My Brigadista Year

author: Katherine Paterson

Candlewick Press, 2017; grades 7-up

Cuban

INTRODUCTION

On September 26, 1960, Cuban Premier Fidel Castro, speaking at the the United Nations, announced the formation of Cuba’s National Literacy Campaign. He proclaimed to the world that, in less than a year, Cuba would become the first country in the Americas to wipe out illiteracy. To that end, he said, organizations of teachers, students and workers were preparing for this intensive campaign—an audacious plan that many said would be impossible.

When the campaign began, about a million Cuban adults were illiterate and another million were semiliterate. Some half million children had never gone to school, most of the rural population had no schools, and thousands of teachers were unemployed. By the end of the campaign, some 250,000 young volunteers and their master teachers had gone to the countryside to work with and teach the campesino families how to read and write—laying the foundation for the tiny island country to achieve the highest literacy rate in the world.

“¡Venceremos!” had been the call and, on December 22, 1961, waving huge pencils to signify their great victory, hundreds of thousands of alfabetizadores marched in Havana responding, “¡Vencimos!”

The National Literacy Campaign set high goals. As the young volunteers, called “brigadistas,” and their master teachers created a process for teaching literacy, the young people learned how to make collective decisions that benefited everyone.

When they gathered in groups, their teachers posed questions that required deep thinking: “How can we teach the campesinos to read and write,” they asked, “in ways that will empower them and, at the same time, further socialismo in the New Cuba?” They discussed Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed, whose main tenet is that teaching and learning are political acts, and that effective education teaches the whole person. While José Martí was the inspiration, Freire’s philosophy became the game plan for Cuba’s literacy programs.

The National Literacy Campaign was much more than a great adventure for the thousands of young people who volunteered to help create a new society. It was a year of growth, a year for these young people—many of them racially and economically privileged—to face real danger, head-on, for the first time in their lives; to become teachers to impoverished people whom they came to see as not only poor and illiterate, but oppressed as well; and to realize their roles in bringing about change in a broken society of haves and have-nots. 

By continually challenging themselves and each other, the brigadistas achieved political and cultural literacy and a sense of solidarity that they had never experienced. They worked harder than they’d ever worked before.

Incorporating Freire’s theories and practices of educating the whole person gave the brigadistas and their master teachers the ability to open the doors for people who had been illiterate and encourage them to use their talents and their dreams—and the revolution gave them the power that fueled them to go on and do more to create a richer society. Today, there are doctors and scientists and engineers and philosophical, cultural and political thinkers, and artists and poets—all in numbers that could never have been imagined. Cuba sends hundreds of doctors, for instance, to impoverished and war-torn countries around the world—and this all ties in with Fidel’s vision of achieving 100% literacy in less than a year. 

The National Literacy Campaign is a little-known event here, but it was a year that changed the people of Cuba, campesinos and brigadistas alike. Catherine Murphy’s excellent documentary, Maestra, together with Un año sin domingos: la imagen de la alfabetización en Cuba / A Year Without Sundays: Images from the Literacy Campaign in Cuba present living testimony of their struggles and triumphs, and beautiful archival film and photo footage.¹

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Katherine Paterson has won multiple book awards and has written more than 30 books. She has visited Cuba twice and writes that she had never heard about the National Literacy Campaign before her plan to travel there this second time. According to her Author’s Note, Paterson found, to her surprise, that her “closest Cuban friend, Dr. Emilia Gallego, who was responsible for both [her] visits to Cuba, was a brigadista as a teenager.” Paterson does not speak Spanish. 

Paterson’s Author’s Note acknowledges the 2012 documentary, Maestra, and the film’s companion book, of which Paterson uses only the abbreviated English name, A Year Without Sundays. (The title of this bilingual book is Un año sin domingos: la imagen de la alfabetización en Cuba / A Year Without Sundays: Images from the Literacy Campaign in Cuba.) “Many of the stories from the film and the book,” Paterson writes, “served as inspiration for Lora’s story.” She also acknowledges Jonathan Kozol’s Children of the Revolution: A Yankee Teacher in the Cuban Schools (Delacorte, 1978) and several other titles. And, she writes, she “gleaned much help from the Internet concerning Cuban history, geography, agriculture, flora, and fauna.”

THE STORY BEGINS…

My Brigadista Year begins with an excited Lora, arguing with her parents about joining the campaign. Although her abuela tells her it will be a “hard life,” Lora imagines:

I knew nothing except that I wanted to be part of the campaign. The girl in the poster was wearing a uniform. I looked at her smiling face and for the first time in my life imagined what it might feel like to be truly free. No one telling me not to play in the sun or mess up my nice dress. I didn’t want to spend the next few years of my life just sitting still so that someday I would be able to make a proper marriage. I wanted to do something, be someone. (p. 6)

Her parents warn her that there would be no electricity, no running water, no toilets. And there would be danger—a young literacy teacher had been murdered. But when she promises her family that she will “come home if it proves too hard,” Lora’s father relents and signs the permission slip. The thread of “coming home if it proves too hard” runs through the story. 

Lora struggles not to think of the danger and is unaware of the political ramifications for joining the movement. Rather, her reasons are self-serving and shallow: she’s in it for the adventure; she just wants to “do something, be someone.”

RACE AND RACISM

Another thread that runs through My Brigadista Year consists of Lora's views of race, as she voices racist observations and opinions that go unchallenged. At her new school, for instance, she befriends an otherwise friendless student, who is of “mixed African blood” and who happens to have horrible table manners.

