Escribiendo mi primer libro

It all started when I was 13 years old, when my oldest sister gifted me a book titled, Go Ask Alice. This book was the beginning of a love affair with the English language. The same language my parents struggled to learn and prohibited me from speaking while I was at home. “Spanish only” was my father’s favorite phrase when he heard my siblings having conversations in English. So it’s no surprise that they were clueless that the first book I owned in my teenage years was full of drugs, sex, and addiction.

Most of the books that I read appealed to my emotions and gave me a sense of comfort. My life wasn’t as bad as I thought after all because the characters that I met in books like Forged by Fire and Breaking Through made me realize there was some level of privilege within my own childhood experience. So I did what any avid reader does, I dove deeply into the sea of literature. I admired the characters and their stories, and in a way I felt like they became a part of me. And just like Alice, I started writing in my very own diary. I’d write poems and entry’s on typical teenage things, at least I thought they were at the time. Until one day I lost my diary in high school and had my first anxiety attack. I didn’t know what anxiety was back then, but I knew when the school counselor called me into the office that I was going to face my secrets with a stranger. It was humiliating to say the least, not because I was forced into therapy, but because half of the school within my small town now knew that I was suicidal.

In college, I took a poetry workshop course. I would say, that’s where my confidence was truly born as a writer. My professor at the time, Diana Garcia, writer of When Living Was a Labor Camp, saw something in me that I couldn’t see at the time. She asked me, “How long have you been writing?” And I timidly responded, “Not very long.” I probably said that because I didn’t think my pre-pubescent productions were up to par, yet she still saw potential in me. After taking the course Latina Life Stories, I thought I could finally write about my life by creating fictional characters that represent the experiences that molded me into who I am today. But as many writers know, writers block has a funny way of showing itself at inconvenient times. After some thinking, I decided to be vulnerable about my lack of initiative and confidence in my writing by asking my former professor Diana Garcia for advice. She said, “Sometimes more life experience is key to developing ideas and themes for what you want to produce.”

Three years later, I became a mother for the first time. Maternity leave was over, and the bittersweet sensation of returning to work had arrived. I missed creating the sacred space within my classroom, where I got to see my students bloom and become cycle breakers. At the same time, my heart ached knowing I had to leave my son with a babysitter. How would they teach him? Will he feel abandoned the way I felt abandoned when my mother would leave me to go to work? Would they treat him with kindness? The teacher in me wanted him to know that I didn’t leave him because I didn’t love him but rather out of necessity for financial stability.

Given these circumstances, the creation of my first book came from a place of true love, the love for my son. Although it feels like hundreds of ideas travel through the different pathways of my mind on a daily basis, I actually held on to this one. This story had a purpose and something in me told me that other children and families could benefit from this story as well. Initially, I went to Dollar Tree to buy a board book that I planned on customizing for my baby. I quickly wrote a short story in Spanish and made plans to glue pictures of my husband and I in order to explain to him why we were leaving him with someone else while we went to work. Nonetheless, I ended up forgetting about the project because I underestimated the difficulty of teaching six periods of high school English back to back.

Eventually, I became accustomed to hardly ever getting a break. My daily reflections during my commute to work transformed from lesson planning to coming up with different ways to make money in order to pay for daycare. During one of those drives, I remembered my book idea. And instead of telling myself, “It’s too hard” or “I can’t afford it,” I decided to do some research. I was so excited! Technology and things like Amazon KDP gave me hope, so I hired an illustrator and specified what I wanted to see in my baby book, what I wanted my son to see. Mostly, I wanted him to see himself. To see our community, family, and to know that not all families are the same, and that’s beautiful. But they all have one thing in common, they work.

Amazon KDP almost felt a little too effortless. I thought I was finished with my book until I realized I missed the fine print: there’s a minimum of 25 pages to publish using Amazon KDP. Not only did I not meet the requirements because my baby book only has 16 pages, it’s also a board book. Apparently board books are much more difficult to publish but I didn’t want to feel defeated so I did more research. I decided to take the self-publishing route by using Alibaba.com to contact a manufacturer in China that uses recycled materials to produce my book. It felt risky, and I put myself in more debt, but I think it’s a risk worth taking. An actual meaningful way that I can make money to pay for daycare.

So I’m excited to share that I will be launching my book this summer, starting on June 3rd, 2023. This bilingual children’s book is designed to teach young readers ages 1-5 to understand the concept of going to work. The book contains illustrations of diverse families, including same sex parents and single family households. Thank you for taking part of my journey by reading my first blog. I hope you enjoyed this piece! Stay tuned for more to come.