S12E13 – Seeds of Resistance: The Lemon Grove Legacy

S12E13 - Seeds of Resistance: The Lemon Grove Legacy

Andrew: Welcome to the Integrated Schools Podcast. I'm Andrew, a White dad from Denver.

Dr. Val: And I'm Val, a Black mom from North Carolina.

Andrew: And this is Seeds of Resistance: The Lemon Grove Legacy.

Dr. Val: I am very excited about today's guest because, not only is she an author, she writes my favorite genre.

Andrew: María Dolores Àguila is a young adult author. She has written three books now, and writes historical fiction for kids, which I think is so cool.

Dr. Val: It's actually amazing. And, you can learn a lot from historical fiction that inspires you to do more research. Right? And so this particular story I knew nothing about.

Andrew: Yes. So her most recent book is called A Sea of Lemon Trees, and it is all about the Lemon Grove Incident. And this is a story that was largely lost to history. Even people in Lemon Grove, San Diego, where it takes place often don't know the story, but back in the 1930s it was actually the first desegregation case to make its way all the way up to a state Supreme Court in California.

It was decided in 1931, and basically said that it was not okay for the city of Lemon Grove to create a separate school for Mexican and Mexican American students. That they needed to keep those students together. And, it's really a powerful story about community coming together and rising up and demanding a better education. And, Ms. Àguila found this story and decided to share her passion about it, share her interest in it, in the form of a middle grade novel.

Dr. Val: Yeah, and I think that that was such a powerful choice to center the story around young people, right? And I know we'll get into it, but it was as a young person that she decided she wanted change in her community. And so naturally for her to find someone who was about in that same age bracket who was about to make change was something that inspired her. And so I'm, I'm super excited for our audience to hear more about the story.

Andrew: Yeah. The book was written for a younger audience, certainly than me. I am, I'm in no ways a young reader or in middle grades right now. But, it was a totally engaging read for me as well. I found the story very compelling and the way that she writes from the perspective of a 12-year-old is really powerful.

And, her story as well. I mean, the parallels are fascinating because she tells the story of a 12-year-old who is sort of the named plaintiff in this case. The book is written from his perspective. And her own personal story of, of her time as a 12-year-old. Both of them really come together to, to make for a powerful conversation.

So I think we should take a listen to the conversation. Listeners will notice that, Val, you are suspiciously quiet in this conversation.

Dr. Val: I know I unfortunately had to miss the interview. I'm so sad to have missed it, but I have listened and I'm ready to talk about it.

Andrew: Alright. Let's take a listen to María Dolores Àguila.

[THEME MUSIC]

Maria: . Hi. My name is María Dolores Águila. I'm a Chicana writer from San Diego and I'm the author of A Sea of Lemon Trees, Menudo Sunday, and Barrio Rising.

Andrew: Amazing. How did you become a writer?

Maria: So I am one of those people that always wanted to be a writer from when they were very little. When I was a kid, I was like a voracious bookworm. Like I loved reading. I would have my mom read me the same books over and over and like, she didn't really get it, but she obliged me, right?

And so eventually I learned to read on my own and I was like, “Hey, why are there no Latino kids in these books that I'm reading? Like, how come I'm not seeing myself?” And so I was 10 years old and I was like, alright, well I guess, you know, this is a problem, so I'm just gonna go ahead and fix it.

So, so this is in 1994. I sat down at my parents', um, Packard Bell computer that we got from, oh my gosh, Montgomery Ward. And um,

Andrew: We have clearly identified what time period that was. [both laughing]

Maria: Yeah. And it was Windows like 3.1 and I, you know, opened up a document. I'm like, alright, I'm gonna, I'm gonna fix this problem of…

Andrew: Here we go.

Maria: … representation in children's literature. And like, I wrote like a page and a half and I got stuck.

So my parents, my father worked in construction, my mother was a house cleaner. Like they didn't know anything about writing. Like they didn't even graduate from high school. And so they weren't gonna be like, okay, well what you need here is like the call to action and, you know, that kind of thing.

So, too busy worrying about like, you know, rent and, and mortgage and all that kinda stuff, right? They weren't wanting to fix the state of children's literature with me. And so.

Andrew: Little 10-year-old you on your own fixing the state of children's literature. Yeah.

[laughter]

Maria: I'm like, I'm on a mission. I gotta fix things. So, you know, I gave up. I didn't know that like getting stuck is actually part of the process. Like that's something that always happens. And so, you know, I just gave up and then after that, like I figured, well, I guess it's just not for me. And so, you know, I just went throughout my life. I graduated high school, I went to community college. And then everything changed when I had kids.

So, I have three kids right now. They are 14, 12 and 9. And I realized when my middle son was about one years old, I was like, I am in charge of these people and they're gonna grow up, and like, I'm the example. And I was like, how am I gonna tell them to follow their dreams when I'm not even following my own?

So I was like, okay, well we're not in the time of like the Packard Bell in Montgomery Ward, like there's an internet out there and it has a lot of information, so I, I started to try to figure it out. And, you know, it was hard.

The things I wrote at the beginning weren't very good, but I persisted. And eventually, I wanna say like five years after I set the goal, I was like, all right, I'm gonna go ahead and start sending this out to agents and see if someone resonates with what I've written.

And a lot of people didn't. I got ignored or I got a no thank you. Which was like a hard pill to swallow 'cause you know, I was drawing back from that childhood like, we're gonna fix, you know, children's literature and, you know, I thought it would, you know, people would be like, Hey, come right in.

Andrew: Let's do it together. Yeah.

[laughter]

Maria: You know, but they were like nevermind.

