>> From the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C.
[ Silence ]
>> I'm John Cole.
I'm the Director for the Center for the Book in the Library of Congress
and it's my pleasure to welcome you once again
to our annual Americas Award.
It's a pleasure for both the Center for the Book
and the Hispanic Division of the Library
of Congress to be involved in this.
We are just coming off I must say the National Book Festival
which was this past weekend where we introduced
yet another awards program, the Library of Congress Literacy Awards,
which are funded by David Rubenstein who is the person
who is also a major private supporter of the book festival.
So, I'm thinking awards in many different ways today,
but must say this is really one of the longstanding award ceremonies
that we have not only enjoyed hosting but at
which I have learned an awful lot and part of that has resulted
in increased attendance at the National Book Festival
by authors that I've met here.
So, no promises but we love to be involved
with this kind of a program.
I would like to turn this over to our co-sponsor, Georgette Dorn,
who is the chief of the Library's Hispanic Division
and she will move us ahead in the program.
Let's give Georgette a round of applause.
[ Applause ]
[ Moving around ]
>> Thank you John.
It's wonderful.
Every year we sponsor the Americas Award for 21 years.
This is the 21st year.
So, it's a great pleasure
to have our wonderful author here Sonia Manzano.
We just recorded her for almost an hour for the Library's Archive
of Hispanic Literature which has 700 authors from all over Latin America,
the Arabian Peninsula, the Caribbean and also in English
that uses Hispanics, Latinos and in French for the French Caribbean
and in Dutch for the Dutch Caribbean and in some indigenous languages
like [inaudible comments].
So, the Hispanic Collection, the Luso-Hispanic collection
and the Caribbean collections are more than four million books
and about 15 million items, almost 10 percent
of the Library's holdings.
We receive about 1100 books a week, thousands and thousands a year.
We could almost form every month a little public library,
that's how many books come.
But, of course, we don't keep every book.
We only keep the ones that are important and have lasting values
such as Sonia Manzano's [inaudible].
Well, I don't want to waste your time.
You don't want to listen to me.
You want to listen to the award winner and I'd
like to introduce Clare Gonzales who is going to be the [inaudible].
[ Applause ]
>> Welcome and thanks to John Cole, Georgette Dorn,
the Center for the Book and the Hispanic Division
of the Library of Congress.
On behalf of the center for Latin, the CLSP, the Consortium
of Latin American Studies Program, we would like to welcome you
to the 2013 Americas Award.
This year we celebrate a milestone for the America's Award.
We are turning 20 years old.
The award was founded in 1993 by Julie Kline
of University of Milwaukee Wisconsin.
She saw the need to highlight and to recognize authentic
and wonderful works of literature, children's literature around Latino
and Latin American, around Latino and Latin America.
The Americas Award again is sponsored by the Consortium
of Latin American Studies whose mission is to promote all facets
of Latin American studies throughout the world.
The broad range of activities of CLASP include the encouragement
of research activities, funding of professional workshops,
advancement of citizen outreach activities and development
of teaching aids for the classroom.
The Americas Award is given to up to two books,
awarded to up to two authors each year and they're selected
for their distinctive literary quality, cultural contextualization,
exceptional integration of text, illustration and design
and something that is unique about the Americas Award
and that we're very proud of is that the books are selected especially
for their potential for classroom use.
The goal of the award is to link the Americas
and to reach beyond geographic borders, focusing instead
on cultural heritages within the hemisphere.
This year the Americas Award Review Committee was made up of teachers,
faculty and community activists from Oregon, Louisiana, Washington, D.C.,
New Mexico and Connecticut.
Hope Crandall who is here with us today, Hope, hello.
She served as Chair of the committee.
In the fall books are submitted and beginning
in early spring the committee gathers in conference calls
for a series of meetings to determine the winners,
honorable mentions and commended titles.
These conversations are enlightening, insightful.
Many times they are spirited and they show the passion
that the committee members feel
about the diverse cultures of Latin America.
Particularly insightful to me are always the discussions
around the classroom applications of the books.
I do not coordinate, I co-coordinate this award.
