Torrey Maldonado, TIGHT
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[1:39]I'm here today with Tori Maldonado, who is a middle school teacher and the author of
[1:43]Tight and Secret Saturdays.
[1:45]He was voted a top 10 Latino author and best middle grade and young adult novelist for
[1:49]African Americans.
[1:51]His book, Secret Saturdays, was highlighted in the New York Times as a top book by an
[1:54]about Latinos.
[1:56]He currently lives and teaches in Brooklyn where he was born and raised.
[1:59]So welcome Tori.
[2:00]Thanks so much for coming on mom's and her time to read books.
[2:02]Thank you for having me here.
[2:04]So I have to say Tori and I were just commiserating because I spent the day chaperoning
[2:07]field trip and he spent the day as a teacher taking his kids on a field trip and it's
[2:11]the end of the day.
[2:12]So we are going to try to pump up our energy for this podcast.
[2:16]Totally.
[2:17]I felt like a domino standing and teetering and almost about to fall at the end of the day.
[2:21]I know I like laid on the carpet and the living room just like, I can't even get up.
[2:26]But the kids know too, because one of my sixth graders came up to me and said, how are
[2:29]you still standing?
[2:32]So really, I don't know why.
[2:33]I mean, all we did was like pick pumpkins.
[2:35]I don't know.
[2:36]Just exhausting.
[2:37]I'm managing all those kids.
[2:38]So I just finished reading your book tight, which was so good.
[2:42]Thank you.
[2:43]I mean, really, I thought I was going to read it with my kids, but I ended up just reading
[2:45]it myself because I didn't want to wait for them.
[2:47]I read them the first chapter, which they liked and I was like, no, no, I'm not waiting.
[2:50]So it was great.
[2:51]Thank you.
[2:52]And I'm excited to talk to you about it.
[2:53]Tell us what a tight is about and what inspired you to write it.
[2:56]Awesome.
[2:57]I've been teaching for about 20 years.
[2:59]I constantly hear slang that say, yeah, that really describes the experience.
[3:04]And one of the slang words that I hear kids use, and adults use it too, is tight.
[3:09]And I feel that words perfect to describe adolescence.
[3:13]You know, sometimes, tween them is tight.
[3:16]Tight means a lot of things too.
[3:17]Like you see, my students will look at each other's footwear and say, oh, you've got those
[3:21]kicks, those are tight.
[3:22]You know, you hear the converse, you hear people say, oh, get away from me.
[3:28]You're making me tight.
[3:29]So I thought you were going to say maybe the opposite was loose.
[3:32]Like loose.
[3:33]No, I'm kidding.
[3:34]That would be the next book.
[3:35]Yeah.
[3:36]They're like, this dude, he just went from tight to loose.
[3:39]So the boy, Brian, who's a sixth grader, he loves comics, he thinks comics, the tight,
[3:45]things are drawing his tight.
[3:46]He has a tight relationship with his mom.
[3:49]He experiences other types of tightness.
[3:50]He has a sibling, a sister, and sometimes this is going to be awesome.
[3:56]But sometimes brothers could be big brothers.
[3:58]And so sometimes she gets in tight and angry.
[4:01]So siblings could relate to that, being also sometimes money in his family is tight.
[4:06]And he really wants to have a tight friendship.
[4:10]And that's the one piece that's missing.
[4:11]So we read, and we embark on his journey where he belongs tight with another boy.
[4:19]And then we learn that everything that glitters isn't gold, even though the boy is an
[4:24]Honorable student.
[4:26]And he thinks, you know, he has belts thinking that he's a pretty tight, awesome kid.
[4:32]He is, however, he pushes Brian into tight situations where Brian has to figure out what
[4:39]to do that's right to make it tight good.
[4:41]I feel like one of the things that was best about this book was talking about how hard
[4:48]it is to know how to handle a situation that feels out of your control.
[4:51]So Brian feels peer pressured basically to do some things that he's not sure.
[4:57]He knows they're not right, but he feels like he should do them anyway.
[5:01]And you give readers and Brian the outlet to say, like, no, I don't want to do that
[5:08]or think about how to do it or how to handle it.
[5:11]And I think that was, it's great.
[5:12]It's like, what do you do in those situations?
[5:14]Because every kid, and I'm sure all of us at some point or another, have been in that situation.
