1/7/2024 0 Comments Confessions of a fit foodieQ: In a 2013 essay you wrote for NPR, you mentioned reading your first novel all the way through after high school when a college professor handed you a copy of Alice Walker’s “The Color Purple,” saying that she thought of you when she read it. My voice as a writer is a strange melding of the two. I feel so fortunate to have known these two disparate and wonderful parts of San Diego. I met kids who surfed and had college-educated parents. I fell asleep to the sound of train whistles and the smell of the Pacific Ocean. We lived in an old house sandwiched between the freeway and a large stretch of greenhouses (that are now gone). Then, we moved to Cardiff-by-the-Sea, back when it was quiet and sleepy. It has found its way into many of the books and essays I’ve written. National City left a huge impression on me. We struggled at times, but so did everyone around us, and you got the sense that the community was looking out for you. She was always making tortillas and tamales and chile colorado. Even after we moved to our own place, on Potomac Street, my grandma’s house was still the center of our lives. For the first few years of my life, we lived in my Mexican grandmother’s house. They were teen parents, and everyone I knew lived in National City: my grandparents, aunts and uncles, cousins, friends. My parents met at Sweetwater High School. National City was bustling and working class and gritty. How did growing up there influence your voice and point of view as a writer, later in life?Ī: I grew up in two very different parts of San Diego. Q: Although you later moved to Cardiff, you grew up in National City. The author and speaker took some time to talk about his journey as a writer, how reading made him whole and allowed him to feel, and his commitment to telling kids the truth. 30).ĭe la Peña, 49, lives in San Diego’s Bird Rock neighborhood with his wife, Caroline, and their children Luna and Miguel. His latest children’s book, “Patchwork,” illustrated by Corinna Luyken, encourages the twists and turns a child’s interests will take as they figure out what they like and who they want to be in life (the book will be available on Aug. He earned his bachelor’s degree from the University of the Pacific and his master’s from San Diego State University. Those stories have earned him a Newbery Medal, the NCTE Intellectual Freedom Award, and a place on the New York Times Best Sellers list. “Sometimes, I get to visit schools in faraway towns and read them one of my books, to talk to them about what life was like, growing up in San Diego, and how San Diego is the inspiration for many of my stories,” he says. Later, they moved to Cardiff-by-the-Sea, where he was closer to the ocean and got to know kids from families who were different from what he’d known. First, in National City, where his family and friends and everyone he knew looked out for each other and took care of each other. Matt de la Peña grew up in two very different parts of San Diego.
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