively early on that there are things in the world you have to protect yourself from, that there are literally monstruous beings who are quite willing to do you harm—other human beings with greater power and privilege. Elders tell you all sorts of cautionary tales. Nursery rhymes and folktales brim with darkness. Some folks prefer entertainment that helps them escape from the bleakness of reality, but I found that horror healed me at the moments of greatest despair, that confronting fears and monstrosity on the page in an exhilarating, heightened way meant that the mundane terrors facing my community were easier to grapple with.
And, to be honest, I just loved me a scary-ass cucuy (what Mexican Americans call creepy creatures). My family’s folklore has some of the best monsters around.
Do you make a conscious effort to include Latinx characters and themes in your writing and if so, what do you want to portray?
Absolutely I do. It’s important to me that I root my writing in my lived experience and that of the people closest to me. It lends an authenticity and gravity to storytelling that is much more difficult to achieve when you write “outside your lane,” so to speak. And given the vast diversity in the Mexican American community alone (not to mention the larger Latinx umbrella), I strive to showcase multiple, stereotype-busting characters in my work that will make Latinx readers smile knowingly and help non-Latinx folks dismantle their preconceptions.
.
What has writing horror taught you about the world and yourself?
To keep perspective, first of all. Horror, especially cosmic horror, is good at reminding us that the forces of the universe are indifferent to our pain and sorrow, as are many of our fellow human beings. But the monstruous isn’t just vast and incomprehensible: it’s also small, petty, intimate. Each of us grapples with demons in our hearts. The angels are the minority. Coming face to face with those hard truths has made me want to protect the weak, the kind, the innocent, the oppressed with every fiber of my dark-riddled soul.
How have you seen the horror genre change over the years? And how do you think it will continue to evolve?
Certainly it has become slightly more queer, more BIPOC, more disabled than before, but not nearly enough and with entirely too much chest-beating opposition from cishet white dudes who are nominally transgressive when they have all the power but who become reactionary fascists as soon as what they mockingly call “woke” folks begin to win awards and receive attention. So I’m hoping they will take a seat and that the trend toward literary dignity and equity for underrepresented groups will continue.
How do you feel the Latinx community has been represented thus far in the genre and what hopes do you have for representation in the genre going forward?
Well, frankly, poorly, just like most communities of color. Our terrifying stories have gotten coopted by outsiders and retold in crappy, inelegant, jump-scare ways. The past decade has seen a marked change in that trend, with more and more Latinx creatives getting to put out amazing horror books, comics, TV, film. But we still have a LONG WAY to go. We make up twenty percent of the population, yet less than one percent of horror content comes from us. Given how much horror content we consume, that’s a major miscalculation on everyone’s part.
Who are some of our favorite Latinx characters in horror?
Fernando, the protagonist of Zero Saints. Atl, the Aztec vampire in Certain Dark Things. Lourdes, leader of the “bruja Craft crew” in Goddess of Filth. Claudia from the film Even the Wind Is Afraid. Ramón Morales in Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark.
Who are some Latinx horror authors you recommend our audience check out?
Gabino Iglesias,Silvia Moreno-Garcia, www.CinaPelayo.com , Carmen Grey, Violet Castro, Jonathan Torres, Ann Dávila Cardinal, E. Reyes, Michelle Garza & Melissa Lason (The Sisters of Slaughter).
What is one piece of advice you would give horror authors today?
Don’t base your horror off fear of the “Other” if the other is simply another group of human beings different from the one you belong to. There’s enough real-life horror perpetuated against the perceived other. We should try not contributing to that gross punching down.
And to the Latinx writers out there who are just getting started, what advice would you give them?
Anchor your stories in your lived experience, in the geography of the place you call home, in the web of relationships that exist in your community. I’m fond of saying that the universal comes from the specific.
So does the best horror.
September 22, 2021adminBlog, Diverse Works incl. The Seers' Table
Comments are closed.
To Mexico and Back With Author David Bowles
BY VICKY SMITH • SEPT. 9, 2021
To Mexico and Back With Author David Bowles
Photo of David Bowles by Paul Chouy
David Bowles won a 2016 Pura Belpré Honor for his middle-grade fantasy The Smoking Mirror (2015), and since then his career has taken off, with some dozen-plus books for children and young adults now on the shelves and more under contract. All draw on his Mexican American heritage. My Two Border Towns (Kokila, Sept. 14), illustrated by Erika Meza, is his first picture book. In it, a father and son make a routine trip from the U.S. side of the border to the Mexican one, visiting relatives and shopping for necessities that they giveto newfound friends among the refugees waiting on the bridge, hoping to cross into the United States. Bowles spoke to us via Zoom from his home in Donna, Texas, in the Rio Grande Valley. The conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
When did you begin working on My Two Border Towns?
It was [around] 2017 to 2018, when we were going back and forth between the towns of Progreso, Texas, and Nuevo Progreso, Mexico, where we have friends and relatives. We began to notice a proliferation of tents on the pedestrian walkway from the Mexican side to the U.S. side. The checkpoint’s in the middle of the bridge. If you don’t have documents, you aren’t permitted to step onto U.S. soil, [so this] gets in the way of the ability of people to request asylum. People were being written down on a list, and eventually they’d be called. They were afraid of losing their place in line, so they started camping out on this bridge. We would stop and talk to these people—many of them were from Cuba, Nicaragua, El Salvador—and they had their children with them. We just felt a real sense of duty of care for people who before would have been folded into our community. We would buy medicine, food, water, and we would give the kids comics and games.
I had grown up going back and forth across the border with my dad, and we had done the same with my children, as part of this transnational community with relatives on all sides. I imagined how my kids would react, coming across these kids, and how they would likely be playing with them. I thought, that’s the story I need to tell, I need to tell the story of the joy of living in this transnational community. What a great way to counter the negative rhetoric about the place where I’ve lived for 51 years and also to bring to light the plight of people down here in a way that’s accessible to kids. Parents can use it to help border kids see themselves reflected in a positive way and see their culture and community celebrated. And let other kids say, “Oh, that place sounds fun. These kids are having a good time. And it’s beautiful.”
How did you approach the dramatically low word count of a picture book?
The advice that Matt de la Peña gave me was, “David, you’re a poet. Think of the book as a single poem. And then start cutting.” So I took the first poem fromThey Call Me Güero (2018), which is “Border Kid.” The structure was already in place about going to Mexico with your dad and experiencing the mirror relationship of the two towns. [Then I aged] that protagonist down and focused on the duty of care that the family is there for. And I had to figure out how to make the two languages intertwine. When you’re writing for middle school kids, you can slap a glossary at the back and go to town with whatever admixture of Spanish you want. I had to be a lot more deliberate about it and find ways to echo the texture of code-switching in our community while keeping it as comprehensible as possible to really young readers and making it not too much of a chore for non–Spanish-speaking people. I chose words that are pretty common, words that anybody with passing knowledge of Spanish should be able to handle. That also felt like the way people flip back and forth between the two languages. And that’s something I tried to keep in place also for my Spanish version of the text—to do that, but in a mirror way.
And then there are Erika Meza’s illustrations.
I told Joanna Cárdenas, our editor, “I know this might not be the kosher way of doing things, but I need to talk to Erika. She’s from the Tijuana/San Diego area, and we are from a similar culture. And I know that if we talk, we will be able to see eye to eye.” And so we had a couple of great phone conversations, and everything clicked. It was a really, really nice collaboration. I just love the fact that [publisher] Kokila was completely OK with our having a relationship. [She included] these things that appear in any little border town. And a reader who’s in the know will immediately recognize it.
Your career has really taken off in the last few years.
There’s a verb that we use in Mexican Spanish, talonear, which means basically to get after it, to hustle. I come from a working-class family, and I learned life is mostly not going to give you opportunities; you’re going to have to work really, really hard just to survive. But if the door does open for you, then you need to get your ass through it and get working. You don’t know when that opportunity is going to come again.
The things that I see in our nation make me really concerned about the future of publishing for underrepresented groups. And whether we’re queer or disabled or BIPOC [Black, Indigenous, and People of Color], it just feels like there may be a time when it’s not as easy anymore. Not that it’s super easy now, but it’s certainly easier than ever to put these kinds of stories out there. It may be that the window closes or narrows for a lot of us for a time before we’re able to open it back up.
Is it possible to separate David Bowles the activist from David Bowles the author?
I don’t think so. I’m able to do work in one area without thinking too much about the other area, but they’re intertwined. Some of the things that I choose to write about I choose because there are things that need to be said. My advocacy for my own children, for my wife, for my community, for people like us—it’s something that I can’t stop, it’s always there. One of the things that you grapple with when you’re from a community of color and you have privilege—either because you’re White passing or you have more money or you’re male, whatever it happens to be—is what are the responsibilities that accrue to you? As a writer, I’m always thinking, OK, this next level of success, what does that mean? What increased capital am I going to have that I can then turn into lifting other voices up and mentoring more people from my community and pushing back harder on publishers so that they promote the literary dignity and equity of these underrepresented groups? It is all bound up one with the other and almost impossible to tease out in any sensible way.
Vicky Smith is a young readers’ editor.
Interview with David Bowles, Author of “The Seed”
Photo: David Bowles
Photo: David Bowles
Brief Biography:
A product of an ethnically diverse family, David Bowles has lived most of his life in the Río Grande Valley of south Texas, where he divides his time between writing, translating, and teaching at the University of Texas Pan American. The Texas Institute of Letters recently awarded his book Flower, Song, Dance: Aztec and Mayan Poetry the Soeurette Diehl Fraser Award for Best Translation. He is the author of several other books, among them Mexican Bestiary and The Seed. April will see the publication of The Smoking Mirror, his first young-adult fantasy novel, and Border Lore, a volume of his retellings of south Texas folktales.
Additionally, David’s work has been published or is forthcoming in various periodicals, including Apex Magazine, Metamorphoses, RattleTranslation Review, Eye to the Telescope, Concho River Review, Interstice, Huizache, BorderSenses, Illya’s Honey, James Gunn’s Ad Astra, and Red River Review.
Geosi Gyasi: You’re a translator, poet and author. Could we begin with your work as a translator? What does it entail?
David Bowles: I mostly translate poetry, but I have worked rendering plays, short stories and various documents into English. Though I do more lucrative free-lance translating from Spanish to English (the two languages I speak daily), my literary translations have tended to be from Japanese and Nahuatl, two of my favorite languages.