The expression on her dark face was always guarded, her almost black eyes unreadable…. She sat down across from me and unwrapped an empanada stuffed with meat….She took a large bite and began talking, her mouth so full that little bits of meat and bread escaped to the table between us….Mama, I knew, would have suggested a different friend. Norma’s complexion made me sure she was of mixed African blood. And even if my good mama was so biased, Norma surely felt the prejudice of all our fair-skinned classmates. She wiped her mouth with the side of her hand. “I’m so glad there’s someone I can talk about Martí’s writing with.” Or anything else, I thought. She took another large bite….I quickly forgave Norma’s table manners….(S)he told me her mother bewailed the fact that Norma’s skin was much more like that of her father’s family than her own proud family’s. (pp. 18-20)

And when Lora meets a much lighter-complected girl, she is entranced:

What a beautiful girl! That was my first thought. She could have been a poster girl for the campaign, with very light tan skin—reminding me of the milky coffee Abuela made for me on the nights before exams. The green beret on her head made her hazel eyes look almost green, her hair was a lustrous dark brown, and her figure, even in boots and uniform, was a match for any Hollywood star. (p. 40)

Certainly, since the days of slavery, Afro-Cubans were, to an extent, marginalized. The National Literacy Campaign was a major step forward in building alliances and solidarity, in filling the chasm of race and class that existed at the beginning. But having Lora talking about race in these offensive ways without grappling with the issue of racism itself reflects the author's own lack of consciousness; there is no understanding of the complexity of the issues.


“¡VENCEREMOS!”

One of the National Literacy Campaign’s two textbooks is entitled, ¡Venceremos!—the campaign’s battle cry. With exclamation points, it translates as “We will be victorious!” or “We will succeed!” or “We will win!” or “We will do it!” Like “¡Juntos Unidos!” and “¡Viva la Causa!”, “¡Venceremos!”—the song and the chant—is almost always accompanied by a fist in the air. It’s a call for a response; it’s an exercise in unity, common purpose and spirit but, at the end of the day, it’s a call to action. It represents passion and people power and is fuel for the work ahead. It demonstrates the anger, the hope, and the belief in the victory to come. 

Paterson apparently does not understand the meaning or the power of “¡Venceremos!” Literally translated and without the exclamation points, it becomes the passive-sounding “We Shall Overcome,” and that’s how it’s used in the ARC. In the finished copy, the English translation of the workbook, ¡Venceremos! has been changed from We Shall Overcome to We Shall Prevail, still without the exclamation points.

When the hundreds of thousands of young brigadistas marched in battle uniform in Havana, their huge pencils substituting for rifles, their banners proclaimed, not “We overcame” or “We prevailed,” but “¡Vencimos!”—“We won!” or “We did it!”

USE AND MISUSE OF SPANISH LANGUAGE

It’s clear that the author neither knows nor understands the Spanish language or its metaphors and symbolism, nor does she know or understand the history of Cuba and the role that Fidel’s National Literacy Campaign played in furthering equality, socialismo and cubanismo. Her attempts at research are weak at best; rather, she adopts as a plot device the protagonist’s love of the English language. Portraying the main character as an anglophile—which begins when Lora enrolls in a private Secondary School in which everyone speaks English and continues throughout—enables the author to tell the story that she wants to tell in the way she wants to tell it without utilizing the likely and appropriate voice of a teenage brigadista. 

The text is peppered with grammatical, historical and cultural errors. In addition to “¡Venceremos!” (see above), for instance, “jumping beans” are Mexican, not Cuban; “macho” is not something a Cuban woman would have said out loud about her husband; “bandidos” (bandits) is not synonymous with “insurgents”; and “little José” is not the diminutive name for “José”—that would be “Pepe.” (Lora’s campesino learner family names their new baby “Little José” in honor of José Martí, probably because Paterson doesn’t know that Martí himself was affectionately called “Pepe.”)

Throughout My Brigadista Year, Lora informs the reader that she is translating Spanish concepts, chants and songs into English. For instance:

Then someone began to sing the anthem of the campaign. I could feel my spirits lifting. In English, it won’t sound anything like that wonderful song with which the mountains rang that day. (p. 58)

In so doing, the author denies the reader the opportunity to see and appreciate them in Spanish. And that her favorite book is Pride and Prejudice (in English) also diminishes the value of Cuban and other Spanish literature.

One of the most egregious results of using this plot device is what Paterson does with José Martí’s beloved poem, “Cultivo una rosa blanca” (“I Cultivate a White Rose”). Martí was a fierce poet-revolutionary who fought against injustice, from slavery to colonialism. He had a great heart and a clear vision, and he’s beloved throughout the Spanish-speaking world. Those who are engaged with his poetry see “Cultivo una rosa blanca” as an expression of both Martí’s personal beliefs and political activism. He cultivates a white rose for his friends and his enemies, as a metaphor for defiance and resistance—his unwillingness to remain silent in the face of oppression. Young people who read his Versos sencillos (Simple Verses) in which this poem appears, grow to know and appreciate the deep symbolism in his words. A conscientious writer would have carefully researched Martí’s poetry and the reasons he is so loved, rather than just inserting a faulty English translation of “The White Rose” and “I Grow a White Rose” (including the title)² as a poem her protagonist happens to “love” without stating why. Or else she could have left it out. Paterson chose not to do either.

COUNTERREVOLUTIONARIES

While the Cuban government was implementing the most successful literacy campaign in history, everyone saw it as a military campaign, a battle for the lives of the most oppressed of the Cuban people. It was also an important part of the battle against the US-backed counterrevolutionaries who tried to destroy the revolution. Paterson touches on “militias with rifles,” “a few roving bandits” and “those who would do evil,” and there’s a scene where they bang threateningly on the doors. But while she writes that “it was in (the Escambray Mountains) that Conrado Benítez had died” and there’s an announcement of Manuel Ascunce’s murder together with that of a campesino, she brings all of this back to Lora: “I’m sorry to say I knew that day in my heart that I would rather be a live coward than a dead hero.” (p. 161) And My Brigadista Year’s overarching context returns to that of a teenage girl’s internal conflicts. 

