Cspan2 public service. Todaysis discussio expression. I want to share first and then will into the conversation. National data reports and the usa mounting pressure shows escalation of censorship and passionate u School Libraries across the united states. Indive 2122 school year from july 20, 22 through june 20, 23. There were over 3000 instances of individual being banned, affecting almost hundred unique titles and almost 1500 different authors illustrate and translators and within texas itself, the total number of book bans currently stands at 625 across 12 districts and before we get into book banning proper, id love to sort of set the conversation session and why youtube, right . If i could here sort of about how your work responds to the world around you, what you think writing does in the world. And why dont we begin with luis for that question and then well go over to roxanne roxanne. Well, yeah, i was born in tijuana and, you know, all you have to do is be from tijuana to learn with the human is like from people, not from. And you i my motivation i didnt even realize it was to bear witness from beginning that the people that i knew and grew up with and ultimately represented were, i thought, the most fabulous interesting, real people in the world. And then we left tijuana and settled in san diego. And i found out suddenly tijuana was filthy dirty prostitute dope. I thought, what . What happened . And, you know, so it became really important me not only to bear witness, to be the witness, you know, everybody had everybody had depth. Everybody had feelings. And the majority of the people that i was with in my boyhood didnt write, didnt tell stories, except amongst themselves, didnt have access to an audience or a public. And, you know, i dont i dont know how roxanne felt, but i of course, when youre a poor and youre arty, you want to be a star, right . You want to make some money, man. But that drive transformed more and more to bearing witness and the more resistance i got, the more truculent i got. And ill just throw this out as a mexican. This. But my my dads nickname for me was the mule i always said is more like ron, because every time they tried to force me to do something, i would just dig in. I didnt. Why . Maybe it was this that, you know, there was a calling somewhere. Im from omaha, nebraska, and im a first generation american. My parents are from port au prince, haiti. And growing up. There werent really stories about people like me. And when i went high school and College People were always astounded to learn that black people live in nebraska and and indeed they do. And not only that, there were like five haitian families growing up in nebraska, and we all knew each other, of course, because we all know each other and. I wanted to write stories about people like me. But then, of course, like luis, it evolved and i recognized that i could articulate my understanding of the world as much as anyone else. And a lot of times people would say. Why you . And my rejoinder was why not me . I think that were all entitled to share our understanding of the world, to bear witness and to bring attention to the issues that matter to us. And ive had the very fortunate privilege of being able to do so for the past. 25 years or so. And every day i wake up and i realize i get to do my thing all day if i want, and i never do it all day, but i still get to do it. And that drives to tell other peoples stories. To tell my stories is still there. Fortunately, it has not gone away. Oh, i think off of both your answers. Theres this interesting note of both reflecting your own stories to different audiences and also sharing and bearing witness to those stories around you. And in this current era book banning, were seeing a focus on silencing narratives from marginalized voices. Voices that deal with sort of americas history with race, americas history broadly with sexual assault, with lgbtq. I a identity and both of those are topics you both about or appear or all of those. Some of those topics are topics that appear across your books, and id be curious to hear what it means when talk about this act of reflecting your own life. To hear those stories are being banned and maybe why dont we start off with roxane, then well do this next. Well, i was pretty surprised. I learned that some of my books well, all of my books are banned in one place or another because like one of them is a graphic novel. Thats a fantasy story about a man that flies an air machine into the sun. And so im not sure. What sun lovers really were like. That book has to banned in eight states, but its disheartening of course, book banning is not new. First book was banned in 1637 and the first book burning was in 1650. And so this is something that humans have doing for a very long time because knowledge is power. And i dont mean in a cheesy way, i do mean that the more you learn and the greater your understanding the world, the more power you have. Even if you dont necessarily have ways of using power. And so when you write about sexuality, when write about race, inequality, any form of bigotry, it makes a lot people uncomfortable because they have to hold themselves accountable for the ways in which they support systemic bigotries and to know that my work is being banned its not something that i wear as a badge of pride because books should not be banned. But i think im doing something right when people are threatened. And whats really important is that have to remember that local elections running for your local boards and School Boards boards, its not glamorous at all, but we should not be what other people read. Its not our business and we should not be afraid of knowledge. We should not try to elide history from books and from our students, our children, because then theyre going to go to college and be because they dont know, for example, that the holocaust happened. Bravo. Its its strange experience to go through these kind of things. I just want to tell you to things, and maybe itll put it in perspective for you. One is that i a i wrote a book called the devils highway, and it came out and i was at the tucson festival of books walking toward my event and the tv crew stopped me and they said, can we talk to you a second . And i said, sure, im trying to get to a gig. No, no, just take second. I said, okay. And they put the mic in my