[5:19]I get to meet lots of different adult groups and also student groups who know the book.
[5:25]And one of the things that I ask is how many of you have been peer pressured or how
[5:31]many of you have done it there or how many of you have been in a situation that you
[5:36]know is tight and not right, but you stayed in that situation.
[5:42]And 90% of the honest adults raise their hands, 100% of the kids raise their hands.
[5:49]And so peer pressure is this perennial issue that we all go through.
[5:54]So the teacher and me wanted to write a book that gave kids a model of, if I'm ever in
[6:01]this tight situation, here are some other options.
[6:04]One of the things I like to say is I also ask any adult group that I meet and any youth
[6:11]group that I meet raise your hand if you wish at a super power.
[6:14]And everyone raises their hands.
[6:16]One person, my principal would say, I want to be the flash because I can get all my work done.
[6:20]Get all my stuff in my, you know, in basket to my out basket.
[6:24]That's the power I wish that I had to.
[6:25]It's like, all the stories that I have in me.
[6:28]And we noticed that in the book, Brian, he admire certain heroes.
[6:33]He wants to be Batman, because Batman uses his head and thinks 10 steps ahead.
[6:39]And he wants to be Black Panther, because he's a thinker.
[6:44]And that's one way to respond to peer pressure, think it through, think about different choices.
[6:51]We notice his friend that he becomes tight with has a different way of reacting to situations.
[6:57]He tells him, you don't want to be Batman, you don't want to be T'Challa, you want
[7:02]to be Luke Cage, this brony, mustily, unbreakable guy who solves things with his fists
[7:09]mainly.
[7:10]So, I feel like there was this theme in the book of not wanting to be soft, right?
[7:15]It kept coming out of like, oh, you're soft and the dad doesn't want his kid to be soft.
[7:21]And he's, oh, you're not soft.
[7:22]And tell me a little more about that.
[7:24]Does that come up a lot?
[7:25]Like is that a big thing with the students or is that just like the big fear of every
[7:30]sort of tween boy as he's getting older?
[7:33]Yeah.
[7:34]Frankie Valley in the 1940s had a song, Walk Like a Man, Talk Like a Man, and if I had a nice voice
[7:43]like you, I'd probably sing to, and also sometimes I do sing songs and I've had students
[7:48]tell me, I will not sing, I will not sing, yeah, you know.
[7:52]And so I used to sing along to that song, and my dad sang it, and my mom sang it, and
[7:58]I didn't question the narrative of toxic masculinity in that song.
[8:03]I just, like a sponge absorbed it, and as I got older, as a boy, I heard people tell
[8:10]me, man up, you know, I remember going home once and I don't impress my father because
[8:18]my father.
[8:19]He took so dignified when he read, and I thought he's gonna walk through the door, and
[8:24]he's gonna find me in that living room, and I'm gonna hold the newspaper.
[8:27]I was so small that the newspaper was bigger than me, right?
[8:30]I probably was holding it upside down, and I thought, wow, he's just gonna be really impressed.
[8:36]When you walk through the door, he saw me reading, and he snatches the paper, and he says,
[8:41]you should be outside playing football, you should be outside running with the boys.
[8:45]So early on, like many boys left me and right of me, I was being told there was one way
[8:53]to be a man, and that included being hard, that meant not being solved.
[8:59]I see it inside school, I've been teaching for 20 years, I've had girls say, oh, that's
[9:06]solved.
[9:07]I've had males say, you know, you don't wanna do that, that's solved.
[9:12]And I always say that one of the quickest ways to turn a boy away from doing something
[9:19]that could promote his growth, and promote societal growth is to call that thing solved.
[9:24]You're all, what are you reading for?
[9:26]That's solved.
[9:27]So I explore softness and hardness inside type, and the boy, he quietly interrogates this
[9:34]one-sided masculinity of the superheroes that we see in comics and film.
[9:40]You also address how to deal when your home life is chaotic and unpredictable, which
[9:47]many people face in one way or another, not necessarily the way the Brian's family was,
[9:52]and this is father in the out of prison and all the rest.
[9:55]But he has this one really lovely, peaceful evening with his family, and you write, everything
[9:59]has changed.
[10:00]Phil, and there's not an ounce of drama.
[10:01]I love it.
[10:02]I look out my window and realize something.
[10:04]I help to make this moment chill by what I chose.