And so, eventually I got better. I learned what a story entails. I learned how to start one, I learned how to finish one, I learned how to make one engaging. And finally, after five years and 60 rejections, I got a literary agent. And after that, you know, like all the dreams came true, right? We went on submission. My first work sold at auction. There were like six publishing houses being like, we wanna work with you. It was like a dream come true.

Andrew: Amazing.

Maria: But, it's still hard. Like, you know, it's still, even though I'm living my dream and I have everything that I want, it's still hard.

It was an incredible experience. My editor was amazing. She supported my vision and, and you know, that's where like this all began and, and I figured out that I really like historical fiction. Like that's what I love to write. I like to look back in time and see what were people in my community doing and how come I don't know about it? So like that's, that's where we find ourselves.

Andrew: Amazing. Who poured that into you that like, I'm gonna change the world. You're 10 years old, you've got a Hewlett Packard computer from Montgomery Ward and no people around you to, to sort of model for you what it looks like to become a writer. But you still had the faith in yourself and you saw the need in the world. And you thought, well, okay, I'm gonna go fix it. Who poured that into you?

Maria: My mom. So my mother, my gosh, I don't even know where to begin with this woman, but she is like everything to me. And so when I was in second grade, right next to our school, there was this place, it was privately owned, but everybody called it the Stein Farm. And it's like this, this farm that goes back to like 1910. And, somehow my mother had found out that it was slated to be redeveloped into like a multi-unit property. And my mom was like, absolutely not.

And so together with the school, they formed a petition and they started going out there and getting signatures and I went with my mom door to door getting these signatures and I remember thinking like, wow, my mom is going out there and she's making a difference, like right next to my school.

We ended up being successful and we kept the Stein farm and it's like a living history museum now, right? And I, I live like a block away from it, and I, my kids go to the school that I went to. So every day I walk by it and I'm like, wow, like it's still here. Like this has outlived the work that all those people did to come together. And so, you know, I heard a lot of people tell my mom, no, and she just went to the next door.

Andrew: Without, without a high school diploma, without the, like, backing of a big organization or something. She just saw the problem and went out and tried to fix it.

Maria: Yeah, she just goes out there and tries to fix it. And I, and, and not only does she not go to high school, she only went to the fifth grade. So I'm like, my mom does not have like, you know a huge educational background. She values education for me and my brother and my, and her grandchildren now.

But, you know, she didn't have that and she still went out there and did that. So it made me feel like you can do anything if you really want to. Like, if you really want to, you're gonna go out there and you're gonna burn rubber, right?

Andrew: Right. And you, and you did. That's so inspiring. That's an amazing story. Why write for your young audience?

Maria: So as I mentioned, you know, I long to see myself in books when I was a young reader. So I, that's one of the reasons that I write, but I, I write it as a form of social capital. So what do I mean by this? I mean that when young kids read my books, they can see that communities that they belong to have come together in the past and have achieved great things.

And when you haven't seen that before, that information has been repressed, that information has been hidden from you, you don't know what you're capable of today to make positive change in your part of the woods. Right? You can't be what you don't see. Right?

Andrew: Right. If you had not gone out collecting petitions with your mother, you would not have known that you, given all the things that you saw around you could actually go out and change the world. And so creating these worlds where you see kids changing the world, that, that like opens up the possibilities for kids today.

Maria: Exactly. And I, I try to paint a full picture when I write these events, right, because it's not just like an easy, exciting part. There's hard parts, there's bitter parts, there's sad parts. Sometimes it doesn't work exactly like you thought. And I think, sometimes when we read about these events, there's a bit of a disservice not to include the hard parts because you might think you're doing it wrong and you're really not. It's just the way that it happens.

Andrew: Like if you didn't know that it's normal to get stuck writing, you,

Maria: Yes.

Andrew: … might have never started writing again. Right, right. It's not, it's not all the glory. Yeah. That's amazing. You write in verse. Why? Why do you write in verse?

Maria: I have loved verse since I was a very young teenager. Like I, you know, I had my notebooks full of these angsty teenage verses. Nobody understands me. Woe is me. Like the world is so dark and hard.

Andrew: You've got those hidden away somewhere, or are we gonna, are we gonna publish those later?

Maria: Yeah. No, no, no, no, no. They're gonna go into a bonfire because nobody can read those. [both laughing]

I always loved poetry and Sandra Cisneros, which was one of the first authors I had ever read, was a Chicana author. She has a very poetic style of writing and she has some books of poetry. So I loved those.

I came into publishing through picture books and picture books, we have a very limited amount of words to tell a story, and I love that. I love the challenge of trying to distill something to its very essence to tell it as simply as you can possibly tell it. Because I feel like if you don't understand something enough to explain it simply, then you don't really understand it. So I'm always trying to get like a really deep understanding before I even get down to write.

But I also wrote it because I want A Sea of Lemon Trees and the other stories that I write to be accessible to kids that are maybe a reluctant reader, right? Because not everyone is as excited about reading as I am. Right. And so I don't want them to miss out on the story that I'm telling the, the lessons that are in there because they open up the book and they see this big block of text, right? And they're like, oh, like let me go ahead and close it. Like, I don't want nothing to do with this. When they open it and they see the verse and they see all the blank space, they're like, okay, yeah, I…

Andrew: I can get through this page. Oh look, I can get through this next page. Oh, look at this next page. Yeah.

Maria: And before they know it, they finished a book and they have that, um, accomplishment under their belt. Right. And like, it makes you wanna do it again. So I wanted it to be told as simply as possible, but also accessible for, for a reluctant reader.

