Why I wrote The Secret Story of Sonia Rodriguez

After Homeboyz came out my career ascended to a whole new height. The popularity of the title mixed with the accolades mixed with the attention and awards moved me up “to the next level”. And then one day a group of girls, Latina students of mine, came up to me and asked…

“How come you don’t write a book about us?”

The Hoopster, Hip-Hop High School and Homeboyz all had African-American characters as their protagonist. Why? Because I aspired to get my students to read through writing books for them, books where they saw their own lives directly reflected on the page. But at Lynwood High, a growing portion of the student body was Hispanic – and my girls felt a little cheated.

When these Latina students hit me with this question, I immediately felt bad. As a teacher, you never want to play favorites between your kids and this was a group of really awesome girls, students I tremendously enjoyed having in class. Additionally, racial tension between brown and black kids on campus has been an issue for years and years (The race riot scenes in my book Hip-Hop High School and The Secret Story of Sonia Rodriguez are fictionalized accounts of race riots we have had on campus) so being fair and balanced in aspiring to write a book for all of my students, so that the Hispanics had the same feeling of “my English teacher wrote a book for us, too” instantly became a high priority for me.

And then I asked the question, the one which turned out to be the fuse that lit the dynamite.

“Well,” I said to this group of Hispanic teenager girls. “What should I write about?”

If you know anything about teens, you know that asking a teenage Latina to talk can be a dangerous thing because, once asked, they are going to talk and talk and talk and talk.

Lunchtime in my room. After school. They talked and talked and talked and I just listened and listened and listened. That’s when I saw a few incredibly common threads between so many of my Latina girls. (Note: These are simply my observations from our conversations – please don’t get all politically correct on me for being honest or go cuckoo with emails to me about matters of race, gender equality and so on. These are broad strokes here – case by case, of course it can be different)

1. Boys were treated better than girls in their home/culture. (i.e. Machismo is still alive and kicking.)
2. Girls were outperforming boys in school, really stepping into their own and coming on stronger than they ever had while the boys were lame.
3. Girls were caught in the crosshairs between serving the family and getting an education as if the two were mutually exclusive… and mothers from the prior generation who had made the choice to value familia first and foremost were often applying the most pressure to follow in their footsteps and be homemakers as opposed to independent, well-educated women with professional careers.
4. First generation immigrants (illegals and legal – I teach both at my school) often were the bridge to the English speaking world for their non-English speaking parents, of which there are millions in America. The daughters, even ones as young as 8 or 9 years old, were the official translators for parents who had never learned English – even if they had been in America for more than 10 years. They may have immigrated, but they did not assimilate.
5. Sexual molestation was a HUGE problem… and it was incredibly under-reported to authorities, other family members and so on. Teen Latina girls were being sexually abused at a far greater rate than I had ever imagined. It was, tragic to say, “common”.
6. Today’s young girls are smart as a whip, ferociously determined and a whole lotta fun to be around. They really do LOVE to laugh.

These notes – and others – are what inspired The Secret Story of Sonia Rodriguez, a book that has been exceptionally well-embraced by Hispanic readers, boys and girls alike. My own opinion as to why boys like this book so much is because of the cultural validation. In this novel I worked exceptionally hard to move beyond stereotypes and illuminate the beauty of the Hispanic culture. Latinas are a remarkable people, unique and distinguished, and the pride so many teens feel in seeing their culture portrayed in a positive light – despite it being “and warts and all” book – has really won over scores of young adults.

Last thing about The Secret Story of Sonia Rodriguez that I should mention is that I never in a million years would have been able to write this book without genuinely listening to my students. When you read the book, I take the reader deep into Mexico, a Mexico that a white guy like me could never really know firsthand. It truly took a latino to shine a light on this private, inside the culture world and I can’t tell you how many comments I have had from Hispanic readers who say, “how did you know this.”

It’s because real people illuminated it for me. From the code-switching language (my students proofed the Spanish that is peppered throughout the text) to the quirky little aspects of life as an American Latina who is caught between the two worlds, two cultures and two completely different sets of expectations (based on gender), without the real voice of my students, The Secret Story of Sonia Rodriguez would not have any real voice at all.

Here’s the problem: our scores speak for our school before people know who we are or what we do.

The book is being judged by the cover. But does the cover have anything to do with gaining insight to or prognosticating about the content? For sure.

However, does it tell the whole story?
Probably not.

Does it tell an accurate story?
I am not so sure.

Does it tell a fair story?
Nope, I don’t think so.

Test scores are the first — and sadly, in far too many cases — the last things that politicians, bureaucrats and parents are seeing and using to make judgements as if one can know from afar what can only be viewed up close.

And far too many of their judgements are being based on these narrow windows.

I guess I wouldn’t have so much of a problem with this if I didn’t believe there was such a wide gap between test scores and what was actually going on in a teacher’s room. It’s just not, in my opinion, an accurate, insightful, full, rich, deep look in the profession of teaching.

And yet, it is being assumed to be so.

Look, my test scores are gonna rise next year. Why? Because that is my (forced) goal.

But does it mean I am a better teacher?
Does it mean my students learned more?

I’d say it definitely will mean my students will have become better test takers. But at what cost?