Indeed, throughout My Brigadista Year, Paterson centers the story on Lora’s personal struggles, while her personal “triumph” subsumes the communal triumph: 

For all her seeming giddiness about love, Maria must have been a good teacher. All six of her students had passed their first tests and were well on the way to taking the second. My envy of her looks and warm personality gave way to my envy of her success. But she never lorded it over me….In the midst of my discouragement, there were wonderful moments….I could hardly wait until Sunday to tell Esteban and Lilian and the rest of the squad about my triumph. (pp. 105-106)³

LETTERS TO FIDEL

In testimonies some 50 years later, both the brigadistas and the campesinos saw the National Literacy Campaign as a defining moment in their lives. In 1961, as a “final exam,” each campesino learner wrote a short personal letter to Fidel about what it was like to be given the gift of literacy,⁴ something most campesinos had thought would have been impossible. Today, in the Museo Nacional de la Alfabetización near Havana, albums housing over 750,000 such letters are considered a national treasure.

In Un año sin domingos⁵ , there’s a photograph of one such letter to Fidel from an elderly campesino who has just learned to read and write:

Amigo Fidel. Te escribo para decirte que ya no soy analfabeto y que cada día me siento más proféro y más feliz con esta Revolución que nada ní nadie podrá arrebatarnos. Te deseo salud y suerte. Juntos Venceremos. 

 (“Friend Fidel. I write to tell you that I’m no longer illiterate and every day I feel more articulate and happier with this revolution that nothing or nobody can take away from us. I wish you health and luck. Together we will be victorious.”)⁶  

In her Author’s Note, Paterson acknowledges the 2012 documentary, Maestra⁷ , in which Cuban women who had been part of the Conrado Benítez Brigade tell their stories some 50 years later. In this film, Blanca Monett recalls trying to teach one particularly difficult student, an elderly man named Joaquin, who argued that his name couldn’t possibly be spelled with a “quin” at the end because this was not one of the rules he had learned. On pages 102-103 of My Brigadista Year, Paterson tells exactly the same story that Blanca Monett relates in Maestra, down to the elderly campesino’s name. But then Paterson veers off into a ridiculous scenario:

“When I write my letter (to Fidel),” Joaquin tells Lora, “I will tell Fidel it is wrong, and tell him to change it. We won our freedom from Spain many years ago. Those stupid imperialists have no right to tell us how to write our own names.” Lora encourages Joaquin to hurry up and finish the primer, so that he can go on to write his complaint to Fidel. This is the long-awaited letter, which Lora praises:

Comrade Fidel. I can read and write, even the big words and the squiggle on en-ye. But why must I write my name like the old Spanish oppressors? We won independence. We won the revolution. We have won the war against illiteracy. Now we must free our spelling. Your comrade, Joaquin Acosta (p. 166)

Here, Paterson, through her characters, belittles the Spanish language. Accent marks remind readers where to put emphasis, and there’s an occasional spelling of a name that goes outside the “rules.” These skills are easy to teach and easy to learn. Recognizing the relationship between the spoken word and the written word is the definition of “literacy.” And it would be highly unlikely for a campesino who is learning to read and write to criticize the person whose vision and leadership brought him this important skill.

LOOKING BACK AT THE CAMPAIGN

On the last page of My Brigadista Year, Lora says,

My brigadista year was the year that changed my life. This was true not only for me but, I daresay, for all of us who left our safe, loving homes to become brigadistas for literacy. I learned what I could be and do. I was no longer an isolated, spoiled little girl of the city. I was a member of a campesino family who loved me and taught me more than I could ever teach them. (p. 177)

Lora continues, this time in the words of someone else:

I think it is best summed up in the words of a friend and fellow brigadista who said, “I taught the campesinos how to read and write, and they taught me how to be a person.” (p. 177)

Above, Lora posits an equivalency that is belied by the modesty and humility of the real brigadista who said, as quoted in Un año sin domingos:⁸

I learned a lot. I went to teach them, but they taught me many things that I didn’t know. I think I learned more from them than they did from me, because I gave them the light of learning, but they taught me how to be a person. ⁹ (p. 72)

Here, the real brigadista acknowledges that she taught the campesinos a skill, and is grateful that they taught her a life lesson. She knows that this was not an equal exchange. But Lora’s “brigadista year,” to the very end, continues to be all about her. Apparently, this humilidad that the brigadistas learned from their campesino families is something that Paterson either doesn’t understand, or else she considers inconsequential.

CONCLUSION

Lora Díaz is a self-absorbed adolescent who remains one. Although she, too, becomes engaged in this great struggle, the National Literacy Campaign and the Cuban revolution are a mere backdrop to Paterson’s shallow narrative about her protagonist’s own fears and self-doubts and ultimate personal growth. Everything is about Lora and all successes are her own. As she says after one of her students reads aloud, “I could hardly wait until Sunday to tell Esteban and Lilian and the rest of the squad about my triumph.”¹⁰

My Brigadista Year centers the reader’s attention on young Lora’s emotions and personal struggles and downplays the coming together of Cuba’s illiterate campesinos with their mostly teenaged, mostly middle-class maestras, living and working together for almost a year. Throughout My Brigadista Year, Paterson creates a false narrative—a contrivance that promotes the development of one character while trivializing the struggle, and obfuscating the point of the revolution and its literacy campaign, philosophies, and practices.

Indeed, in individualizing only Lora’s perspective, Paterson imposes her own individualist values into the narrative and onto a cause that was fighting for the collective spirit. Lora’s story is told in a way that’s superficial and riddled with errors, misconceptions, and stereotypes.

P.S. AUTHOR’S NOTE (cont’d)

On the back cover of My Brigadista Year is a short statement of praise written by the author’s Cuban friend, Emilia Gallego, who had been a brigadista. She writes, in part, that “It (the campaign) was an experience of solidarity, in the very best sense of what each of us as a human being has to offer.” Yet, in her disingenuous Author’s Note, which she rewrote after the publication of the ARC, Paterson suddenly switches gears to describe the so-called “evils” of Fidel’s Cuba and the National Literacy Campaign. Indeed, she tramples all over the message of her own book, renouncing her whole story—and the Cuban Revolution—apparently for the sake of appeasing criticism from the right-wing emigre community. 