[10:06]I think that over and over.
[10:08]And I like that.
[10:09]Tom, tell me a little bit more about that.
[10:11]Yeah.
[10:13]I'll never forget when the arc, the dance reader copy
[10:17]of tight came out.
[10:19]And I was in Pinging Rand's mouse.
[10:20]And my editor, Nancy Paulson, she holds up the book.
[10:24]And she's, she always has a way of taking her finger
[10:29]and putting it right onto my heart.
[10:32]And, and just saying things that are really heartfelt.
[10:35]And so it's just, this first time I'm looking at the galley
[10:37]at the arc.
[10:39]And she holds it up and she looks at me and she says,
[10:41]this is yours, isn't it?
[10:42]And I thought, yes, the book is largely autobiographical.
[10:46]And when I was growing up, my mom, she was my North star.
[10:52]And she still is.
[10:54]And one of the things that she loved to do was read and write.
[10:58]People ask me, like, who's your favorite writer?
[11:01]And I always say, my favorite writer is my mom.
[11:03]She used to write me spiral notebooks.
[11:06]And then she would call me over and say, read this.
[11:09]And those moments were so chill.
[11:11]They were just so peaceful.
[11:13]They were so drama-free.
[11:15]And she would ask me, what do you think about what I wrote?
[11:19]And Tupac, Tupac has this, this lyric.
[11:23]There's not this, this line where he says, and suddenly,
[11:25]the ghetto didn't seem so rough.
[11:27]Even though we had it tough, we had enough.
[11:30]It felt like the reading, the writing, those chill moments,
[11:36]gave me the intangibles that I needed
[11:39]to survive very tangible roughness.
[11:45]She used to take these books right after Sean Shannon
[11:47]with me and put it up the minifile cabinet,
[11:49]or stuff them in the drawer.
[11:50]She didn't share her writing with anybody else.
[11:53]And as I got older, I started to do something
[11:57]that I'll often tell people.
[11:59]Kids will often be what they see.
[12:02]I started to emulate my mom.
[12:03]I started to imitate my mom.
[12:05]I would just, there are pictures of me at football fields,
[12:09]a humble, courts, in different places.
[12:12]And I have a book out, and I'm writing.
[12:14]And there was this way of just infusing this chillness
[12:18]into the moment.
[12:19]It was very meditative, very contemplative,
[12:21]very reflective, and I became addicted to it.
[12:25]So much that I have seeped up in the joy
[12:27]of so much of my mom.
[12:29]It's love of literacy that three books
[12:32]through Penguin Mandomhouse have overflowed out of me.
[12:35]So I hope I can do that to my kids.
[12:37]Yeah.
[12:38]And you know, it rubs off.
[12:39]It's been running past the real estate.
[12:41]I've got four kids.
[12:42]Wait a few years of that.
[12:44]You know, we often say to kids, you know, tell me who your friends are.
[12:47]I'll tell you who you are.
[12:48]And your friends rub off on you.
[12:49]Family rubs off on us too.
[12:52]And so my mom, she did that, and she rubbed off on me.
[12:55]So that's why you get these amazing, you know, warm scenes in tight
[12:59]where the boy is just reading comics with the other boy.
[13:04]And it's chill.
[13:06]Or they're just drawing next to each other.
[13:08]And it's chill.
[13:09]Or the mom takes the boy from their housing projects
[13:12]over to the book night promenade.
[13:14]And they just have this chill moment.
[13:16]And the boy says in the book, he says,
[13:18]well, this is a moment like you just read.
[13:20]I wish I could, you know, this is a moment I help create.
[13:24]But when he said the promenade, he says,
[13:25]this is a moment that I wish I could take back to my neighborhood
[13:30]and make that feeling stay.
[13:31]And I think all kids want that exhale.
[13:35]They want that sense to chill.
[13:37]You can't be, why?
[13:39]And I hyped all the time.
[13:41]I feel like reading is, I mean, it's a scapegoat no matter
[13:44]where you go, what you do.
[13:46]I mean, anything, anything you're dealing with.
[13:48]Just go right into it.
[13:49]And writing is a, reading and writing.
[13:51]People ask me what is writing mean to me.
[13:53]And I still often tell them.
[13:55]I feel like I'm Tim Robbins in Shoshank Redemption.
[13:58]You know, and how he chipped his way out.
