national hispanic heritage month started as hispanic heritage week under president lyndon johnson in 1968. by 1988 it was expanded to a full month under president ronald reagan it starts on september 15th and ends on october 15th you may wonder why it starts in the middle of the month well it's significant because several latin american countries celebrate their independence within this month but most importantly this is a time for us to honor the contributions of our latin brothers and sisters tonight we kick off season two of everybody with an author and an illustrator who will tell us about some of these amazing women i'm so happy you're joining us welcome to everybody with angela williamson a public affairs program produced in partnership with pbsla this program is made possible by viewers like you thank you and now your host dr angela williamson argelia actilano and anna alvarado are here with us tonight i am so happy that we have them here as our guest thank you so much for being here ladies thank you we're so excited to be here well i'm excited for your new book that will be coming out so before we get into talking about your new book please tell me first just a little bit about both of you and then everyone always wants to know how did you two meet to do this incredible book so which one wants to start gosh you start okay i'll start yes we're the double a team yes oh no i didn't even say that that could have saved me a lot of time in the beginning from this point on you're associated yes my name is argelia tilano i am mexican-american i was born in chicago but i was raised in san pedro in the south bay area um i did my middle school in mexico actually um but then i came back and i ended up being raised finished being raised in east l.a east los angeles so i went to garfield high school go bulldogs um from there i went to loyola marymount university where i double majored in communication studies in spanish literature and that's where my love for books began especially with latin american stories right um i did 20 years at univision i just actually finished a run hopefully i won't cry right now 18 years on caleb 107.5 fm yeah that just happened big career move but now i'm so blessed because i get to dedicate myself a hundred percent to grandest dreamers which is as an author my first children's book i had released a previous book with my husband amor aleire alaire marvel who was my co-host for 18 years oh yeah we can talk for hours but i will not go there today it's all about the book so i'm very excited to be sharing this dream with my bestie now anna alvarado who also is from east l.a yeah oh wow so tell us a little bit about you as well did you also go to high school we didn't so i did i did so i'm third third generation mexican descent and i was raised in east los angeles and i went to school two cities away had i gone to school in my neighborhood i would have gone to school with argelia but didn't went to school two cities away um found myself in washington state as a young adult went to art school out there while i was working on climbing the corporate ladder and i just fell in love with art and it was something that i moonlighted on the side as i was raising money for different non-profit organizations because that was my background and so as moonlighting as an artist growing family i'm a mom of three i have two older boys and a little girl i just i found ways to kind of balance them and i then decided you know what i really feel like i need to do more so i'm gonna leave the corporate world behind my daughter is still in elementary school and i'm going to do this so in 2019 i decided to leave that world behind and focus full-time on my work and the opportunity of being able to do this from home and being able to really dive into it and just put out my best work i feel is is really just a wonderful feeling just the book cover alone is amazing but and we are going to definitely talk about this book but you both have touched on issues that i think is would be very important to the audience right now both of you are moms yes and mid-career you're making transition yeah and you're making this transition and it sounds like this transition is very personal for both of you so i would love for each of you to talk about how it's personal and then tell us how you end up meeting each other oh my gosh should we do that now yeah okay well let's dive in um yes i have two daughters they're 10 and 12 now and this started with camila my 12 year old now but when she was in third grade she came home with the school project to give life to an iconic woman we went down the list and sadly enough there was a lot of amazing women but there was no latina figures so repeated the story repeats because that's what i went through when i was in elementary back in the 80s so i was very disappointed because you would think that by 2018 life would be different or it would be a different scenario for my daughters and that's the day i decided to do something about it i told my daughter i'm going to write a book just for you and for annabella my ten-year-old but that was like me just speaking out of emotion that same year i met ana alvarado through her art i went to an event to moderate for project pastoral which is an amazing organization out in boyle heights that sees and helps and provide support for for women that are victims of violence domestic violence single moms homeless moms and i was moderating this event and at the end of the event i was gifted a beautiful art piece that happened to have the signature of an alvarado i took a picture of it posted on my instagram account her fans started popping up saying oh my gosh you have ana those are she's amazing and they tagged