In the published ARC, Paterson writes: 

Like most Americans, my view of Fidel Castro’s Cuba was largely negative. It is true that from 1959 until his death, Castro presided over a repressive regime, jailing and executing opponents and denying ordinary citizens of the freedoms we Americans take for granted. But he also launched the amazing literacy campaign. And Cubans have for decades received universal free education and health care. (pp. 185-186)

And in the finished copy, Paterson expands her criticism of Fidel, the National Literacy Campaign and the Cuban revolution:

My Brigadista Year is by no means intended to be a full or balanced account of all events occurring in Cuba in the year 1961. Fidel Castro committed many evils against his enemies, some of whom originally fought on his side for freedom from Batista but felt betrayed by the actions of the new government when small farms were seized and innocent farmers relocated or put in camps. From 1959 until his death, Castro presided over a repressive regime, jailing and executing political opponents and sometimes even those considered allies, and denying ordinary Cuban citizens freedoms we Americans take for granted. These freedoms include freedom of expression—widespread censorship, book banning, and even Bible burning have occurred in Cuba since Castro first assumed power. And the literacy campaign was not entirely staffed by idealistic volunteers like Lora. I understand that some families felt the pressure of potential reprisal for non-cooperation, and therefore, some young people might well have felt forced to join the campaign. As the year went on and the goal remained distant, schools were closed and teachers were also conscripted.

Yet it is true that Castro had a vision that basic literacy was important for a functioning society and for every Cuban citizen. Moreover, for decades Cubans have received universal free education and health care. (pp. 185-187)

If any of this is true, or if Paterson actually believes this, why didn’t she incorporate it into her story? Why did she instead write a story, imperfect as it is, through the eyes of a young brigadista, a story of how illiteracy was totally eradicated in a tiny impoverished country in less than a year—something that had never been seen before and has not occurred since anywhere—with only the passions and plans of a few people who dreamed a better Cuba, and the hard work of hundreds of thousands of young people who made it a reality? If Paterson believes the essential story she wrote, why then did she take it all back in her Author’s Note? Where is her accountability to herself and to her publisher—and to history, and to her young readers? 

Were things better for most Cubans before or after the revolution? And, after all, isn’t that all that really matters? My Brigadista Year is not recommended.

—Beverly Slapin

(published 12/17/17)

Gracias a mis colegas Rose Berryessa, Oralia Garza de Cortés, Judy Zalazar Drummond, Lyn Miller-Lachmann, y Catherine Murphy. 

---

1 Both book and documentary are highly recommended. To read De Colores’ review of these important resources go to: http://decoloresreviews.blogspot.com/2016/05/un-ano-sin-domingos-la-imagen-de-la.html.^↩
2 In several references to this poem, which Lora says is her “favorite,” Paterson inconsistently calls it “The White Rose” and “I Grow a White Rose,” both of which are incorrect.^↩
3 emphasis mine^↩
4 Although the purpose of these letters was to tell Fidel, “I can read and write,” they all expressed gratitude as well.^↩
5 Murphy, Catherine, and Carlos Torres Cairo, Un año sin domingos: la imagen de la alfabetización en Cuba / A Year without Sundays: Images from the Literacy Campaign in Cuba. Ediciónes Aurelia and The Literacy Project, 2014.^↩
6 translation mine^↩
7 Maestra was produced and directed by Catherine Murphy and is available through Women Make Movies.^↩
8 Murphy, Catherine, and Carlos Torres Cairo, op. cit., p. 72.^↩
9 emphasis mine^↩
10 emphasis mine^↩

How to Live Like an Aztec Priest

author: John Fardon

illustrator: Giulano Aloisi 

Hungry Tomato, Ltd. / Lerner Publishing 2017 

grades 4-6 

Aztec

According to the back jacket and publisher information, Hungry Tomato’s “How to Live Like” series for young people includes: 

How to Live Like a Caribbean Pirate 
How to Live Like a Medieval Knight 
How to Live Like a Roman Gladiator 
How to Live Like a Samurai Warrior 
How to Live Like a Stone-Age Hunter 
How to Live Like a Viking Warrior  
How to Live Like an Egyptian Mummy Maker 

All of the “narrators” of these titles are young boys in training, from “long ago and far away,” to become respected members of their societies or social groups. All of these “narrators” are speaking to contemporary kids (presumed to be boys), to show them what life was like in historical times. The unstated but strong assumption in this series is that girls and women were unimportant in historical times and, by extension, unimportant today.

Following Ten Vulture (who was “born on the tenth day of the Vulture month”), from the time his parents offer him to the calmecac until he becomes a full-fledged priest in the service of Moctezuma II, How to Live Like an Aztec Priest situates the Aztec nation in 1518 (where it begins and ends), at the nexus of Spanish colonialism, one year before Hernán Cortés marched on Tenochtitlán. Written so the reader can “learn” alongside Ten Vulture, this title reveals its racism early and often, beginning with this: “Aztecs…(are) harder and bloodier than anyone else”—and continues in this well-worn narrative. It proves its tagline that the reader will need “a courageous heart and a strong stomach.” By focusing on a single story—the violent culture of the Aztec peoples—the author and illustrator cast the ancient Aztecs as mindless savages. Not only is this depiction a tired stereotypical trope, it also capitalizes on long-standing anxieties about violent Indigenous populations.  

The cover illustration makes it immediately evident that neither author nor illustrator have any regard for accurately portraying historic, Mesoamerican Indigenous populations. Rather, depicting Moctezuma with Ten Vulture by his side, it’s a study in racist caricaturization. From the facial structure of the characters—those noses! And the cleft chins!—to the hyper-masculine idealized bodies that are all chest and biceps, to the monochromatic brown skin, the cover and the illustrations throughout rely on stereotypes and paint a problematic image of the “Aztec” peoples. (And let’s not forget the girls and women, who are all depicted as thin, and all—except for grandma—have cute little pug noses.)