Andrew: I mean, you definitely achieved that with A Sea of Lemon Trees. I couldn't stop -yeah. 'Cause like every page I'm like, oh, there's just this, there's just a few words on this page. I'll just read this one. Oh, and then, oh, look at this next one. Look at this next one. Pretty soon, like the whole, the whole story has been told. It's amazing.

Before we talk about the book a little bit, what was your own school experience like, growing up in San Diego? What were the schools that you went to, you said that your kids go to the same school you went to. What was that school like growing up? What's it like now?

Maria: I went to school, oh my gosh, I graduated from elementary school in 96, I think. So I went in the 90’s. And one of the things that I didn't know then, but I know now, is that San Diego is really segregated.

And I didn't know this, but I saw it. I felt it. Like I, I knew that in where I live in National City, that it was mostly Mexican Americans, Mexicans and, Filipino and Filipino Americans. And I didn't think much of it. I thought, okay, well this is just a place where maybe people that can't afford that much to pay for housing, this is just where we live. This is just where we're at.

So I couldn't quite put my finger on it, but I knew it was only us. When I went to school, I didn't have any teachers that looked like me and my school. And it was, it was a, it was an okay experience. It wasn't bad. But, you know, I, I could tell something was different. I just couldn't put my finger on it.

And so now that I'm older, I realize that San Diego is segregated and that we were segregated by racial covenants that kept Mexican American, Black, Filipino, people in certain areas of the city. And that's why we were where we were. Right?

And so now I understand that. And now, you know, it's different for my kids., almost all their teachers look like them. And so it's like a totally different experience that they have from, from mine. And I've talked to them about this. Like they, they know like, oh, we live here because of the way that it used to be set up and, and you know, you think it's so much in the past, but here we are.

Andrew: It’s still the case.

Maria: Right. It, it, it's, it's, it's crazy to me.

Andrew: Yeah. Right. So now, now you like, can put your finger on it. You understand it wasn't an accident. It, it's not just the way things happened to be, but there was actually real intentionality behind creating these segregated spaces.

Maria: Yeah. And, as an adult, man, it was just a relief to know, like I wasn't just seeing things like, I wasn't putting things that weren't there together. Like it was like there was an actual like policy. Yeah.

Andrew: Yeah, yeah. Is that what led you to the Lemon Grove incident? Tell us about the Lemon Grove incident and how you discovered it and why you wanted to write about it.

Maria: Yes. Lemon Grove is about maybe five or 10 miles away from me in National City. My grandparents, both sets of them, they came from Mexico and my grandmother, when I was a kid, I remember that she took her citizenship test and I didn't think anything of it. I was just like, whatever, grandma's taking her citizenship test. Like that's what you do when you wanna become a citizen. And so I never thought anything of it.

And so later when I was older, I was on ancestry.com and we learned that my great-grandmother was a US citizen. And so, you know, essentially, she didn't have to take that test. Right. She could have claimed citizenship from my great-grandmother, but she died when, when my grandmother was like a, a, a toddler, practically, right? So…

Andrew: Wow.

Maria: And so I was like, I wonder why. And so I started digging around and I learned about the Mexican repatriation. So the Mexican repatriation happened in the 1930s during the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl where, there's no exact numbers, but there's figures anywhere from like 200,000, to up to 2 million people, were sent back to Mexico without due process, and the majority of them were Mexican American and the majority of them were children.

And then I was like, hmm, I wonder what was happening in San Diego where I live? And so I googled it and I started going down this rabbit hole of the Mexican repatriation in San Diego. And then it came up with the Lemon Grove incident.

And the Lemon Grove incident is in 1931 in Lemon Grove. All the kids up until that point had gone to the same school. And with all this anti-Mexican and anti-immigrant sentiment going around, they decided, hey, ‘Why do we have everybody at the same school?’ Let's build a separate school for the Mexican kids and we'll call it an Americanization school because maybe some of them don't speak English good enough or whatever.

And so they built this separate school. And the principal at the time, he was actually against it and he told the families to organize, but he was kind of limited on what he could do. And so the families found that out and they organized, they, they formed the Comité de Vecinos de Lemon Grove, which is the committee of Lemon Grove Neighbors, and they, they got in touch with the Mexican consulate and they got in touch with the lawyer and they successfully won. But it wasn't without a lot of heartbreak.

Andrew: Right. And this is one of, if not the first like school desegregation case that shows up in US history, right?

Maria: Yes.

Andrew: So this is 1931. It's another, what, 23 years before Brown v Board happens.

Maria: Yes.

Andrew: And yet this was a successful desegregation case way back in the ‘30s.

Maria: Yes. And so it kind of got relegated. I don't know why nobody really talked about it. And maybe it has something to do with that generation of people that were just not one to like toot their horn and be like, I was the lead plaintiff of the…

Andrew: Look at what I did. Yeah,

Maria: Yeah, exactly. Right.

Andrew: Yeah, it's like a story that, that, I mean, I feel like it's gotten more attention recently, but there was a long stretch of history there where sort of nobody was talking about it. I read somewhere like somebody wrote the history of the Lemon Grove School District through that period and didn't even bother mentioning it.

Maria: Yes. I, I, I saw that and I was like, wow.

Andrew: That's crazy.

Maria: Yeah, I think it depends on who's doing the writing, right? Who, who finds it important.

Andrew: Good, good thing you were there to solve the problem with kids literature for real. So, yeah, why did you wanna write about the Lemon Grove incident?

Maria: So I was really interested in writing about it as soon as I learned about it, because as soon as I learn something that just like excites me and electrifies me, I'm like, everybody has to know about this.