[14:00]I'm like, you know, I don't think it's an accident
[14:04]that Lin-Manuel Miranda wrote a song called,
[14:06]wrote my way out.
[14:08]You know, writing is a pathway out of frustration,
[14:13]out of other issues, out of entrapments.
[14:18]And do you must teach this to all your students?
[14:20]Oh, I can hear it.
[14:21]I can like see myself in your classroom.
[14:23]No, I think it must be what you think.
[14:25]And so powerful to hear it from you
[14:26]who's like had success writing not just, you know?
[14:30]Yeah, you know, there's a saying that my mom, I joke
[14:33]because I call my mom a Puerto Rican Yoda
[14:36]because Yoda would always say these cryptic, you know,
[14:39]riddles, but there was a real power and real meaning
[14:41]and everything he said.
[14:43]And my mom, she used to say these quotes
[14:45]and I thought that they were her quotes.
[14:47]And then I'll run, find out in school,
[14:48]they weren't her quotes.
[14:49]I'll run back to them.
[14:50]I'm like, mom, and she used to say,
[14:52]people will remember how they feel about you.
[14:55]Not what you said.
[14:56]And I was like, that's true.
[14:58]So she would take me to like Brian,
[15:01]with his mom in tight, we take him away.
[15:03]My mom would take me to the promenade,
[15:06]to the Brooklyn Heights for author visits.
[15:08]She would take me to the Carol Garden.
[15:09]She would take me in different parts of Brooklyn,
[15:10]sometimes in Manhattan.
[15:12]And at the end of every author visit, she would ask me,
[15:16]how did you feel about the speaker?
[15:17]Now what I thought about the person, how did I feel?
[15:20]And if I said I was feeling the person, she knows good.
[15:23]It was a good, if I said I wasn't feeling the person.
[15:26]And I remember the feelings that I got
[15:28]from being with these people.
[15:29]So that goes into my teaching too,
[15:31]because it can't be all information dumped.
[15:34]And books sometimes can be heavy.
[15:37]I grew up for a while.
[15:38]I was a reluctant reader.
[15:39]And it was because of a lot of reasons,
[15:43]including the books were so informational
[15:48]and not sensational.
[15:50]They weren't fine.
[15:51]And I feel as if teaching needs to be like my books.
[15:56]Kids, I want kids at the end of the class to say,
[15:59]how come we can have you for another period?
[16:02]And that's one of my measures of success.
[16:04]And that's what happens all the time, my students.
[16:06]Mr. T, you know, my favorite teacher,
[16:09]but don't tell the other teachers.
[16:12]Another concrete piece of advice I took out of your book
[16:15]was to de-escalate any sort of conflict situation
[16:19]to just say my bad and walk away.
[16:22]So I actually did that today.
[16:23]Yeah, I did.
[16:25]I did.
[16:26]I was like, I could go either way.
[16:28]And instead I was like, I'm just gonna say my bad
[16:29]and see how it works.
[16:30]We're straight.
[16:31]We're sweet.
[16:32]Yeah.
[16:33]Anyway, thank you for that.
[16:34]I said thank you.
[16:36]And this one, we have to thank Nancy Paulson,
[16:39]my editor for that, because even though
[16:41]I grew up saying my bad, and even though I say my bad,
[16:43]when someone bumps into me or someone, you know,
[16:46]consciously or unconsciously transgressors,
[16:49]she's the one who said, you know,
[16:51]people use my bad, you might want to use this in tape.
[16:54]And so I have to tip my hat to her.
[16:56]Okay, I'll tip my hat to her.
[16:59]I guess.
[17:00]So when and where do you like to write?
[17:02]Tell me a little bit about your process.
[17:05]Is this hip-hop song?
[17:06]And the hip-hop song has this, like, loop.
[17:09]And it was like, it's got to be funky, right?
[17:12]And then is Janet Jackson?
[17:14]She has that iconic sound blast,
[17:17]where she's like, give me a beat.
[17:19]And it doesn't matter.
[17:20]You know, I had a very well-known writer
[17:23]turn her head and look at me in shock at my answer.
[17:27]She asked me, where do you write?
[17:29]I said, I can write anywhere.
[17:31]I can write right here.
[17:31]I can write over there.
[17:32]I can write anywhere.
[17:34]And she said, really?
[17:35]You don't have a place that you do it.
