The Books That Made Me
I have been a lover of books for as long as I can remember. Books afforded a younger me, quiet and aloof, a world of possibilities with infinite braver versions of myself. The more I read the more I realised it was not just the books themselves that were interesting, but the art of their creation, the crafting of the characters and stories that filled them – the very books I could go and borrow week in and week out. This love of books and later of storytelling was spurred on by my mother, a master storyteller of family lore. My mother grew up the daughter of Mexican working-class immigrants who spent her childhood in her small town’s public library dreaming of a much bigger, much brighter world than the one she knew. My mother always emphasised the value and importance of these public institutions as democratic, educational; fonts of imagination with the magic contained in each of their shelves. I am grateful for her nurturing those seeds of creation that lived within me.
As a teenager one of my favourite authors was Charles Dickens much to the chagrin of my peers who were forced to read him in our Honour’s English courses in high school. My favourite was ‘A Tale of Two Cities’, I remember it was one of my first reading experiences in which I was on the edge of my seat, unsure if Lucie would survive her escape from Paris. My heart beating a mile a minute to try and race to the final page. I equally adored ‘Oliver Twist’ and ‘Great Expectations’, the epic quality of each, the imagery and roster of memorable characters.
In my university years, I was besotted with the writing of Nicole Krauss having first read her novel in a course on Post-Modern American Literature. Her novel ‘The History of Love’ will always be a favourite of mine so much so that I ended up choosing an excerpt from it to be use in my wedding ceremony. It is a beautiful exploration of love, family, trauma and the Jewish diaspora. Leo and Alma are two of the most perfectly crafted characters in contemporary literature (IMO) whose connection is so unexpected and so moving and the ending is a shining example of how even fiction can veer into wondrous experimentation and form and do justice to the incomprehensible nature of grief.
As I grew older, I searched for writing that mirrored my own upbringing: multicultural, a mixture of languages, proudly rooted in the story of migration. It was a hot April afternoon in the west side of San Antonio, Texas (a historical Mexican barrio) in which I happened upon Sandra Cisneros’ ‘House on Mango Street’ which had been published over thirty years prior. Although Cisneros is a much celebrated and lauded writer of letters, I had never read her work prior to the age of twenty-three. Immediately, Cisneros captured my attention with her rich depiction of life in her Chicago neighbourhood. It was full of colourful references of Mexican and Puerto Rican life. There was a vibrancy in each vignette and underlying danger that Esperanza’s world could unravel at any moment. Cisneros’ prose and poetry, her use of Spanglish, and the ways in which she reflects a version of life that feels like my own has been foundational to how I have gone on to write to my own cultural backgrounds and experiences.
Now in my thirties, I seek out queer literature with deep hunger because I want to read to all my facets and identities. Giovanni’s Room by James Baldwin is a favourite of mine. Its depiction of desire, love and repression felt searing and incredibly visceral the first time I read it. Baldwin was a masterful thinker and endlessly inspires me and my approach to writing and bearing witness to the world around me.
I read widely and across genres, but more and more, I am trying to discover less known queer writing from the past. One that I must mention is ‘The Front Runner’ by Patricia Nell Warren, first published in 1974. This is an exceptional work of character and plot, and I must thank Jack Parlett (author of Fire Island) who included a comprehensive list of queer literature in his non-fiction book without which I’d never have come across Warren and this beautiful story of love and loss. It has profoundly changed my life as both reader and writer.
I could go on and on about my love of writing and all the books that made me, but if I did it would turn into a story as long as ‘The Iliad’ and I think there are much better ways to spend your time, like reading! So go out there and do just that and if ever we come across each other in real life, I’d love to know the books that made you.