Andrew: Everybody should know this, right?

Maria: Exactly like I wanna tell everybody. And what's funny is that I actually wrote it as a picture book beforehand and, my editor said, ‘Hey, why don't you write a middle grade novel?’ And as soon as she said that to me, like in my mind I was like, I live in a sea of lemon trees. And the, and the poem just flowed out of me. And I was like, alright, I'm gonna do this. It took me about a year to adapt it.

Andrew: That's amazing. The named plaintiff in the case was Roberto Alvarez. Talk about like the justification the school district gave for why they needed the school and why Roberto was chosen to be the lead plaintiff in this story?

Maria: So the school was an Americanization school. What does that mean? That means like kids from different backgrounds were pushed there to be shown how to be American or, or whatever it is, right?

And so Roberto's an excellent student. He speaks English, he speaks Spanish, he reads well. He writes well. And they're still gonna put him in this Americanization school. Like for what?

Andrew: He's already got all of American and also Mexican. He's got, he's got like American Plus already, but we're gonna send him to this school.

Maria: Yes. And I, I wanted to show like how absurd that was. So Roberto was chosen because he was an exemplary student. He was bookish, you know, he could speak well, write well, and, and do everything that a lead plaintiff would have to do. Right? So that's why they chose Roberto.

Andrew: Yeah, there was, there was part of the justification, I feel like I read too, that like, you know, the, these Mexican kids aren't smart enough to do the normal American school, so we need to send them to this special school. And then you've got Roberto, who's, who's probably smarter than every other kid in his grade. And also there to push back against that.

And you write the book from his perspective, why from his perspective as the sort of main character in the book.

Maria: One of the things in storytelling is that we always tell the story from the perspective that's the most interesting, right? Because if you're writing a story and the side character is having like a ton of fun and a lot of stuff is going on, it kind of makes you like wonder like, why am I…

Andrew: Why am I stuck over here with this boring guy? Right?

Maria: Exactly. So that's why I decided to tell it from his POV because his perspective was gonna be the most interesting. And of course, we wanna keep the reader engaged through the whole story.

Andrew: Yeah. How old was he when this was going down? 10 or 11 or something?

Maria: So one of the most interesting things is that Roberto was 12 years old and in fifth grade. And I don't know how that happened because 12 years old, is usually older, right? Like my kid is 12 and he's, he's in seventh grade.

So he's in fifth grade and he was an excellent student. I was drawn to him because, you know, what courage does it take as a child to become a lead plaintiff to, to carry all this right?

Andrew: Yeah.

Maria: And, and be the voice of your community, and you must be so scared if you get it wrong, right?

Andrew: Right. Your ability to take his perspective is, I mean, I'm not 12 years old anymore, but t it feels like you're reading the diary of a 12-year-old, you are like so deep in his world. You wrote,

"I do not feel like a little kid or a teenager. I'm in between. Straddling between two possibilities, the same way I exist between English and Spanish, Mexican and American."

You also wrote, I love this part, "adults always say you're being disrespectful if you point out when they're wrong." Which I just love. And, and it feels like you are so like deep in the perspective of this 12-year-old boy. How do you do that?

Maria: I think it helps a lot that I have kids and I get to see what they go through, how they, how they feel about certain things. But also, I think about how I felt when I was 12 years old, how, just like in between everything I always felt. And so I tried to draw on all that from my past.

Andrew: And then like seeing the world through your own kids' eyes.

Maria: Yeah, because my kids have a very strong sense of justice, like what's wrong and what's right. And I think, you know, that's something that it's common to a lot of kids. Like they understand that when things are not fair and they're not afraid to say something. And I think that's something that drives Roberto.

Andrew: Yeah. I mean, the experience for me of reading it from his perspective. And I know I'm not the primary audience for this, but I found it so compelling to like, see the world through his eyes because it makes some of the absurdities a little more apparent.

You can imagine a 12-year-old looking and being like, this doesn't make any sense. Like, why can't we go to school together? It's so simple.

Maria: Yeah. To them, everything is so simple and maybe things are that simple, but as grownups, you know, we get stuck in all the grays. Right?

Andrew: Yeah. So, Roberto is going to school, he's got all of his friends. There's this beautiful backstory that kind of really puts us squarely in Roberto's world and then, this new school is opened and all of the Mexicans kids are asked to go to the new school, but he and some of his friends, and some of their families decide not to send them to that new school. Kind of walk us through like, what, what happens in that part of the story?

Maria: The majority of the families, they decided they weren't gonna send them to school. And that was at great personal risk that they did this. And so only one family sent their kids to school, and that was a farrier. And he said that he couldn't afford to alienate his customers, so that's why he did it.

But things start getting tense, when the city starts investigating, the county starts investigating and they start trying to coerce them to go back to school. And then there's a threat of like, well, are you on social services? Like, why, why are you not following the law? Your kids are supposed to be in school.

Andrew: Right.

Maria: So, it, it adds pressure to, to an already struggling community, right? Because you're worried about your job, you're worried about your kids' school, and now the county's coming around and saying, why aren't you doing this? Right? So…

Andrew: Not to mention kids aren’t going to school, so they're so, they're not getting the education they're supposed to be getting. You've gotta, they've gotta do something during the days 'cause they're not at school and all those other pressures too.

Maria: Exactly. And so it becomes like this pressure cooker, right? I mean, they wanna go to school, they just don't wanna go to that school, and rightly so, right? 'Cause it's a retrofitted barn with like two teachers for like 80 kids. And so, you know, it makes sense, but there's all this pressure. And things could start getting tighter and tighter and tighter until you know something has to give and eventually something does give.