Geosi Gyasi: How long does it take you to translate a poem?
David Bowles: That depends on several factors, including length of the poem, the language of the original, its form, etc. For example, I can translate a free-verse Spanish poem in about an hour; a haiku by Bashō (whom I’ve been reading for decades) might take me a little less, especially since I have used the form extensively over the years; an eight-stanza Aztec poem, however, might take me three or four days.
Geosi Gyasi: How long does it take you to translate a novel or short story?
David Bowles: I’m pretty fast translating Spanish to English. I can translate nearly as fast as I would write an original story, about 250 to 500 words an hour.
Geosi Gyasi: How lucrative is the work of a translator? In other sense, do you earn a living as a translator?
David Bowles: Literary translation is the diametric opposite of lucrative work, believe me. However, the freelance translation I have done (government documents, bank records, other mundane documents) pays okay. I do not, mind you, translate for a living. I teach at university and head a public-school bilingual education department.
Geosi Gyasi: At what age did you start writing?
David Bowles: When I was fourteen.
Geosi Gyasi: Do you remember your first piece of writing?
David Bowles: Yes, it was a poem called “Deluge.” That year in school my English teacher William Hetrick helped me perceive poetry in a way I never had before, and after a few failed attempts, I produce this bit of verse. The piece took the form of a series of quatrains written in loose ballad-like trimeter, full of flood-related themes and imagery. Its predictable and weak rhymes seem balanced to my present ears by effective internal alliteration.
Geosi Gyasi: When and where do you often write?
David Bowles: I write in my study at home, mostly. I wake up early each morning, at about 5 am, and write for an hour to an hour and a half before going to work. Then, in the evenings, I spend about a half hour or so reading and revising what I have written.
Geosi Gyasi: What’s the best part of writing?
David Bowles: Well, every element or stage has its reward. The hardest part is the actual writing; thinking or researching what you’re about to write and then seeing it completed or published is lovely. Writing itself, however, is grueling work for the most part, though some poems and stories do seem to appear fully formed in a writer’s mind. Those don’t come often, though.
Geosi Gyasi: What’s the most difficult story or poem you’ve ever worked on?
David Bowles: In writing my poetry book Shattering and Bricolage, I had emotional difficulty with several very personal poems, like “I Wish I Could Remember,” dealing with my father’s abandoning my brothers and me when I was a teenager and “Dark Blot,” about the fear my wife and I went through during her third pregnancy. Last year, after the suicide of someone close to the family, I penned a piece titled “Ashen Boy” that nearly broke my heart. Of course, sometimes there are technical difficulties, as in my recent translation of the Nahuatl “Flower Song Convocation” cycle of poems or in writing the short story “Wildcat” that will be published in Apex Magazine this summer. The latter was rejected from many magazines before an editor took the time to show me I had ended the narrative too early; when I took his advice seriously, I was able to take the protagonist to a place that I would never had dared to before, and the result is very powerful.
Geosi Gyasi: Do you have a target audience when you write?
David Bowles: Sometimes, sure. The Smoking Mirror, out in April from IFWG Publishing, is a young-adult fantasy novel, so I was clearly writing with 10- to 18-year-olds in mind. I’ve also written darker fiction meant especially for adults. However, most of the time I write what I feel compelled to write, and then I sort out the audience later.
Geosi Gyasi: What do you hope to achieve with your writing?
David Bowles: I could pretend that I’m writing just for the writing, and there certainly is an aspect of just enjoying the creation of literary worlds, but the truth, of course, is that I do have goals. I want, for example, to promote the culture, history and language of indigenous Mesoamerican people. I want to preserve the legends and folktales my grandmother Marie Garza used to tell me as a child. I want to contribute to diversity in young adult writing in the US. I want to make present and vibrant to modern readers the literature of certain ancient peoples, especially the Nahuas (Aztecs). Above all, I want to guide others through the nooks and crannies of the human heart and how it struggles to find meaning in the world.
Available on Amazon
Available on Amazon
Geosi Gyasi: Are there times you feel like not writing?
David Bowles: Yes, definitely. And sometimes I allow myself that luxury. Perhaps a week or two with no writing at all. But when faced with deadlines, that self-pampering goes out the window. I don’t believe in writer’s block. When it’s time to write, I sit down and do it.
Geosi Gyasi: Could you distinguish between haiku and poetry?
David Bowles: Basically, haiku is a very compressed type of poetry originally intended to spark a round of collaborative writing called renga. Setting aside the formal rules of medieval Japanese, the modern form uses roughly 17 syllables, normally in 3 lines, to juxtapose two images or events in a way that stirs an epiphany in the reader.
Geosi Gyasi: Could you share with us anything about Asian poetical forms?
David Bowles: There’s so much to say! I’ll limit myself to telling you that I find the constraints of waka, renga, senryu, sijo and other Asian forms paradoxically liberating in a way that is impossible with free verse.
Geosi Gyasi: Which writers have most influenced you as a writer?
David Bowles: Nnedi Okorafor, Ted Hughes, Robert Fagles, Cormac McCarthy, Isabel Allende, Stephen R. Donaldson
Geosi Gyasi: Do you have any favourite books?
David Bowles: Sure. My top six would be Moby Dick, Blood Meridian, Things Fall Apart, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, The Tale of Genji and Beloved.
Geosi Gyasi: Does your family approve of your writing?
David Bowles: My children are very supportive, and my wife…tolerates it, heh. Just kidding!
Geosi Gyasi: What do you do to relax when not writing?
David Bowles: I’m a musician, so I often spend time playing instruments. Books and cinema, however, are my mainstay.
Geosi Gyasi: What are you currently working on?
David Bowles: I’m about done with A Mythological History of Mexico, an illustrated synthesis of Aztec and Mayan myth and history. Next I’ve got to wrap up A Kingdom Beneath the Waves, the sequel to The Smoking Mirror and the second in my Garza Twins YA fantasy series. This summer I should be done with the first English verse translation ever of the Aztec codex Ballads of the Lords of New Spain. So I’m keeping busy!
Geosi Gyasi: Do you care about what critics say when you write?
David Bowles: I think if we’re truthful all writers care what critics say, because they are essentially the most vocal and famous members of our audience. Their opinions matter to many readers. That said, I don’t think about them when I write: I’m focused on the integrity of the story or poem at hand, and I trust my instincts (and those of my editors) enough that possible censure from critics isn’t a concern for me.
Geosi Gyasi: The Texas Institute of Letters recently awarded your book, “Flower, Song, Dance: Aztec and Mayan Poetry the Soeurette Diehl Fraser Award for Best Translation. Could you spend some time to talk about this award?
David Bowles: It was definitely a big honor for me, being recognized by the most august literary body in this state. Poetry has a limited audience, and poetry in translation even more so; as a result, awards can open up a readership one might not otherwise reach. It is gratifying and humbling that some of the greatest writers of my region should consider my work significant enough to merit singling out. Getting up to receive the prize and being able to address hundreds of people in Nahuatl, the former lingua franca of a sizeable chunk of North America… that was powerful
Geosi Gyasi: I am tempted to believe that you have something to say to end the interview?
David Bowles: Just that I encourage readers to push beyond their comfort zones, to explore broadly in genre and culture, to really explore the nature of humans and our place in the world by reading what people across the world and all through time have had to say about the big themes of existence. There is nothing like such exploration. It gives real meaning to our lives.
END.
He Is All of Us: The Millions Interviews David Bowles
THE MILLIONS INTERVIEWDaniel A. Olivas February 6, 2019 | 5 books mentioned 4 min read
Related Books:
Many readers may know David Bowles from his Twitter feed, where he schools us on Mexican and Latin-American cultural touchstones and indigenous languages. And he has the academic and literary chops to back up his tweets.
Bowles—who self-identifies as half Chicano from South Texas—is an assistant professor at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley and the author of 14 books. He was inducted in 2017 into the Texas Institute of Letters in recognition of his literary accomplishments and is the recipient of many awards, including from the American Library Association, the Texas Institute of Letters, and the Texas Associated Press. Bowles’s books include the Pura Belpré Award-winning The Smoking Mirror, and Feathered Serpent, Dark Heart of Sky: Myths of Mexico, which was one of Kirkus Reviews’s Best YA Books of 2018.
cover
cover
cover
This year, Penguin will publish The Chupacabras of the Rio Grande, co-written with Adam Gidwitz, and Lee & Low Books will release Clockwork Curandera, a graphic novel illustrated by Raúl the Third. Additionally, Bowles’s Nahuatl translations of the late Francisco X. Alarcón’s poetry will appear in the 25th-anniversary edition of Snake Poems: An Aztec Invocation, which will be published by the University of Arizona Press.
In September, Cinco Puntos Press published Bowles’s most recent book, They Call Me Güero: A Border Kid’s Poems, which was selected as a School Library Journal Best Book of 2018, a Shelf Awareness 2018 Best Books of the Year, and NCTE 2019 Notable Verse Novel.
This latest effort is filled with Bowles’s trademark humor and bilingualism (not to worry if you struggle with Spanish: there is a handy glossary at the end of the book). And in this time of heightened anti-immigrant political rhetoric emanating from the White House, such a book is a welcome balm for what ails us as a nation. Indeed, They Call Me Güero should be in every classroom across this country because it does what literature does best: it humanizes “the other”—while also letting border kids know that they are not alone, while celebrating their multicultural community. Bowles kindly agreed to sit down with The Millions and answer a few questions about his latest book.
The Millions: Why did you choose to write a novel-in-poems rather than a traditional novel?
David Bowles: Actually, the question you might ask is “why a novel-in-poems rather than a collection of poetry,” because that was my original intention.
coverThe book’s genesis was the poem “Border Kid,” commissioned by Sylvia Vardell and Janet Wong for their anthology Here We Go, put together in response to the anxiousness kids of color were feeling at Trump’s election. The speaker of the piece is a Chicano kid living on the border who goes with his dad to the little town on the Mexican side. When they’re driving back, the border fence makes the boy sad, but his dad reassures him that it cannot stop his heritage “from flowing forever, like the Río Grande itself.”
