Matt de La Peña and Aimee Nezhukumatathil, whose friendship has spanned more than 10 years, will share some of their conversations on identity and belonging with their joint author presentation at 3:30 p.m. today in the Hall of Philosophy.
De La Peña is the author of Mexican WhiteBoy; Nezhukumatathil is the author of World of Wonders: In Praise of Fireflies, Whale Sharks, and Other Astonishments. Both are Chautauqua Literary and Scientific Circle selections for Week Seven.
de La Peña remembers hitting it off with Nezhukumatathil because of their shared experiences as people of mixed race; the two had “so many conversations about identity, and I think this talk is kind of going to be an extension of the things we’re always talking about when we’re together,” he said.
Mexican WhiteBoy — which was also the book for the Week Seven CLSC Young Readers program — is a young adult novel that follows the journey of Danny Lopez, a part-Mexican, part-white 16-year-old with a passion for baseball, as he navigates his complicated relationship with cultural identity and acceptance.
It’s one of the most personal, autobiographical stories de La Peña’s ever written.
“I grew up in that same town near the Mexican border, and I grew up mixed race, so it was really like me trying to understand questions I had as a kid,” he said.
de La Peña grew up playing basketball, which ended up paving the path for him to be the first person in his family to go to college. He graduated from the University of the Pacific, having studied on a full basketball scholarship. Since his first book, Ball Don’t Lie was deeply rooted in basketball, he decided to switch it up a bit when writing Mexican WhiteBoy, leaning more toward baseball.
“I thought, the thing about pitching is it’s so solitary, it’s all on you,” he said. “I thought a lack of control on the mound could be a good metaphor for Danny’s lack of control in terms of his identity and place in the family.”
de La Peña is a New York Times bestselling author and Newbery Medal-winning author who has written seven books for young adults. In 2016 he was awarded the NCTE Intellectual Freedom Award, and he currently teaches creative writing and visits schools and colleges across the country.
One of de La Peña’s favorite things is writing for children, because he thinks that most adults read to reinforce what they already believe in, whereas kids haven’t curated an ideology yet.
“They’re still searching. I love readers who are searching. … There’s so much great literature about this now in young adult novels and middle-grade novels,” he said.
America is obsessed with identity, and placing people in “boxes,” said de La Peña, which can be confusing for young people — especially mixed-race kids who often feel out of place.
“I think we’re too obsessed about it, but I do think you kind of have to square it in your mind — who you are, where you fit in — before you can kind of go on to the rest of life,” he said. “It’s better to kind of explore that as a young person.”
In his presentation today, de La Peña will be exploring his own experience as someone who has felt like he doesn’t belong, and his experience growing up near the border.
“We’re going to be in Western New York, and I’m from a border community in San Diego, about as far away from where we’ll be as you can get to me,” he said. “I just love the chance to share the beauty and grace that I find in a life near the border, and kind of sharing with people what that life is like and what communities look like there.”
Nezhukumatathil’s own personal experiences growing up part-Filipina, part-Indian are woven in with observations of the natural world in her essay collection, World of Wonders: In Praise of Fireflies, Whale Sharks, and Other Astonishments.
Nezhukumatathil said her children were always asking about her experiences growing up bi-racial, and she began using bedtime stories about animals in the wild to explain to them how she felt. World of Wonders came to life.
“I didn’t have the answers to these questions, but I could at least begin to say, that reminds me of when I felt a certain way in my childhood,” she said. “I made sure to tell them things like: Narwhals are in a pod and they stick together, and even if one gets lost, they circle around until they find that missing narwhal and they stay safe.”
As she wrote more and more, Nezhukumatathil began asking herself, “How are we all connected?” and “How are we all a part of this world together?” She began piecing together the flora and fauna that would be featured in the book.
“I started with over 200 plants and animals that I was interested in, but I only let that serve as a guide,” she said. “I wanted to focus on questions that I had about growing up and questions in my sons’ heads as they were starting to understand the world and their place in it. I whittled it down to just about 30 after that.”
Nezhukumatathil is a New York Times bestselling poet and author, who is the poetry editor for Sierra magazine. She was the recipient of the Pushcart Prize, a Mississippi Arts Council grant and a Guggenheim Fellowship in poetry. Currently, she’s a professor of English and creative writing in the University of Mississippi’s MFA program.
Throughout the essays in World of Wonders, Nezhukumatathil’s personal history is often entwined with cultural identity in the modern world. Growing up, she noticed that there weren’t a lot of people who looked like her represented in books, TV shows and movies, which also served as inspiration for her.
World of Wonders is tied naturally to the week’s theme of “Wonder and Awe,” and Nezhukumatathil has the joy and wonder instilled by her family to thank, as that allowed her to discover how to make her space in this world.
“Talking about joy and wonder, and sometimes loneliness, is a lot easier to discuss through the language and metaphors of the natural world,” she said. “I’m grateful to my parents and librarians for giving me the curiosity, a language, and the vocabulary to do so.”
During her presentation today, she plans on discussing the importance of wonder and the origins of how she became a writer. Nezhukumatathil, who used to teach at SUNY Fredonia and spent several years as a teenager in Gowanda, New York, was most recently a poet-in-residence at the Chautauqua Writers’ Center in 2019. Now, she’s excited to return to the grounds as a CLSC author.
“I’m completely honored (to return),” she said. “… My parents would take me to the Chautauqua grounds and hear speakers and performances in my formative years. The first time I taught at Chautauqua, my son was three-and-a-half months old, it was his first poetry reading. He’s now a senior in high school. I don’t take any invitation for granted and I’m always thrilled that my work continues to find audiences, from Western New York to Greece to Italy to Korea.”