Andrew: Yeah. And this leads to the lawsuit. They filed a lawsuit. The Comité gets together and they say, we're not gonna send our kids to school at great personal risk to them, personal cost to them, and eventually files a lawsuit. The lawsuit, you know, works its way through the courts and eventually they do come out victorious. Talk about winning that case and what it meant to the community and what it's meant since then.

Maria: So when they won the case, it wasn't without great personal loss, right? One of the families was deported because of their involvement within the community, right? So, even though they won, it was a bittersweet victory, because, their community was kind of ripped apart right, when they lost that, that family.

So, you know, it was victorious. It happened and then they just didn't talk about it anymore. They just all went back to school and they were trying to be like nothing happened. Which is, I don't know, maybe it's just the time because it's 1930, but, you know, they just went back to whatever had happened.

And so when I was reading material on this, one of the most interesting things I found was that the school board didn't have any money to appeal the case, but had they appealed the case, it probably would've been reversed. Yeah, but they just had, had run outta money. And they said that the judge that they went with that oversaw the case, he was, a liberal judge and, you know, it, it was gonna, it was gonna work out. But, you know, had they appealed the case, like what would've happened, like what, you know, like this would've been drawn out a lot longer. You know, and it's just interesting to see like the past that history takes and the way that things end up working out you know?

Andrew: Right. They just happened to get assigned to a judge. The school board just happened to run out of money, and then that's how things continued.

Maria: Mm-hmm.

Andrew: The pressure on Roberto, which I think is another thing you just capture beautifully, must have been immense. Talk a little bit about where you leaned into actual history and where you diverged, like where it became historical fiction versus just history.

Maria: I think it turned into historical fiction because I realized that I, I didn't know for sure what Roberto felt like, right? But what I do know is that I have been in a very similar position to Roberto. You know, when I put out my debut book, all of a sudden I became this voice that was talking about my community, right? And all of a sudden there was a lot of pressure on me, and I was like, oh my gosh. Like, am I doing things the right way? Like, what do people think? You know?

So I was able to draw from that from my own life. And there's a lot of things that I draw from my own life and, and I put in the book, um, one of the biggest examples being about the pinatas, right? When he doesn't get a chance to hit the pinata. And I was always the tallest kid growing up. And so I would be at the very end of the line, I'd be like, oh my gosh, I'm not gonna get a chance to hit the pinata. These little kids are tearing it up.

And so, you know, I, I drew a lot from my own life, to use for Roberto because I feel like as human beings, we're wired for stories and, and we connect through stories, right? And when we experience a story, it's almost like we live through it. So I had to draw from my own life so the reader, especially young readers, could connect with Roberto's journey and experience it more profoundly, more immersively, more deeply.

Andrew: Right. That helps me understand why it's so compelling, why you feel like you are so much inside of Roberto's head because you are it, it is also your own head in so many ways. It is also your own story told through his eyes. Yeah, that's really, that's beautiful.

There's these, the, this sort of theme of, of in-betweenness that, that runs throughout the book of, you know, he feels like not quite a kid, not quite a teenager. He's not quite Mexican, he's not quite American. His, like both speaking Spanish and speaking English. He's brave to be doing this, but also scared about screwing it up. The community, you know, he is strengthened by the community that he is part of, but recognizes the ways that that community is pushed to the outside in the country. Talk about some of that, that like theme of in-betweenness.

Maria: I think as a Mexican American myself, like I have felt that in betweenness my whole life. And that's something, people like me, we struggle with. Like, there's that famous line from Selena when he says that we're too Mexican for the Americans and we're too American for the Mexicans. And man, when they said that, and I saw that in that time, like I, that man, I felt that in my soul. I was like, yes. That's how I feel. Like I understand that. It just always resonated deeply with me.

And also like when I speak in my everyday life, I speak in Spanglish. Sometimes a word in Spanish is much more appropriate than a word in English. And I feel like people understand that feeling of not being enough for either side. They understand of just not fitting, fitting into the labels. Right? And that's somewhere where we can find a lot of commonality, where we feel like uncomfortable or like not enough. Like those are very vulnerable places to be. And when you meet someone there, like you can touch them, right? You can, you can connect with them on a deeper level.

Andrew: It, I mean, it also seems like it ends up being part of both, both Roberto's strength, but also sort of the community strength. The in-betweenness also is why there is the ability to see a broader set of possibilities. And I mean even the book is like, there's Spanglish in the book, there's little sections in Spanish, there's words in Spanish that pop up there. There's like such richness, there is a cost to feeling in between, but also a real benefit to being in between it seems.

Maria: That, what you just said, like there's a cost, but there's also a benefit. Like, it's such a human thing, you know? Like everything has its pro and everything has its con and there's good and there's bad. Like with Roberto, you know, being a 12-year-old and being so direct and seeing things very simply, but yet things aren't like, I don't know, I think the world is so complex and, and to put all this together so people like can get what I'm trying to say of, life is hard and life is beautiful and it's also sad and it's also happy, it's like everything all at once.

Andrew: Roberto certainly captures that. One of the other big themes of the book, it seems , is the power of community. And, again, you start out by placing us squarely in the world of Roberto and highlighting all the strengths of the community. I'm imagining it's a community that was probably looked down upon by a lot of people in power, And yet you see through this story, the power of that community. Talk a little bit about the, the power of community and why it felt important to, to tell that part of the story.