That poem got reprinted in the Journal of Children’s Literature, and when I was inducted into the Texas Institute of Letters in April of 2017, it was one of the pieces I read before the members of TIL. Afterward, Bobby Byrd of Cinco Puntos Press approached me and said, “If you can write another 50 poems in this kid’s voice, I want to publish that book.”
So I did. At first, however, there were multiple sections, only one of them telling the story of the unnamed protagonist/speaker and his seventh-grade year. Other sections were about celebrations, traditions, music, poetic forms, etc.
It was Bobby Byrd, working as editor of the book, who realized it wanted to be a novel-in-poems. When he pointed this out to me, I pouted for a bit, then re-read it all. He was right. There was a story that wanted telling. Manos a la obra.
TM: Though the action takes place in the present, there appear to be many autobiographical elements to the poems. Is “Güero”—the pale-skinned boy who is at the center of these poems—based on you and your experiences?
DB: I certainly dug into my own experiences as a half-Chicano child in deep South Texas in the 1970s and ’80s. But I filtered that through the lens of my son’s life and the struggles of other kids we know, like the undocumented girls and boys in our community who now fear for themselves and their families. Perhaps 30 percent of it is fictionalized versions of things that happened to me. Another 30 percent I lifted from the lives of my son and other kids. The remainder is fictional, though informed by what we see daily in our community.
After a few poems, it all blended together in just the right balance, like a good pico de gallo. I could hear the boy just as clear as a bell. He didn’t need a name. He’s the güero, the light-skinned kid in his extended family, a 12-year-old with one foot in mainstream America and the other in his family’s Mexican American traditions. A Gen-Z gamer who goes to Spanish-language mass, a dreaming reader who runs through the monte—the brush—with his dog.
In that sense, sure, he’s me. No, that’s not quite right. He is all of us traviesos, que no? Mischievous and big-hearted, maybe softer than the men in his family might want, but ready to stand up for what he believes in.
TM: How did you approach developing the narrative arc for this collection?
DB: Once we decided that the collection was going to be a short novel instead, Bobby Byrd asked me to restructure the poems, putting everything in chronological order. Then we took stock, pulling out what didn’t fit the sort of loose plot and making note of the gaps in the narrative. At the end of the day, we realized that—in wanting to appeal to boys ages nine to 13, a group notorious for not liking poetry—we needed narrative poetry, action, overarching plot, etc.
With that in mind, I then set myself to creating more poetical vignettes to fill in the gaps and address those needs. Before long, the book took on the basic shape it has now.
Lo raro es … I’m usually a huge plotter. Like 5,000-word outlines and so on. But this project just grew organically. My mental Güero composed the poems he needed and wanted to compose, and in doing so, he traced his journey through this very difficult year of 2018. All raza who have lived through its ups and downs as well will probably feel themselves reflected in his own lucha y celebración.
Hopefully, as the new year begins, we can also hear poetry in the ebb and flow of the world around us, just like Güero learns to do.
interview: DAVID BOWLES
David Bowles is BUSY! He has the following releases this year.
February 23. The Sea-Ringed World: Sacred Stories of the Americas. My translation and expansion of the book by María García Esperón, illustrated by Amanda Mijangos (MG non-fiction). Levine Querido.
March 23. The Immortal Boy. My translation (in a bilingual flip book) of Francisco Montaña Ibáñez’s impactful No Comas Renacuajos (MG/YA fiction). Levine Querido.
April 27. Tussle with the Tooting Tarantulas. Book five of my 13TH STREET series (illustrated by Shane Clester). HarperCollins (HarperChapters).
Summer. El ascenso del rey enano. My Spanish version of Rise of the Halfling King. Penguin Random House (Vintage Español).
August 17. Fight with the Freeze-ray Fowls. Book six in my 13TH STREET series (illustrated by Shane Clester). HarperCollins (HarperChapters).
August 24. My Two Border Towns. My debut picture book, illustrated by Erika Meza, releasing in both English and Spanish (as Mis dos pueblos fronterizos). Penguin Random House (Kokila).
October. The Witch Owl Parliament. Volume one of the graphic novel series Clockwork Curandera, co-created and illustrated by Raúl the Third. Lee and Low (Tu Books). Publishing simultaneously in English and Spanish, as El Parlamento de Lechuzas).
And, he tweets! @DavidOBowles
Yet, he managed to have a little time for an interview. We did it old school: via email.
Hi David! Thanks for agreeing to an interview. I hope it helps promote all the good work you’re doing. How are you? What has sustained you over the past year?
I’m doing well, all things considered. Staying focused on the needs of my family and community keeps me busy, driven to do the work of teaching, writing, and advocating that sustains me and through which I strive to sustain others. But I’ve tried to be kind to myself as well, indulging in a lot of feel-good romantic K-dramas and composing music. My wife Angélica and I managed to carve out a couple of weeks in December to decompress and unplug—that brief vacation breathed new life into us.
I’ve gotten to know you through your activism and that has me wondering where did you learn to speak out? Who did you witness being a voice for others? What were some of the injustices that you became aware of early on?
I grew up hearing tales of injustice perpetuated against my Mexican American community here on the border. During my childhood,
Dr. David Bowles, UTRGV Assistant Professor in Literatures & Cultural Studies. Photo by Paul Chouy
however, I didn’t always believe my Grandpa Manuel Garza, Uncle Joe Casas, and others who wove those tragedies amid their spooky storytelling. But I always understood the importance of family and community, of standing in solidarity against those who want to hurt us and of standing up for those among us who are weaker and poorer. When I was still a kid, we moved to South Carolina for seven years. As a Mexican American family that chose to live in all-Black neighborhoods—and given that my youngest sibling Fernando, born in Myrtle Beach, was half-Black—we faced a degree of ethnic and racial violence from white folks that was less visible or common in South Texas. Because my mother was white, I realized that, as a light-complexioned Chicano, I had more privilege than my kid brother, could move through different spaces unquestioned. But because of the family I belonged to and the color of my brother’s skin, I also straddled a divide between the culture of power and the people it oppresses. It was a hard lesson.
My father, who had converted from Catholicism to Evangelical Christianity at a Black Baptist Church, got ordained and started a congregation in Beaufort that welcomed all ethnicities and races and dared anyone to challenge that choice. From him I learned to fight—mostly with words, but sometimes with fists—to defend my family and the Lowcountry community that embraced us as their own.
When we moved back to South Texas, that impulse toward forcing justice from an injustice world kept burning in my heart. I became a teacher because of it, working with “problem” kids who simply needed dignity and affection, fighting even against administrators to see them treated like human beings. And now, of course, that never-ending struggle continues: publishing is my focus now, alongside education, both of them systems that need to be broken and rebuilt to efface more than a century of oppression.
I think along with the energy to change the world you seem to have an energy to keep learning, growing and changing as an individual and I see that happening through the diverse writing projects you’ve undertaken recently. Through the translations, the series work, the graphic novel and even the picture book, what have you realized about writing that you didn’t know before?
I’m definitely a big believer in the need to constantly question oneself, to break down the misconceptions, prejudices, and bad habits that have built up recently and rebuild oneself afresh, with an eye toward greater enlightenment and humanity. If we don’t do that work, life itself will eventually shatter us, and we may not be able to put the pieces back together then. Gloria Anzaldúa—the queer Chicana philosopher from my home county of Hidalgo—called this the Coyolxauhqui Process (named for the Aztec goddess of the moon, who was broken into pieces by her brother, god of the sun). I use the phrase “shattering and bricolage,” but the idea is the same. Putting your soul back together again does indeed leave seams, but like in the Japanese art of kintsukuroi, those scars are beautiful and unique.
Translating (between my native tongues of Spanish and English, but also other languages I’ve studied, like Nahuatl) is a great tool for this sort of close personal examination, as language and thought are closely connected. And writing in multiple genres for multiple audience also keeps me from falling into a rut. I push myself with every new project, push the boundaries of both my creative skills and my very being, helping me deepen my identity and writing philosophy, anchoring both in community and ancestral lore, de-centering the worst aspects of my European heritage (like capitalism and colonialism). The most important lesson I’ve learned as an author, actually, is that writing is ultimately about the book and the reader. Not me. When we remove our ego from a project and fight for it to be the best it can be for the audience we need to reach, magic happens.
How does Twitter influence your creativity?
Twitter has allowed me to stand in solidarity with like-minded social justice warriors (a title I proudly accept) as we collectively fight for greater equity and dignity in our society. It has also given me a platform to share knowledge with the world, especially harder-to-find information about pre-Columbian Mesoamerica, the Nahuatl language, etc. Realizing that the key to social media is content creation, I’ve used Twitter to develop new strategies for conveying complex ideas in catchy, pithy ways, which in turn has helped me to be more concise and “voicy” in my writing elsewhere.
What do you hope young readers take from your writing?
I hope Mexican American (and more broadly, Latinx kids) come away with a clear conviction that our community is worthy of being depicted in books, of being studied in school, of being celebrated for its variegated diversity. I hope they are convinced their own lives, as particular and wholly unique iterations of our shared experience, though perhaps only wispily reflected in my work—like their own reflections in a window as they look out on the world—are beautiful and fascinating, full of all the glory and contradictions of any human life.
I hope that readers who aren’t from my community come away excited about how cool our culture and language are, fully recognizing us as their equals in this society and indignant at any further attempted erasure of us from the national conversation.
And this may seem strange, but I want some of them to wish, deep in their hearts, that they were Mexican American, too, as so many of us have wished our entire lives that we were anything other than the embarrassing folks on the wrong side of the tracks. Though they never can, we still welcome them as our siblings, our allies, our fellow human beings, beside whom we are proud to stand and raise our lamps against the darkness.
Thanks, David!
Friday, June 11, 2021
Interview with David Bowles, author of The Blue-Spangled Blue
Please welcome David Bowles to The Qwillery as part of the 2021 Debut Author Challenge Interviews. The Blue-Spangled Blue, David's adult SF Debut, was published on March 11, 2021 by Castle Bridge Media.
TQ: Welcome to The Qwillery. What is the first fiction piece you remember writing?
David: I still have it in the “baby book” my mother kept until I was seven—a bit of “microfiction” I wrote in first grade about a boy standing on the beach with an ice cream cone in his hand. A wave decides to snatch it from him.
TQ: Are you a plotter, a pantser or a hybrid?
David: A plotter for sure. Characters begin to make their own decisions and change some of the particulars, but I can’t write if I don’t have the basic story outlined.