[17:38]For me, it's not an outer space.
[17:41]It's inner space.
[17:42]As long as I have instrumental music,
[17:45]I can write anywhere, because I've been doing this for years.
[17:50]It has to be instrumental music,
[17:51]because if it has words in it, then the words
[17:53]interfere with what I feel the characters trying to say.
[17:56]And then I actually end up writing those words.
[17:59]But if it's playing, I was like, you know what the scene needs?
[18:02]The scene needs to be slowed down.
[18:04]So I'm gonna find some slow instrumental music.
[18:07]And then I would write to that.
[18:09]And I was like, this scene, this scene has to feel like you are
[18:13]on a roller coaster.
[18:14]And I had to find something that was thumping,
[18:18]a horror hitting, a fast pace for that.
[18:20]And it wasn't until maybe about five years ago
[18:25]that I saw that video.
[18:27]It was on TV.
[18:29]It was like one of those MTV quick info sessions.
[18:32]And a person came on and said, you know,
[18:34]top universities and colleges have been studying
[18:36]this for a while, that when you listen to music,
[18:38]it changes the biochemistry of your body and of your brain.
[18:44]And you got to be careful, because if you listen to a slow
[18:47]song of a breakup, you're actually releasing the chemicals.
[18:51]And you're reliving that memory and that experience.
[18:53]But if you are listening to a song that hyped you up,
[18:57]you are feeling those hype sensations.
[18:59]And it was like Roberto Flak, you know, it was a Roberto Flak moment
[19:06]where singing my life with your words,
[19:09]it gave words to what I was doing all along,
[19:12]using music to change how I feel so that I could change
[19:17]the feeling of the reading and the writing.
[19:20]So cool.
[19:21]So headphones always headphones, not just like,
[19:24]you put it on like a.
[19:26]Yeah, because I want to offend anybody else.
[19:27]Well, maybe you're in a full, obviously,
[19:29]if you're in a public place.
[19:30]Yeah, just I just, just some headphones, you know,
[19:35]it could be anything.
[19:36]I feel like you should put the playlist that you listen to
[19:38]when you write in the book at the end, right?
[19:41]Like you could do a playlist for, you know,
[19:43]maybe people could put it on while they're reading.
[19:45]It's so cool.
[19:46]As we said, that because my first book has is that playlist.
[19:49]Oh, really?
[19:50]Oh, see, that's how it is in the book.
[19:51]I'm sorry.
[19:52]It's really like, you're sad as a red tide and see.
[19:54]Well, yeah.
[19:55]This is why, you know, I should have read both.
[19:57]But, you know, mom said, I tried to read both.
[20:00]Yeah, that's what I mean too because
[20:02]Secret Side is was my first book.
[20:03]And, you know, speaking of music,
[20:06]there's this amazing soundtrack, Spider-Verse.
[20:08]And in Spider-Verse, the Spider-Man movie,
[20:10]Miles Morales is in that.
[20:12]And in tight, the boy talks about Miles Morales.
[20:16]And Miles Morales is a big thing inside tight.
[20:18]There's this track.
[20:20]And then it says, I gotta go hard.
[20:23]You know, I gotta elevate.
[20:24]And my first book, I went really hard.
[20:27]Like my first book, I wrote a discussion guide
[20:29]that's in the back.
[20:30]I put the playlist in the back.
[20:32]I created comic or lessons for all four major subjects.
[20:36]People on my website, I created a conflict resolution.
[20:39]Lesson, I created a quiz.
[20:41]I did all of this stuff.
[20:42]I did see that on your website.
[20:43]But then when it came to tight, I didn't do any of that.
[20:47]And it was, so, you know,
[20:48]that's why you didn't see the playlist in tight
[20:50]because it was tight, I was like.
[20:52]And what about your next book?
[20:53]I got a sneak peek of your next book,
[20:55]which looks amazing.
[20:56]All the things you say about that publicly,
[20:58]and all that good stuff.
[21:00]I'm really excited because I'm mixed.
[21:03]And when I was growing up,
[21:05]I didn't have a book that I felt was fun,
[21:09]but also gave me tools to-
[21:13]And you mean mixed race?
[21:14]Yeah, mixed race.
[21:16]I didn't get tools to figure out how to navigate
[21:20]in a world that sees color.
[21:23]And as I got older, I read adult books.