Vanderbilt co-coordinates this award with Tulane University
with Denise Woltering who is here.
So, I'd like to recognize Tulane right now
and Denise as our co-coordinator.
And we're happy to do that.
[applause] Denise and I are extremely grateful for the hard work
of the Americas Award Committee and the care that they put
into choosing each year's award winners.
And at this time I'd like to recognize them by saying the names
of people who are here and saying the name of those
who were not able to join us.
As I mentioned, Hope Crandall is the chair of the committee.
She is here with us today.
America Calderone who is not here with us today,
but also is in the Washington, D.C. are, Barbara Demberoso, who is here.
Erin Forbes is here in the front row and Kyra Phillip Shooner,
who is at University of New Mexico who is not here with us today.
Without their hard work and careful consideration,
the Americas Award would not be possible.
So, thank you very much.
At this time I would like to pass the microphone to Erin Forbes
and we are going to begin by talking about the honorable mention books.
Thank you.
[applause]
>> Thank you Clare.
Good afternoon.
[foreign language spoken] So, I wanted to introduce
"Martin de Porres", which is our honorable mention title
for this year, written by Gary D. Schmidt
and illustrated by David Diaz.
This book was chosen.
We looked at the literary quality of the book.
We looked at the literary quality of the book.
We looked at cultural contextualization.
We looked at the integration of text and design and illustrations
and the classroom use; the same as we do with all titles.
In this book, one of the things that stood out most
about it was the colorful watercolor and mixed media illustrations.
Beautiful, beautiful illustrations as you can see behind me.
And the vibrant colors really made a good setting in the back
for the actual plot of the story.
So, the story is based on San Martin de Porres, who was the patron saint
of interracial harmony and social justice.
San Martin de Porres was a patron saint
from Peru, Lima during the colony.
>> Oh.
>> And he came from the father of a Spanish nobleman
and his mother was a slave.
So, we're familiar with the history, the colonial period, just the weight
that that carried at that time.
He came from a very, very poor family and he was brought
into the Dominican brotherhood by way of his curing powers.
So, this is a beautiful, beautiful story, not just about the culture
of Peru during the colony and not just in terms of illustration,
but most importantly about universal themes of fraternity,
racial equality, justice, poverty and compassion.
And this is what our title this year, why our title was named
as the honorable mention.
It was also deemed worthy of classroom use.
It has many applications in the classroom.
And altogether we found it an outstanding example
of an Americas book.
So, this is our honorable mention for the year.
Thank you.
[ Applause ]
[ Moving around ]
>> Good afternoon.
I'd like to talk with you this afternoon about two titles,
two extraordinary books which we've put on the commended title list.
In their tone, their accessibility and their intent,
they're very different and yet both of them in its own,
each of them in its own way is enormously captivating.
"Drummer Boy of John John written by Mark Greenwood and illustrated
by Frane Lessac is based on the inspired childhood of the founder
of the steel pan drum in Trinidad, it's national instrument.
This guy's name if you don't know him is Winston "Spree" Simon.
It's a fun exuberant book from, right from the first page
to the end page, the colors and everything
about it is very exuberant.
It takes place at carnival time and little Winston is just determined
that he's going to have the best band of all in all of Trinidad.
So one day, unfortunately he does know how
to play anything any instrument, but one day at the junkyard
as he disposes of a mango seed, it goes jing, jing,
jing of some various metal containers
which have been thrown away and that's his inspiration.
He said, "Oh boy, I think I can do this."
So, the rest is kind of history.
He goes on and he creates a band with his friends.
They win the best band.
The book is just, it's lively in every way.
The colors are vibrant.
The Caribbean colors are very, very bright.
The language is just lively as the colors
and the illustrations just show just this lively movement
of everything that's happened during carnival time.
So, we love this book and it's a commended title.
A second commended title is "In Darkness" by Nick Lake.
This book is equally magical, but whereas "Drummer Boy
of John John" is all color and sound and fun this book is,
it's for young adults and it's quite the opposite.
In it, a 14 year old gang member in Port-au-Prince, Haiti is trapped
in the rubble of the 19, 2010 earthquake.