Maria: The power of community is such a compelling thing to me, because you know, we're seeing now, right? When we focus on one person and we make them the face of something, it doesn't always end up being a good thing. And so when we bring the focus back to the community, to the roles that everybody plays, right? Because everyone has a role to play. Not everybody is going to be the lead plaintiff. You know, some people are gonna support through fundraising, they're gonna support, canvassing, they're gonna support through organization, through, through all kinds of different ways.

And so I think for readers and young readers especially to understand that when these movements happen, not everybody's gonna be on the front lines. Like there's a lot of roles for everybody to play and they're all important, crucial, vital roles. They might not be as glamorous or as exciting as some other roles, but we all have a role to play and there's a place for everyone in these community movements, right?

Andrew: And it only works if everyone plays their role. Right? Like it took, it took the whole community. Obviously it took Roberto and his bravery and his unique positioning as the lead plaintiff. And it took everybody else as well. And it was, you know, costly and risky to all of those people along the way. But when they all came together, they were able to, to win.

Maria: Exactly. Yeah. It, you know, it takes, it takes a village.

Andrew: Right. Why is this story important to tell right now? I mean, there's all sorts of reasons. I think it's, listeners are obviously hearing all sorts of parallels to 2026 from 1930. But why does it feel to you like this is, this is worth telling right here now in this moment.

Maria: When I wrote this in 2021, I wrote it as like, ‘let's talk about something that happened in history, and I'm gonna share with you what I learned”, right? And now this comes out in 2025, and we find ourselves in this backdrop of what's currently going on. So it became more than just a history lesson, for me it's become like a blueprint to be like, look, everything that's going on it, it's happened in the past. Like, this isn't something new. This isn't something that our community hasn't gone through before, right? And so you know, now I see it as a blueprint as for communities to come together to resist and, and also to understand that, you know, resistance is sometimes painful, sometimes bitter, um, sometimes hard. But ultimately, like if we stick together even through all those difficult parts, you know we can be successful. We can make the change that we want to see in the world, but we gotta stick together, right?

Andrew: Yeah. What, what change do you wanna see in the world? If everybody picks up the book and reads it, if all the kids out there today read it, the kids who have not seen themselves in books and kids who have seen nothing but themselves in books, if the, the story, the power of any individual to go out and change the world, uh 12-year-old you deciding to fix the problem with youth literature and representation. Roberto being, you know, El Futuro for his family and for his community. Like, you know, what, what does the world look like if, if more people embrace this vision of community and organizing and power, building social capital through stories like this.

Maria: I don't even think I can imagine that. Like what would that be like? What would that be like if we were able to have that control over our communities to be able to shape things as we need them, right? Because what one community needs is not what another community needs, right? So how do we reshape this world in the image that we wish to see? To me like that's a utopia.

But on the smallest level, you know, I hope that it inspires kids to see themselves in fixing the things in their community. So like maybe for example, in one community that's like with the things with book banning, they come together and they fight against that and they work with people who are already doing the resistance within that. Or if they find out that something that was gonna be promised to them doesn't come through, that they come together and they resist against that.

For me, I can't imagine what it would be for other people 'cause I don't know their needs, but I know for myself the idea of them understanding that I come from a community of resistance and resilience and success, like that, that gives you more power than anything else.

Just like when I was, you know, a kid and I didn't know that you get stuck when you write, I didn't know that communities in my neighborhood had come together. Knowing all that stuff gives you power to move forward. It lets you imagine a different future, right? Because you can't, like I said, you can't be what you don't see, and if you don't know what's possible, then you can't create something new, right?

Andrew: Yeah. It's a, it's a beautiful story. It's wonderfully written, it's incredibly engaging. I know that it's written for a younger audience than me, but I was totally captivated by it and really enjoyed reading it. And I'm wondering if you would maybe do us the, the honor of reading a little section from the book.

Maria: Yes. I am gonna read from the part where the kids have been outta school for a little while and they're finding ways to fill their days.

The next day, David and I walk all the way to Chollas Reservoir. We sit on the edge, take off our shoes, tuck our socks inside, and squish our toes into the mud before sliding them into the water. Geese with long white necks and bright yellow bills honk as they fight over a piece of bread crust and a handful of stolen chicken feed from my pocket.

Later, we look for a long stick, a piece of cut fishing line, and a lost hook to fashion into a fishing rod. We never catch any fish. It doesn’t matter, as long as we are together.

Slowly it becomes normal to play in the lot with Carter, Pancho, David, Socorro, and Mary in the middle of the day when we should be at school studying times tables, reading books, and eating lunch.

One day David asked me, Do you think they miss us? Do you think they notice we are gone? I don’t know what to say. I wonder if Mrs. Markland sits in an empty class writing on a chalkboard for students that never come. I wonder if the other students think of us at recess. Do they ask for us? Do they wonder what we’re doing? What do the teachers say to them? Or are they happy to have the whole school to themselves?

Andrew: It's beautiful. Thank you. Thank you for coming on and sharing. Thank you for writing this beautiful book. Your story is incredibly inspiring. I can only imagine the next generation of kids who will take your words, who will see themselves in you and be able to go out and change the world too. So really appreciate you coming on.

Maria: No problem. Thank you so much for having me.

[THEME MUSIC]

Andrew: So Val, what'd you think?

Dr. Val: First of all, I am shocked by not knowing anything about this particular story, the history around it, and the parallels to what we are seeing today. We know history repeats itself, right? And what we don't know is like how much of this history we, we actually have never heard. So we don't even know that it's repeating itself yet. Right.

And so I'm sitting here, just truly shocked and not shocked that we have learned, through this text about Mexican repatriation in the late 1920s and 1930s.

