Video transcript
NSW Premier's Reading Challenge 2024 – SWF author interview (secondary) – 03. Elizabeth Acevedo

[intro music]

EMEL: My name is Emel from Bankstown Girls High School. I'm here today on Darug land at Parramatta Riverside Theatre as part of the Sydney Writers' Festival Secondary Schools Day. And I'm so excited to be interviewing Elizabeth Acevedo for the Premier's Reading Challenge. How are you today?

ELIZABETH ACEVEDO: I feel good, Emel. I had a good morning. I had some avocado toast. It was delicious. It's a really sunny day, which I've enjoyed the loveliness of the weather. I'm doing well. How are you?

EMEL: I'm doing good. I'm a bit nervous, but that'll be fine.

ELIZABETH ACEVEDO: Yeah, you're doing great.

EMEL: My first question is, your books are mainly aimed towards young adults. Did you hope to inspire and motivate young people? And what message did you want to convey to your audience?

ELIZABETH ACEVEDO: I think the biggest thing I was trying to do when I wrote these books was let young people feel loved in whatever situation they're in. And so if you're coming from a family where maybe your parents are really strict and you don't always have room to express yourself, like it's the premise in the 'The Poet X', what does it mean to become really powerful in your own voice, to become powerful in your body and to say, I have really important thoughts I want to get across, and just let young people know that it's OK to have that tension where you love the people in your family, and you also wish they knew you better, right?

I think in 'Clap When You Land', it's about these 2 sisters who don't know about each other. Their father had multiple families. And so there's a little bit of these secrets, and it's very spicy in that way. But it's also if you come from families where maybe it's not the 'traditional' family, how do you still grow to love each other? How do you grow to forgive the adults in your life who may have kept things from you that were really important?

And so I don't think I come in with a message like, this is what it means to be a 'good girl', this is what it means-- I come in and I say, how do I ensure that someone who picks up this book feels loved by whatever walk of life they've chosen and feel like they are being told it is OK to be brave, and I applaud you for being brave?

EMEL: My second question is, what inspired the creation of Xiomara in 'The Poet X'?

ELIZABETH ACEVEDO: Oh, I was-- I taught English language arts eighth grade. What grade are you in?

EMEL: Nine.

ELIZABETH ACEVEDO: Nine. OK, so imagine yourself last year. And I had this student who hated silent reading. We would do 15 minutes of silent reading before every single class, and she somehow always had to go to the bathroom. I'm like, always? And she didn't love silent reading. I had tried to give her all the fun, exciting books at the time, and she just wasn't into it.

And I asked her one day, what can I get for you? And she just said, none of these books are about us. They don't reflect where we come from. I don't feel seen by these books. And so I'm just not interested in 'Twilight'. I don't care about sparkly vampires. I'm not interested in 'Divergent'. I don't care about 'Hunger Games'. I want to know characters who look like me and who come from where I come from.

And it was the first time I had kind of heard a student echo what I had felt when I was her age in school. And I had been a poet up until that point. But I'd never realised if I wasn't in the room performing the poem, my students couldn't take that with them. And so the idea of a book, how can I give them something they can take in their book bag, that they can see themselves in, that they can carry and hold-- and so that was the spark of Xiomara, this really kind of quiet sometimes, but really fierce, really thoughtful, really observant young woman who is trying to figure out I am both invisible, in that they don't see me, and I'm hyper visible, because she's a voluptuous young woman. And so what does it mean to say, I want to be seen on my terms?

EMEL: My next question is, is there any poem or poet who you really look up to that influenced you?

ELIZABETH ACEVEDO: Oh, I love this American poet named Lucille Clifton. When I was 15, I was introduced to her work. And she had a poem that went,

'won't you celebrate with me

what I have shaped into

a kind of life? i had no model.

born in babylon

both nonwhite and woman

what did I see to be except myself?

i made it up

here on this bridge between

starshine and clay,

my one hand holding tight

my other, won't you celebrate

with me that everyday

something has tried to kill me

and has failed.'

And something about those last 3 lines at 15, I was just like, ah, this lady gets it, in a way that I had never really felt like I was gotten. And it's when I realised you can have literary mentors. You can have people who you've never met, who just see you in such a way that their words guide you through your life. And I still, when I'm having really tough times, that's the poem I go back to. That poem is like a gift. You didn't even expect me to recite it to you. You see, Emel, you inspiring me.

EMEL: I didn't think you'd memorise a poem.

ELIZABETH ACEVEDO: [laughs]

EMEL: My next question is, 'The Poet X' has very specific struggles for the main characters, but can still relate to a lot of people. Can you explain your approach to portraying these characters and experiences, particularly in ensuring they remain relatable and impactful?

ELIZABETH ACEVEDO: I think I try to be really specific. I try to think about what kind of language would this character, who's 15 and is growing up in this kind of environment, use? What kind of hopes and dreams would she have? Would she know how to describe those? Would she know how to say what she wants to say? Or would she have to practise what it means to say that?

And so I think I don't go in saying like, how can I make this really relatable to a lot of people? I go in and I say, the more specific I am, the more that people will know where she's coming from and be able to find echoes in their own life to say, oh, I think I know how she feels. Maybe I've never wanted to be a slam poet, but I really did love art. And it hurt my feelings when my father said I wasn't very good. And so you can relate in that way.

Or oh, I do remember a time when maybe a comment was made about my looks that made me self-conscious for a long time. And so it may not be exactly Xiomara's curly hair. It may not be her body. But readers see the specificity, and it brings up in them echoes throughout their life. And I think that that's where those connections are made. It's not in trying to get as many people as possible. It's in saying this is one girl in one story in this world. And readers that are empathetic enough and are practising empathy will find themselves in the pieces that match and will say, wow, I really feel for this character and the pieces that don't. Are you a writer?