her and i said i want to check out this anal i clicked on it was welcomed into her colorful vibrant world and i said this is the woman that i want to illustrate this idea that i have ruined in my head and then we met and the rest is history that's it it's a love story well it is a love story because i mean without knowing each other you both are leading the same paths in a way and and then how you meet is because you both are giving back to a community and a cause that is dear to probably personal your heart into the community as well and so then you come together to do this yes and so how does this start how do you drag this sweet lady into this it was very easy matter of fact because we started communicating through instagram through dms literally and she said let's meet up in downtown l.a she was still working in the corporate world so we fared an hour just you know an icebreaker this is who i am and she's like oh i know who you are you know caleb 107.5 and i was like well you're you're an amazing artist and we started we put our phones down we did and three hours went by where we shared our dreams and our passions and it's funny because i wanted to write this book but i don't know how to draw i don't have i'm clueless and she wanted to put put out a beautiful book out in the world with her art but she didn't want to write right yes i wanted to illustrate a book so this is mine tell your stories through your illustrations right that's that's how i communicate art is my it's it's my form of communication and you know like argelia mentioned it started with our girls they were my my daughter tatiana is 11 years old and i have two older boys and so seeing a little girl and then being able to say well wait a minute i'm buying you all these books of all these amazing women talk about like the books that are out there and i'm like there's not very many for her and especially for her age group so it just it worked out perfect we say it's a divine timing right we really do believe in that and then we came together and as we were working on it as she was writing as i'm drawing we start to realize wait hold up this isn't just for our daughters this is for us this is like our inner child saying we wish we had this book i feel like when you write i create those are our footprints that we leave on the world and that is something i do have to say that when i went to take the book the books over to the library the other day i went into the room i saw all the books and i got very emotional because i thought i'm contributing i'm part of this so you are yeah i know i know that we are contributing because there's a void there's definitely a need when i did my research as a mom to help my children find those resources i went to so many public libraries sadly enough there's compilations right of of many women but there's not a book dedicated for this specific age group and even even if we found a book it was just a paragraph not even a paragraph a line and i tell my girls and that's what we want children to know that these latina icons are not a mention they're not a line they're not even a paragraph they're more than that and so this is where mommy comes in and i feel like i was back in college doing all this research with the help of a research consultant that went to my alma mater loyola marymount university which happened to be my spanish linguistics professor so she came in handy when it came to she's gonna give me her name yeah she came in really handy i when she and i saw those red marks like oh man that's embarrassing right no but no she came in handy and i just felt like i was in college all over i was in the zone mind you we're very proud of this book because it's also a bilingual book it's not a spanish book it's not an english book it's a bilingual book which is also unique because the few books that are out there by latinx authors which we applaud them for doing that amazing work and paving the way it's it's cato mortar like a younger generation pre-k toddler very early years but it's either in english or it's either in spanish very little bilingual books for this age group there's none none we went on all the sites we could find online we went on stores and they were very hard to find if there are out there we can't find them and that's a problem because they should be visible so that's what pushed us to say because i had told anna we'll write the english one first and then we'll publish the spanish one but then we were like no let's give our parents and our children two to one let's dream big well and normally that's what you see you see the first one is printed in english and then the next one is printed and so you actually started i mean not only are you leaving a legacy but now you started a new trend so well we are going to take a break okay and when we come back i want to know because you talked a lot about research so i want to know how did you choose these amazing women because some women we would think okay yes that makes sense with some women you brought mention to them that they should have been mentioned long time ago so how did you find that and then tell us a little bit about this prosp process too okay so hold on ladies we'll be right back and you hold on and come back and join me with my conversation with argelia and anna as we talk a lot about this book especially why it's important right now [Music] novelist poet dreamer being the only girl crowded by six brothers and treated as a princess was something sandra detested the mexican traditions and household chores imposed on her would prepare her for marriage and nothing else but she saw life differently she took refuge at the city library where she shared magical moments with her mother surrounded