It’s difficult to decide some of the most glaring racist tenets, but here are a few:

• The Aztecs are brutish, strong, and terrifying: “Our great task is to sacrifice to the gods…Soldiers will lead the sacrifices up the steps to us and we will throw each one across the alter. The high priest will plunge in the stone knife, slice out the heart, and hold it up to the gods in offering. The steps turn red with blood.”

• And disgusting: “After the sacrifice has been killed, each part of the body is removed and sent to its correct destination: The head is placed on the skull rack. The heart is kept in a special jar, called a chac-mool. The blood is poured down the temple stairs. The guts are fed to the animals. The limbs may go to the warrior who captured the person, to cook and eat in a holy meal.”

• And besides the gruesome details (told in modern language, such as “getting the point” in a description of being jabbed with maguey cactus spikes), there are passages that are majorly undecipherable: “We learn some of our lessons from books. They’re written mostly on paper made from tree bark and they fold into pleats like an accordian [sic]. The writing is in painted pictures, not words. The Spanish later called this kind of book a codex.” (“Accordions” were not part of Aztec culture. Painted pictures are words. And how would this young narrator know how the Spanish people later referred to these books?)

• And yet, they are succinctly wiped out (presumably without spilling any blood) in one easy-to-miss paragraph: “Moctezuma II was our last ruler! In 1519, just a year after I stood by him in my glory [readers are forgiven for not knowing what this means], the Spanish soldiers came. The killed Moctezuma and destroyed Tenochtitlan and our entire way of life.” 

• There are two short mentions of girls (along with exclamation points that belie the description): “Girls made spit beer from balls of corn they chewed and spat out. It was considered delicious!” And, “One of their favorite foods was cakes made from the green scum (an algae called spirulina) on ponds. It was considered very nutritious!” 

There’s so much more. We’ll spare you.

If the author’s goal was to reveal how Aztec priests lived, why does the culmination of the story focus on being colonized? The genocide of Indigenous populations is a painful and unnecessary chapter in our history and to rehash it in this supposedly “instructional” text feels like salt in the wound.

How to Live Like an Aztec Priest is also rife with historical and cultural inaccuracies. It purports that the Aztec people were completely apart from Totltec, Mayan, or other Mesoamerican societies; but the boundaries between Mesoamericans were fluid as power shifted between peoples. Further, the author posits, again in the “voice” of the young narrator: 

Nobody knows where our people, the Mexica, came from. But we arrived here two centuries ago. The local king drove us from the land after we killed his daughter as a sacrifice, so we built our city Tenochtitlan in Lake Texcoco. Then, sixty years ago, we formed an alliance with other kings to create a great empire, with our city at its heart. Aztecs rule, ok? 

As a Wikipedia-worthy summary of Aztec history, How to Live Like an Aztec Priest woefully mischaracterizes the various Indigenous peoples who would come to be known collectively as the Aztecs. They were not lost wanderers who magically appeared at Tenochtitlán, but instead a sophisticated amalgamation of smaller Indigenous populations who navigated complex power structures between one another to create and maintain a rich culture that thrived for centuries. In reality, the Aztec peoples were athletes, artists, astronomers, explorers, scientists, writers, and warriors. But here, they appear to be nothing more than, literally, bloodthirsty savages.  

Farndon seems to relish the bloodier aspects of the culture, reducing the whole of the Aztec empire to a brutish, violent people with no humanity; and his hyper-masculine focus all but erases women. He describes the various ways Aztec parents physically abused their children, and survived only by carrying out rage filled pillaging raids on neighboring territories—but really gets into it (we imagine him salivating) when it comes to human sacrifice. The number of pages, the detailed illustrations, the specific and multiple ways the human body can be ripped apart is well beyond the scope of a children’s book—or anyone’s, for that matter. 

Although text and illustrations imply “interest” and “fun,” what we see is Indigenous children sitting in class, or in the school or community library, or even in their own homes, and seeing themselves represented here. Instead of feeling pride or wonder, they see nothing more than a society—their society—built on blood lust.

Ultimately, How to Live like an Aztec Priest perpetuates horrible stereotypes about Latinxs. We fear that such representation could lead to Latinx readers seeing their heritages as grotesque, or could provide fodder for other readers to see Latinxs as lesser than them. With so much at stake for minoritized children, a title like How to Live Like an Aztec Priest proves that we have so much more work to do to dismantle racism in children’s literature. It’s not recommended.

—Cristina Rhodes and Laura M. Jiménez, PhD 
(published 12/14/17)

(Reviewers’ note: Cristina is Chicana and Laura is a lesbian Latina. Both of us are biased against racist depictions of our culture, people, and families. We deeply believe in the need for positive representations of our culture in children’s literature and are furious that a book like this was even published, let alone that it could get into the hands of impressionable readers.) 

13 colores de la resistencia hondureña / 13 Colors of the Honduran Resistance

author: Melissa Cardoza  

translator: Matt Ginsberg-Jaeckle 

El BeiSMan Press, 2016
grades 9-up 

Honduran

On March 3, 2016, not long after long-time environmental activist Berta Cáceres Flores publicly denounced the US government for complicity in the 2009 Honduras coup in which the military overthrew the democratically elected government of Mel Zelaya, gunmen burst into her bedroom and assassinated her. In particular, Berta had singled out Hillary Clinton whose brokered “election,” she had charged, had enabled a repressive, militarized regime, carried out on behalf of “international capital.” 

