Transcript
Reading “Basketball Digest” in high school
When I was in middle school I started to go to our school library early because my parents had to drop me off early. So I was at school an hour before school started, and I started to go into the library. Which was always a daunting place for me because there are so many books, and how do you choose, and, “Maybe I don’t belong here because I’m not somebody who reads books.”
But I love sports, I love basketball in particular, and I started to grab this one magazine called Basketball Digest. And I loved it - I would devour it. Every single time the new issue came out, I would just race through it. So I would go to this one table, there were many tables, and I would find my little favorite table. And I still have this weird feeling where I need this certain table, even when I’m writing at a coffee shop.
So I went to this one table and then I thought, “Is it kind of strange that I’m reading a basketball magazine in the library? This seems wrong. You know, this isn’t real reading,” because that’s kind of the messaging I got back then. So, I thought I was kind of clever. So I grabbed the biggest book I could find, usually a big Russian novel with all these names I couldn’t pronounce and I would put Basketball Digest inside of it. And I was like, “Okay, now at least the librarian will think I’m here for the right reason.”
And so I would just read Basketball Digest inside of it. And I thought she barely even noticed me there. But occasionally she’d come by and say, “Oh, I see you’ve got a Russian novel there. How are you liking this?” And you know, I would just like sort of think I was so clever, eighth grade, “Oh, you know, this is a great book, it’s called War and Peace, it’s like there’s all this war and then things become peaceful, it’s amazing.”
And she’d be like, “Okay, that’s great.” And she’d move along and I’d be like, oh, sucker, and I’d go back to my Basketball Digest. And then of course, she knew all along that I was reading a basketball magazine and would always pass me like secretly the new issue. And I was always confused, like, “What’s going on here? Like, how does she know this?” Well, she’s somebody who actually noticed the people who were in her library, and she saw us.
And the bummer is, looking back, of that whole story what bothers me the most is that somehow I had received this message that reading about sports was not real reading. When you think about it though, I was fascinated by what these different players had to overcome in their neighborhoods, in their family life, to become a successful NBA player. I was fascinated by that. I gravitated to all the profiles.
That’s what you find in great literature, right? You find, you know, there’s conflict, and a character has to persevere to overcome something and then you find out where they’re going to be at the end of the novel that’s different from the beginning.
Providing entry points for young adult readers
One of the things that I think about now when I’m writing for young people who are often reluctant readers, at least when I’m writing my young adult novels, is I think about that version of myself and I try to leave as many entry points for kids like that as I can.
Sometimes it’s going to be the character looks like you or speaks like you. Sometimes it’s going to be a similar setting, but sometimes it’s going to be a sport. And I’ll tell you, I had one instance that really taught me a lot. My first novel is called Ball Don’t Lie, but it was originally called Three Stones Back.
And you know, I didn’t want to write about basketball because, as I said earlier, when I was just getting into writing I was so conscious of being viewed as a jock, that I was like a tourist in the world of art. So I didn’t want to write about basketball, but then there was so much to explore in the world of pickup basketball, that I had to do it. But my title was not going to have anything to do with basketball. It was going to be Three Stones Back, which was a metaphor for class. And so this was going to be my title.
But I was a first time author, and my publisher asked me to change the title to something that included basketball. And I was heartbroken because I thought, oh, now people are going to just think I’m this basketball guy who’s writing a book and it doesn’t really matter. It’s for kids who play basketball, and that broke my heart.
So I came up with, Ball Don’t Lie, which I thought at least had like a double meaning. Well, I ended up going early in my career on a school visit to a place in Texas, a high school in Texas. And the librarian had this great idea, “I’m going to have you speak to the general population for one talk, but then the second talk is going to be only for the athletes.”
But as I was walking to the second talk the head basketball coach told me about this kid named Lee who was their best basketball player, he was a sophomore, and he was definitely going to go to college on a scholarship.