We are so fiercely driving all our nation’s teachers to up their bubble test scores that we are losing sight of the fact that, in the 21rst century, almost no one uses bubbles to measure the ability to perform at any level once you leave the world of academics.

Performance is measured in how one performs… by actually doing something.

But we are not asking our kids to DO enough.

And they want to DO more.

And they take greater benefit from school when they DO more.

And in life, they are gonna have to DO.

I mean come on, the reason we love the magnet schools and high-functioning charters is because we get to see kids in their science classes looking under microscopes while kids in computer classes program code and kids in theater art class stage full ballet productions.

We don’t ask to see the bubble test scores of the kid we see building solar heating panels. Why? Because we know they are learning.

How? In non-quantifiable ways.

Will we ever again trust in the idea of non-quantifiable learning?

I am not sure if sexual molestation by school personnel against students is on the rise or if the explosion of web-based media has simply drawn more attention and awareness to the problem. Either way, it’s absolutely tragic when this stuff happens.

And it devastates lives.

As this story in the L.A. Times shows, the victims, the kids, suffer in ways that color their existence and worldview for the rest of their life… and what scares me is how numb I think we in our society have become to the crime because of the frequency with which it is being reported these days.

Having had students confess to me their victimhood over and over (it’s so much more common than I ever realized — like SO MUCH MORE!) is what drove me to want to do more. And the fact is, an incident right out of my own classroom (the tale a female student told me about her uncle) was the original spark for my latest book of fiction, The Secret Story of Sonia Rodriguez.

In some ways, I am just amazed how SONIA has hit a nerve with so many kids. Especially girls. And even more especially, with Latina girls. This novel hasn’t become breakout big like TWILIGHT or anything like that but it does have a very strong group of kids and teachers that really support it extremely well and it’s being brought into classrooms all around the country. (And oh the emails they send to me.) For that I am honored.

But still, I want to do more.

I guess the question is, how can we better protect our kids? And what more can we do to help them when this stuff happens?

BTW, was it always so prevalent and yet under-reported, or is society so much more sexualized that seeing more and more of this type of abhorrent behavior is simply inevitable?

Yet, this still brings me back to the bigger point: what can be done?

I do know that banning books like Laurie Halse Anderson’s SPEAK is not the answer. Books open conversations in a way that few other forms of media can do. Read Laurie’s answer as to how she feels about banning books right here… you go Laurie!

The tragedy of sexual molestation is a plague on teens today and yet so many folks are sweeping it under the rug pretending it’s not happening in their school, their community, their world.

As Mark Twain once quipped, “Denial ain’t a river in Egypt.”

As Jim Burke has mentioned – quite brilliantly – writers today (and of the future) will require compositional skills in formats that consist of 3,000 words, 300 words, 30 words, 3 words and no words. (I am paraphrasing here; he’s much more eloquent.) The point is, that literacy is increasingly more diverse than ever and the challenges we face preparing our kids to successfully tackle the demands behind placed upon them are both dynamic and shape shifting.

However, when you look at the word counts above, I get the vibe that many forward thinking people (outside of persnickety teachers… like yours truly) are ready to throw the 3,000 word composition under the bus. They call it antiquated. Outmoded. Academic. 21rst century skill conversations revolve around “digital this” and “socially networked that” but rarely, if ever, pay homage to the value of the good ol’ fashioned long, thoughtful, richly textured essay.

Well, check this story out. If that ain’t proof that the ol’ bugger still ain’t got some life in it, nothing is.

Sorry, but I can’t recall yet seeing a story on how a tweet resulted in such an outpouring of generosity and goodness. I could be wrong, but having only 140 characters may be fun if you want to smarmily talk about the texture of your morning waffle. Yet, if you want to reach the movers and shakers of this world, as the 11 year old girl above proves, you are gonna need some chops with the written word.

Otherwise, all your gonna have is lightweight junk food for your intellectual meal. And man cannot live by smarmy waffle alone.

I love when the media tosses numbers around because they can make people look either brilliant or foolish. For example…

Check out this great story, the tale of Sharron Pearson. Sharon is the first student from the Los Angeles school to be accepted by Oxford Tradition. She has a scholarship but figures she needs $2,500 for airfare and other expenses.

That story resulted in this story, a follow-up about, you guessed it, Sharon Pearson, the first student from the Los Angeles school to be accepted by Oxford Tradition. (The money came a flowin’!)

Makes your heart kinda go all weepy, doesn’t it? People are, I believe (actually I have to believe this otherwise I couldn’t press on in this world) fundamentally good.

But as I said, when the media tosses around numbers it can also make us look foolish. Take for example this story about our impending college graduate shortage.

Do you wanna know why there’s no hyperlink to a feel-good follow up? Because right now, my faith is a bit low that numbers like the ones cited in the story are going to spur enough people into action. I mean the Governator keeps slashing the education budget as if it’ economically prudent in the long term to short change today’s kids in terms of funding their education and the resistance we see being offered to his ideas is feeble at best.

Makes us look pretty foolish, doesn’t it.

Obviously, there are a heck of a lot of people working their tails off so that we don’t end up in an “I told you so” nation… but don’t say they never told us so.