EMEL: I want to be.

ELIZABETH ACEVEDO: Yeah? What kinds of things do you write?

EMEL: I would like to write historical fiction or fantasy.

ELIZABETH ACEVEDO: Amazing. Good on you. I can tell. These questions and how you ask them is very writerly.

EMEL: Thank you. In 'The Poet X,' the story is told in a simple but entertaining way, which allows you to feel close to the characters in the book. These characters are supposed to be family, one of the closest relationships people can have, yet they don't get along well or understand each other well. What was your experience in depicting these complex family dynamics, and is it difficult exploring these challenges within the narrative?

ELIZABETH ACEVEDO: I come from a community and from a generation where I think people were trying to be more thoughtful parents than their parents, but also sometimes struggled with the balance of-- my mum would not be my friend. She would not confide in me. And she felt it was her job to keep me safe. And that was her first job.

And there were moments when I wondered if she knew it would be easier to keep me safe if I felt like I could trust her with the things that made me feel unsafe. But because it was very much like, this is right and this is wrong, and she didn't allow for the space of well, in the country you grew up and in the time you grew up, that was right and wrong. But I'm growing up in a different country and in a different time. And it's complicated in a way I cannot tell you, because you don't give me space to confess what's happening.

And so I think that so much of my books is moving through how do people learn to trust each other? Parents trust their children. Children trust their parents. And how do we learn to know each other? As someone can love you so much and still not know you, not know what you think and feel and want, and you don't feel like you can tell them.

And so for me, those family relationships feel like the centre. I mean, the family is the first institution any of us know. And it's how we learn to trust or recognise or move through every other circle of society. And I think it starts at home.

And so I write stories of home. I write stories of how we learn to be ourselves. And I don't like to write flat characters. So even parents have hopes and dreams. Even the parents are working through, can I be brave enough to tell my child that I also wanted to be something I couldn't be, that I also struggled to talk? And so just the practice of how do we all be more loving towards each other, and if we start at at home, how would that spread in a way that might change the world?

I don't even know if that was the answer to your question, to be honest. I just went out and said--

EMEL: I really like these answers.

ELIZABETH ACEVEDO: That was all right? All right. I trust you.

EMEL: Are there any other books that inspired your writing?

ELIZABETH ACEVEDO: Oh, so many. I'm a big fan of Jacqueline Woodson, who also writes poetry. Her novel, in a verse, 'Brown Girl Dreaming' was one that I loved. Jason Reynolds-- have you been to the festival before?

EMEL: I don't think I have.

ELIZABETH ACEVEDO: No? Well, Jason Reynolds was here in 2023, phenomenal writer. When I read his-- he sent me a manuscript of 'Long Way Down', which is his novel in verse, while I was writing 'The Poet X'. And so he's just always been such a champion and writes in beautiful, beautiful ways.

And I really love Meg Medina, who I think has, to me, the best ear in the industry. She captures dialogue in a way that I'm just like, how do you know what a young person talks like? How do you catch their voice in such a way that feels so precise and accurate? And so I'm always studying her and trying to keep myself really sharp.

EMEL: Did you always want to be a poet? And what made you decide to publish your books?

ELIZABETH ACEVEDO: I wanted to be a rapper. So my dream was to be a rap star. I didn't think poetry was for me. I was like, it doesn't even rhyme. Like I was very condescending in that way.

But I think I always wanted to work with language. And I always wanted to be a storyteller. And it didn't feel like it was something I chose to do. It felt like something that was just always under my skin, and I was just trying to find the medium where my stories could go.

I decided to start writing 'The Poet X' soon after that story I told you about my student, where I thought I'd never considered writing a novel, but maybe now's the time. And it took me a long time to get published. It took me 6 years to write that story and find an agent and find the right publisher. But I think I learned a lot in that time about myself.

And I wanted to reach a wider audience. And I wanted people who grew up like me to know that we too can be in books, that we too can be a part of the American literary canon, that we too have stories to offer the world that are just as important as what we have been forced to read in our classes.

EMEL: I wanted to ask this question. I was going to make it the first one, but my librarian didn't let me.

ELIZABETH ACEVEDO: And look at you. You said, I'm going to ask it anyways. We're here.

EMEL: I really wanted to ask, the visual book 'Inheritance' has a big centre around the importance of hair. And how has your hair shaped the way that you write?

ELIZABETH ACEVEDO: Oh, I think hair as a way into writing about colonisation and the way that-- my people come from a place that has certain beauty standards that are not based on us. They're based on the people who colonised us. And so it's hair, it's eye colour, it's body type. It's a whole generation of people, of generations of people, who I think are utterly beautiful, who I think have so many things our ancestors gifted us with who believe we are not enough, because we don't look like European standards.

And so that poem, I think as a response to talking back, to saying I reclaim where I am from, and I reclaim it and I pass it to the next generation, I write this poem for my children, and that so much of my work, I think, is in that echo, is in that footstep of what have I been given that I no longer want to carry, and what do I choose will be the heirlooms that I am passing on?

EMEL: So really good answers.

ELIZABETH ACEVEDO: Yeah.

EMEL: Thank you so much for letting me interview you today, Elizabeth. It's been amazing talking to you. And I hope everyone watching out there today enjoys your incredible novels as much as I did as they work to complete the Premier's Reading Challenge.

ELIZABETH ACEVEDO: Awesome. Emel, can we do a hug? Do you hug?

EMEL: Of course.

ELIZABETH ACEVEDO: Let's do a hug.

EMEL: I've been waiting.

ELIZABETH ACEVEDO: Those were great questions. Do you feel better?

EMEL: I feel much better.

ELIZABETH ACEVEDO: You did a wonderful job. Thank you.