by books one day something came over her and she began to jot down her painful reality on paper through the power of words sandra found her voice and a literary star was born she dedicated herself to highlighting the adversities and injustices experienced in mexican-american culture her most recognized work is the house on mango street translated in over 20 languages this masterpiece is now standard curriculum for schools and universities so pick up a pen and paper now and let your imagination run wild only then can you build a sacred place for your dreams [Music] welcome back i am here to continue my conversation with these two amazing ladies mothers authors and illustrator so let's talk about this book you before we went to break you talked about the research that goes in to making sure that this book was complete so that your daughters had something as part of your legacy but my question to you is how did you choose these amazing women because these are just you know just a few of several who have made an impact in our country tip of the iceberg i know we're barely scratching the surface our list was long it was literally anna and i doing the research literally first it was like top of our head just throwing names right like just like throwing our names exactly yeah these are my favorites yes a lot of her ideas just was in sync with mine so we had no issue there but then our list got long yeah and then we had to say okay do we want 10 do we want 12 do we we even thought about 20 yeah but then we thought about the age group you know 8 to 12 we want we don't want to overwhelm them we don't want to say oh it's a lot to read we want them to engage them and see that it's very friendly to read and fun but we also thought about you know what let's stay with 12 12 months out of the year and then we work on volume two and then volume three and then volume four and we create a series thanks for taking my follow-up question what's next okay but i'll let you i'll let you go with that now and then i'll let anna explain to you the cutting off process who didn't make we're not going to say who didn't make the cut on the first volume but how did we end up staying with these first 12 right right it sounds like it was difficult it was it was it was we actually it was it was one of those decisions where you have to take away personal feelings right and you have to stop and you have to really look at it and think why does the world need to celebrate this accomplishment and all these accomplishments and how important is this and one of the things that we thought was extremely important was that you know we run from um to our trailblazers who are who have been around longer versus younger our youngest being laurie hernandez and saying okay we want our our youth to be able to see them in the present to watch and follow them not just read about them as if this is something that happened a long time ago but to be able to say this is what they've done this is what they continue to do okay and they're now being mindful and watching because that's a big impact to be able to see um you're the trailblazer up there and saying wow they're still making moves they're still paving the way they're still doing big things and so that was that was a big deciding factor and once we came to terms and agreed on that which was super easy a couple of seconds then it was like no these are going to stay on and these are going to go on the second volume yeah and something they all have in common is that they're all born in the united states of america so we made that distinction you know what we're going to make sure that the first 12 are as american as they can be right so that was a beautiful thing to focus on for this volume the second volume will focus on immigrant latinas that have contributed enormously to this country because they're here since two or three four they're like the dreamers right but these grandest dreamers um you know they're like us like anna and i born in the states like many of our children born in the states that have contributed enormously in so many fields but that unfortunately half of them are like hidden figures yes everybody knows selena jennifer lopez rita moreno dolores huerta but then what about sandra cisneros what about celia cevedo what about olga custodio alexandre ocasio-cortez you know which i know most everybody knows but still we wanted to make sure that those women just because they're not in the spotlight doesn't mean that their story has to be hidden on the contrary because they're not on the spotlight we need to put them on the spotlight i'm an educator and i want to use this inside my classroom what advice can you give to me on how to use this book correctly so i'm reaching those that population that's never seen people like themselves in a book i'm so glad you asked that because um this message is also we also did it for the teachers of course our biggest you know dedication is to our children it's boys and girls because boys need to know that strong woman can make huge difference and it happens at home with the mom but um it's also for us women to find empowerment through what women have done in the past right and in the present but we we it takes a village to get that message out you're right and we want to invite into our village the educators i know that there's you know committees that choose books for our kids education and it's fine that there has to be a committee we're not saying make this the school textbook we're just saying have it in your classroom we're just saying have at least one copy if you can have two or three even better but have one copy as a resource for when hispanic heritage month comes around like right now you have a