“I think the beauty of literature [is that] … there should be enough for all of us to find the text that we need and the work that we need.”
Award-winning YA author Elizabeth Acevedo opened her lecture to a crowd of students during her Suzy Newhouse Center talk on Feb. 29 with this quote, emulating everything she aims to achieve in her writing. Acevedo has spent her whole life attempting to understand her space in the world, and showing others that her experiences are valid, and deserve a role in literature, language and education.
Acevedo grew up in Harlem, New York, the child of two Dominican immigrants. She identifies as Afro-Latina, and she says that her identity, as well as her family’s values, played a big part in her upbringing. Living in a conservative and Catholic household, being the only girl and the youngest sibling, made her both love her culture and question some of its teachings. She expressed that she was always balancing the duality of her household and community rules, as well as the concept of “what happens in house stays in house,” and she has worked to infuse that same confusion into her novels.
In her 2018 novel “The Poet X,” a New York Times bestseller and National Book Award and Carnegie Medal winner, character Xiomara Batista experiences that same struggle. Acevedo read a portion of the book, highlighting the doubt Xiomara has about her body, her relationships, her connection to her mother and God, and what it means to be a Dominican teenager, growing up in the city and writing poetry to understand herself. Acevedo put a lot of herself into Xiomara, and along the way, has written a nuanced love letter to her culture.
“I think [“The Poet X”] is an homage to sounding like your people, to loving your people, to imagining your people as the reader always and first,” she said.
Much like Xiomara, Acevedo learned to express herself through verse through journaling. When she attended the Beacon School, a small selective public school in Hell’s Kitchen, she met an English teacher named Abby Lublin, who pushed her to participate in slam poetry. Acevedo jokes about how resistant she was at first, saying “[She was like] ‘You should join the poetry club.’ And I was like, ‘I don’t do poetry. I’m a rapper.’” With Lublin’s encouragement, however, Acevedo competed in her first poetry slam at the Nuyorican Poets Café at age 14, going on to participate in open mics all over New York. Acevedo says that without the educators she had, and the space she gained to share parts of herself, she would have never believed she should be a writer.
“I think when someone, at the age of 12-13, shows an interest in your work and your ideas, it does something really special, because this person is saying you’re a writer, and it just kind of solidifies something like, ‘oh, maybe I am a writer,’” Acevedo said.
Acevedo attended George Washington University for her BA, pursuing performing arts and creative writing. She then earned an M.F.A. in creative writing at the University of Maryland, all while serving as adjunct professor for bachelor level creative writing courses. After college, she began teaching eighth grade in Prince George’s County, Maryland, and Acevedo says this is when she knew she had to write. She describes how, despite working in a school that was 70% Latine and 20% Black, she was the first Latina teacher to ever teach a core subject. She saw her students struggling with reading levels and engagement, and remembers thinking, “it’s so easy for someone to get lost.” She said it was a different experience, being the one at the front of the classroom and having her students say that the books everyone loved weren’t for them, that they didn’t connect with them, and therefore they didn’t want to connect with literature or learning.
“There is a void of stories for those of us who hunger to know of our culture and our communities, to see ourselves reflected in interesting and dynamic characters with storylines that weren’t worrying about just their cultural heritage,” Acevedo said.
It was this that inspired Acevedo to write “The Poet X.” She wrote it for the students in her classes, for all the young people searching for stories that spoke to them, and a little bit for herself. She says, “I wonder how much of my writing is an attempt at an empathy practice.” She uses her writing as a way of working through the many intricacies to relationships within communities, and she hopes that others can use her work for the same thing. Acevedo writes for both herself and others; she asks while writing, “Oh, what don’t I know? How can I reshape a memory? How can I? How can I step into shoes other than my own?”
When asked how she navigates predominantly white spaces, and how she carves out a space for herself, Acevedo says that it is important to remember where your audience is. About the Afro-Latino community, she said, “My first school was for us. And it was us who honed my craft and honed my voice. So I knew there was an audience in us.”
The most heartwarming part of the talk, however, was when a small crowd of students from Chelsea High School came up to the microphone. Their teacher had brought them to see Acevedo after reading “The Poet X” in class. The teacher, expressing how important this was for her students, said, “I brought my village and we saw you. I felt like [you] belonged to us.” One student commented, “In freshman year I read your story and it was the first time I ever read a Latina main character,” while another spoke about being able to celebrate Acevedo with an art project in school. It was tangible proof that Acevedo’s words were resonating with teens; her story made them feel seen.
Acevedo puts herself into her writing, as a way to work through who she is, and then she puts that writing into the world, so others can see that they are not alone. At the center of her work is her community; the ones that raised her and the ones she could help raise. In closing, she said, “Writing is a way to practice being human … and it always starts with the person.”