Berta Cáceres Flores continues to speak to readers today in a black-and-white woodcut portrait that graces the cover of 13 colores de la resistencia hondureña / 13 Colors of the Honduran Resistance, 13 short stories and essays in Spanish and English, put together in honor of this courageous woman—“the unwavering warrior who from time immemorial has returned over and over again to lift up her rage, tenderness, voice and imagination against those who oppress, murder, belittle and deny life.” And it’s for all the brave Honduran feminists—Indigenous and Black, lesbians and trans, teens and grannies and many more. They are united by their fierce love for their children and each other, and ultimately for the freedoms they’ve been denied, and for their courage in confronting those they’ve labeled the golpistas—the perpetrators and supporters of the coup.

Originally written in beautiful, poetic Honduran vernacular Spanish by Melissa Cardoza and with a careful idiomatic English translation by Matt Ginsberg-Jaeckle—along with 13 black-and-white photos that visually highlight the diversity of the struggle—13 colores documents the resistance of all the abuelas, powerful sisters, and mamas who struggle to feed their children. Each piece begins with a black-and-white photo of Honduran girls and women in struggle, and facing pages show the Spanish on the left and the English on the right, so hablantes and English readers can compare line to line if they wish to. The one flaw here, something common in self-published books, is that it’s riddled with typos and one significant layout issue.

Some of the standouts of image and text are these:

• Armed with only their brooms, rags, and gallons of bleach, a dozen women congregate in the center of the city in Tegucigalpa, doing what they do every day, only this time in the presence of journalists, soldiers and functionaries. This time they are chanting “¡A lavar, a lavar, la vergüenza national!” (“Wash the place, wash away the national disgrace!”) Soon, the pavement, the flags, the soldiers’ uniforms, everything is faded from the bleach.

• When only four feminists show up at a courtroom surrounded by the military, they unfurl a banner painted by artists with color and flowers. It proclaims, as the women chant: “¡Ni golpes de estado, ni golpes a las mujeres!” (“Yes to coup resistors, no to beating sisters!”) Other women who had been pretending to be clients get up and empty the courtroom, and “with their colorful t-shirts, their brilliant faces conquering fear, their voices raised, they moved in close together as they had for centuries in front of all sorts of men…”

On the last pages is another dedication that voices hope for the future:

Cuando a la nieta que aún no ha crecido, su propia nieta le pregunte como era este tiempo: le contestará que era duro y poderoso.

Que cada día se escribía a diario con los cuerpos resistentes de las indígenas, las negras, de los hombres y las mujeres que tenían la convicción fuerte, la palabra sin mentira, la risa sin permiso y el corazón tierno.

Que las feministas luchamos con todo lo que sabíamos y podíamos para darnos a todos, a nosotras, a ellas y sus hijas, un país con justicia, sin miedo y sin guerra.

Le contará entonces que ganamos.

When the granddaughter of the granddaughter who has yet to grow up asks her about these times: she will answer that they were painful and powerful.

That every day the day’s history was written by the resilient bodies of indigenous women, black women, of men and women with strong convictions, words without lies, laughter without permission and tender hearts.

That we feminists struggled with everything we knew and gave our all in order to give to everyone, to ourselves, to them and their daughters, a country of justice, without fear and without war.

 Then she will tell her that we won.

*Highly recommended for all home, library and classroom collections.

—Beverly Slapin

(published 11/8/17)

Home at Last

author: Susan Middleton Elya

illustrator: Felipe Davalos 

Lee & Low, 2002 

grades 1-3 

Mexican

Eight-year-old Ana Patiño and her family—Mamá, Papá, and baby twins, Jesús and Julio—come from a village somewhere in Mexico and move to “a town surrounded by corn” somewhere in the US. We don’t know what circumstances brought them here; all we know is that, from the first page, Mamá is “already missing home.” (Apparently, this “town surrounded by corn” does not contain Spanish-speaking agricultural workers—actually, it doesn’t contain any agricultural workers at all. Maybe it’s the off season, even though the illustrations show a field full of corn that’s ready to be harvested.) The first spread shows Ana, curiously looking out the window at the field full of corn. Maybe she’s wondering about the absence of farm workers, too.

“After the family settles in,” the story continues, Ana is in school, in what appears to be a friendly, multiethnic third-grade classroom with a supportive teacher who encourages her to say “hello.” At first, Ana is too shy, but by afternoon, she’s saying “hello.” By the next spread, we are told that Papá has gotten a job at the factory where Uncle Luis works, and Ana likes school. Mamá is in the kitchen, and the babies are probably taking a nap. On the next spread, Ana is back in school. There are a calculator and lots of art supplies, all the students are smiling and the teacher is looking on as the students share their artwork.

The next day Ana learned to say her name in English. Everyone in the class practiced with her. By the end of the day she had said “My name is Ana Patiño” a dozen times.

Let’s stop here for a moment. The child’s name is Ana Patiño. It’s the same name in English as it is in Spanish. A name is a name. Exactly what is it that she’s practicing? And why is everyone else practicing? And why is it taking all day? Everyone is sure devoting a lot of time to saying Ana’s name. If this is a third-grade classroom as it appears to be, don’t the students and their teacher have anything else to do? Like study for standardized tests?

On the next spread, Ana and Papá are practicing English together and keeping the babies entertained while Mamá is boiling rice and beans (because that seems to be all that Mexicans eat). Mamá wants to understand English, but when Ana suggests that she could learn, she responds with “¡Imposible!” (Except for “¡Imposible!” just about every Spanish question or phrase in the dialogue is repeated in English. This is annoying.) 

The next pages depict Mamá’s problems because she doesn’t speak English: a rude grocery clerk who overcharges her, an inability to read Ana’s teacher’s note, and finally—The Crisis That Changes Everything. Mamá panics because baby Jesús is running a fever, Papá’s not home from work yet, and their neighbors “didn’t understand her frantic Spanish.” Or gestures. Or the fact that she’s holding a sick baby and apparently doesn’t know what to do because she doesn’t speak English. 