TQ: What is the most challenging thing for you about writing?
David: Focusing on one particular book at a time. I have tons of ideas and dream projects.
TQ: What has influenced / influences your writing?
David: The storytelling practices of my Mexican American family, especially the sorts of folktales I heard as a child, as they intersect with my own identity and passions.
TQ: Describe The Blue-Spangled Blue using only 5 words.
David: Action-packed religiopolitical BIPOC futurist romance
TQ: Tell us something about The Blue-Spangled Blue that is not found in the book description.
David: Many of the characters are queer, either in sexuality or in gender. In fact, the planet Jitsu waits until children are 10 before considering affirming a gender for them, and those who don’t feel either female or male are considered “omedeyo” or “twin-selved” (a term like our present “non-binary” or “two-spirit”).
TQ: What inspired you to write The Blue-Spangled Blue?
David: After getting married, I lived with my wife’s family in Mexico for a while. The particular dynamics of her evangelical Mexican family, her sister’s neurodiversity, and her drive to give everyone in her community a better life got me to thinking about what such a struggle might look like on an interstellar scale. Over time, those reflections have led me to speculate about what it will take for humanity to pull away from its present struggle for power and wealth, moving down a different collective path.
TQ: What sort of research did you do for The Blue-Spangled Blue?
David: Over two decades, I have crafted two very important elements of the novel: the “religion” known as The Path (or Neo Gnosticism) and the language Baryogo (I’m also a linguist, full disclosure). That required considerable study, as did developing the cultures of the Aknawajin (an ethnic group that arises in the asteroid belt, a blend of Indigenous Mesoamerican, African, and East/Southeast Asian peoples) and of the Simerianes (a branch of Latinx people that emerges in the Cimmeria region of Mars).
TQ: Please tell us about the cover for The Blue-Spangled Blue.
David: The cover art was created by Estudio Tlalli, an activist non-profit dedicated to protecting land and community created by my two daughters (a tattoo artist and illustrator, respectively). It pictures the two contrasting couples in the book: Tenshi Koroma (foreground) and Brando D’Angelo (silhouette) – Konrau Beserra and Jeini Andrade (midground).
TQ: In The Blue-Spangled Blue who was the easiest character to write and why? The hardest and why?
David: The easiest was Brando D’Angelo, because his personality is essentially a fictional extension of my 25-year-old past self. The hardest was (and continues to be) Samanei Koroma, Tenshi’s sister, because she is a powerful neurodiverse antagonist, and I have to constantly check whether I’m falling into stereotypes about people with dissociative identity disorder and schizophrenia.
TQ: Does The Blue-Spangled Blue touch on any social issues?
David: Yes, very much so. It depicts humanity as having moved past white hegemony (the global majority—BIPOC people—are the ones who have colonized space), but still shackled by corporate capitalism and a will toward power. Religious fundamentalism, queer identity, and future spirituality are all explored as the series speculates as to how we might escape what seems an inevitable, tragic end as a species.
TQ: Which question about The Blue-Spangled Blue do you wish someone would ask? Ask it and answer it!
David: Does it have bad-ass action scenes and space battles? Absolutely! What would a space opera be without them?
TQ: Give us one or two of your favorite non-spoilery quotes from The Blue-Spangled Blue.
David:
Tenshi to Brando: “Don’t imagine we need you or any other offworlder to be our savior. We can save ourselves just fine. You’ve come to teach, but you also need to learn. Instead of you being the hero and changing this world, maybe it will end up changing you.”
The Ramatini to Brando: “You don’t have a soul. You have a self. But you didn’t create that self. It has accrued together over time, coalescing out of bits from the world around, expectations imposed on you, teachings you’ve received, experiences you’ve had. The second Oracle taught us to shatter those selves and build bricolage souls from the pieces.”
TQ: What's next?
David: Books 2 and 3 of THE PATH drop in July and November of this year. My Indigenous magic / steampunk graphic novel series Clockwork Curandera launches in October with The Witch Owl Parliament. In the midst of all that, Penguin Random House will be publishing my debut children’s book this summer, My Two Border Towns.
TQ: Thank you for joining us at The Qwillery!
Interview & Giveaway with David Bowles!
As a long-time admirer of award winning Mexican American author, teacher, translator and academic, David Bowles, I was thrilled to have the opportunity to interview him for the MUF blog. David is a wealth of knowledge on writing for children, representation in publishing, and the myths of Mexico.
Storytelling, Culture & Community
pura
At the Pura Belpre Awards
APP: Thank you so much for agreeing to this interview David! Let’s start with the rich, diverse characters in your books. Who do you imagine as a reader when you’re writing them? Who do you see reading your stories?
DB: I imagine myself as a storyteller, kind of like my uncle Joe Casas, who owned a ranch where my cousins and I would work and hang out as kids. At night, Joe would build a little fire and sit on a mesquite stump to tell us stories. We would sit in a semi-circle on the other side of the flames, there in the circle of firelight. That’s how I see my readers. First, there are the Mexican American kids, the ones I’m directly addressing, sitting close to the fire. Behind them are other Latinx kids, whose lives intersect with ours in special ways. And in the third circle, at the edge of the flickering illumination, are all the other kids, who will benefit from the specific story of fictional Mexican American kids, seeing our culture as amazingly cool, seeing us as fully human.
APP: I love that idea of sitting around a fire and seeing our own cultures, and other’s cultures, as amazingly cool! How much of your amazingly cool childhood memories and experiences influenced your stories?
DB: I definitely draw upon my childhood and the feelings associated with it to craft characters from my community. That doesn’t at all mean that they are just copies of me, because I also draw on the lives of my own children, my nieces/nephews, kids I taught as a teacher, etc. But my first-hand experience as a Mexican American and as a human being will always undergird the work that I do, because I can’t have direct access to anyone else’s interior life. Because novels-in-verse (and poetry in general) are so compressed and emotionally charged, accessing my emotions (through “text-to-self” connections with my own work) is vital.
On Güero & Writing
Guero
Award winning novel in verse, They Call Me Güero
APP: I agree, and based on your vast repetoire, I can tell you had an interesting childhood to work with. Tell me, which of your MGs is your favorite?
DB: LOL, that’s like asking which of my children is my favorite. As is the case with most authors, the book I’m working on right now is my favorite. So I’d say They Call Her Fregona, the sequel to They Call Me Güero. Look for an announcement about it very soon.
APP: I can’t wait! Johanna is such a fun, strong character. I fell hard for her in They Call Me Güero, your novel in verse. How much is Güero based on your own story? Do you think that writing in verse allows for more vulnerability from a writer? Is it riskier? Scarier?
DB: About 30 percent of it is drawn from my own life, just brought forward into the present and fictionalized. Verse does require / allow a writer to plug more directly into their emotions, which can definitely feel risky and scary, especially if they haven’t come to terms with who they are as a person. There’s a need for deep self-understanding and honesty that (if I’m frank) most people take a lifetime to reach. So it’s an especially complex thing to write.
APP: No doubt. Writing really does feel like putting our hearts out for all to see sometimes. Speaking of the craft of writing, I’m wondering about problems you see in MGs today. Since you teach writing workshops, can you share some pitfalls that aspiring authors should watch out for?
DB: It’s the same problem I see with YA—a tendency for authors (often pressured by editors and agents) to limit themselves to what is “accepted by the marketplace” in terms of content, structure, audience and voice, as well as a tendency to mimic the most popular works of any given moment. Tell your own stories the way only you can tell them, folks.
#OwnVoices
family
David and Family
APP: I feel exactly the same way, but sometimes things get tricky. Specifically, can we talk about #OwnVoices?
DB: Yup, because I’m really annoyed about how that useful hashtag is being turned against writers from under-represented groups. One mistake publishers and some authors make is to imagine that an #OwnVoices story must represent an entire community. That’s impossible. I can’t tell a story that is universally representative of every Mexican American, much less every Latinx person. But I can draw on my identity, my experience and my community to construct a story about a very specific character or group of characters, putting in the work required—even if these fictional people come from a fictional version of my own community—to craft fully realized human beings whose actions, speech and interior lives resonate as real.
Windows, Mirrors & Sliding Glass Doors
13th Street
13th Street Chapter Book Series
DB: Another is the inverse of this, the fear or conviction that a writer can ONLY write a protagonist that ALMOST COMPLETELY mirrors their own identity. But #OwnVoices fiction IS NOT autobiography, y’all. It’s meant to underscore the greater cultural accuracy (and smaller potential for harm to readers) that comes from the intersection of a writer’s lived experiences with the setting and characters in a book. Through those more accurate and respectful details, often invisible to outsiders, readers of all backgrounds can recognize the universal truths that emerge from that specificity. And readers from the under-represented community can see themselves reflected, but not in a perfect mirror, no. Dr. Rudine Sims Bishop never suggested such an impossible thing. It’s worth revisiting her words:
“Books are sometimes windows, offering views of worlds that may be real or imagined, familiar or strange. These windows are also sliding glass doors, and readers have only to walk through in imagination to become part of whatever world has been created and recreated by the author. When lighting conditions are just right, however, a window can also be a mirror. Literature transforms human experience and reflects it back to us, and in that reflection we can see our own lives and experiences as part of the larger human experience. Reading, then, becomes a means of self-affirmation, and readers often seek their mirrors in books
We’ve all looked at ourselves in windows. We can see through that ghostly image at the world on the other side of the glass. We are superimposed upon it, tenuous, temporary. For most of us, seeing our transparent selves floating on a vibrant fictional depiction of our community is enough. For others, it’s not satisfying. They want a mirror that shows them as they are, solid and whole. Yet no such mirror exists, even in the real world. Mirrors show us inverted, flipped right to left. Only photos get this right. And books are not photos of the reader, friends, no matter how much we might want or need them to be.
Equity & Literary Dignity
DB: The publishing community has begun using #OwnVoices to cudgel writers from under-represented groups. Queer authors who are not out publicly yet have been forced to prove they have a right to write about queer characters. Black authors have been subjected to scrutiny about how “Black” they really are. And so on. The situation is frankly gross.
Yes, bad representation exists. It can come from both outsider perspectives or #OwnVoices as well—usually either a failure of craft or of self-knowledge. It can also be deliberate, of course, born of greed or outright cruelty.