book that will proudly resonate with so many and not just with the latino kids with everyone you know just like everyone learns about dr martin luther king who we love harriet tubman who i did my report on when i was you know in high school it's about every single child no matter where you're from to also learn about these latina icons so yes educators please if you're watching this right now we need your help we need you to bring this book to your classroom we're willing to come into schools and and do meet and greets and do book readings whatever it is she already said i'll make posters for your classroom right now to decorate your wall [Applause] so i guess you are going to have to do it but i would gladly yes we've talked about that well hearing your personal story that's why i had to ask you that question because just hearing your story and hearing your story as a mother and and trying and feeling that emotion right here that you know we feel that emotion as we're talking about this i had to ask you how can educators use this because this is your book and it's the legacy but we need to change the story and how we change a story is by starting with this book exactly especially in california now that we have ethnic studies on the table fortunately and this it's it couldn't be a better time seriously with ethnic studies on the table the the talk of schools and classrooms and teachers including it is gold for us because we got your book right and it's it's as simple as reading the book and creating a space creating the space yeah so let's talk a little bit about that before we end our conversation because i think it's a great way to end it as we celebrate this month is how can we as i said educators but also to parents parents that you know african-american parents you mentioned who can do this white parents that can pull this book how can we create that space so we are teaching our children to love all contributions from all people i actually you know it's interesting that you say that because with my daughter and it did it with the boys but i did them more so because as i got older really seen the importance of being able to share um the beauty and diversity right and being able to see color because it's so important and being able to embrace and um really just love on one another and so i remember that diana's one of her favorite books was the fierce 44 it's african-american a compilation book and um being able to share so one of tatiana's all-time favorite icon is maya angelou and so i'm thinking here i'm teaching her about all these different these different leaders these different iconic people it was easy enough to pick up a book it was easy enough to show her documentary because it was there it's available to you and it's just really creating the space i love it and i know that that sounds so simple but it really is just finding the time to create the space why do you like that person what did that what did that poem mean to you what do you think it took to get there and having that conversation oh kids their responses are incredible i know in creating space my my ten-year-old is in fifth grade her last year in elementary lausd and she can't wait to take this book to her classroom she's the only latina in the classroom and she loves that because that classroom is very diverse and that's beautiful right she needs to see that like anna was saying these beautiful colors and everyone learning from each other and her biggest highlight this year is to be able to take this book that mommy wrote and that her friend anna alvarado you know illustrated because she can't wait first to show it off that mom wrote it but that this is who we are and i want to read you about selena because she's in love with salinas she loves everyone but she just cannot wait for the day to to read to her friends that are very diverse from very diverse backgrounds about selena and that to me is goal because she knows and loves selena's music and story and heritage because i gave it to her i created that space for her at home and now she's taking it with pride to her classroom so we're going to end the our conversation with creating a space for our audience by you either one of you telling us how we can get this book and how we can support you as parents and educators well um right now we're focusing on grandestreamers.com so if you visit our webpage which is very vibrant and colorful thanks to anna it's very easy way to obtain the book on grandestreamers.com we have an amazing relationship with lapl public library of la and i know that they're going to have the book available already thank you for that support and i know there's plans right to have it in other portals and as soon as we have that plan we will obviously share it with you okay and we will make sure to get all of your social media up too so that our audience can stalk you and find out please encourage dreamers yeah everything is good on this dreamers we're on facebook we're on twitter and of course we're on instagram wonderful thank you so much ladies for your time this evening thank you and thank you for leaving us this incredible legacy not only for this generation but for next generations to come and thank you for the space that you gave us and thank you for offering your assistance as an educator that means the world thank you i'm so honored now you're trying to make me cry before i do my closing catch a breath ladies we will definitely be in touch because when that second edition comes out you definitely have to come back and thank you for joining us on everybody with angela williamson viewers like you make this show possible join us on social media to continue this conversation good night and stay well [Music] you