The first thing I noticed was her humility.
Her sweet and raspy voice demanded the attention of every single person in the room.
Men and women, mothers and their children, young students eager to meet her
— and me.
I was the second person to ask a question.
“What was your family’s reaction when they found out that you wrote about them in your 2002 book ‘Caramelo’?”
“What a great question,” Sandra Cisneros replied before tackling my question with that great literary mind of hers.
As I looked around the Orange County High School of the Arts Auditorium and saw all the Latino families, I couldn’t help but smile.
The young Latino students weren’t there to see a backstabbing Daddy Yankee (Google: Daddy Yankee Supports John McCain) or to be an audience member in MTV3’s “Mi TRL.”
They were there for the joy of reading and to meet their favorite author; an author who speaks to them through beautiful stories about growing up as an outcast.
Oddly enough, there were no members of the media covering this event. There were no cameras showing a bunch of brown kids excited about reading. There were no reporters interviewing those students and asking them what other favorite authors they were into.
Had this been a drive-by in the children’s heavily Latino-populated Santa Ana neighborhoods, media would have swarmed in a second.
But this just wasn’t newsworthy. “Too happy” doesn’t bring viewers.
Libreria Martinez, an iconic Santa Ana bookstore that focuses on works by Latino writers, was responsible for Cisnero’s book signing.
Its owner, Rueben Martinez, was happily talking to mothers and encouraging them to read to their children.
Along with other independent-run bookstores, Libreria Martinez is in the midst of closing down because of low sales and corporate competition.
After meeting Sandra Cisneros (I kept calling her by her first and last name, with a bow here and there) and getting some advice from her, I walked away thinking that these real-life role models do exist and they want to leave a literacy legacy behind.
The face of this country is changing. Its citizens don’t just speak and read English. They speak Spanish, Vietnamese, Tagalog and Arabic.
We really should try harder to save these local bookstores by buying the works of writers that we might have never heard about when we were in high school. Who knows? You might just find a new Sylvia Plath — with a darker shade of brown.
Or whatever.
– Julio Salgado