And as he lies there in the darkness he speaks directly
to his hope for rescuers.
Why, because he hopes that maybe
if he tells them his story, they'll forgive him.
They'll understand him and they'll forgive him.
His life, this guy's name is Shorty.
Shorty's life has been one of deprivation, of violence, of loss,
but also of family devotion.
And as he recounts the episodes of his life he does
so in a very colloquial kind of matter-of-fact way.
But at times it turns-- his thoughts turn rather philosophical too.
So Shorty was born in darkness and that's how he expects to die.
And now as he lies in this collapsed building in the darkness.
Again he suffers hunger.
He suffers terrible thirst and he's been injured and he begins
to dream or perhaps hallucinate.
And in his dreams he's taken away to a different period
of history, Haitian history.
He's taken away to the period of independence
and he becomes the leader of Haiti's independence
to [foreign language spoken].
Through his musings and through his imaginings we journey.
We journey back in time and we journey very deeply into the psyches
of two very different people.
And as we do so we realize how very intimately connected the past is
with the present.
Along the way we come to appreciate the importance,
the power of political ideals, the importance of religious ideas
and the power of the human spirit.
And we're also forced to contemplate for ourselves our own power
to escape the darkness or not.
So, we congratulate the authors and illustrator
of these two magnificent books.
[ Applause ]
[ Moving around ]
>> And our final commended title of the year for the Americas Award is
"Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets
of the Universe" written by Benjamin Alire Saenz.
This book is a-- set in a Mexican-American community
on a border town in Texas and it's not your typical account of life
in a Mexican-American community.
It's a book that's focused on breaking down stereotypes.
They have one family that is
from a typical working class family background and then the other family
that is more of a middle class academia background.
And the two boys from these families they build a friendship
and what develops into a romantic relationship between the two boys,
they discover friendship, loyalty, love and all of this in a way
that breaks down traditional stereotypes that we think
about in the Latino community.
It's a beautiful, beautiful piece of work in terms of literary quality,
has an excellent prose quality about it, dialog between the two boys.
From the very first page to the end you watch them grow
from young adolescents into young men and watch their friendship
and their relationship develop.
This book was awarded for its literary quality,
also for its cultural contextualization.
The cultural details may not abound like you would see
in some other books, but you're looking at family values.
You're looking at friendship, all of this through the lens
of a Latino family, two Latino families.
And finally it was awarded the commended title
because of its application in the classroom looking
at universal themes of friendship, loyalty
and trust between these two boys.
So, "Aristotle and Dante" our final commended title for the year.
[ Applause ]
[ Moving around ]
>> We've now come to our award.
We are delighted to present to Sonia Manzano the 2013 Americas Award
for her novel "The Revolution of Evelyn Serrano."
How fortunate we are to have raised our children, our grandchildren
and all these generations with you introducing all of us,
all our generations to the Latino culture.
Thank you.
And now we have this book from Maria.
We are delighted to present you with the 2013 Americas Award
for "The Revolution the Evolution of Evelyn Serrano."
We thank you for drawing us into New York City in the late 1960s
to meet Rosa Maria Evelyn del Carmen Serrano.
Evelyn, she does not want to hemmed in by the ubiquitous Latin names
of Rosa or Maria or Carmen.
She's struggling to define her place in her family
and Spanish Harlem community with the unexpected arrival
of her very flamboyant Puerto Rican grandmother.
Family dynamics shift in the house,
in the home while political activism develops in the streets.
As she learns of her role, of the role her family had played
in the politics of Puerto Rico she slowly steps
into the activism generated by the Young Lords in her own neighborhood.
And readers we invite you to read, enjoy and learn
from the revolution of Evelyn Serrano.
The Americas Award committee chose this novel for recognition
because of its depiction of an important time,
place and multicultural cast in the United States.
It is an accessible coming of age novel with much humor,
well rounded characters and a satisfying ending.
We urge students and teachers to write
and employ literature studies centered
on the revolution of Evelyn Serrano.
It combines the specifics of Puerto Rican history and culture
on the island and the mainland with the universal struggles of growing
up and finding ones place in a loving family.