face and said, how do you feel about your book being banned in arizona . And i said, excuse me, what . Its been banned in arizona. I said, do you know why . Yes. They said that its got a satanic title. The devils highway. And secondly, antiamerican bias. And i remember thinking, you know, certainly reason will win here. I said, its the name of a place every arizona map. Are you going to edit the maps to get the devil out of them . And the second thing i said was they teach it at the Border Patrol academy. If its american enough for the Border Patrol, you know, you could probably read it and i thought, this is ridiculous. And i went on, and that was what began the massive arizona a book banning youre youre youre texan the trafficante is they got together in response to what happened in arizona and if you dont know them theyre here theyre going to be doing events here. They decided instead of being narco traffic and like everybody thinks we are, lets be book smugglers and got all the banned books and they drive them into the places theyre banned and pass them out. You know action Creative Action i think is a brilliant response to it. And the other thing i just want to mention to you is that i had another book and i it was it was a novel its called into the beautiful north and i wanted to honor people that i knew or people that i respected, including who were trying to walk to make the world better and get somewhere else. And then send it back home. So it got some resistance. But it was picked as an all region read in western, uh, oregon and. The School Districts banned it and my wife and i naively went to talk to the the big man, the head principal and the principals, and we went into his office and he was all, you know, pleasant. Yeah, hi. Lewis. And i said and i said, so, you know, we wanted to talk about why is the book banned . And he said, well, its got a homosexual hero. And i said, yeah, i bet you have gay students. So whats wrong . He said, well, we gay bashing here and they they got rid of the book. And what were in my heart was the parents parents took it over sort of as an independent study and made sure their kids could read it and talk outside of school. But the argument that we have gay bashing here, i understand what he was saying honestly, that youre going your your books are going to cause more gay bashing. I dont know why. Um, and so once again, parents took a step to circumvent that. And i think the answer always is a creative and smarter response because the people who are doing this are are sly and, theyre sneaky, but they eat smart. And so you can, you can them and if you should publish something that gets you bad stuff, im sure we both get really weird communiques. Since when the devil said, oh, when the devils highway came out, then the White Supremacists started in on me and they would write to me. And i swear to you, tell me that they had to do me the favor of exterminate my children to stop the and my wife smartly would get up in the morning and delete my emails because she knew i couldnt keep quiet. But when i got one, heres what you do. Anybody who gets one correct there english. So. Thats actually my favorite pastime, isnt it . The best. Its amazing how terrible at grammar spelling racists are. I love that for them. Yeah. Always give them a c minus and put your comments on it and send it back to them. And i swear to you, they will write back maybe once what wont get you so bad man, that was it. And they disappear disappear. Oh, well. So while were here, im curious. How do you think about this response in terms of how it affects writing . So when the who say your books are dangerous rich, how does that change how you write . And more broadly . I how do you think it affects younger authors, too . Like in this environment where they know theres this wide sort of movement they have get published, it. Oh hi. It doesnt affect my writing at all, frankly. It makes me lean into it. Yeah. And do it more and. I mean, when you tell me not to do something, all of a sudden i have a burning desire to do it and i hope that its not deterring young people from telling the truth for recognizing reality, articulating what it means to be queer or trans or black or mexican or middle eastern, anything. Because when we start to, deny ourselves the right to tell our stories, we lose parts of ourselves. And i think we lose something incredibly vibrant in. Our culture when we strive for some kind of christian ethno state where everyone looks the same, thinks the same acts the same. First of all, you guys like tacos too much. You cant do that. Im just saying im and so its just important to continue to remind people that diversity is not just a word, its a way of being. And its a practice and its a remind that we share this world with other people. We i got nothing after that. Yeah, well, so then lets move it a bit away from sort you as writers and id be curious to hear about the responses gotten from students and readers who havent been able to access your books and what have you heard. What is that made you think . And why dont we begin with louis for this one and then roxane its its its overwhelming and its why you do this. I mean, you know, of course, our incredible fame and fortune is very. But no, its its, you know, i dont know about you, but, you know, i was the kid in the terrible tenement bedroom and the floor listening to Leonard Cohen writing in a notebook. I didnt know this would happen. And at the time when i got started, there werent a whole lot of mes out in publishing. And i was told the first thing from the publisher in new york that i was trying get into. I was working as a missionary, ill admit it, but as a as not a preaching missionary, but feeding poor for years in mexico. And i wrote a book about it, my first book and the first publisher i submitted it to said nobody cares about starving mexicans. And i was all selfrighteous. Yes, this is why i have written it, which wasnt necessarily a good, you know, commercial move. But driven by those things that burn inside. And im telling you, you ask about, thats the most astonishing and rewarding thing of all of is meeting young who saw themselves in your book or felt that, you know, we could understand them or listen to them or they could come out to us and you come out and so many ways. You know, i have a lot of because my family has a