Art Against the Machine: Aida Salazar on Writing for the Resistance

Some days I am bowled over by the catastrophe of it all. I lean on my community. I lean on the power of the pen. I lean on remembering who my ancestors are and what they endured. The colonization that they survived in The Americas, I would be dishonoring that legacy and that lineage if I didn't step up in this moment.

What do we owe to our ancestors? What does it mean to be writers and readers at this moment in the world? And what does stepping up look like? Those questions are what motivate Aida Salazar.

As Toni Morrison says, this is not the time to despair. This is the time that artists get to work.

Aida's goal is to wield the power of words to change the world, which is why so many of her works for young readers deal with issues of social justice, politics, or questions of identity. She is known for books like In the Spirit of a Dream, 13 Stories of Immigrants of Color, as well as middle grade novels, including The Moon Within, Land of the Cranes, and more recently, Ultraviolet. Ida is an activist, a poet, a novelist, a Mexican American immigrant, and a mother who has found a way to turn the challenges of her life into empowering work for young audiences. In this episode, she shares how the act of writing itself has helped her heal and survive difficult chapters of her life, including an early confrontation with death, plus how a fart poem, a Parker pen, and a punk rock inspired zine all played a role in shaping her journey as a writer. My name is Jordan Lloyd Bookey, and this is The Reading Culture, a show where we speak with authors and illustrators about ways to build a stronger culture of reading in our communities.

Well, I was born in Mexico in a place called Zacatecas in a pueblo. And my parents brought me and my three older siblings with them when I was about nine months old to The United States. And we came on a visitor's visa really with the intention to stay. My parents wanted to build a better life than the opportunities that they had in Mexico. But the idea was also to return, to just make enough money and return.

Oh, wow. Okay. So it sounds like it was a busy house.

I was fourth. So three above and three below. Mhmm. And it was a beautiful time despite the fact that we were undocumented. I mean, we didn't cloud our every single day because my parents worked so hard and, you know, we didn't have a lot of toys.

very effective salespeople. Yeah.

Yes. They were. But reading was not something that we really did too much.

Was there a, like, storytelling if not reading? Or was it not as much either?

Yeah. There was a lot of a lot of storytelling because I think one of the primordial functions of story is to remember, right, and to educate and to nourish in different ways. And in order to kind of maintain our culture, of course, we had to hear our stories, the stories from the aunts and the uncles and the grandmothers and grandparents. And many times they were funny, and many times they came in song. Right?

remember any of them that you've Yeah.

Or do

you have any that you have, like, passed on to your kids that you could share a little piece of?

In Spanish? Sure. The one about farting? Oh, I feel embarrassed to share it, but, like, okay. I'll share it. Share it. It's in Spanish, so here it goes.

Okay.

Okay. It's just what I mean is just it's, like, so ridiculous. It's just like the fart. It's told in this very contemplative way, and it rhymes. Okay? But so the fart Yeah. It's a very light air that comes from a hole announcing the next poop. That's all that's all it is, but it rhymes. And it's just super so, yeah, I mean, it was all playful. Right?

That tradition carries on in your work. Mhmm. Coming from her home life, rich in spoken language, wordplay, and storytelling, Aida's actual love for the written word took some time to develop, and she credits her love of reading, as many of us do, to one pivotal teacher.

It really wasn't until I was in fifth grade that I read a novel for the first time. My my teacher, mister Clark, he gave me a book to read and I fell in love with reading. And he read gave me another and another and another. And then by the time the fifth grade ended, I had read all of his books in his classroom library, and I was working on the school library. Wow.

What's a Parker pen? Why don't I know what a Parker pen tell you, what's a Parker pen?

Oh, they were a Parker pen is like a beautiful pen. Like, it cost about a hundred, a hundred 50 dollars now. What? Yeah. Yeah. They're like these really special pens that are made out of silver or some metal. And then, you know, you could change the cartridges. It came in a a box

Oh, yeah.

With Parker on it. It was just, like, so fancy. And I felt so special, you know Yeah. Because he gave me these two things. And I really believe mister Clark was trying to tell me something by giving me a book, a book of poems, which I still have. Actually, it's right here. I I I brought it up.

The exact one?

The exact one. And I'm like and look. It's like falling apart.

Wow.

And then you can see Yeah. You can see this book belongs to Aida Salazar. This is my 10 old penmanship.

Is that the one that has Sarah Cynthia Sylvia Stout? Is that this book? Is that where the

silence Yes. Exactly.

I used to have that one fully memorized.

I know. Makes sense.

That must have been so his poems are so, like, timeless. You know, they just still they work. You know?

Mhmm. They totally do. The one I always read and the one I rememorized was sick, which is, I cannot go to school today, said little Peggy Ann McKay. I have the measles and the hogs. That one.

Gasherash and purple bumps.

Gasherash and purple bumps. Okay. Purple bumps. Yeah.

So he gave you this book. Go ahead.