[21:26]You know, I was like, oh my God.
[21:28]You know, this book is amazing.
[21:30]But I know that my middle school of kids,
[21:32]students wouldn't feel it.
[21:34]And so, I challenged myself to write a high paced,
[21:40]fun book that left kids seeing where people are divided
[21:48]and having a desire to heal those divides
[21:52]and bring people together.
[21:53]So what Lane, you know,
[21:55]if you be a kid's being told, stay in your lane,
[21:58]we're giving a toll, stay in your lane.
[22:00]So the book's called What Lane?
[22:02]It's like, What Lane is this mixed boy
[22:05]supposed to stay in?
[22:07]It's coming out May 2020.
[22:09]Yeah, it's coming out on single-to-mile.
[22:11]May 5th.
[22:12]Perfect.
[22:13]I can't wait.
[22:14]That's what I'm excited about.
[22:15]Big party plans, something.
[22:17]You gotta do something.
[22:18]I know.
[22:19]I have friends who do launch parties,
[22:21]and they do these big things.
[22:22]I've never done a launch party.
[22:23]Well, you have to like pair it with single-to-mile now.
[22:25]Right?
[22:26]Not as single-to-mile.
[22:27]You want to be wanting to have a party anyway.
[22:28]Definitely.
[22:29]People are ready.
[22:30]Yeah.
[22:31]They just need an excuse.
[22:32]Yes.
[22:33]That's perfect.
[22:33]You're right.
[22:34]Yeah.
[22:35]The stars align.
[22:36]When I have to invite me.
[22:37]No, you don't have to.
[22:38]You know, yes, you are inviting.
[22:40]So tell me if you have any advice to aspiring authors.
[22:44]Absolutely.
[22:45]You know, I can hear my students say, Mr. T,
[22:49]comic books, comic books, superhero superheroes,
[22:51]you always talk about comic books
[22:52]and superheroes are big.
[22:55]And I often say, tell me who it's heroes you admire.
[23:00]And it tells me a lot about who you are on the inside.
[23:02]Oh, who you aspire to be.
[23:04]And I'm going to talk about writing about it
[23:08]so that it feels essential through a story about a superhero.
[23:12]I was writing tight.
[23:14]And I was experiencing writer's vlog.
[23:16]And I would turn on a TV.
[23:19]And I was watching Daredevil on Netflix
[23:22]in the second season, the very last episode
[23:26]and then the last 20 minutes.
[23:27]Karen Page, a reporter, is sitting at a desk.
[23:31]And she's standing on the screen.
[23:33]And she knows her right.
[23:34]And Paul's walks in.
[23:35]And Paul says, what are you doing here?
[23:38]It's to holidays, the Eve.
[23:41]You know, aren't you supposed to be on my family?
[23:43]And she says, I don't know what to write.
[23:45]He says, writer's vlog.
[23:47]And she says, yeah.
[23:48]And then she gives them some ideas.
[23:50]And he says, that's all garbage.
[23:52]And she says, but it's the news.
[23:54]Those are facts.
[23:55]And he said, yeah, but the facts have been reported already.
[23:58]The news has been reported already.
[24:00]That news.
[24:01]He said, and this is the piece of writing advice
[24:03]that just blew my mind so hard that I took my cell phone
[24:07]and I went up to the TV and I recorded it as it was happening.
[24:12]And I still have it on my cell phone.
[24:14]He says, this is New York.
[24:16]And in New York, New Yorkers think they've seen it all.
[24:20]They think they know it all.
[24:21]They think they've heard it all.
[24:23]So you have to write what they haven't seen, what they haven't heard.
[24:26]And what they don't know.
[24:28]And she says, what is that?
[24:31]And he says, the truth.
[24:34]Your truth.
[24:35]And you can't hold up back any punches.
[24:38]And any time I hit writer's vlog, I would play that.
[24:42]The reason is I feel as a teacher, my job
[24:47]is to bring adults who don't know the interiority
[24:52]of young people, the inner worlds of young people,
[24:55]bring them into the world of young people
[24:58]so we could bridge that divide.
[25:01]And so I've been writing the truth
[25:04]that young people have been experiencing,
[25:07]and I've seen them experience for the 20 years
[25:09]I've been teaching.
[25:10]And I also mix it in with my truth that I experience in my life.