But what makes bad representation hurt as much as it does is the lack of equity and literary dignity for communities of color in publishing. If 50 percent of books for kids and teens were written by BIPOC authors (BIPOC make up 50 percent of school age children), then readers wouldn’t need to comb the stacks carefully with #OwnVoices lists in order to find the accurate, good representation.
Gatekeeping
APP: Everything you are saying is essential knowledge for those involved in publishing, I hope people out there are listening, especially gatekeepers. Including gatekeepers who are, themselves, from marginalized communities. I have encountered Latinx gatekeepers making some Latinx writers feel like they are not POC or Latinx enough. This can be a very disheartening experience. In my case, I felt like my identity was being challenged, and that felt awful.
DB: This is also an outgrowth of the lack of literary dignity. But it needs to stop. There are as many ways of being Mexican American, for example, as there are Mexican Americans. No Latinx person should be policing the identity of any other Latinx person or trying to dictate the sort of story they ought to be telling. My own children, for example, have a Chicano dad and a Mexican immigrant mom (both with working class backgrounds). They grew up in a lower middle-class family on the border, but also spent a lot of time with family in Mexico, so they are pretty bilingual. Their parents aren’t religious, so they didn’t attend church and have none of the traditionally Catholic experiences that some see as essential for being Mexican. But their parents emphasized the need to de-center European heritage and explore Indigenous roots.
Their lives are unique, yet worthy of being represented, not judged by someone’s biased view of what makes a person Mexican American.
Latinx Identity
brothers
Brothers: Fernando, Matt, and David
APP: I appreciate you sharing that insight. I feel some frustration as a white looking Latinx person with so many Latinx characters I see in books described and pictured a certain way that I would characterize as a stereotype. I want to see a diversity of skin tones, hair types, and eye color all represented in Latinx-centered kidlit – but I usually don’t.
DB: Latinx identity (in our respective cases, Mexican American and Argentinean) is ethnic. Cultural. We come in multiple “races” and blends of them. Certainly it is important that Indigenous and Black Latinx folks be represented in kid lit, especially given the historical colorism in our communities that has attempted to erase and marginalize them. But there are Asian Latinx folks and white ones, too. To say that a Latinx character must be a Brown person is wrongheaded and unfair. Heck, in my own family, there are multiple skin tones among siblings. I have an Afro-Mexican brother and one with green eyes. That’s just how it is, friends.
The Garza Twins
APP: That is so true, and so lovely. Speaking of family, let’s talk about the family in your Garza Twins Series: The Smoking Mirror, A Kingdom Beneath the Waves, and Hidden City. In volume one, I was frustrated by the father. I wondered why he didn’t communicate with his kids, and why the mother hadn’t mentioned some very important information (I’m not going to give it away, read the books!). Latinx parents are usually hard to sideline in my experience.
garza
The Garza Twins Series
DB: I promise the parents are much more involved in the rest of the series, heh. And the father has a character arc that requires him to be broken by the absence of the mother at the beginning of book one. The mother, Verónica, is the one who is usually all “up in” the children’s business (she’s an immigrant from Mexico), while Oscar (the father, a Chicano with a white mother and a doctorate in archeology)
Myth & Magic
APP: I can’t wait to read more about that family and the magical worlds they discover and navigate. I was captivated by the Mexican mythology that is woven into the series. How important do you think the idea of myth and magic is for kids to have in literature? How about in real life?
DB: I was raised in a community that believes magic is a part of the actual world we live in (which is why Latinx realism is often called magical realism). I think it was a boon to my own mental health and creativity to live that way and see magic in books.
APP: I totally agree. Can you explain the difference between magical realism and fantasy for an MG audience?
DB: To me it’s pretty simple. Magical realism just accepts that there are moments when the supernatural or magical just pops up in otherwise mundane lives. People know that it will happen, and there is no surprise or shock or commentary about the oddness of it. Fantasy worlds either have magic imbedded in all aspects of life (so that it’s ever-present rather than showing up from time to time) or magic hidden from most people’s view but that can be learned and wielded by a special few.
APP: Great explanation! You seem to seamlessly incorporate the magical into your writing. I’m wondering what your advice is for writers who want to integrate their cultural heritage, mythology, family dynamics etc. into their writing but still reach a large audience not limited to their own cultural or linguistic group?
DB: Frankly, don’t worry about the whole “reaching a large audience” thing when you’re writing the first draft. Write the story you need to tell the way only you can tell it for the people that deserve to have it told. That courage and integrity will make your story resonate for all people, regardless of their backgrounds, because universal human truths always emerge from honest, culturally and geographically specific writing. Even the beloved Classics of the Ancient World like the Odyssey are very specific to time, place, people. When revising, you can enhance others access by maybe sanding down some of the thicker, more opaque texture a tad.
Language Use
PB
David’s new Picture Book!
APP: Great advice, for me that’s often about access to language because I like to mix languages in my stories. How do you feel about language mixing within texts without translation? Is it rude to non-bilinguals? Is it othering?
DB: I write dialogue the way my characters speak. That usually means that Spanish words and phrases will crop up. I don’t think this is rude at all, any more so than it’s rude for a British writer or a Bostonian one to include words from their dialect that don’t occur in mine. I just add a glossary at the end. Readers can consult it if they want.
What would truly be othering would be to flatten all use of language into a homogeneous, white-sounding universal dialect of English. No, thanks.
APP: On the topic of language use, how do you feel about certain words being avoided or considered taboo because of their connotations?
DB: Obviously, words that are hurtful and insulting toward a class of people, meant to denigrate and marginalize them, should be avoided by all folks who want to be humane, caring allies. For a writer, however the issue gets complicated because they are depicting worlds in which not everyone is a humane, caring ally (or woke enough to see their own use of language as problematic).
APP: Thank you so much for your time David! Now I can’t wait to delve into more of your books!
Giveaway!
guiro
Pura Belpre Honor Book 2019
Wow, talking to David really is like receiving a class in creativity, dignity and representation in the world of kidlit. His wide variety of books, awards and honors is too long to mention, so check out David’s website for more invaluable information, essays and events!
David has generously offered to send a copy of They Call Me Güero to one lucky winner, US only. To enter rafflecopter giveaway like, retweet, comment and follow!
eathered Serpent, Dark Heart of Sky: Myths of Mexico
David Bowles
Cinco Puntos Press
701 Texas, El Paso, Texas 79901
www.cincopuntos.com
9781941026717, $24.95, HC, 368pp, www.amazon.com
Synopsis: The 34 folk stories and aboriginal myths compiled in "Feathered Serpent, Dark Heart of Sky" by University of Texas academician David Bowles deftly trace the history of the world from its beginnings in the dreams of the dual god, Ometeotl, to the arrival of the Spanish conquistadors in Mexico and the fall of the great city Tenochtitlan.
In the course of that history we learn about the Creator Twins (Feathered Serpent and Dark Heart of Sky) and how they built the world on a leviathan's back; of the shape-shifting nahualli; and the aluxes, elfish beings known to help out the occasional wanderer. And finally, we read Aztec tales about the arrival of the blonde strangers from across the sea, the strangers who seek to upend the rule of Motecuhzoma and destroy the very stories we are reading.
These legends and myths captured Bowles's imagination as a young Latino reader. Despite growing up on the United States/Mexico border, he had never read a single Aztec or Mayan myth until he was in college. This experience inspired him to reconnect with that forgotten past.
Critique: A fully absorbing and inherently fascinating read throughout, "Feathered Serpent, Dark Heart of Sky: Myths of Mexico" is an impressive work of simply outstanding scholarship that is enhanced with the inclusion of a two page Pronunciation Guide, a eight page Glossary, a four page listing of Source Notes, and a two page Bibliography. While strongly and unreservedly recommended for both community and academic library Mexican Mythology collections and supplemental studies lists, it should be noted for students, academia, and non-specialist general readers with an interest in the subject that "Feathered Serpent, Dark Heart of Sky: Myths of Mexico" is also available in a paperback edition (9781941026724, $16.95) and in a digital book format (Kindle, $9.99).
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2018 Midwest Book Review
http://www.midwestbookreview.com
Source Citation
Source Citation
MLA 9th Edition APA 7th Edition Chicago 17th Edition Harvard
Dunford, Michael. "Feathered Serpent, Dark Heart of Sky: Myths of Mexico." MBR Bookwatch, Aug. 2018. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A553627756/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=36e24267. Accessed 13 Mar. 2022.
Bowles, David THEY CALL ME GUERO Cinco Puntos (Children's Fiction) $16.95 9, 4 ISBN: 978-1-947627-06-2
Explore the life of a border kid in Bowles' spirited verse novel.
For the 12-year-old Mexican-American narrator that everyone calls Guero, the borderlands (that "strip of frontier, / home of hardy plants") means more than home. On Saturdays, he crosses the border into Mexico with his dad and chats with the locals. He goes marketing in the boisterous pulga with Mom and listens to his abuela Mimi's scary folktales. Seventh grade soon begins, and Guero reunites with los Bobbys (or, as his sister Teresa calls them, "los Derds--Diverse Nerds") for some reading, mischief, and girls (a new interest). His English teacher even gets Guero interested in poetry! In this slim verse novel, Bowles splendidly translates border life via loosely connected vignettes in an eclectic mix of poetic forms. Guero's voice brims with humor, wit, and bits of slang, and a diverse cast of characters offers hints of other cultures. The author, however, does inject some complex themes and topics for rich discussion, touching on immigration, prejudice, and even the narrator's nickname, "guero," a term used to refer to light-skinned men and boys. Guero occasionally faces flak from a few schoolmates on account of his pale, freckled skin and copper hair, resulting in a revealing exchange with his dad: "M'ijo, pale folks catch all the breaks / here and in Mexico, too. Not your fault. / Not fair. Just the way it's been for years."
A valuable, too-brief look at the borderlands. (glossary) (Verse fiction. 10-14)
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2018 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Source Citation
Source Citation
MLA 9th Edition APA 7th Edition Chicago 17th Edition Harvard
"Bowles, David: THEY CALL ME GUERO." Kirkus Reviews, 15 Aug. 2018. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A549923797/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=9731a2ea. Accessed 13 Mar. 2022.