Andrew: Yeah, the Mexican repatriation was something I also knew nothing about, until, getting ready for this interview. Yeah, basically between 1929 and 1939, the US government repatriated somewhere between 300,000 and 2 million Mexican or Mexican Americans, most of them children. Some of them were Mexican citizens. Some of them chose to go back. It was the Great Depression. So, there was sort of economic uncertainty. Some of them were forced to go back. But there was no due process.

This story of, you know, Maria's great-grandmother being born in Texas and Maria had no idea about it until doing ancestry.com work to figure this out. And then her grandmother taking her US citizenship test when she didn't need to, because she should have been a US citizen anyway.

But, this is the context that Roberto Alvarez and the folks in Lemon Grove found themselves in, in the early thirties when the Lemon Grove incident was going down. And, yeah, the parallels to today are, um, I mean, yeah, they probably shouldn't be surprising, but still, somehow I manage to find myself surprised.

And this idea that we don't know the story and that we hadn't heard, you know, as, as Maria said in the interview, like, it matters who's telling the stories. This is why we need a diverse group of, of writers telling stories and telling them in different ways so that these stories can come to life.

Dr. Val: Yeah. Just that, that diverse group of writers comment makes me think about what she said in terms of writing as a form of social capital. Right?

Andrew: Yeah, I love that idea.

Dr. Val: I did, I did too. And, I think it's powerful when I can go, and not only like pick up a book where there's an author who identifies in the same way I identify, but also they have characters that I can connect to in some way or another, and that I am learning more about my people, their people, the world in which they had to navigate that most things are pretty universal and so you don't have to look too far to, to understand the human emotions that are rooted in that.

And to also, to Maria's point, be inspired to know that, hey, people have fought this battle before and it was hard. And it may have taken a long time, it certainly took a lot of courage. They may have won or they may not have won, you know, in the way that they thought they were. But we have many, many examples of people coming together to stand up for their communities, and for the young people in their communities.

Andrew: Yeah. Super inspiring. And I think this, this idea of social capital. And she says like, you can't be what you can't see. To hold up an example of a community that came together and fought despite odds, despite not having the most resources. There were all of these things stacked against them, and yet they came together as a community and as, as Maria talks about, right? Like it took everybody, it wasn't just Roberto Alvarez, he played a huge role, and the pressure on a 12-year-old to hold up all of that is, is, is immense. And she talks in the book a lot about him as El Futuro for his family that…

Dr. Val: Mm-hmm.

Andrew: …he, he had to carry the weight of that. But it took everybody coming together and all playing their role, and then they were successful. And, you know, the long-term trajectory we find ourselves, you know, a hundred years later, back in very similar things going on. And yet there is power in knowing that the community came together and they were able to hold each other up and hold each other together in the best way they could.

Dr. Val: Yeah. One of the most beautiful parts in of the interview was thinking about 10-year-old Maria, taking on that weight herself, because this was before she knew Roberto's story, but she felt a sense of responsibility to fix literature.

Andrew: Right.

Dr. Val: For the entire world. She was like, ah, I can take care of

Andrew: Sitting down at her Hewlett Packard computer, like, well, there's there, there's no writers who look like me. I got it.

Dr. Val: I can do this, I can certainly do this. Again, you know, as someone who has been strangely optimistic in terms of how much change that I can do in the world, I definitely connected with that, that little 10-year-old who said I can do this. And that was based on parents that showed like, oh, there's things that we can do to make change. And she talks about her mom being that person. Yeah.

Andrew: Yeah. So inspiring and reinforces to me the power of letting your kids see you going out and doing the work, and maybe the work isn't always successful, maybe the work seems small scale. You know, they, they saved a farm, with her mom with a fifth grade education going around and getting people to sign petitions, but like, that meant something. And still today, she walks by that farm every day.

Dr. Val: Yeah. I think we also underestimate sharing stories of struggles and failures, with our kids too, right? Like, I did try to do this petition and maybe didn't work out exactly like I hoped, but this is what I learned in the fight. And this is what I hope you saw in the fight.

Andrew: The relationships I made, the community I built, the ways I strengthened us for the next battle. The, yeah, all of those things.

Dr. Val: Yeah. All of those things matter.

Andrew: Like Maria didn't know that you're supposed to get stuck when you're trying to write, and so she abandoned it for, you know, 20 years. Like, you have to know that it's not always easy.

You know, we hear the stories of the successful parts of the civil rights movement.

Dr. Val: Mm-hmm.

Andrew: And it can feel like, well, like they, they marched and then like things changed and like, we marched and nothing changed. We should just give up. But like, yeah, there, there is actually a whole world of wins and losses of victories and failures along the way. That's all, you know, hopefully slowly moving towards progress. But it's hard work.

Dr. Val: It is hard work.

Andrew: The other thing that I was just struck by is the power of telling this story as a YA story and from the perspective of a 12-year-old, like, it, it helps you see the absurdity of the arguments against the kids learning together.

When you were put into the perspective of Roberto Alvarez and his friends are no longer in school with him. It's like that, it doesn't make any sense to him. And it's easy to see, like, yeah, this doesn't actually make any sense. And like Maria said, you know, the kids can see it and they're like, this is actually, why are we making this more complicated? You know, because that, that sense of justice that our kids have, you turn that lens on the way the world works and it's easy to see like, oh yeah, this actually doesn't make any sense, and we could do it much easier.

Dr. Val: I 100% agree and, it's taking me back to our conversation with Logan, and the Legacy Museum. And when you see signs that say, ‘no blacks, no mosquitoes’. You know, like you are like, wow, this was, this is really truly absurd. Like, I don't even know how to…

Andrew: If it wasn’t real, it would be silly.