Thank you.
[ Applause ]
>> On the behalf of the Consortium--
>> Oh, thank you so much.
>> We also as a tribute--
>> Thank you very much.
We love to give our award winners a weaving to continue weaving stories.
So we have a beautiful mola for you.
>> Thank you very much.
Very nice.
Let's hold it up so we can have a nice picture here.
On television it's all about getting a picture of something.
Thank you.
Thank you.
I appreciate it.
[applause]
>> Yes, please come.
>> Alright.
>> And I'll put this here for now.
Thank you.
Thank you very much.
It's a pleasure for me to be here.
And I just wanted you to see the little bit of me on "Sesame Street"
so you could see what my life has been
on that show compressed to two or three minutes.
Because I'm in Washington I feel that I have
to talk about the First Family.
When Barack Obama was elected we at "Sesame Street" bemoaned the fact
that the First Family's daughters were well past the
"Sesame Street" age until we realized that Michelle
and Barack themselves had probably watched a lot of a "Sesame Street"
as a child and would have been touched by the show as children.
I, I witnessed this first hand when the cast was invited
to the White House for the Easter egg roll hunt a couple of years ago.
And I'm telling you that Michelle Obama was much more excited
about meeting us than Malia and Sasha were.
I have to admit that I've-- over the years I've had my fair share
of recognition both publicly and privately
and recently I had some indirect recognition.
I was just in Puerto Rico last week and on my way home
at the airport a young woman with two small children stared
and smiled at me and I smiled back.
And she smiled some more and I smiled some more and then she came
over and held our her hand and said, aren't you Ines Ramos?
[laughter] And I said, "No, I'm sorry I'm not."
But, and she continued with tears welling in her eyes,
but you must be somebody, somebody.
My heart is beating so.
And I said to her, "Well, you might know me
as Maria from Sesame Street."
And she said, I knew it, I knew it.
I knew that you had something to do with my children.
You are Maria.
And she threw herself into my arms for a great big hug.
It was a lovely moment of recognition.
The Americas Award is a wonderful recognition and not only that,
I know that you folks know who I really am.
[applause] Receiving this has given me the opportunity
to reflect on my life.
I know, I now realize that I was born in the best of times
because I have seen remarkable changes
in the society that I live in.
I take every opportunity in a public forum to say the following:
My parents are from Puerto Rico.
I was born in New York, which makes me a Nuyorican just
like Supreme Court Justice Sonia Maria Sotomayor.
Puerto Rico is a territory of the United States and has been
since the Spanish-American War.
Puerto Ricans have been U.S. Citizens since 1921
because I recently learned this on PBS just the other night
of a woman named Isabel Gonzales.
Shortly after the Spanish-American War,
after the U.S. had acquired Puerto Rico as a territory from Spain,
Isabel Gonzales came to New York and was sent to Ellis Island.
Well, she was insensed.
She felt that she just been stripped of her Spanish citizenship to end
up having no citizenship at all.
She took her complaint all the way to the Supreme Court
and finally paved the way for U.S.,
gaining U.S. citizenship for all Puerto Ricans.
That said, let me go back to my early years of being
like many Latinos in the 1950s, an invisible citizen.
I was raised in the South Bronx, watched a lot of television
and always wondered how come I never say anybody who looked like me
or lived in the same neighborhood that I lived in.
Latin people were simply not recognized
or represented in any media.
That's why I was so shocked
and amazed the first time I saw "Sesame Street."
I was a student at Carnegie-Mellon University.
I walked into the student union and there
on the television set was a very young,
very bald James Earl Jones reciting the alphabet
as the letters flashed over his head.
He recited the alphabet in a very deliberate manner; A-B-C.
I thought I was watching a show that taught lip reading.
Mr. Hopper, the candy store looked just like the candy store
over on my block when I was a kid.
The stoop was everybody's stoop.
Then I saw the characters of Susan and Gordon, a cheerful, warm,
urban black married couple who were so real.
I was amazed.
Let me remind you that in 1969 you never saw a person
of color on television.
