Memoirs of How My
Passion for Reading Started
As a child I did not understand why it was
that my sisters were always so enthralled by books. What could these books possibly
say that was so special? I always wondered this but the only thought that ran
through my head when I saw their faces buried in all kinds of books for hours
and hours on end was that they were bores and obviously didn’t have anything
better to do. Why would a person choose a
book over the playground? Not me! I very much rather go outside and play,
was my every day thought. I eagerly waited all day for six o clock to come
around because that’s when the sun had eased down and my mom would allow me to
go outside and play with my friends. I was counting down the minutes when all
of a sudden, my heart sank. Is that thunder I hear? Much to my disappointment,
it was. My fate on this gloomy day would be to stay inside the house because
there was no way that my mom would let me play outside with rain and lightning.
I played with my dolls for a few minutes but I was bored
with that already since that was what I had played with all morning. I went
upstairs to see what my sisters were doing. Julieta was taking a nap and
Blanca, my oldest sister, was reading from a set of boring books my dad had
bought for us a couple of months before. “Que haces?” I asked, knowing what the
answer would be. She looked up from the book and said, “Estoy leyendo.” Of course
she was reading. “What are you reading?” She responded and sounded rather
annoyed, “A fairy tale.” I continued to pry, “Un cuento? But it doesn’t have pictures! How do you even
know how the characters look like if there are no pictures?” Blanca chuckled
and replied, “You don’t need pictures when you have an imaginative mind.” I was
intrigued, “You mean to tell me that you don’t need pictures to imagine in your
head what is going on?” Blanca let out a sigh and asked, “Do you want me to
read to you?” I thought about it for a while and finally determined that I had
become one of theme and had nothing better to do. It was raining cats and dogs
outside and it didn’t look as though the rain would let down anytime soon so I
took a shot, “I guess.” And so she began…Había una vez un rey
que tenía 12 hermosas hijas. Éstas dormían todas en una habitación y cuando se
iban a la cama, las puertas se
cerraban bajo llave. Sin
embargo, todas las mañanas sus zapatos aparecían muy desgastados como si
hubiesen bailado con ellos toda la noche. Nadie se explicaba cómo ocurría, ni
dónde podían haber estado las princesas…
That is
the story of how I fell in love with reading, maybe I should rephrase that
since I didn’t really like reading, what I enjoyed was being read to. The first
fairy tale that Blanca ever read to me was that of the “Twelve Dancing
Princesses” and it soon became my favorite one. I looked forward to her reading
to me. Soon, my sister Julieta started reading to me as well. I honestly can’t
remember when they stopped reading to me. I’m guessing it was when I learned to
read. They probably assumed that I would read by myself now. They were wrong.
Nobody said anything about me loving to read. I loved being read to, that was
it.
Fast forward
to Summer of 1992. By this time, I already spoke fluent English. We were
migrants and after a long day of working in the fields, my sisters found that
reading was a big stress reliever, so they read. They read, exchanged books and
then spent hours discussing what they had read. It’s as though they had formed
their own little book club, a book club that I was not part of because I
despised reading. This happened on a daily basis. They spent endless evenings
discussing the novels they had read while I just sat there, green with envy
because I had nothing cool to talk about. So one day, just because I was
jealous of their book talks, I picked up one of the books that both of them had
read and read the entire thing in a day and a half. Granted it was only about
153 pages long, but that was much more than I had ever read. If you ask me for
the title, I, for the life of me, cannot remember. However, I will tell you, as
embarrassing as this is, that it was a book from the Harlequin Romance
collection. I soon became a junkie for Harlequin Romance novels. I absolutely loved
them, yes I suppose the thrill of the sexual tension they created was crucial
to my addiction to the novels, but what I loved the most was the discussions I was
now able to have with my sisters. I’m sure that if my mom had known what the
novels were about, she would have totally kicked my butt, but she never found
out. Lucky me!
The point
here is not that I was into the sexy, racy novels. The point is that I learned
to enjoy literature, even the cheesy kind. I, at one point in my life, was a
Limited English Proficient student, and as so, I was not the best writer. I can
honestly say that I developed a passion for writing and was able to improve
greatly as a result for my newly acquired interest in reading. Neat, huh?
If you
ask me any of the titles of these Harlequin Romance novels I read, I can’t remember
a single one. However, in the Fall of 1992, I fell in love with the most
meaningful novel that I ever read. Mr. Molina, my eight grade English teacher
took us to the library about every two to three weeks. He encouraged us to read
the classics, and so one day I picked up Little
Women by Louisa May Alcott because I remember loving the cartoons I used to
watch when I lived in Mexico. I
absolutely fell in love with the novel, with the characters, with the entire
plot of it. Jo was my favorite character and my heart ached with how much she
suffered. It was the best! And of course, Mr. Molina loved my selection. After Little Women, I picked up Tom Sawyer and also because I used to
love the cartoons I used to watch. So perhaps the reasons I had for selecting
the novels that I did were not the best, but I am glad I did because I realized
that the novels were far much better than the cartoons.
I know
many people despise reading. I have quite a few of my students every year that
hate it and I try my best to share my passion with them. I truly feel blessed
to have been influenced by reading at a young age because reading is what
transformed my writing as well. Naturally, because my first language was
Spanish, my usage wasn’t the best, and perhaps it still isn’t, but I do feel
that a reason for which my writing has improved was my love for reading. My
passion and appreciation for literature started off with the, “Once upon a time…”
and it ended with a, “happily ever after.”