Yes. Mister Clark gave me this book. And I listened. I started to write poems at that time, 10 years old, 11 years old, going into middle school, trying to imitate Shel Silverstein because I thought it was so funny, and so I rhyme and, you know, I was I was practicing. Right?

I wrote. Aida's sister's death was an appending of the life she'd known, and it entirely changed her family. They'd lost their eldest child, who Aida describes as brilliant, a straight a student, class body president who had struggled with depression for some time.

When she passed, I immediately wanted to follow in her footsteps. Mhmm. In my 13 year old brain, I wanted

She felt like you had to step in that space that she had left sort of for your family.

Absolutely. I had to do that. I had to try and fulfill it because I saw my mother and father in so much grief. And because my sister had accomplished so much, and I wasn't a genius. I was smart, but not a genius in the way that she was a genius.

heal. You were like the healer. Yeah.

Yeah. Exact I was trying. I think all of us were in different ways, all of my siblings. And Mhmm. I mean, the younger ones don't remember as much, but my brother and my older sister, they did definitely.

For Aida, writing had become a necessity, a way to let the grief in and to allow herself to express the pain and the pressure she felt. But at that time, it was still just a therapeutic tool, and the idea of writing becoming a potential vocation was far from her mind. An early experience in college changed that.

Something happened. I walked into a Latino literature course, and I read Latino literature for the very first time. And that changed my life because at that point, I went, wait a minute. All the things that I've been writing with my Parker pen and my journals and those all those poems could actually be in a book, like, for me. Nice.

That's a poem by Lorna de Cervantes called Beneath the Shadow of the Freeway, read from a collection called Emplumada, published in 1981. There was actually more to the poem in the middle that we couldn't fit here for the sake of time, but we will definitely post Aida's uncut reading on Instagram, so keep an eye out for it. Aida first discovered the poem at 18 years old and immediately gravitated toward the speaker, resonating deeply with the role of family translator. Being burdened with adult responsibilities at a young age is a common challenge for many immigrant children. And in Aida's case, this burden was even more pronounced as she also tried to fulfill the role of an older sister.

What hit me was the language. Right? On the level of the line that was really, surprising, the way that she uses words and how she strings them together that on a craft level was really exciting and revelatory for me. But in terms of content, you know, she's speaking about these these contradictions and these wounds in our families. Right?

By her early college years, Aida had come to two important realizations about writing. First, she discovered that writing could serve as a powerful, healing, and spiritual practice for herself. Second, she recognized that pursuing a career as a writer was indeed possible. And while she was discovering the former, she was simultaneously coming to a third realization. Art is a tool that has the power to change the world.

So we were surrounded by art. Mhmm. And then to kind of understand what these muralists were doing and that it went back to a movement in Mexico, the Mexican muralists. And and I discovered Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera and Siqueiros and Orozco and all of these incredible painters who were very political and uplifting the indigenous people and and the original peoples of Mexico and fighting against the exploitation of the worker. This idea of communality.

Yeah. It's perfect. I'm also thinking, like, I think that community, like, that rooting in a lot of your work. It's funny because the page I had marked when I was reading Land of the Cranes, which is also interesting because birds played very heavily into the, poem that you just read. But the little stanza that I took here is I hug mommy and smush my head on the top of the nest feeling so selfish and wrong for forgetting what a flock does for one another.

Mhmm. Yeah. And I think it was because I grew up in such a I mean, we grew up in a two bedroom house, seven children. So, there was two sets of bunk beds and a single bed in one bedroom. My brother slept like, all of us girls slept in one room, but there was no sense of privacy,

you know, like No. Like knock before you enter. Right?

Maybe just not like none of this go to your room. Like, it was, you know, you help your sister. You help your brother. And to this day, we're pretty close, you know, and and that sense of community expanded, right, as we had children. And then and so it's not a foreign idea to watch out for one another and to see the wounds of our communities and feel compelled to try and heal them.

That deep sense of community, of looking out for one another, didn't just shape Aida's childhood. She carried it into her adult life, influencing the work that she chose to do. So you you left college. You were in nonprofit work for a lot of years. Is that right?

Yeah. Yeah. I was a nonprofit.

How many years were you doing that for? And were you writing all the time during that time just on the side?

Yeah. I graduated in 1994. And at that year, the Zapatista Army of National Liberation came to the world's consciousness. They they uprose in Mexico, and it was a revolution. Def like, it was the first activist group that used the Internet, and they gained so much so much support.

That commitment to a political struggle carried Aida through an early career as a nonprofit organizer and then as an MFA in critical studies at Cal Arts. But sadly, it was a heartbreaking personal struggle that marked the next period of her life, even as it eventually led to her first efforts as a writer for children. Did you always know that you wanted to write for kids, or is that like a real station that you came to through having your own children?

Yeah. Absolutely. So I left the nonprofit world because I met a man who I worked with initially, and then it took us a couple years. But we he lived here in the San Francisco Bay Area. My husband is a musician, and I moved to the Bay Area. And very soon after I came to the Bay Area, I got pregnant. And our first child was born with a lot of complications at birth, and she died after a month. Oh my god. And that totally was another revolution in my life. Mhmm.