They Call Me Guero: A Border Kid's Poems
David Bowles
Cinco Puntos Press
701 Texas, El Paso, Texas 79901
www.cincopuntos.com
9781947627079, $12.95, PB, 160pp, www.amazon.com
Twelve-year-old Guero is Mexican American, at home with Spanish or English and on both sides of the river. He's starting 7th grade with a woke English teacher who knows how to make poetry cool. In Spanish, "Guero" is a nickname for guys with pale skin, Latino or Anglo. But make no mistake: our red-headed, freckled hero is puro mexicano, like Canelo Alvarez, the Mexican boxer. Guero is also a nerd (reader, gamer, musician) who runs with a squad of misfits like him, Los Bobbys. Sure, they get in trouble like anybody else, and like other middle-school boys, they discover girls. Watch out for Joanna! She's tough as nails. But trusting in his family's traditions, his accordion and his bookworm squad, he faces seventh grade with book smarts and a big heart. Life is tough for a border kid, but Guero has figured out how to cope--He writes poetry! "They Call Me Guero: A Border Kid's Poems" by David Bowles (a native of the South Texas borderlands, where he teaches at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley) is a compendium of poetry for young readers ages 8-12 and will prove to be a prized and welcome addition to school and community library collections.
Please Note: Illustration(s) are not available due to copyright restrictions.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2019 Midwest Book Review
http://www.midwestbookreview.com/cbw/index.htm
Source Citation
Source Citation
MLA 9th Edition APA 7th Edition Chicago 17th Edition Harvard
"They Call Me Guero: A Border Kid's Poems." Children's Bookwatch, Apr. 2019. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A584978945/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=8681246d. Accessed 13 Mar. 2022.
Bowles, David BATTLE OF THE BAD-BREATH BATS Harper/HarperCollins (Children's None) $15.99 7, 7 ISBN: 978-0-06-294780-2
Three cousins find themselves fighting a horde of bats.
Cousins Malia, Ivan, and Dante are spending the summer at Aunt Lucy’s house, located in fictional Gulf City’s Little Mexico neighborhood. The day is full of promise, as the children plan to visit the neighborhood’s water park. As they walk to the attraction, an old woman they meet on the way suggests they take a shortcut through an alley behind a bakery, but the street they emerge on—13th Street—is empty. Feeling lost, Malia uses her phone’s map app and realizes they’re no longer en route to the pool. Instead, they’ve been transported to a strange place infested by huge bats with astonishingly bad breath. The cousins must use Dante’s video game experience, Ivan’s creativity, Malia’s leadership, and the help of some fantastical characters to survive the terrifying bats and return home to Aunt Lucy’s house. Bowles gently introduces a sprinkling of Spanish vocabulary throughout this chapter book. Encouraging messages greet readers after some chapters, along with occasional progress markers. In addition, a summary of the number of chapters, pages, and words read gives readers a sense of accomplishment at the conclusion, and the three protagonists speak directly to readers, encouraging them to take up another book. Three additional activities aim to further readers’ engagement with the story and develop critical reading skills.
An exciting series opener that should whet readers’ appetites for more. (Horror. 6-10)
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2020 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Source Citation
Source Citation
MLA 9th Edition APA 7th Edition Chicago 17th Edition Harvard
"Bowles, David: BATTLE OF THE BAD-BREATH BATS." Kirkus Reviews, 1 May 2020. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A622503047/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=8082b574. Accessed 13 Mar. 2022.
Bowles, David RISE OF THE HALFLING KING Cinco Puntos Press (Children's None) $12.95 9, 1 ISBN: 978-1-947627-37-6
A halfling child challenges a cruel king for the throne.
Almah, an apprentice witch in Kabak, a city in the Yucatan Peninsula, receives from the elfin beings known as Aluxes a magic stone and a drum that “will announce the true king of Uxmal.” As years go by, Kinich Kak Ek takes the throne in Uxmal, but the sorcerer Zaatan Ik prophesies a challenger: Not born of a woman, the usurper will take Kinich Kak Ek’s throne once he bangs the kingmaker drum and conquers three challenges. Unbothered by the prophecy, the king annexes neighboring cities and imposes on them rules and punishments. Almah asks the gods for help for her people and receives a response in the shape of an Alux halfling boy, Sayam, who hatches from an egg. When Zaatan Ik releases on a defiant city a serpent from the underworld, he sets in motion a series of events that will change Sayam’s fate along with the rest of Uxmal. In the first of 10 graphic novels to adapt his work Feathered Serpent, Dark Heart of Sky (2018), David Bowles pairs up with illustrator Charlene Bowles to bring Mesoamerican heroes to life. With seemingly simple yet vivid illustrations characterized by strong, dynamic lines, the illustrator develops cunning and endearing characters to populate this enticing tale. In an afterword, the author shares the historical significance of Maya storytelling and its connection to today’s graphic novels.
An unmissable adventure of mythical proportions. (Graphic fantasy. 8-14)
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2020 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Source Citation
Source Citation
MLA 9th Edition APA 7th Edition Chicago 17th Edition Harvard
"Bowles, David: RISE OF THE HALFLING KING." Kirkus Reviews, 15 June 2020, p. NA. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A626451833/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=fbb04dd1. Accessed 13 Mar. 2022.
Rise of the Halfling King
David Bowles, author
Charlene Bowles, illustrator
Cinco Puntos Press
701 Texas, El Paso, Texas 79901
www.cincopuntos.com
9781947627376, $12.95, PB, 64pp
https://www.amazon.com/Rise-Halfling-Tales-Feathered-Serpent/dp/1947627376
Sayam has always been different from other kids--he's very short for his age, his best friend is a monkey, and most curious of all: he was born from an egg! His grandmother, a witch, found him and taught him all the ancient magic she uses to help her people. So when a giant snake starts terrorizing a nearby city, Sayam decides it's time for him to use his knowledge to help others, and steps into action.
But the beast might not be Sayam's biggest problem: the ruthless King Kinich Kak Ek sees Sayam as a threat to his throne. Prophecy declares that whoever succeeds at three impossible tests will be king. Monstrous snakes and impossible tests are a lot for a boy to handle, but Sayam is brave and has a loyal monkey, a wise grandmother, and magical knowledge on his side!
Fans of adventure tales with a mythological focus (such as Bowles' previous work with Latin American myths, The Chupacabras of the Rio Grande and the Garza Twin series, as well as Rick Riordan Presents, especially the Storm Runner novels) will love this exciting and accessible graphic novel.
"Rise of the Halfling King", the first volume of the 'Tales of the Feathered Serpent' series, is also an invaluable educational tool for middle school students because it is a well-researched introduction to Maya culture, made accessible by an expert in Mesoamerican culture and juvenile literature. Bowles previously stitched together tales from Maya, Aztec, and other ancient mythology from pre-Columbian Mexico in the his YA book, "Feathered Serpent, Dark Heart of Sky".
Simply stated, "Rise of the Halfling King" is especially and unreservedly recommended for family, elementary school, middle school, and community library graphic novel collections for young readers ages 8-13.
Please Note: Illustration(s) are not available due to copyright restrictions.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2020 Midwest Book Review
http://www.midwestbookreview.com/cbw/index.htm
Source Citation
Source Citation
MLA 9th Edition APA 7th Edition Chicago 17th Edition Harvard
Bowles, David. "Rise of the Halfling King." Children's Bookwatch, Nov. 2020. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A645279965/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=0867d594. Accessed 13 Mar. 2022.
The Sea-Ringed World: Sacred Stories of the Americas
Maria Garcia Esperon, trans, from the Spanish by David Bowles, illus. by Amanda Mijangos. Levine Querido, $21.99 (240p) ISBN 978-1-64614-015-2
"Fifteen thousand years before Europeans stepped foot in the Americas, people had already spread from tip to tip and coast to coast." In the preface to this reverently gathered collection of sacred stories from the Americas, Garcia Esperon (A Tortoise Named Harriet) and Bowles (The Rise of the Halfling King) convey their aim to "bring out the faint ancestral voices echoing at the heart of each" presented tale. Preceded by short poems and full of vivid language ("a land of ruddy sunset splendor and deep green night"), the stories fulfill that intention by evoking the unique cadences and traditions of the Indigenous cultures represented. Spanning "north to south, east to west, and back again," the entries cover a range of locales as well as varied topics and themes, including cosmic tales of creation and destruction (" 'Spider Grandmother,' Hopi tradition") and the heroic trials of twin brothers visiting the underworld (" 'Xibalba,' K'iche' (Maya) tradition"). Employing a limited, resonant color palette of blue, black, and white, illustrator Mijangos alternates between decorative headings and full-page depictions to conjure up the world in which each story originates. Visually striking and accessibly written, this book provides readers with a worthy introduction to some enduring Indigenous narratives. Includes a pronunciation guide, culture guide, map, and glossary. Ages 8-up. Agent (for Garcia Esperon and Mijangos): Paulina Delgado, Ediciones el Naranjo. (Feb.)
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2020 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Source Citation
Source Citation
MLA 9th Edition APA 7th Edition Chicago 17th Edition Harvard
"The Sea-Ringed World: Sacred Stories of the Americas." Publishers Weekly, vol. 267, no. 52, 21 Dec. 2020, pp. 91+. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A650072688/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=da0f295a. Accessed 13 Mar. 2022.
The Sea-Ringed World: Sacred Stories of the Americas.
By Maria Garcia Esperon. Illus. by Amanda Mijangos. Tr. by David Bowles.
Feb. 2021. 240p. Levine Querido, $21.99 (9781646140152). Gr. 4-8.398.
From the Inuit in Canada and the Hopi in the U.S. to the Maya across Central America and the Sel'nam (or Ona) at the tip of Argentina, Native peoples in the Americas have told traditional stories for thousands of years. In this Mexican import, Esperon retells sacred stories from 18 Native cultures, making them accessible to middle-grade and adult readers alike. Complemented by stylized artwork that combines Native motifs with looser, modern lines, in black, white, and a deep ocean blue, the short stories reflect a wonder and understanding of the natural world and the human spirit. Some speak of creation, like the Niitsitapi (or Blackfoot) story in which six poor brothers go to live in the sky, becoming the constellation known today as the Pleiades. Others describe the complexities of love, such as the Guarani tale in which a girl transforms into a flower to avoid a loveless marriage, and her forbidden lover becomes a hummingbird, always flitting from bloom to bloom in search of her. Dark tales also abound, like the Maya story in which two brothers who love to play ball are invited to a game in the underworld. Copious back matter includes a pronunciation guide, a map and guide of the cultures, and a lengthy glossary. A rich anthology to understand and delight in Native traditions. --Angela Leeper
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2021 American Library Association
http://www.ala.org/aboutala/offices/publishing/booklist/
Source Citation
Source Citation
MLA 9th Edition APA 7th Edition Chicago 17th Edition Harvard
Leeper, Angela. "The Sea-Ringed World: Sacred Stories of the Americas." Booklist, vol. 117, no. 9-10, 1 Jan. 2021, p. 61. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A650393097/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=aaeb7e0b. Accessed 13 Mar. 2022.
