Author Tells Stories To Students


Matt de la Pena, right, talks Thursday with Har-Ber High School juniors after speaking at Southwest Junior High School in Springdale. De la Pena is an award-winning author of books for young adults including “Mexican WhiteBoy,” which the Har-Ber students are studying in their junior literature class.
VISITING WRITER
Matt de la Pena, right, talks Thursday with Har-Ber High School juniors after speaking at Southwest Junior High School in Springdale. De la Pena is an award-winning author of books for young adults including “Mexican WhiteBoy,” which the Har-Ber students are studying in their junior literature class. VISITING WRITER

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Novel Controversy

Matt de la Pena’s 2008 novel, “Mexican WhiteBoy,” was removed from classrooms in the Tucson, Ariz., School District last year after the state passed a law making it illegal to teach courses in public schools that focus on a single ethnic group. A student at Tucson High School raised $1,000 to bring de la Pena to speak at the school after the district discontinued its Mexican-American studies program. The novel focuses on a teen boy striving to pitch for his high school baseball team.

De la Pena said Thursday as a writer, he used to think it’d be cool to have one of his books be banned. “But being banned from Mexican-American readers, that hurts,” he said.

Source: The University of Arkansas, Staff Report

— A professor handed Matt de la Pena a book during his sophomore year at University of the Pacific and suggested he read it.

The novel didn’t appeal to him at first, but de la Pena continued reading. Soon he was captivated.

“The rest of the world disappeared,” he said, addressing Southwest Junior High School students during a Thursday morning assembly in the school gym. “I was on the verge of tears upon finishing the book.”

That book was “The Color Purple,” by Alice Walker, which won a Pulitzer Prize and later was made into a movie. It changed his life, de la Pena said, and it continues to inspire him.

Now, at 38 years old, he’s the author of five books for young adults. One of those books, “Ball Don’t Lie,” has been turned into a major motion picture. Most of the characters in his books are biracial, he said.

De la Pena, the son of a white woman and a first-generation Mexican-American man, was brought to Northwest Arkansas on Thursday by the University of Arkansas as part of a celebration of Martin Luther King Jr. Day. He was scheduled to give a lecture Thursday night at the university about representing multiculturalism in young adult literature.

During the day, however, the resident of Brooklyn, N.Y., talked to students at Southwest Junior High and Rogers High schools.

At Southwest, he spoke for close to an hour to an audience of eighth- and ninth-graders about growing up in a poor neighborhood in San Diego, about going to college on a basketball scholarship and about his transformation from a reluctant reader to a successful writer.

De la Pena described himself as a “mediocre student” who spent more time playing basketball than studying. As a boy, he didn’t know much about college and didn’t know anyone who had gone to college. He finally got up the courage to ask his friend’s mother, whom he knew had gone to college in Utah.

“She told me, if you go to college, you can take any classes you want,” de la Pena said. “If you go to college you could meet people from all over the country and all over the world.”

Going to college became his dream that day.

He said he also had dreams of playing in the NBA. But after competing against fellow point guard Steve Nash, then a college player who’s now an NBA star, he began to have his doubts.

“I looked at the stat sheet after the game and saw Steve Nash had 36 points,” he said. “And I had three.”

De la Pena kept students laughing with anecdotes from his youth, such as the time in high school he wrote a love poem and gave it to a girl in his class. Her reaction was nothing like he had imagined.

“She never spoke to me again for the rest of high school,” he said.

He also shared how he draws real-life experiences into his fiction writing. He told how, during a subway ride to work, he listened while a man sitting next to him lectured his son for getting into trouble at school. De la Pena subtly jotted down specific things the man said — material that eventually made it into one of his books.

Santos Peraza, 14, said he appreciated de la Pena’s talk.

“I feel like I have a lot in common with him,” Santos said. “He showed no matter how you grow up, you can still be whatever you want.”

Erik Garcia, 14, called the speech “inspiring.” As the son of Mexican parents, Garcia said he identified with de la Pena’s description of how his father spoke Spanish, but preferred his son speak English.

Hearing that, Erik said, “made me feel like I’m not the only person like that.”

Erik said he understands Spanish but doesn’t speak it.

Sean Connors, an assistant professor of English education at the university who coordinated de la Pena’s visit, said de la Pena writes about a population that tends to go unrecognized.

Last year, National Public Radio came up with a list of favorite young adult novels after soliciting nominations from listeners. Connors said the vast majority of books on the list were about white characters.

“It completely overlooked the kind of diversity we have here in Northwest Arkansas,” Connors said.

De la Pena said after the Southwest assembly that he makes many visits to schools, especially those with big Hispanic populations. More than 40 percent of the students at Southwest Junior High are Hispanic.

Samantha Tillery, 13, said she enjoyed the assembly.

“It was inspirational because he’s saying don’t give up on your dreams,” Samantha said. “His books sound really good. If I find them, I’m going to read them.”

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