And if you did, they weren't a loving married couple
like Susan and Gordon.
You did not see Asian people
and certainly did not see Hispanic people either.
Because of this racial and cultural discrepancy in the media
"Sesame Street" hired me to provide an image
that inner city Hispanic children could relate to.
I had been wooed and married and even had a baby on the show.
When I think about it, we were the first reality show
without the whining.
[laughter] Maybe I should clear something
up about my life on "Sesame Street."
I am not really married to Emilio Delgado
who you saw me marry on the show.
But I'll tell you a little story about that.
Emilio Delgado who plays Luis and I were once recognized by someone
who gushed and was thrilled and was very complimentary and said,
how great it was that her children should see real love on television
and get married on television and how happy she was
that her children should see real love between real people.
Emilio and I exchanged glances and decided to tell her the truth.
We told her that we were not really married.
She was taken aback, sucked in her breath and said, it's okay as long
as you really love each other.
[laughter] My real life has been as interesting if not as predictable.
My parents came from Puerto Rico in the 40s, not on an Eastern Airlines
or a Pan Am plane, but on military transport planes.
They could get to the mainland for 30 bucks, not quite first class.
He was a laborer and she was a seamstress.
I walked a cultural tightrope existing and growing
up in two worlds at once, always reconciling the world of living
in Bronx [inaudible] with the world at large.
At school we hoped for a white snowy Christmas when at home we prayed
for fair weather so we could go on [foreign language spoken]
which meant filling your car with food and drink and instruments
and kids and going from house to house singing Christmas carols.
As a kid nothing gave me greater pleasure than eavesdropping
on grownups talking about this mysterious island of Puerto Rico.
Did mangos really fall onto the street?
I quickly imagined Third Avenue in the Bronx festooned with ripe fruit.
Could you really drink water from the waterfalls?
I'd see faucets sticking out of crevices in rocks at the park.
Did roosters really sing?
I'd envision roosters dressed
as Elvis Presley singing into microphones.
As a real little kid [foreign language spoken] Puerto Rican
folklore gave me the opportunity
to glean further desperately needing information about my culture.
And it was a good thing because not seeing myself represented
in the world was making me wonder how I could contribute
to a society that didn't see me.
I think I've remedied that for other Latin children by being
on television and I'm thrilled that I've gone from representing
on television to representing in literature,
which of course brings me to the hot topic of the state
of diversity in literature today.
Certainly there are many more diverse books now then there used
to be when I was reading "Dick and Jane."
Scholastics list is chock full of them.
Yet a recent NPR piece was pointed out to me that was entitled,
"As Demographics Grow, Shift, Kids Books Stay Stubbornly White."
It's stated that even though a quarter of the schools,
of school kids are Latino, only three percent of the books are
about or written by Latinos.
You wouldn't know it from this group and all of the literature
and all the books that I've just seen at the Library of Congress.
And this is a recent article and that the books
that are diverse don't drive best seller lists.
Well, of course, there are exceptions.
Sherman Alexie's book "The Absolute True Diary
of a Part-Time Indian" is a best seller.
But I'd like to share a thought on best seller lists.
I wonder if more diverse books aren't on the best seller list
because of political correctness.
Political correctness is timely, appropriate
and makes us responsible citizens, but it's a two-sided sword.
"Sesame Street" could never have happened
in the politically correct atmosphere we live in today.
When "Sesame Street", "Sesame Workshop" issued a DVD
of early shows called, I think it was just called
"The Early Days" it contained a disclaimer about Cookie Monster.
In it he was playing Alistair Cookie, who was the host
of "Monster Masterpiece Theater" on PBS, Cookie Monster was playing him
and it was called "Monsterpiece Theater."
And he was smoking a pipe and then he ate the pipe.
The folks at "Sesame Street" were afraid that those early shows
of Cookie Monster talking and then eating the pipe was going
to be misconstrued as advocating for kids smoking pipes,
I don't know or eating pipes.
For years we were criticized for not having a Hispanic puppet
as popular as Cookie Monster.
But can you imagine a Hispanic character whose sole character trait
was smoking pipes and eating cookies?