Bowles, David THE IMMORTAL BOY Levine Querido (Teen None) $17.99 3, 9 ISBN: 978-1-64614-044-2
Two sets of young people living in dire circumstances are trying their best to survive in Colombia.
Thirteen-year-old Hector and his siblings, Maria, Robert, David, and Manuela, are living in Bogota on the brink of starvation since their father left and their mother died. As the oldest, Hector assumes the responsibility of finding work to feed his siblings. Determined to stay true to their father’s wish that they stay together, they refuse to seek help from social services out of fear of separation. In a parallel story, Nina, the daughter of political prisoners, is a new arrival at an orphanage. As she awaits her mother’s release, she is fixated on befriending the Immortal Boy, a loner who, rumor has it, protects bullied children. Told through chapters that switch between third-person narration focusing on Hector’s family and Nina’s first-person voice, the stories initially do not seem to intersect. Their eventual connection is suspenseful, unexpected, and tragic, underscoring the visceral loneliness that permeates both stories. Fans of Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs may appreciate the eerie tone. This work could serve as a springboard for discussions about poverty and the difficult choices one must make in desperate situations. This English-language debut by award-winning Colombian author Montana Ibanez appears in a bilingual edition, presented flip-book style in both English and Spanish.
Intense, surreal, and mysterious. (Fiction. 13-adult)
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2021 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Source Citation
Source Citation
MLA 9th Edition APA 7th Edition Chicago 17th Edition Harvard
"Bowles, David: THE IMMORTAL BOY." Kirkus Reviews, 1 Feb. 2021. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A650107555/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=1315260e. Accessed 13 Mar. 2022.
The Immortal Boy. By Francisco Montana Ibanez. Tr. by David Bowles. Mar. 2021.176p. Levine Querido, $17.99 (9781646140442). Gr. 8-12.
This dual-language book--presented twice, once in English, once in Spanish--tells two interwoven stories set in Bogota, Colombia: that of five unparented siblings fighting to survive and that of Nina, at the orphanage, who has big, romantic dreams of what she wishes her life were, especially after crossing paths with the most mysterious of the five siblings, the rumored "Immortal Boy." Bowles' translation captures the shifting gaze of an omniscient narrator, preserving the style of slightly stilted, archaic prose that hearkens back to classic writers like Dickens and Dostoyevsky. The Spanish text mirrors this style, alternating between that narrator and Nina's first-person, emotion-driven point of view as the tragic story unfolds and spirals. Ibanez explores the sibling bond and the magical quality of being a child, made especially memorable through bouts of magic realism. The vivid imagery is unforgettable, including the visceral starvation that occurs as the family pays the price of staying together. The American debut of Ibanez's work will leave readers speechless and contemplative of the pain, innocence, and danger it conveys. --Stephanie Cohen
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2021 American Library Association
http://www.ala.org/aboutala/offices/publishing/booklist/
Source Citation
Source Citation
MLA 9th Edition APA 7th Edition Chicago 17th Edition Harvard
Cohen, Stephanie. "The Immortal Boy." Booklist, vol. 117, no. 11, 1 Feb. 2021, p. 47. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A654001041/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=e056b1bc. Accessed 13 Mar. 2022.
My Two Border Towns
David Bowles, illus. by Erika Meza. Kokila, $17.99 (40p) ISBN 978-0-593-11104-8
"Every other Saturday," this story's child narrator and his father, who reside in the U.S., set out for the Mexican side of the border near where they live. Meza (Balloons for Papa) pours artistry into mixed-media images of the towns, which mirror each other across the river--"a watery serpent that glints with the dawn," writes Bowles (Rise of the Halfling King), making his picture book debut. The two show their documents and cross the boundary into the town, brought to life visually with sunny shades of yellow, btick red, and magenta. They make stops at the boy's aunt and uncle's jewelry shop, at a grocery for snacks, a doctor's office for medication, then take much of what they've gathered to a family who is camping along the border bridge: "Refugees... Stuck between countries. The U.S. says there's no room, and Mexico says it can hardly look after its own gente." Acknowledging their own "duty to care for our gente," and the "cards that give us the freedom/ to travel back and forth," the father and son look forward--with warmth and care--to a "wonderful day," when passage between the botder towns isn't limited. Ages 4-8. Author's agent: Taylor Martindale Kean, Full Circle Literary. Illustrator's agent: Claire Cartey, Holroyde Cartey. (Aug.)
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2021 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Source Citation
Source Citation
MLA 9th Edition APA 7th Edition Chicago 17th Edition Harvard
"My Two Border Towns." Publishers Weekly, vol. 268, no. 25, 21 June 2021, p. 131. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A667264973/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=0a984477. Accessed 13 Mar. 2022.
Longoria, Margarita LIVING BEYOND BORDERS Philomel (Teen None) $17.99 8, 17 ISBN: 978-0-593-20497-9
Twenty original contributions by Mexican American authors about growing up in the U.S.
In a note to readers, editor Longoria describes feeling compelled to create this anthology as she saw Mexican Americans being attacked and derided in the media. The result is this collection of short stories, personal essays, graphic stories, and poems by Mexican American authors. The standouts here pack a real emotional punch. Awareness of the impact of socio-economic status often takes center stage, and several pieces are set in the Rio Grande Valley. Protagonists vary in age from middle school through adult and are predominantly mestizx. “The Body by the Canal,” by David Bowles, is not to be missed and, along with “Coco Chamoy and Chango,” by e.E. Charlton-Trujillo, brings queer representation to the project. The opening story, “Ghetto Is Not an Adjective” by Dominic Carrillo, successfully cannonballs into the deep end of the social justice pool, while “Morning People” by Diana Lopez wades into the murky waters of the taboo. “Yoli Calderon and Principal Hayes” by Angela Cervantes offers an exemplary use of the first person, and both “This Rio Grande Valley” by Daniel García Ordaz and “Sunflower” by Aida Salazar are full of beautiful imagery. “Ode to My Papi” by Guadalupe García McCall and “La Princesa Mileidy Dominguez” by Rubén Degollado both tug at the heartstrings. The variety of narrative styles contributes to the broad appeal of this volume.
Well worth reading; a welcome addition to any bookshelf. (contributor bios) (Anthology. 13-adult)
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2021 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Source Citation
Source Citation
MLA 9th Edition APA 7th Edition Chicago 17th Edition Harvard
"Longoria, Margarita: LIVING BEYOND BORDERS." Kirkus Reviews, 1 July 2021, p. NA. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A667042067/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=772a17a0. Accessed 13 Mar. 2022.
The Witch Owl Parliament. By David Bowles and Raul the Third. Illus. by Raul the Third and Stacey Robinson. Oct. 2021. 112p. Lee & Low/Tu, paper, $ 17.95 (9781620145920). Gr. 7-10. 741.5.
In this electric series opener, an all-star team of Latinx creators tells the story of Cristina, a curandera who is killed by witch owls and revived by her brother, who couldn't bear to lose her. When Enrique brings his sister back from the dead using sacrilegious means, she, like Frankenstein's creature, is rejected by their community. But Enrique's actions gave her surprising powers, and she decides to use her renewed existence and skills for the good of her country and its denizens, with the help of Enrique and a skinwalker called Mateo. Set in a steampunk-inspired nineteenth-century Mexico, the story draws on Indigenous folklore and other traditions, in a fascinating blend of magic and culture, which is very effectively conveyed through Raul the Third's dynamic artwork, predominantly in black with red and green accents. This first book in a planned trilogy is being released simultaneously in both Spanish and English. Following the comic is a short story that acts as a sort of prequel, telling the story of Cristina becoming an apprentice curandera. --Kristina Pino
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2021 American Library Association
http://www.ala.org/aboutala/offices/publishing/booklist/
Source Citation
Source Citation
MLA 9th Edition APA 7th Edition Chicago 17th Edition Harvard
Pino, Kristina. "The Witch Owl Parliament." Booklist, vol. 117, no. 21, 1 July 2021, p. 57. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A669809426/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=2470df32. Accessed 13 Mar. 2022.
Bowles, David MY TWO BORDER TOWNS Kokila (Children's None) $17.99 8, 24 ISBN: 978-0-593-11104-8
A father and son run errands across the U.S.–Mexico border.
Early on Saturday, the boy (who's never named) prepares his “special bag” to bring to Mexico for his friends. Crossing from Texas to Tamaulipas, the duo drives across town and over the bridge into a twin town where Spanish is just as frequently heard, but English is spoken less. Before tackling their errands, father and son stop to fuel up with café de olla and chocolate caliente, respectively. They visit the jewelry shop, gather groceries and supplies at the abarrotes, play soccer with cousins, and pick up medicine at the pharmacy. On their way back home to the United States, the protagonist encounters his friends at the bridge: displaced people from the Caribbean and Central America living in limbo on the border between two towns and two countries. Taking advantage of the slow pace of the traffic on the bridge, the boy exits his father’s truck, bringing the gathered supplies and toys to those in wait. In what initially comes across as a story of a sweet visit to a Mexican town to run some errands, Bowles seamlessly weaves in some of the complexities of living on the border. He fearlessly introduces the complex issues surrounding the presence of refugees waiting to be admitted into the United States and candidly portrays the everyday lives of families who span the border, creating a unique cosmos in this space. Meza’s background illustrations around town imbue the pages with Mexico’s vibrance. Bowles translates his own text into Spanish in a simultaneously publishing edition. (This book was reviewed digitally.)
Beautiful, honest, complex. (Picture book. 4-8)
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2021 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Source Citation
Source Citation
MLA 9th Edition APA 7th Edition Chicago 17th Edition Harvard
"Bowles, David: MY TWO BORDER TOWNS." Kirkus Reviews, 15 July 2021, p. NA. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A668237578/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=ae1a3af7. Accessed 13 Mar. 2022.