He goes, “I got to tell you, Ball Don’t Lie is his favorite novel he’s ever read. He’s read it like five times.” And I was like, oh, my god, this kid sounds amazing. Should I just like bring the adoption papers with me? And he goes, well, let me let you meet him. So Lee and I had a one-on-one meeting. I’d never met anyone in my life who had read my book more than once who hadn’t been paid to, like my editor.
And so I was like, “Hey, I heard Ball Don’t Lie is your favorite novel?” And he was like, “Oh, yeah, I love this novel.” And so I was like, “Why Ball Don’t Lie?” And he said, “Well, basketball’s my life; I’ll read anything that has to do with basketball.” And he goes, “So when I saw Ball Don’t Lie, I was like I got to read this.”
And I was like, “Okay, that’s kind of what I had expected.” But I liked, I wanted to continue this conversation because it felt good, you know. I’m meeting a reader who’d liked my book. So I said, “Well what are your favorite parts of the book, I’m just curious?” And he proceeded to describe in great detail five different scenes in the novel that were his favorite.
And here’s the amazing thing. None of those scenes had anything to do with basketball. And it just taught me in that moment that my publisher was right. They allowed an entry point through the title for this kid Lee, for a kid like me, but once he got there, he found bits of the human experience the most interesting.
So basketball got him in, and being a human and watching another human try to navigate the world, is what resonated for him. And that’s what he took away.
Are readers finding different kinds of diversities in the books they read?
I think we’re doing a really good job right now talking about just different diversities that need to be represented in bookstores, in school libraries.
But I think that the thing that we’re not getting as much of, is other diversities, what I call like unspoken diversities. So, for instance, not every kid is growing up with a mom and a dad. Right? Maybe some kids have alternative families. Not every kid is going to school every day and getting a 3.0 and sort of thinking about the parties at the end of the week. Some kids are really, really struggling in school; some kids are failing out. Some kids are going to school and then coming home to a group home.
So, I think it’s very important to share different journeys. And it’s not just important for a reader who might be going through a similar journey; I think it’s really important for us to ultimately read about kids who are growing up different than us. So we can have more empathy. This is the ultimate opportunity for empathy, is watching a kid in a book living a different life.
And maybe you’re going to understand it better than if you just hear a quick story about, oh, so-and-so lives in a group home. Then you start to form all these ideas about what that means, snap judgments. But if you watch a kid growing up in a group home through a 300-page book, you’re going to see all the nuance that you can’t see when you just hear a quick quip of about that kid.
But I also just think by nature when kids are young, they are looking for extremes. Right? I think they’re experimenting with the worst thing that could happen, or the fairy tale ending. You know, they want extremes because they live what they consider to be mundane lives. But why do they think it’s mundane? Because this is their existence every single day and you often think your story isn’t worthwhile, or it’s too boring, nobody would make a movie about my life, or write a book about me, because I’m just so ordinary.
Well, when you see it in a book though you can actually see your life as extraordinary because it’s actually been published, it’s in the school library, and that adds an instant validation to that story. If there’s something you’re ashamed of, there’s a little less shame if you find a book and it’s been published and it’s even maybe in the curriculum, or you see a friend reading your story. So that feels reinforcing and it chips away at that shame.
I think it’s important for us to have stories for, particularly middle school kids and high school kids, that are on the extreme. Sometimes that scary story can actually make a kid feel safe and at home. Sometimes a story about a kid who might be a quote/unquote “messed up” lets a kid who views themselves as a mess up, sort of watch somebody else go through an experience and maybe they’ll have a better – just a better idea of how to navigate it for themselves.
In a strange way, reading about stories like this give you reps on life and you kind of get to go through the process where the stakes are low because you’re just reading a book. And then when it comes to your real life, maybe you have something that you can pull from watching a journey like that, that you can use in real life.
Lots of students are secret writers
There are a lot of writers out there who are similar to me. They’re writing in secret, because maybe they think that, I’m not a writer, I shouldn’t be writing. Or they’re a boy growing up in a machismo community where, oh, writing is too sensitive, you know, I would never want my dad or my uncles or my cousins or my teammates to find out that I write. Well, that’s okay to write in secret.