Dr. Val: It would be silly,

Andrew: If it hadn't happened you’d laugh at it, right?

Dr. Val: Right? Because you're like this, you can't be serious. You're so unserious, but you're very serious. Right? You're very serious because you have convinced yourself that it's better for folks who share a human condition to be apart. It's better for children to be targeted for repatriation. It's better for children to be separated in schools because learning from one another might inspire what? Coalition building love, solidarity, joy…

Andrew: Yeah.

Dr. Val: Can’t have that.

Andrew: I think, if you think the pie is fixed, then I guess it, it starts to make sense. If you think that there is only so much that we can have, and this is why, you know, it's not surprising that we see the Mexican repatriation happening in the time of the Great Depression.

That is when people start freaking out about taking our jobs and all these things, and you know, we see as economic turmoil comes in, in our current day, that that creates more animosity.

But, I don't know why we can't hold on to the lessons from, from when we have had a more expansive view when we have said, okay, actually we can all come together and make a bigger pie.

Dr. Val: Right, right.

Andrew: That’s a much more hopeful and powerful vision, and we've seen that happen. I would love to find a way to convince everyone to hold onto that version rather than the, you know, zero sum Heather McGee, fixed pie that we all have to fight over scraps from.

Dr. Val: What I also appreciated, I appreciate Maria's, reflection and thoughtfulness about this in-between space. Right? And I don't know if you've ever felt like that in-between space in your head. Is that something white men feel? Sorry, I don't mean to put you out there.

Andrew: No. Yeah, it's, it's, that's legit.

Dr. Val: Yeah.

Andrew: Um, I don't think so.

Dr. Val: Yeah.

Andrew: Yeah, I mean I feel like I know so many people who have had that experience and I have like read about that experience and talked to people who have had that experience. But I can't think of any time that I have had that experience myself.

Dr. Val: Yeah, there have been times that I haven't felt like I could be American enough. Right? Even though my family is here and we built here and I have family members who have served and…

Andrew: Your family has been here for longer than a lot of other families.

Dr. Val: Right, right. And so, it's kind of a weird place to be. And so I appreciate her putting some language around it. And when we think about your pie, I am hopeful that in this larger pie, we can expand the idea of what it means to belong to this country, you know?

Andrew: Yeah. I haven't had that in-between experience, but like the, the closer I can get to understanding it, the, like, the better friend, ally, citizen I can be. And it's another reason that I appreciate the book and would definitely encourage folks, you know, you have, have a little book club with your kids because it is, it is easily accessible for any kid, probably starting at age 10 and is engaging and compelling for anybody up through adult.

So, certainly I'm gonna put the book on my kids' bedside tables and encourage them to check it out and then have a conversation about it because they will also likely not have certainly nearly the extent of the in-between experience that Maria has and that Roberto Alvarez had. But the more they can understand it, the better. And so I think this is a, the book is a great chance to explore that.

Dr. Val: Yeah, I think what it also illuminated for me is the importance of really understanding the community in which you come from, right? And so there are gonna be stories like this in every community. And there will be people and names that you don't know that maybe you have a chance to learn, and share that story and be inspired by that story.

And, we're currently at a moment in history where Cesar Chavez…

Andrew: Yeah.

Dr. Val: …has been identified as a predator, a rapist, and that has shaken a lot of people who followed his movement, believed in the movement. And the movement is not just one person, right? The movement will never just be one person. And I think that's an important thing to remember as well, right?

There will be lots of stories of everyday people who have made choices in the face of like losing their jobs, or terror for being deported or repatriated, who are saying like, no, my, my children deserve better. And so I think the more we can tell so many of these stories, the more confidence we have in our own ability to make the change that we want.

Andrew: And that, that it requires a community that requires the role for everyone. It makes me think about Omkari Williams who we had on, talking about micro activism, that there is a role for everyone and that it takes everyone doing their roles and, we can hold up the heroes and then sometimes be disappointed in the stories that we learn about them, but that doesn't undermine the stories that they brought to life and the movement that they formed that required a whole bunch of other people as well. And so, yeah, certainly another important lesson for our kids to learn, for our kids to see us engaging in and, conversations that are worth having.

Dr. Val: Yeah. This was great. I want people to read it and I want people to talk about it. I want people to share the history and I want people to have their kids read it.

Andrew: Yeah, absolutely. And if you do, we want to hear how it goes. Maybe have your kids send us a voice memo if they listen to it.

Dr. Val: That’d be cool.

Andrew: We’d love to hear from them. speakpipe.com/integratedschools, S-P-E-A-K-P-I-P-E.com/integratedschools. Or just record us a voice memo and email it to podcast@integratedschools.org.

We would love to hear what you're thinking.

Dr. Val: That's right. And if you like what you hear, we would encourage you to go to integratedschools.org and hit that red donate button. All of the donations go to the work of integrated schools. And, we would love your support.

Andrew: Absolutely. You can also join our Patreon, patreon.com/integratedschools we've got study guides and, facilitation questions about this episode that you could use to have a conversation with your kids if you have a book club about it. And otherwise support the work of integrated schools.

Dr. Val: Yeah, I'm, I'm so sad I missed the live interview with Maria. Maria, you have my heart. You like you have put your story in my heart. I am passing it on to many others. And I hope our listeners do the same.

Andrew: Absolutely. This was a great conversation. I'm so grateful to Maria for joining us for writing the book, and as always, I'm grateful to be in this with you, Val, as I try to know better and do better.

Dr. Val: Until next time.