history of certain gang relations. I get gang members who come to me and theyre very ashamed and theyre like, i want to write something, man, but i cant. Why not im gang related. And i said, so is my family what, you know, come on, tell me your story. Thats a miracle. And the book that got banned for the gay bashing. Was in the rio grande valley, talking about it. Most of the students couldnt give a darn about it, but this young person came and sat next to me in and the gay the gay characters named tojo. And theres a whole story about torture. He was a real person. That name in a little town in. I first met him in 1970. It was the first person who was out that id seen or heard of in a place. It was very dangerous for him and he made himself this incredible mainstay of his hometown so that everybody, instead of, you know pointing him out, is there he is theres the queer guy. He was our torture. It was a work of political genius. And i made him a hero. The book, under his own name. And i just want to say that my cousins took him the book when it came out. And ever since then he tells i told you i was special and he keeps it with him. But this student came and sat next to me and was very reticent and leaned and said, can i ask you a question . And i said, of course. And the person said it is torture. Single or. Oh man. I said, you know, touch is real and touch is still single. Probably a little old for you. But, you know those things that its about the humanity. Thats what that thats what moves me. And i feel impossible. And i tell this to my students every semester. One of my main rules is because people always ask me, what are your books . Funny if theyre about such terrible things. I say, because were funny. Were funny. Its one of the sacred things that us and if you can sit, down with the other and have a good laugh, not an evil laugh, a mocking laugh, laugh together eye to eye. How do you get up from that table and say, well, those people are all pigs. You cant you cant. So i think, you know all the things that i try to do to please myself. Esthetically, im also conscious, i think, of trying to do at least a little bit of either healing or reconciliation between readers because its turned out weirdly. I have a really wide array of readers. I thought i would get a very small niche, but it turns out that people read it and they often forgive me for my liberal ways. I tend to meet a lot of readers and its always gratifying to encounter them. And when i hear that my books have been taken away from them and banned, im happy to just send them my books. Yeah. And make sure that at least that person has access to something that they wanted. But i also recognize that thats not actually to solve this problem when you do it one on one, you can do it, but it doesnt make. People stop banning books. And so i try to listen to whatever readers want to share about how they connect with my writing. I try to talk about the importance of that. Like luis, i thought i was writing for a very niche audience of the four black girls from omaha, but it turns out that people from all walks of life have connected to my work in one way or another, and that has been very humbling. One of the biggest surprises of my career. And so when someone connects and can say, i know what that feels like, know what it feels like to be in a human body, know what it feels like to be vulnerable to be hurt, and then someone wants to take that away from them. It just infuriates me and it makes me want to write even more and make sure that more people read my work. Not because of vanity, but because so many people just need to know that they are not alone and that they are not the only people who have experienced trauma or have experienced isolation or any of the other things we tend to write about in our work. And it just is fuel more than anything. I now that thats such a good way to approach it to, use it as an Inspiration Point to think about those people who you wouldnt expect to connect with your books. But the of your audience. And so a bit off of that. Im curious, what were the first books you read where you saw yourself and like, what did it to see yourself in a book . I dont know that i saw myself, but the first book where i felt like, oh, i wish that she was my was little house on the prairie. Yeah. And i know that the books are flawed, but, you know, in 1978, 1979, those books were everything to me because it was a story about an ordinary girl from the plains whose life was rendered extraordinary by Laura Ingalls wilder. And i mean, i still reread those books to this day because. They are really good. And i just i can matter. I can just be an ordinary girl and have an interesting story. And then the book i really saw myself was not its not that i saw, its that i felt a kinship. And that was beloved by Toni Morrison. Oh yeah, thats amazing. So a little a little bit of background here. My mom was the only american in my family, but the mexicans were the blue eyed ones. Go figure, make. My grandmothers name was guadalupe. It mcmurry. So so. And so there was a very strong and relentless mexican presence, obviously. And i spoke spanish first and all that. And my mother was to get america into the mix and she decided to do it through literature. And she she she read me dickens, which i thought, whats whats going on, man . I dont get whats he talking about, you know . And shed get a british accent, you know, the alfa dodger of it. I was curious when i was like. So she gave that up and switched to mark twain. And i got to say, tom sawyer blew my mind. And it was kind of a Science Fiction book to me. Giant river, whats we dont have those in tijuana, san diego, all of that stuff in his presence, his voice, american voice made me crazy. And i do confess this every time i talk about it and becky thatcher. Hmm. Yeah. My my first literary girlfriend, i was like, wow, wow, dude, are you kidding me . And i have to say that later it was rudolfo aeneas. Bless me, ultima and i thought, oh, my god. And i understood that we can be we can be a weave. Were all weaves in this country. And so that instead of a kind of a liability felt like to me, i always felt a little alien. I started thinking, yeah, this is it. This is what being american, if you want to know what, being an american looks like i am this version. Youre that version, youre that and were all basi