Let’s stop here for a moment. Why, with two babies and an eight-year-old, is Mamá so helpless that she can’t treat a baby with a fever? Why isn’t she resourceful, as Mexican parents are? Why doesn’t the family have remedies in the apartment? Such as baby aspirin or Tylenol? Or apple cider vinegar to mix with water? Or alcohol to rub on the legs? Or chicken broth? Or any of a number of Mexican herbs? Why can’t the English-speaking neighbors understand the gestures of a panicky mother with a sick baby? Why can’t Ana, who speaks English, find a neighbor who can help or go to the store and get something?

Finally, Mamá agrees to learn English. So she goes to evening school while Ana and Papá prepare “overcooked pork wrapped in a tortilla” for her (because only Mexican mothers know how to cook), she learns “how to count, how to answer the phone, and how to shop at the store,” and—aces her test! With Ana watching proudly, Mamá corrects the grocery store clerk who had cheated her the first time (after which “she dances around on the sidewalk”). And one might surmise that she now knows what to do when one of her babies gets sick. 

After hurrying back to the apartment where Papá, Uncle Luis, and the twins are waiting, she declares (in English), “We’re home!” Meaning the US, not Mexico, is now their home. The End.

Home at Last was probably written to help English-speaking children understand the struggles of new immigrants. But this unrealistic and didactic story serves only to reinforce the stereotype of Mexican women as helpless and dependent; and to infantilize a Mexican mother with several children, who needs the pressure of her husband and daughter to learn to speak English, which will be interpreted as the only road to empowerment, not to mention survival.

Davalos’s vivid oil paintings, on a bright and varied palette that beautifully depicts facial expressions as well as a multiethnic neighborhood and classroom, are not enough to save this poorly conceived and poorly written story. Home at Last is not recommended. 

—Beverly Slapin

(published 10/26/17)

SanTana’s Fairy Tales / Cuentos de SanTana

author: Sarah Rafael García
translator: Julieta Corpus
Raspa Magazine, 2017 
grades 9-up 
Mexican American

Storyteller and visual artist Sarah Rafael García offers six “Fairy Tales for Trust and Justice,” all of them set in Santa Ana, a city in southern California that borders “the happiest place on Earth.” But that place is “never happy” for the brown people who live and work there, who live in fear of the landlords, the police, and ICE. In the first story, “The Carousel’s Lullaby,” we see the stakes, as teenager Saul remembers the carousel where he reunited with his parents after their separate migrations across the border, where he and his younger brother spent so many joyful weekends until Señor Billy Spurgeon, the real estate developer, tore it down to make way for shops and restaurants for rich Anglos. One night, Saul sneaks out to hear the ghost of the carousel, and never comes home—one more unarmed person of color killed by police. 

In “Zoraida and Marisol,” perhaps the most heart-wrenching of an emotionally powerful collection, transwoman Zoraida remembers her struggle for survival and to be herself while trying from the next world to save her younger friend Marisol:

I am an enchanted woman named Zoraida.

But of course you already know my name. You knew me when I was alive.

In this life, I reign from far, far above the castles and queens. I travel by whispers, wished upon the North Star and hushed weeps. Just like you called upon me in midst of bloody murmurs, wishing for death to ease the pain. Some call me death, others the Godmother of life.

In my last life I too thought it was my fate to die as a woman on a night like tonight. But death came just too soon, leaving me trapped between others’ lives and my own.

While Saul and Zoraida lose their lives to the supernatural ogres and beasts that represent forces of repression, the resourceful and resilient children of the next two stories, “Just a House” and “Hector and Graciela,” manage to outwit those who would steal their happiness and their lives—though not without great loss. Josefina’s nemesis in “Just a House” are Anglo gentrifiers turning their close-knit community into a playground for the wealthy (hers is the unhappy mother toiling in that artificially happy place). Graciela and Hector’s parents debate how to tell them that ICE threatens to destroy their family. Graciela, the older one, tries to protect her younger brother, but he is far more aware and clever than she gives him credit for. Readers will note the parallels between this story and the Grimm fairy tale “Hansel and Gretel,” including the ogre that lures the children with food.

For the last two stories, García narrates from the point of view of adult characters. The Anglo prosecutor in “When the Mural Speaks” hears the voices of Chicana/o veterans painted on a mural, and the Chicana writer of “The Wishing Well” hears the voices of her characters, most of them whose lives were cut short by the “snouted beasts.” 

García’s poetic language employs code-switching and incorporates individual words, dialogue, and songs in Spanish in an organic and believable way. For instance, in the first story, she code switches in dialogue:

“Saul! Where are you going? Don’t leave, you know what Apá says about being out after sunset.”

“Daniel don’t you want to know what happened to the carousel? Vas a ver, first the carousel and quinceañera shops, soon los fruteros, and one day it might be us!”

Rather than a word-for-word translation, Corpus’s Spanish version captures the rhythm and voice of the original, as shown by the Spanish beginning of “Zoraida y Marisol,” the English version quoted above:

Soy una mujer encantada de nombre Zoraida. Pero claro que ya sabes mi nombre. Me conocías cuando aún estaba viva. 

En esta vida, gobierno desde lejos, muy por encima de los castillos y las reinas. Viajo por medio de susurros, deseos pedidos a la Estrella Polar, y llantos silenciosos. Así como tú me invocaste enmedio de murmullos sangrientos, deseando que la muerte aliviara el dolor. Algunos me llaman Muerte, otros, la Madrina de la Vida.

While SanTana’s Fairy Tales was created for general adult readers, its focus on young people resisting oppression, coming of age, and coming into who they are makes this a compelling choice for teens. *It’s highly recommended for all home, library and classroom collections.

