Chapter 79: Yuyi Morales on Mexican massacres and the magic of Márquez

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“The Ys sounds like Js,” Yuyi Morales tells me when I ask for the correct way to pronounce her name. It’s embarrassing to ask but my detective work online resulted in a half dozen different options.

Yuyi is a Mexican-American children’s book author and illustrator. She was born in Mexico and raised amongst giant grandmothers, mossy house walls, and rampaging feral gardens, fostering a strong bond with magical stories that ran in her family as a child.

Today she is known for her incredible children’s books which combine powerful spare language and sumptuous complex imagery.

She has written books like, Dreamers, Niño Wrestles the World, Just a Minute, Viva Frida, Little Night, Just In Case and her brand new book coming out in September called, Bright Star (I suggest you pre-order it!). It tells the story of a fawn making her way through a border landscape, teeming with flora and fauna native to the region. A gentle empowering voice encourages her to face her fears when she comes across an obstacle in the form of an insurmountable barrier.

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A lot of her work has these themes running through it — immigration, pilgrimage, journeying, discovery. It’s no wonder she is one of the most decorated children’s books author in the world. At last count she’s won twenty-nine awards including the Pura Belpré Medal, the Americas Award for Children and Young Adult Literature, the California Book Award, the Tomas Riviera Award and the Caldecott Honor. For those of you who know the children’s books world well, the Caldecott is the top prize! She is the first Latina to ever be a Caldecott recipient.

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Let’s strap in to talk about the burdens of colonialism, Mexican artistry, introducing books to book deprived communities, magic realism, community feminism, teen prostitution, dirty cops, living in books, making the world a better place, and, of course, the wonderful Yuyi Morales’s three most formative books.

Let’s head down to Veracruz, Mexico. Feel that sun on your face, picture yourself on a beach, grab a drink, lay out a towel, and stare into the sea and the surf with me.

Let’s flip the page into Chapter 79 …

What You'll Learn:

  • What is Xalapa like?

  • What is the state of Mexico today?

  • What are the burdens of colonialism?

  • What is community feminism? 

  • How much are books in Mexico?

  • What is magic realism?

  • What motivated the student uprisings of 1968 in Mexico City?

  • What was La Noche de Tlatelolco?

  • Why do Mexican students feel criminalized?

  • What must we change in our culture to allow children to thrive?

  • Why must we change our paternalistic views on immigration?

  • What can we learn from children?

  • How can we organize books by our emotional state?

  • What is storytelling?

Notable quotes from yuyi morales:

“We still carry an identity that has to do with the superiority of certain people and the inferiority of others.” Yuyi Morales #3bookspodcast

“I’m living an idyllic life. I live in books. I am all day thinking of stories.” Yuyi Morales #3bookspodcast

“Having a book is not something that usually happens in our lives, especially not for children because children's books in Mexico are really expensive compared to what a family might earn working.” Yuyi Morales #3bookspodcast

“As any child I was full of wisdom and knowledge.” Yuyi Morales #3bookspodcast

“That thing that I thought I wasn’t, that book showed me I was wrong, that book showed me that in fact I love books.” Yuyi Morales #3bookspodcast

“I really want to be part of something that allows us to break and unlearn all this culture of servitude where children have to respect elders and have to be part of these dynamics and where they just are vulnerable, vulnerable, vulnerable until we kill their spirit and then we make them be more like us.” Yuyi Morales #3bookspodcast

“I really want to see what children have to teach us. I really want to see what's the world that they are going to build.” Yuyi Morales #3bookspodcast

“One of the things that is very important to me is about how we create our own story, but it's also about how we respect people as we are already, as we are right now.” Yuyi Morales #3bookspodcast

“I want so much to separate from this view that sees immigrants as people who need help and charity because that is not the real picture, because that's just a little very narrow way of seeing immigrants.” Yuyi Morales #3bookspodcast

“We cannot keep seeing  immigrants or children or teenagers as people who need to be repaired. They are not deficient.” Yuyi Morales #3bookspodcast

“We don't need children to change and become something better. They are already the perfection that we can aspire to.” Yuyi Morales #3bookspodcast

“What I know now is that we are all brimming with stories and we need to pull those stories out, even if they don't get published. Publishing is just one thing that can happen. But for the stories and for books to exist, we only need that we create them, that we tell them.” Yuyi Morales #3bookspodcast

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