"The Poet X" Is the Next Book You Need to Read

“You need to read The Poet X.”

This is what I texted all my friends as soon as I read the last line of this book; I wanted to tell every person I spoke to that this book would not get out of my head.

Born and raised in New York city and the daughter of Dominican immigrants, Acevedo was a National Poetry Slam Champion and coached for the D.C. Youth Slam Team. The Poet X is her debut novel and quickly became a New York Times Bestseller. It also has won multiple awards including the 2019 Michael L. Printz Award and the 2018 National Book Award for Young People’s Literature. With The Poet X being her debut novel, we are so impressed with her work and cannot wait to see what Acevedo comes out with next. 

The Poet X is a breathtaking novel in verse narrated by the protagonist, Xiomara Batista, who is a passionate and headstrong young Afro-Latina woman growing up in Harlem. Xiomara slowly falls in love with poetry, especially spoken word poetry. Xiomara pours her emotions and reflections of her day to day life into her poetry journal, commenting on topics ranging from pressures from her mother’s religion to gender to sexuality.

Acevedo told Publisher’s Weekly that she “pulls from her experience working with teens and her own high school journals”, which clearly is seen in her poetry, which truly channeling the emotions we can relate to from our teen years. She points to her being first-generation influencing her writing: “There are a lot of the cultural things that inspired aspects of Xiomara, like the ways in which who you are outside of your house is a little bit different than who you must be inside because of the cultural norms that exist. That push and pull that Xiomara carries of being first-generation is something I share.” (Publisher’s Weekly, 2018) Because of her own personal connection, her words evoke so much more meaning and carry weight of being something she has lived through.

Xiomara’s words haunted me at every moment I set down this book. A particularly impactful poem is In Front of My Locker (218). In the poem a boy at school grabs Xiomara inappropriately, and instead of waiting for her friend and crush Aman to say something, she has the realization of not needing to wait for anyone. In the poem In Front of My Locker we see Xiomara standing up for herself:

“For the first time since I can remember I wait.

I can’t fight today. Everything inside me feels beaten…

He’s not going to curse or throw a fit.

He’s not going to do a damn thing.

Because no one will take care of me but me.” (Acevedo, 219)

Xiomara is a girl to look up to, with her strength and dedication driving her actions, even when  everything inside her “feels beaten.” Her emotions are so raw and realistic, and from the first page I found myself cheering for Xiomara and her passion for life.

Acevedo excellently captures the struggles of being a minority teen in her novel, and I can see people everywhere being able to see some of themselves in Xiomara’s story.

“There is power in the word” Xiomara says, and yes, there is power in practically every word of Acevedo’s book. (Acevedo, 353)   

(SS)

Sources:

Acevedo, Elizabeth. The Poet X. HarperTeen, 2018.

https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/childrens/childrens-authors/article/76224-q-a-with-elizabeth-acevedo.html

Voice Your Language 2016 — Juan Felipe Herrera Pays SDSU Another Visit

SDSU and students in the Department of Dual Language and English Learner Education hosted the second annual Voice Your Language forum on February 12, 2016. Voice Your Language is a grassroots organization dedicated to recognizing the dual character of language as both “a means of communication and a carrier of culture and identity.”  

Among its guest speakers this year was 21^st Poet Laureate of the United States Juan Felipe Herrera and the first Latino to hold the position. Herrera acknowledged the long-standing issue of accessibility when it comes to children’s books, especially those aimed at multilingual or ethnic families. These are books that harness plots, images, and characters with diverse experiences that need to be told and read across America.  But the problem is that “books are not accessible to everybody,” as Herrera explained. What attracts us as readers and parents to certain books are the colorful, beautifully appealing pictures, which then become a double-edged sword for families with limited incomes. The more beautiful the book, the glossier the pages, the more expensive it is to buy. And that is only a fragment of the obstacles multilingual students face in the classroom.

But Herrera has a few ideas for overcoming these obstacles. “Have your students [in the classroom] break through the paper. Write on the other side all the whys,” Herrera suggested, as a way to shed the negative stereotypes attached to being multicultural and bilingual. Educators should have them physically break through the paper with all the reasons aimed at them to hold them back: because they can’t do it, because it’s shameful, or because they speak Spanish.

At the end of the event, Juan Felipe Herrera stayed to sign books and gave each of the people that came to see him a little bit of his time to chat and expand on the topics touched on in the talks. We, here at the National Center for the Study of Children’s Literature, would like to thank Mr. Herrera for attending San Diego State University this year and voicing his opinion and knowledge about how multilingual educators, citizens, and learners can imagine the future of multilingualism in schools.

And for this great picture!