—Lyn Miller-Lachmann

(published 10/8/17)

Camino a casa // Walk with Me

author: Jairo Buitrago
illustrator: Rafael Yockteng
translator: Elisa Amado 
preschool-up 
Colombian

Fondo de Cultura Económica 
(Camino a casa), 2008 
Groundwood Books / House of Anansi Press (Walk with Me), 2017 

The cover of the Spanish version, Camino a casa, depicts a little girl who’s being held in the safety of whom we soon learn is a lion. The English version, Walk with Me, shows her offering a flower to the lion, who is sitting on a grassy knoll near a pedestal on which is engraved, “1948.” And girl, lion, and pedestal appear on the first full-bleed spread of both versions as well. 

The little girl asks her lion-friend to protect her from “falling asleep” as she navigates her dangerous, dilapidated city, picking up her baby brother from child care, shopping for groceries from the tienda whose owner refuses credit, arriving home to cook dinner, and waiting until her mamá returns from her job at the factory. Finally, the girl gives her lion-friend-protector permission to “go up back into the hills again,” but to be sure to return when she needs him.

Throughout, we see people falling asleep where they stand or lie down. The few adults who aren’t falling asleep are just staring blankly at the lion. And one appears to be dead. Only the children seem to be interested as they exit a school that resembles a prison (with a uniformed guard at the gate). In fact, there appear to be bars everywhere: on the school doors, on buses, even on the windows of the broken-down apartment houses. 

Many of the people in the city are impoverished and shabbily dressed, as is the little girl. A car passes by a man who’s digging through garbage cans. A man wearing a suit ignores a homeless man who’s leaning against a building with his hand out. A child looks out the window while a woman and her child walk up the hill, carrying everything they own on their backs. People pass by an elderly woman who’s dropped her bags of groceries, but no one offers to help. Indeed, complacency to the political and economic climate has put almost everyone to sleep. 

In 1948—the year carved into the pedestal—Liberal Party leader and Presidential frontrunner, Jorge Eliécer was assassinated in an operation widely believed to have been orchestrated by the then newly created US CIA. His murder provoked a riot in Bogotá (known as "El Bogotazo") which, between right-wing and progressive forces, almost completely destroyed Colombia’s capital city, claiming some 200,000 lives. Throughout the country, the more than ten-year epoch of violence became known simply as “La Violencia,” during which many more thousands were killed or disappeared over the years. In 1953, Colombia’s commander-in-chief, Gustavo Rojas Pinella, seized power in a US militarily and financially supported coup and ruled as dictator until 1954, when he was declared President. Today, under many guises, US support for “friendly” right-wing forces throughout Latin America continues to be well-known.

But the lion—the little girl’s protector—appears to be making things happen. As he passes by with the child on his back, people wake up and notice. There’s a car crash but no one is hurt. A young man has pasted a revolutionary poster on a telephone pole and is making a “peace” sign at bus passengers, who are all looking at him and the lion. A woman turns around to wave at the lion. People are looking out of the windows of the neighborhood buildings. A roar from the lion convinces the scared-to-death tienda owner to extend credit. Maybe, just maybe, people are beginning to wake up.

After dinner, with four bowls set out for the three humans and the lion, the girl knows that it’s time to send the lion back into the hills if he wants to go. She knows that he has more work to do.

On the next to the last page, as her little brother and their mother are asleep, the girl places her flower beside a framed family photo. It’s the same flower she has offered to the lion on the cover of the English edition and the first page of both Spanish and English versions. Next to the bed is a chair that holds an empty book bag and beside the chair is a pair of large boots. They are the same boots whose prints we see on the back endpapers. On the floor behind the chair is a stack of newspapers. On the last spread is a closeup of the stack of newspapers, with its headline now visible: “FAMILIAS DE DESAPARECIDOS DE 1985.” Under the headline is a photo of a man giving a statement to the media during a demand for information about all those whom the Colombian government has disappeared. And on the night table is a closeup of a framed photo that depicts happier times together: mother, father, baby and little girl are smiling, and the little girl is holding out her fingers in a “peace” sign. The father has a mane of curly hair—just like the lion who has walked with and guarded the little girl throughout the story. 

On the front endpapers we saw two sets of prints: those of whom belonged to the little girl and those of whom belonged to the lion. On the back endpapers are also two sets of prints; but this time, the lion’s paw prints have been replaced by the boot prints of an adult—the little girl’s father.

Yockteng sketched his illustrations—all on full-bleed spreads—in pencil and then digitally redrew and colored them. On a muted and somber palette of mostly grays, greens, blues, and browns, the only standouts are the girl and the lion—and the one spread that shows the grocer frantically pushing two bags full of groceries to the girl whose lion, in a full roar, exhibits all his teeth. And, as always, Amado’s English translation is excellent.

Together with Rafael Yockteng, Jairo Buitrago, who is Colombian, have written picture books for young children, including Dos conejos blancos // Two White Rabbits, that describe people’s hardships and struggles to survive the economic and political realities throughout Latin America and here in the US. As with Camino a casa // Walk with Me, they appear as quiet stories and are full of symbolism for young children and their teachers to discern and discuss in a non-threatening way—and to support those children who have their own stories to tell.

Throughout Latin America—most notably, Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Peru, and El Salvador—families of the disappeared and murdered are still holding vigils and protests and demands for information. In some of these countries, unmarked graves have been uncovered and victims identified and, with love, reburied. And in some cases (such as Chile), perpetrators have been tried and imprisoned. Nevertheless, families of the disappeared have kept up the pressure. It is to keep alive the memories of the disappeared, the activism and sorrow of their families, and their prayers for reunification (one way or another)—that Camino a Casa // Walk with Me holds so much hope. These are lovely, poignant, compassionate books. 

*Highly recommended for all home, library and classroom collections.

—Beverly Slapin

(published 10/6/17; revised 10/17/17)

(Note: "El Bogotazo" was not the name of the Liberal Party leader, Jorge Eliécer Gaitán; it was the name of the riots that followed his assassination. I made this correction above. Thank you, Lyn Miller-Lachmann; good catch!)