Bowles, David THE WITCH OWL PARLIAMENT Tu Books (Teen None) $17.95 10, 19 ISBN: 978-1-62014-592-0
Mix Fullmetal Alchemist with steampunk in a fictionalized version of 19th-century Mexico, and you have Bowles and Raúl the Third’s new graphic series.
It’s 1865, and Cristina Franco is an apprentice curandera, or healer. The witch owls lay siege to the East Laredo train depot in the Republic of Santander, where she awaits her brother Enrique’s return, and despite the best efforts of her green magic, she is fatally wounded. All is not lost, however, as Enrique has been studying alchemy and engineering while he was away at university. He uses his new skills to bring Cristina back and creates mechanical limbs for her. Yet Cristina struggles with this blasphemy, knowing it will result in her expulsion from her curandera community just as the witch owls are rising to terrorize Santander. The pace is fast and clipped, with little time for worldbuilding; even brief flashback scenes can cause more confusion than clarity. Nevertheless, the combination of steampunk and cyberpunk genres in such a novel setting will appeal to many. Readers lacking a familiarity with the mestizo and Indigenous cultures of Mexico may be inspired to learn more in order to fully appreciate this work. Illustrated in black, red, and, occasionally, green ink on a background that mimics the sepia tones of old paper, the dramatic and expressive artwork and creative use of panels greatly enhance the reading experience.
A fast-paced genre mashup sure to find a cult following. (maps, author's note, sketches) (Graphic fantasy. 13-18)
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2021 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Source Citation
Source Citation
MLA 9th Edition APA 7th Edition Chicago 17th Edition Harvard
"Bowles, David: THE WITCH OWL PARLIAMENT." Kirkus Reviews, 1 Aug. 2021, p. NA. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A669986341/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=2909ac0d. Accessed 13 Mar. 2022.
Mis dos pueblos fronterizos. * My Two Border Towns. By David Bowles. Illus. by Erika Meza. Aug. 2021.40p. Penguin/Kokila, $ 17.99, Spanish (9780593325070); English (9780593111048). K-Gr. 2.
A father and son wake up early to drive across the U.S. border, into Mexico, and to a small town much like their own. A routine they take part in every other Saturday, this trip gives them time together as they enjoy breakfast and run errands, visiting family along the way. The little boy brings along some of his favorite things--comics, notebooks, and more--and he and his father buy additional supplies. As they return across the border and into southern Texas, readers discover that there is another, more important purpose to their trip: the supplies are for a little boy named Elder and his family, refugees who aren't allowed into the U.S. and who must wait, their future uncertain. Mezas lovely watercolor-and-gouache illustrations bring to life the bustling activity in each of these border towns. The Spanish text gracefully details the trip in a way that is perfect for sharing with little ones, with many readers likely to spot familiar sights, sounds, and phrases. Characters' friendly greetings, the vibrant illustrations, and the thoughtful actions of this father and son come together to create a feeling of warmth and hope, while also bringing to the forefront the plight of so many like Elder and his family. An excellent addition to Spanish picture-book collections.--Selenia Paz
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2021 American Library Association
http://www.ala.org/aboutala/offices/publishing/booklist/
Source Citation
Source Citation
MLA 9th Edition APA 7th Edition Chicago 17th Edition Harvard
Paz, Selenia. "Mis dos pueblos fronterizos." Booklist, vol. 117, no. 22, Aug. 2021, pp. 54+. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A689976820/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=e5728882. Accessed 13 Mar. 2022.
Living beyond Borders: Growing Up Mexican in America. Ed. by Margarita Longoria. Aug. 2021. 224p. Philomel, $17.99 (9780593204979). Gr. 7-11.
This superlative collection of fiction, essays, poetry, and graphic vignettes is as varied as its contributors. The experiences portrayed in this anthology are deeply personal with sharp, heartfelt ruminations on the experience of living on the "cusp of two cultures," as Longoria notes in the introduction. The pieces foray into the past and reflect on timeless themes like dignity, as in Guadalupe Ruiz-Flores' "My Name Is Dolores" and Francisco X. Stork's "Filiberto's Final Visit," and present a vivid picture of contemporary experiences, exemplified by David Bowles' magnificent "The Body by the River" and Ruben Degollado's soaring "La Princesa Milady Dominguez." The Texas-Rio Grande region is the primary setting, representing the "best of both worlds," enlivened by Spanglish colloquialisms (chamba, carnal) and cultural superstitions. Justine Narro succinctly captures the push and pull of identity, "a place you have never stepped foot on / but call it your land" (in her poem "I Want to Go Home"), that will resonate with readers across cultures who are contemplating their own identities. Aida Salazar, Xavier Garza, Anna Meriano, and Angela Cervantes also contribute standout pieces to this memorable collection and worthy companion to other anthologized works such as Take the Mic: Fictional Stories of Everyday Resistance (2019) and Black Enough: Stories of Being Young & Black in America (2020).--Jessica Agudelo
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2021 American Library Association
http://www.ala.org/aboutala/offices/publishing/booklist/
Source Citation
Source Citation
MLA 9th Edition APA 7th Edition Chicago 17th Edition Harvard
Agudelo, Jessica. "Living beyond Borders: Growing Up Mexican in America." Booklist, vol. 117, no. 22, Aug. 2021, p. 51. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A689976806/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=c5a09c95. Accessed 13 Mar. 2022.
David Bowles and Raul the Third.Tu, $17.95 (112p) ISBN 978-1-62014-592-0
In this ultracool but information-dense first installment of Bowles {My Two Border Towns) and Raul the Third's (Strollercoaster) graphic novel trilogy, its creators pose the following question, taken from an author's note: "What if a curandera... had to become a cyborg to survive?" Drawing inspiration from steampunk and cyberpunk aesthetics, "magical, horror-tinged comics," and Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, the story--set in an alternate 1865--introduces readers to siblings Cristina and Enrique Franco Pedregon, just as tragedy strikes. After an attack by witch owls fatally injures apprentice curandera Crisrina at a train depot in the Republic of Santander, a desperate Enrique makes the fateful decision to bring his sister back to life using a combination of alchemy and engiheering. But as Cristina reluctantly adjusts to her new existence, the siblings must team up with a shape-shifting mage to investigate the owl coven responsible for the cruel attack and find a way to fight back. Featuring a limited palette with pops of brilliant orange-red and forest green by colorist Stacey Robinson, stylish lettering by Damian Duffy, and Raul the Third's well-placed panel breakouts and signature kinetic style, each page buzzes with life. Though Bowles condenses much information into the trilogy's first volume, the siblings' compelling dynamic will leave readers awaiting the next installments. Includes maps, a prequel story, and bonus sketches. Ages 12-up. Agent (for Raul the Third):Jennifer Laughran, Andrea Brown Literary. (Oct.)
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2021 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Source Citation
Source Citation
MLA 9th Edition APA 7th Edition Chicago 17th Edition Harvard
"The Witch Owl Parliament (Clockwork Curandera #1)." Publishers Weekly, vol. 268, no. 38, 20 Sept. 2021, pp. 73+. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A677353067/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=87f20248. Accessed 13 Mar. 2022.
David Bowles, illus. by Erika Meza. Kokila, $17.99 (40p) ISBN 978-0-593-11104-8
"Every other Saturday," this story's child narrator and his father, who reside in the U.S., set out for the Mexican side of the border near where they live. Meza (Balloons for Papa) pours artistry into mixed-media images of the towns, which mirror each other across the river--"a watery serpent that glints with the dawn," writes Bowles (Rise of the Halfling King), making his picture book debut. The two show their documents and cross the boundary into the town, brought to life visually with sunny shades of yellow, brick red, and magenta. They make stops at the boy's aunt and uncle's jewelry shop, at a grocery for snacks, a doctor's office for medication, then take much of what they've gathered to a family who is camping along the border bridge: "Refugees... Stuck between countries. The U.S. says there's no room, and Mexico says ir can hardly look after its own gente." Acknowledging their own "duty to care for our gente," and the "cards that give us the freedom/ to travel back and forth," the father and son look forward-with warmth and care--to a "wonderful day," when passage between the border towns isn't limited. Ages 4--8.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2021 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Source Citation
Source Citation
MLA 9th Edition APA 7th Edition Chicago 17th Edition Harvard
"My Two Border Towns." Publishers Weekly, vol. 268, no. 48, 24 Nov. 2021, p. 35. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A686559574/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=fefe1026. Accessed 13 Mar. 2022.
Maria Garcia Esperon, trans, from the Spanish by David Bowles, illus. by Amanda Mijangos. Levine Querido, $21.99 (240p) ISBN 978-1-64614-015-2
"Fifteen thousand years before Europeans stepped foot in the Americas, people had already spread from tip to tip and coast to coast." In the preface to this reverently gathered collection of sacred stories from the Americas, Garcia Esperon (A Tortoise Named Harriet) and Bowles (The Rise of the Halfling King) convey their aim to "bring out the faint ancestral voices echoing at the heart of each" presented tale. Preceded by short poems and full of vivid language ("a land of ruddy sunset splendor and deep green night"), the stories fulfill that intention by evoking the unique cadences and traditions of the Indigenous cultures represented.
Spanning "north to south, east to west, and back again," the entries cover a range of locales as well as varied topics and themes, including cosmic tales of creation and destruction (" 'Spider Grandmother,' Hopi tradition") and the heroic trials of twin brothers visiting the underworld ("'Xibalba,' K'iche' (Maya) tradition"). Employing a limited, resonant color palette of blue, black, and white, illustrator Mijangos alternates between decorative headings and full-page depictions to conjure up the world in which each story originates. Visually striking and accessibly written, this book provides readers with a worthy introduction to some enduring Indigenous narratives. Includes a pronunciation guide, culture guide, map, and glossary. Ages 8-up.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2021 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Source Citation
Source Citation
MLA 9th Edition APA 7th Edition Chicago 17th Edition Harvard
"The Sea-Ringed World: Sacred Stories of the Americas." Publishers Weekly, vol. 268, no. 48, 24 Nov. 2021, p. 88. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A686559725/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=835d58f7. Accessed 13 Mar. 2022.