The reason that I wrote, and the reason why many people in these communities write secretly, is because they’re trying to figure out what they think about the world. One of the best ways to understand who you are and your place in the world is to write about it.
I wrote a lot of spoken word poetry about things that confused me. And to this day I think I do the same thing. There’s such a mistake when people think that writers write what they already know. I don’t think that’s totally true. I think writers write in the territory of something they know, but they’re drawn in that category to something that confuses them or a question they have.
So I always say it’s a mistake to go into a book with an answer. Really what you’re trying to do is pose interesting questions. Another way to say that is, the job of the writer is not to diagnose the characters; it’s just to list the symptoms and then let the reader have a chance to sort of figure out how they want to view that journey. But yeah, so I think writing is a great way to understand yourself and the people around you. And it can be secret, but ultimately you may want to share it down the road.
Matt de la Peña reflects on why his books are easier to find in some schools rather than others
My first four young adult novels, they’re all about mixed-race kids growing up in tougher communities, similar to the community I grew up in. And so we’re following kids in their own setting who are struggling. Right? And I love these books. They were quiet, they were diverse.
But I noticed something. I’d go to a Title I school and the books would have great representation; they’d even be in the curriculum sometimes. Which made me feel so proud because I remember sitting in a high school class and I remember the books that we’d be giving in the curriculum, and none of them really felt like my book. And I wondered, “Oh, maybe some of these books, they’re going to reflect some of the kids’ experience.” And it made me feel great about that.
But then I would go to the – some of the suburban schools or private schools, and I would notice, even though I was the guest speaker, there would only be like one or two copies in the library. And I didn’t understand the difference. I didn’t understand why there would be a lot of them in the poorer schools, and then in the more wealthy schools, the more predominantly White schools, there wouldn’t be so many.
And so I just kind of just thought, okay, well this is what it’s like to be an other, there are some things you just don’t understand. But then to fast forward to maybe around eight months after my fourth book came out, I went to a national conference for English teachers. I was on a panel with a couple of other authors and we had a great crowd. I think we had like 500 people or something, and we were answering questions.
And at the end I started to walk back to my hotel. And I remember there was one particular teacher who kind of hustled to catch up to me. And she said, “Matt, I’m so glad I got to talk to you. I really love your books. And I just was, I was hoping I would be able to hear you speak.” And I was like, “Oh, thank you so much.” And she said, “I’ll be honest with you, we don’t have too many kids like that in our school so we don’t actually have too many copies of your books. But I wanted you to know that I really appreciate what you’re doing.” And I was like, “Oh, no problem, thank you ma’am.”
But then there was something gnawing at me. And I didn’t even understand what it was. And you know after a couple seconds’ pause I looked up at her and I said, “Out of curiosity, how many wizards do you have at your school?” And she said, “What?” And I said, “Oh, never mind.” But you understand the implications, right?
It was fascinating to me in that moment that, you know, these kids in private schools could read about vampires or wizards, but they felt like they were disconnected from a mixed race kid growing up in a tougher community. Isn’t that interesting? I still to this day find that so fascinating.
And so, I remember thinking, when I go to the Title I schools, they’re reading Looking For Alaska by John Green, they’re reading Catcher in the Rye. So why can’t I go to the private school and see some books with diverse characters that are at the core of the curriculum? Now, I will tell you, I’m starting to see that now. More and more I’m seeing that.
And then one other thing I want to share is I don’t ever want it to come across that I’m saying we should have this kind of book, with a kid in a tough neighborhood, instead of that kind of book. I’m always hoping to say, we should have this kind of book alongside that kind of book. So, I don’t believe in replacement; I just believe in inclusion.
Why Matt de la Peña likes to challenges assumptions about identity in his books
In my Young Adult books, I love to work with mixed-race kids because it’s often assumed that based on how somebody looks they’re going to use a certain language, or have a certain set of problems. And so I hope that I can kind of complicate those kind of assumptions in my Young Adult books.
