Burd & Comellas: The House of a Poet’s Daughter
The House of a Poet’s Daughter
By Sara Milena Lee Burd and Chalet Comellas
For this volume, Sara Milena and Chalet have curated and illustrated quotes, synthesized from three separate banned books that resonated with their own Latinx experiences. With the goal of highlighting missing perspectives in young adult literature, they selected The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros, Poet X by Elizabeth Acevedo, and I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter by Erika L. Sánchez. Written in the first person, these books shed light on specific experiences of different immigrant families from an array of countries. In all three books, the girls reflect on the way their names are pronounced by non-Spanish speakers and how this bothers them, identifying this micro-aggression as an issue that people in marginalized groups often encounter. Indicating the significance of correctly pronouncing these names highlights how much belonging a person feels through speech. The authors include lists and lists of people’s names in their books to bring attention to them as part of literature written in the United States. These ideas were considered in the visual design of each layout, incorporating the correct pronunciation of each main character’s name through phonetic spelling. Each of the selected book titles has its own two-page spread, illustrated in a style inspired by several female Latin Surrealist painters of the 20th century, with distinct color combinations and embedded symbols to be decoded by the viewer. To create the big book’s text, a single quote was selected from each YA author. When read together, the quotes craft a new poetic narrative that alludes to the collective theme of these titles, which is that words and the process of writing are tools of empowerment that impact an individual’s experience.
“As a creative team, it was important for us to select Young Adult books that shed light on Latinx issues, some of which we both confronted as young people growing up in immigrant families. We feel that each author skillfully takes on these serious topics for YA readers in relatable and comforting ways. It’s a shame that students at some schools have been blocked from accessing these books.”