Are there any of those stories stories that have found their way now? Are they, like, some of the stories, like, the board books you just did? Or are they stories, like, completely fictional?

Yeah. They were you know, I was practicing. So, yeah, some of them were fictional. Some were they were like stories about a polka dot princess because my daughter was so into princesses. But, and I'm like, oh my god. The monarchy. Why? I can

know Disney. Here, let me give you the

Well, I actually did that. At one point, I did that. I was like, no. No. No. And and one of my activist friends is like, you know what? You should just indulge it because she's gonna outgrow it so fast. And I was like, okay. And so we did. We went full blown Disney, and then she was, like, dropped. And then she just

It's definitely a parenting pro tip. It's like, give in. Opposite. They won't yes. I know. It's, like, very hard to do, but it is very effective to just True. Yes.

Yes. Those board books are books that I wrote that I wish I had had for my children when they were that little. The Moon Within was inspired by my daughter, and she was the actual opposite of my daughter.

Really?

My daughter was so open with me. Yes. But there's a shell of my family in there. My husband's a musician, the little brother, the the daughter you know, a house with colorful walls. So there's lots of similarities. And so, yeah, I wrote that story for her, and Ultraviolet is a story I wrote for my son. And so they they continue to inspire me.

That is a book that I wish that I had, like, I because I just read that and I was thinking I just, my son is 15 now. So he's sort of like anyways, he's

Just on the other side. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. But it was actually so helpful, you know, both of those is have and my daughter's 13, so I think it's just so important for them to have those experiences because even if the kid's background or whatever is, like, you know, those are, like, very universal experiences of tweens and teens.

So art for me is a tool for social change. Clearly, that's how I view it. And I want, again, for other children, the same thing I wanted for my own children, which is for them to find their spirituality, their agency, their power through any form of art, whether they commit to it as a career or not. And so I love to be able to use that to teach them that art can be not only a tool for social change, but a tool for social, personal transformation. I want them to see that that personal transformation can come through dancing, through playing piano, or singing or acting, painting, drawing, picture poems.

I don't know. You're you're, like, body of work.

Yeah. I know. Body of work. Exactly. It's it's hard to kind of even think about it that way, you know, because I'm just kind of, like, writing stories and not not really thinking about it as a body of work. But these are the things that I'm trying to kind of integrate into my body of work Yeah. For all all children. And and there are so many art forms, and there's so many ways of expressing and so many ways of healing and resisting through the art.

Aida connects deeply with both prose and poetry, but her approach to writing is guided by three principles, ideas that shape how she creates and engages with poetry. These principles come from three powerful quotes.

Billy Collins being a former poet laureate of The United States, he said that poetry is the history of the human heart. I love this quote for all of the ways that it's able to kind of explain. Yes. Poetry is this very emotional, very internal expression. Right?

Do you think that poetry has, like, a unique power or place in that realm?

Well, there's a lot of things about that. Right? So poetry gives us this ability to get really close, really close inside human expression. Like, for instance, the way that a metaphor can open meaning is very different than just saying, well, this happened. You know? For instance, in the passage that you read about Betita in Land of the Cranes, and she says, you know, I forget what a flock can do for one another. That's all metaphorical language. Right?

That's right.

She could have said, I forgot what a community does for one another. But the flock implies flying, implies birds, implies freedom, and so it expands the meaning. So it allows me to enter a kind of arena, a kind of landscape that we don't necessarily have access to when we're just seeing things for just this it's superficial, utilitarian way. You know? The third quote that I love and I use quite a bit and it is is centered in my practice is every child is born a poet.

At this point, I'm sure you're not surprised to learn that Aida has chosen a wonderfully political theme for her reading challenge, Banned Together. You're going to want to add these to your TBR.

The theme that I decided to select was banned middle grade books. I think that we've seen a lot of picture books that have been banned, and we see a lot of teen books that have been banned. But middle grade books, we don't see them as much, and I wanted to kind of highlight those. So some of the books, of course, include Melissa by Alex Gino, which is one of the most banned books. There's nonfiction, which is really interesting.

You can find Aida's reading challenge and all past reading challenges at the readingculturepod.com. In this episode's Beanstack featured librarian is Amy McMichael, the media specialist at Dutchman Creek Middle School in Rock Hill, South Carolina, and the lead librarian for all secondary schools within Rock Hill Schools. The woman does it all, and now she tells us about her strategy to lure in reluctant readers with an unconventional library setup.

My library is not necessarily a traditional come in and be quiet all the time kind of a library. For instance, I have an old school arcade. I have an air hockey table. I have pop a shot basketball. My philosophy is always you have to get them in the door before you can put books in their hands.

This has been The Reading Culture, and you've been listening to my conversation with Aida Salazar. Again, I'm your host, Jordan Lloyd Bookey. And currently, I'm reading Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro and A The The Original Fight Over Science in Schools by Debbie Levy. If you've enjoyed today's episode, please give us that five star review. It will just take you a few seconds, and it really helps the show.