What I love about novels is that you can really get into the nuance because you have more space to work with. So, you know, a book like, We Were Here, this is a good example of this, where all the other characters called my main character Mexico. He’s a mixed race kid, he’s never been to Mexico. And he’s so, he feels so complicated, like it’s such a complicated set of feelings he has about being called Mexico.
And at one point in the story he’s actually standing at the border looking into Mexico, wanting to escape what he’s done in America. And he has this epiphany that, you know what? I don’t deserve to go to Mexico yet. I need to go there once I’ve cleaned things up in America and then explore that part of who I am.
So I think the mixed race identity is so fascinating. It’s something that we never talked about when I was a kid. Nobody wanted to talk about that. They would just kind of like not mention it, not really own it. Whereas today I think more and more kids are mixed race and so more and more kids are open about it and talking about it.
My own kids are mixed. They have Mexican, White, and Asian. And so it’s just interesting to see how they’re going to forge their identity. So yeah I think, I remember when I was playing college basketball. There was this one section of fans in our arena. And they would always hold up signs for me. And we called it the De La Peña Zone.
And you know I wasn’t even like a star on the team or anything. But they, there was – it was a Mexican community that would go up there and they were so happy that there was a Mexican player on this team they rooted for. And so they would hold up signs. And one night on fan appreciation day, all my teammates were like, you go to go up there, you go to go talk to them. And I was like, yeah, let’s – I go to go up there.
So I went up to the top and they were sitting near the top, behind the basket. And I went up to them and they started, you know, all talking at me at once and speaking very fast Spanish. And I remember I had to be like, “Oh, no, no entiendo.” So I felt like I was slightly letting them down because I wasn’t fluent in Spanish. But what happened was so beautiful. They just – they stopped using words and just pulled me into a hug and they just like sort of hugged me. And I’ll just never forget that experience. And it sort of comes out, in some ways, in my Young Adult novels, that sort of complexity about being mixed.
Matt de la Peña talks about writing Superman: Dawnbreaker
Superman: Dawnbreaker, when I was invited to get the opportunity to tell Superman’s story as a teen, I was overwhelmed. I also thought, oh, this isn’t really a good fit for me. I don’t really watch those kinds of movies. I didn’t grow up reading comics. I don’t know if I’m the right person for the job.
But then there are two other factors that I think came into play. First of all, when my dad was young, his favorite superhero in the world was Superman. And I used to ask him, this is strange because he was somebody who actually felt like the American Dream didn’t apply to him and that was the messaging I got all through my childhood.
He had a chip on his shoulder, he said, “America doesn’t care about people like me. We are voiceless. America doesn’t even want to know I exist.” But yet, he loved Superman. And I remember asking him, “Why Superman?” As an adult asking him this. And he said, “Well, he’s like the ultimate American. You know, like he’s like everybody looks up to him. I just love that. I wondered what it would be like to have that thought about me.”
So that was one thing. But then I also thought, well actually Superman’s the ultimate immigrant, right? Because he’s coming from somewhere else. Is this a possible vehicle to explore immigration? I had just come off writing Carmela Full of Wishes, the picture book, about a mixed-status family and I thought, “Gosh, the themes are so similar, I wonder if I could do that?” But then I also thought, “There is no way the publisher will let me do this. This is a superhero story, it’s supposed to be exciting and save the world.”
And so I said, “I would love to tell this story, but I would love to tell it this way.” And I thought I’d get major pushback, but they said, “That’s what we want you to do.” So I was so excited. And that’s how I approached it. I thought, here’s a young man who identifies, according to other people, as American, as the ultimate American even. But deep down he has the same feelings of identity insecurities that, you know, all the characters I write about have. So, it was actually a really nice fit.
And, to bring it back to something we talked about earlier, it was also an opportunity to bring in reluctant readers to explore some of the themes I’m interested in. So, here’s a superhero story. Well, that may be your entry point. But once you get in there, maybe you get to explore, “What does it mean to be an immigrant? What does it mean to feel ‘othered’?” How do you navigate that? So that was a really fun, kind of like subversive thing I got to do in Superman.