[25:15]And I like to say one more thing about that,
[25:19]I'll never forget this is also a tie to writing advice.
[25:23]I'll never forget that I was in the main office
[25:25]of my school at once.
[25:26]And there was a woman who doesn't work there anymore.
[25:30]And she overheard me talking to a student.
[25:34]Student came in.
[25:36]Hey, Mr. T, what's good?
[25:38]I said, what's good?
[25:39]How are you?
[25:40]I said, he says something else.
[25:43]And I said something else than he left.
[25:45]And the lady said, Mr. T, you talk like that to kids.
[25:50]So do you mean?
[25:51]And she said, he said, what's good?
[25:53]And you said, what's good?
[25:54]Then he said, how you?
[25:56]And you said, how are you?
[25:57]It's how are you?
[25:59]And she was correcting me.
[26:00]And it hit me hard.
[26:01]I really, not only did she do it publicly,
[26:04]so I felt defaced, but it hit me hard
[26:07]because it had me questioning, is there a right way
[26:11]to talk to young people?
[26:14]And Shakespeare has the saying, nothing is good or bad,
[26:18]but thinking makes it so.
[26:20]The question is, the way you're speaking
[26:22]is it a tool that is making a rapport easier.
[26:26]And I once walked into a classroom
[26:29]and the teacher was reading a book,
[26:31]and the kids were bored out their mind.
[26:32]And I said, can I read this book just for fun to the kids?
[26:35]And the kids were like, yeah, I mustn't read it.
[26:36]And the teacher said, I read it.
[26:38]And I read it, and I code switched.
[26:40]And I peppered it, and I seasoned it
[26:42]with the slang that the kids use.
[26:46]And they said, you have to write a book.
[26:48]And she said, told me to, and she was like,
[26:49]you have to write a book.
[26:50]And that was a major push towards me
[26:52]writing secret Saturdays.
[26:54]And then I realized something.
[26:57]I'm not the only person who quotes witches.
[26:59]You know, like, you as a mom, you probably
[27:01]talk to your kids one way, but you
[27:04]will talk to your really good friend for two decades
[27:08]a whole other way.
[27:09]says, do you code switch?
[27:10]And I remember watching Barack Obama's inauguration.
[27:14]And he said, Jay Z. He's like, hey, Jay, what's up?
[27:17]He said, queen was like, queen was good.
[27:20]And then he got on the mic, and he sounded like the president.
[27:26]Code switching is something that happens a lot in my books.
[27:30]And young people love it.
[27:32]So my suggestion to a writer who's writing for young people
[27:36]is figure out how do we young people really speak
[27:41]and mirror that language?
[27:43]Because what you're going to do is
[27:45]you're going to bring adult readers into the world
[27:49]of young people that they can understand
[27:51]without a nerve in dictionary.
[27:53]But also, you're going to be letting young people
[27:57]feel refreshed that, ah, there's something here for me.
[28:01]This book is in my language.
[28:03]And I get that a lot, a lot of times,
[28:05]kids come up to me and they're like, Mr., this is how we speak.
[28:08]And it just makes me feel really good.
[28:11]Because I didn't see myself a lot growing up in books.
[28:15]So it really makes me feel good that young people
[28:18]see themselves in books.
[28:19]And they feel that they matter,
[28:21]and that they could be the center of a narrative.
[28:24]And then hopefully they'll go on and write other books.
[28:26]And it's like a whole thing.
[28:28]It happens.
[28:29]And it happens.
[28:30]Well, we're out of time.
[28:30]But thank you so much for sharing all your thoughts.
[28:33]And your great advice and your really powerful experience
[28:37]and for coming on the show.
[28:38]Thank you for having me.
[28:40]Thanks for listening to Mom.
[28:41]So I have time to read books, the award-winning podcast.
[28:44]This episode has been sponsored by Book of the Month Club.
[28:47]Book of the Month Club.com.
[28:49]And your code, Libby, to get your first book for just $5.
[28:52]You can follow me on Instagram at Mom's Don't Have Time
[28:55]to Read Books.
[28:56]Thanks so much to Steve and Ryan at Texture Sound
[28:59]for the Sound Editing.
[29:00]And thank you to Morning Moon Productions
[29:02]for providing this fantastic intro and now trim music.
[29:04]Thanks for listening.
[29:05]You can always email me at zibiadzibiowans.com.