Today, I wonder if we could tolerate Diary of a Wimpy Muchacho
or The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Bobo.
Could we accept the opening of a children's book that begins
with the possible slaughter of a pig,
like the opening of "Charlotte's Web."
That's the most hilarious line I ever read, the opening of that book
where immediately the pig is in danger.
>> Yeah.
>> It's a thorny question.
But thanks to forums such as the Americas Award and people
like you we can have discussions about these things and come
up with solutions to help us navigate through these minefields.
I got into writing for "Sesame Street"
because I questioned the Hispanic content on the show
and thought there were more ways
of expressing culture then ethnic foods or music.
The producer responded by saying why don't you try writing some
of these Hispanic items yourself and I have to tell you I back-pedaled.
I had never written anything in my life.
In fact, I always told a crummy joke about how our household was
so devoid of the written word or paper
or pencils we often used my mother's eyebrow pencil
to write a phone number on the kitchen wall.
I didn't realize I could read from a book.
I realized I could read from advertisements.
I was on the Third Avenue elevator train
with my sister wondering what the ads above my head said.
And I asked her and she said, rolling her eyes
because my sister was born exasperated,
why don't you try reading it.
I thought, reading it, me?
I thought reading was something you did at school
with "Dick and Jane" books.
I didn't realize you could try to read words anywhere,
that reading was something you could do every day.
I tried reading the ads and oh joy, I could.
I trembled with excitement the rest of the way home reading ads
for nylon stockings, reading about the health benefits
of smoking Chesterfield cigarettes and reading all about the hopes
and dreams of Miss Subway 1957 to my heart's content.
But it was Frank McCourt's "Angela's Ashes" that inspired me
to right mini picture book memoirs based on my life.
"No Dogs Allowed" is about a family who overloads their car with people
and kids to get out of the city to go to the beach only
to find there are no dogs allowed when they get there.
It's exactly the image of Latinos that Jan Brewer,
Governor of Arizona, seems to have issues with.
In my picture book "A Box Full
of Kittens" a young girl gets distracted enough to miss
out on an important event.
My Aunt Benita close to giving birth and not having a phone
for emergencies inspired that story.
I always tell myself to write honestly even when it's unflattering
because sincerity will reach more people.
I went back to my feelings as a disenfranchised marginalized person
when writing "The Evolution of Evelyn Serrano."
The book takes place in 69 when "Sesame Street" was first aired
and many other historically meaningful events happened,
the moon landing, students for a democratic society, Woodstock and,
of course what I've chosen to write about, the background
for my story is the Young Lords.
They were a group of young people who brought attention
to the injustices going on in their community.
I'm thrilled that "The Evolution
of Evelyn Serrano" has been so well received.
I hope it inspires readers to want to reconnect to wherever they came
from and I hope it empowers young people.
We count on young people to show us the way.
We hope that they create a better society than we have created.
Take a moment to think about the movie "ET", Spielberg's big hit.
Remember how the audience gasped with delight
when the kids escape the well-meaning adults
and took off on the air in bicycles.
We loved that.
We loved that feeling that the children will set us free,
that the children will see the way.
I say keep those kids inspired.
They are our only hope.
Your Americas Award has motivated me to try harder than ever
to reach them through my writing.
Thank you CLASP, Americas Award for this recognition and gracias
for all the terrific work that you do.
Thank you.
[ Applause ]
>> Thank you so much.
I did just want to recognize a few of the institutions from class
that paid special tribute to this year's Americas Award;
Florida International University, the Ohio State University,
Tulane University, University of Florida, University of New Mexico,
Stanford University, University of Wisconsin Milwaukee
and Vanderbilt University.
And special thanks to Georgette Dorn, Catalina Gomez, Ann Boni
and John Cole and Angela Newburn.
Thank you so much for everything.
We have a special cake celebrating our 20th year outside,
so please stick around.
Sonia will be around a short moment to be signing and there's some books
for sale right out back, so thank you.
[ Applause ]
[ Moving around ]
>> This has been a presentation of the Library of Congress.
Visit us at loc.gov.