Her Story: Ladies In Literature is a special, month-long series on Pop! Goes The Reader in which we celebrate the literary female role models whose stories have inspired and empowered us since time immemorial. From Harriet M. Welsch to Anne Shirley, Becky Bloomwood to Hermione Granger, Her Story: Ladies In Literature is a series created for women, by women as twenty authors answer the question: “Who’s your heroine?” You can find a complete list of the participants and their scheduled guest post dates Here!
About Chantel Acevedo
Called “a master storyteller” by Kirkus Reviews, Chantel Acevedo is the author of Love and Ghost Letters (St. Martin’s Press), winner of the Latino International Book Award; A Falling Star (Carolina Wren Press), winner of the Doris Bakwin Award, The Distant Marvels (Europa Editions), which was a finalist for the 2016 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction, and most recently, The Living Infinite (Europa Editions), hailed by Booklist as a “vivid and enthralling tale of love and redemption.” Her essays have appeared in Vogue and Real Simple, among others. Muse Squad: The Cassandra Curse, is Acevedo’s new middle grade series forthcoming from Balzer + Bray. She is Professor of English at the University of Miami, where she directs the MFA program.
Picture me, age eleven, living in Miami, Florida, the only city I had ever known. At eleven, I had never seen snow. The homes in my neighborhood were ranch homes made out of concrete, able to withstand hurricanes, and painted in tropical colors. In fact, I had never been inside a two-story house. In my backyard, my abuelo grew papaya, mango, avocado, mamey, and tamarindo. On my block, families worked long, hard hours, and so we didn’t know our neighbors very well, because there was not a lot of free time to get to know them.
A Cuban-American kid, my parents were divorced, and I was shy, shy, shy. My school friends were named Yesenia, Milena, Danet, Arlenys, and Gisela, and us Cuban kids weren’t allowed to play outside without supervision from our eagle-eyed abuelitas. At eleven, I was allergic to everything, was all knees, eyes, and elbows, and still didn’t know how to swim. I couldn’t play sports, sing, or act.
I didn’t know yet that I could write.
But I DID like to read. Every week, my mom would take me to John F. Kennedy Library, and I would pick out a book. I loved the crackling sound of the glossy, plastic book covers, and the solid snap of a book that hadn’t been opened in a while. My shoes on the terrazzo floors echoed, and the way the librarian thumped closed the books after checking them out? Auditory heaven.
It was here where I first picked up a copy of Anne of Green Gables and discovered a girl who was nothing like me. Canadian, red-haired, orphaned, bold, Anne knew what snow looked like, and she lived in a two-story house, and had friends with names like Josie, Diana, Jane, Ruby, and Minnie May, and one of them “walked the ridgepole” of a kitchen roof once.
I had no idea what a ridgepole was.
But oh. Anne Shirley. Anne with an “e.” I had never loved a character more. Anne, whose imagination seemed boundless, who allowed that gift to lift her thoughts so that she was full of hope. Anne was everything I wanted to be.
Anne was a girl who sat in her room, looked out the window, and noticed things, like “the garden and the orchard and the brook and the woods, the whole big dear world.” And when it came to her feelings, she OWNED them. She would tell people that she was in “the depths of despair,” and maybe they mocked her, but Anne didn’t care, because her feelings were real, and she gave name to them.
As for me, I kept my feelings locked up tight. I hardly ever cried, though I often wanted to. Anne shed tears with ease, and lunged herself at her friends with loving ferocity, and demanded “puffed sleeve dresses,” and performed recitations of poetry without an ounce of embarrassment.
I wanted to be Anne so badly. I didn’t want to be so quiet, chewing on my sweater sleeve at school when I got nervous. I wanted to be brave like Anne. But I didn’t know how.
One day, after having reread Anne of Green Gables for the third or fourth time, I got an idea. Maybe I would never be as outgoing as Anne, or as effusive as Anne, but she was a storyteller. I could do that, I thought. So, I sat down and started writing.
Looking back, I know now that the story I wrote about a girl named Sage (she was red-headed, of course. I should say that I did not know a single red-headed person at age eleven) was an Anne knock-off. But it was my first taste of writing a world onto a page. It was the voice I had been looking for.
In time, I discovered other books, other voices, writers who were Latinx like me, who showed me that the stories of a Cuban-American, Miami girl, in all its patterns and permutations, were worthy of literature. I owe those writers — folks like Sandra Cisneros, Cristina Garcia, Julia Alvarez — a debt of gratitude. But I’d be remiss if I didn’t say that I am a writer, in some part, because I read Anne of Green Gables at age eleven.
L.M. Montgomery chose this Elizabeth Browning quote for the book’s epigraph, “The good stars met in your horoscope / Made you of spirit and fire and dew.” Most assuredly, this quote is meant to refer to Anne herself. But I’d like to think of it as a call-to-action for many a young reader like me — quiet, introspective, unsure of herself — that we might also see in ourselves both the fire and the dew.
Find Anne of Green Gables on Goodreads ● Amazon ● Chapters ● The Book Depository ● Barnes & Noble ● IndieBound
Title Muse Squad: The Cassandra Curse
Author Chantel Acevedo
Intended Target Audience Middle Grade
Genre Fantasy
Publication Date July 7th 2020 by Balzer + Bray
Find It On Goodreads ● Amazon ● Chapters ● The Book Depository ● Barnes & Noble ● IndieBound
The first in an action-packed debut middle grade fantasy duology about a Cuban American girl who discovers that she’s one of the nine Muses of Greek mythology. Perfect for fans of The Serpent’s Secret, the Aru Shah series, and the Percy Jackson and the Olympians series.
Callie Martinez-Silva didn’t mean to turn her best friend into a pop star. But when a simple pep talk leads to miraculous results, Callie learns she’s the newest muse of epic poetry, one of the nine Muses of Greek mythology tasked with protecting humanity’s fate in secret.
Whisked away to Muse Headquarters, she joins three recruits her age, who call themselves the Muse Squad. Together, the junior muses are tasked with using their magic to inspire and empower — not an easy feat when you’re eleven and still figuring out the goddess within.
When their first assignment turns out to be Callie’s exceptionally nerdy classmate, Maya Rivero, the squad comes to Miami to stay with Callie and her Cuban family. There, they discover that Maya doesn’t just need inspiration, she needs saving from vicious Sirens out to unleash a curse that will corrupt her destiny.
As chaos erupts, will the Muse Squad be able to master their newfound powers in time to thwart the Cassandra Curse…or will it undo them all?
One Response
Omg this book sounds amazing! And I always love seeing people be so inspired by Anne of Green Gables! Thanks so much for writing Chantel and thanks for sharing Jen!
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