The CamaraIfe Maktaba

By Robin Herrera

Sometimes when I look in the mirror, I see my grandma. Especially now that I have shorter hair, because as long as I knew her, she wore her hair short. Strangely, it wasn’t until a few years after she died that I noticed the resemblance between us.

She was short, too, like me—I’m the shortest in my family at (barely) 5’3”. We both have round faces and eyes that crinkle into small slits when we smile.

Now, years after her death, years after I’ve forgiven her for not telling me how bad her cancer really was, I wish I’d talked to her more. I know only snippets of my grandma’s life growing up in Colorado during the Great Depression. She was the youngest girl of 16 children, the second youngest altogether. Her parents were Joseph and Josephine Herrera. (On a baptismal document I found in my grandma’s…

Good News Everyone!

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NBCannounced that it is producing an eight-hour miniseries about love stories on the Underground Railroad, with Stevie Wonder serving as executive producer.

The miniseries, titled Freedom Run, is an adaptation of Betty DeRamus’s 2005 book Forbidden Fruit: Love Stories From the Underground Railroad. It will focus on three “specific epic journeys and love stories, each based on actual people,” according to NBC.

The miniseries will be written by B. Swibel, Adam Westbrook, and Charles Randolph-Wright, who will also executive produce. Per NBC, DeRamus’s book is also being developed as a stage musical for which Swibel, Westbrook, and Randolph-Wright are writing the book and Wonder is attached to compose the score.

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Forbidden Fruit is a collection of fascinating, largely untold tales of ordinary men and women who faced mobs, bloodhounds, bounty hunters, and bullets to be together — and defy a system that categorized…

Just when you thought your To-Be-Read list couldn’t get any longer, here we have 24 young adult and middle grade novels to be released in 2015 that are all by and/or about Latin@s. While they all share this aspect, you’ll see the novels are diverse, representing these genres: horror, fantasy, contemporary, science-fiction, memoir, magical realism, romance, and historical. Authors include award winners Margarita Engle, Pam Muñoz Ryan, and Matt de la Peña, as well as NY Times Bestselling authors Kierra Cass and Anna Banks. Alongside these authors are many debuts, which are *starred* in the list below. If you click on the cover image, you will go to the book’s Goodreads page, so you can easily add them to your TBR list! And if you’re adding them, you are likely interested in diverse kid lit and should, therefore, consider participating in the We Need Diverse Books reading challenge. Happy…

by Kimberly Mitchell

A boy from Taiz, Yemen

With the launch of the #weneeddiversebooks campaign last spring, the idea of diversity in children’s writing is everywhere these days. As the diverse books movement moves forward, all writers of kid lit should consider how to create diversity in their work.

Creating characters outside your race and ethnicity can sound daunting. It doesn’t have to be this way. My characters often represent cultures and races outside my own. In Traders of Incense, my protagonist is an Arab boy, based on my time spent in Yemen. In Pen and Quin and the Mystery of the Painted Book, Pen and Quin are Mexican American twins. My motivation behind creating these protagonists stems from my desire to connect with readers and view the world through the eyes of others.

Here are some suggestions on how to create authentic, diverse characters.

1) Mine your…

By Sujei Lugo and Lila Quintero Weaver

The year 2014 brought us three outstanding Latino children’s books celebrating art. Each book represents a distinct format: Draw! by Raúl Colón, is a wordless picture book; Viva Frida, by Yuyi Morales, is a poetic tribute to a beloved artist of worldwide importance; and Frida & Diego: Art, Love, Life, by Catherine Reef, is a work of non-fiction geared toward upper-level grades. These releases came in a year already brimming with strong Latino titles in children’s publishing, along with the We Need Diverse Books campaign, which challenges publishers and others in the book industry to question their views and roles regarding literature by and about people of color.

And guess what? Latin@s create art, too, so why shouldn’t they be celebrated in art-related books?

Children’s books that extol visual art serve to influence readers in significant ways. Through them, children can learn…

Last week I attended a Bagley Wright Lecture on Poetry at the Library of Congress, given by Terrance Hayes. His lecture was on “Ideas of Influence” where he discussed Etheridge Knight and – you should really just listen to the lecture yourself because I’m getting ready to jack up this explanation – the idea of poets being “liquid.” Liquid, in the sense of being able to be influenced by many different groups – whether that be a local group of writers you meet with on a regular basis versus attending a workshop like Cave Canem, which potentially can bring people from all over the nation.

Hayes has a new collection of poetry coming out this year called How to be Drawn. The video below is him reading a poem from that collection (That’s an assumption on my part because of the title). 

By Cindy L. Rodriguez

When I was 23 years old, I left Connecticut for Boston for what should have been an amazing experience. I had been recently hired to be a researcher for the Boston Globe’s award-winning investigative team, a dream come true for a young journalist. Over the next two years, however, depression slowly ruined me, although many people close to me never knew. I wrote about it for the Courant years later, when my mind was clear enough to make sense of it. Here’s an excerpt from that article:

“It was a rainy February night in 1997 when it became apparent that the depression was no longer a temporary emotion, but a disease that had invaded every part of my life. I had gotten into my car after work and cried all the way home. I can’t remember why. But I remember feeling like I was choking, like…