 Okay, I think we are ready to go. And so thank you again, thank you for joining us this afternoon for a handmade court test and conversation with your similar areas. I'm Kevin, I'm a librarian from the Cornell LGBT QA center at the main library, and I'm very excited to be here to introduce our guests. Before I do that, I will start us off with a land acknowledgement and a few brief library updates. And again, please check your chat box for all the links for information that I'm covering in my intro. The San Francisco Public Library acknowledges that we occupy the unfeeded ancestral homeland of the Ramiotish Aloni peoples, who are the original inhabitants of the San Francisco peninsula. We recognize that the Ramiotish Aloni understand the interconnectedness of all things and have maintained harmony with nature for millennia. We honor the Ramiotish Aloni peoples for their enduring commitment to war rep mother earth as the indigenous protectors of this land and in accordance with their traditions. The Ramiotish Aloni have never seated, lost nor forgotten their responsibilities as the caretakers of this place, as well as for all people who reside in their traditional territory. We recognize that we benefit from living and working on their traditional homeland. As uninvited guests we affirm their sovereign rights as first peoples and wish to pay our respects to the ancestors, elders and relatives of the Ramiotish community. We recognize that to respectfully honor Ramiotish peoples we must embrace and collaborate meaningfully to record indigenous knowledge in how we care for San Francisco and all its peoples. And I just want to tell you a little bit about the James C. Hermel LGBTQIA Center. It consists of the reading room that you see in the slide, as well as archival collections held in the SF History Center. We have approximately 10,000 books, 200 archival collections, as well as videos, magazines, newspapers and journals, and more by and about LGBTQIA people with a special emphasis on the San Francisco Bay Area. And I'd like to let you know about a few upcoming library events on September 28, the 7pm, we have Carolina de Roberto's and Julian Delgado, no para and conversation. And that is a virtual event. The next event sponsored by the Hormel Center is a virtual event on October 6 at 7pm. And that is Matthew Clark Davidson discussing his debut novel with Michael Nova. And very excitingly we have a live in person event on October 12 at 7pm with Thomas Moniz and Michelle Gonzalez. So that will be in the Latinx community room at the main library. And that will also be streaming online as well. And we would like to thank the Booksmith for co-sponsoring this event. You can purchase Gordo from their website and we have the link for that in the chat box. You can also visit them in person at their new location on H Street. And of course you can check out the book in all formats from the library and we have a link for that as well. And just to remind you we will have an audience Q&A towards the end of the program so please use the Q&A feature in Zoom. If you are watching on YouTube you can ask your question in the chat box there. And this program is being recorded and it will be made available on the library's YouTube channel. And now it is my pleasure to turn it over to Yossimar Reyes. Take it away. Hola, buenas tardes everybody. I'm super excited. Feliz domingo, happy Sunday. My name is Yossimar Reyes. I'm super excited to be in conversation with the Jaime Cortes who is here with us. I'm super excited. I have my copy of Gordo. Hopefully you have your copy as well. If you haven't purchased it, I highly encourage you to get the book. I'm going to introduce Jaime. Jaime is going to do a reading for us from the book and then we're going to get into a little conversation. Please, please join us in the conversation. We definitely want to hear your questions and we definitely want to hear from you. So please, please, we're super excited that you're here with us. Jaime Cortes is a writer and visual artist based in Watsonville, California and the San Francisco Bay Area. Cortes often combines humor and tragedy to tell the stories of resilient survivors who exist on the margins of the economy, the law and social acceptability. Gordo is Jaime's debut collection of short stories, Black Cat and Imprint of Growth Atlantic Press is the publisher for this book. So please help me in welcoming Jaime Cortes. Hello everybody. So good to be here with you on this Sunday afternoon. My internet at home decided to conk out this morning so I'm on the deck of my sister's house doing this reading and hopefully we will not have any technical difficulties during the course of this this evening that this afternoon that I've been looking forward to so much. I'm Jaime Cortes author of Gordo. I want to begin with a bunch of thank yous. First, I want to thank the San Francisco Public Library for inviting me and for also having Yosemite here present. Thank you Yosemite as well for participating in this dialogue. I've been looking forward to having a public discussion with you for weeks now and so I'm so excited that we're here at this moment. I want to thank Booksmith as well for providing book sales and support for that as well. I want to thank my editor John Freeman who made all of this possible and who has been such a fantastic champion of this book. I'm forever grateful to John Freeman for that. And of course, and very importantly I want to just thank everyone who is here and who's taken time from their Sunday to just join us for a little bit. And I hope it's a good investment of time for you and I'm glad to have you here. So those are my thank yous to start with. Let's just begin with a brief reading. I wasn't sure which story to start with and I just decided I would start at the beginning I'm going to read to you. The first few pages of the first story in the book. And this story is called the Jesus Donuts. The Jesus Donut like like many of the stories in this book take place where I grew up on a migrant farm worker camp in San Juan Bautista over in San Benito County. And this one happens to center on the pack of kids that I grew up with on the camp. And the day when someone very special came to visit us at our lonely camp. So this is the Jesus Donut and I'm going to have a little sip of water first. The Jesus Donut. Soon as the van turns off San Juan Highway onto our dirt road, I could see the cloud of dust chasing it. Don't look like nothing special at first, just a white van changing into a dusty brown van. When it gets closer, I see it says flower child on the side in big curly letters. What does that mean? The van stops close to me and the other kids and the driver opens the door and steps out with his pink face, white shirt, white hair, little mustache. It looks like Mr. Kentucky Fried Chicken. My dog Lobo doesn't like strangers and he pulls on his chain and barks at the man. Mr. Kentucky opens up the two back doors of the van. Of course we're wondering what he's doing. Usually the Hefe Joe Geirich is the only bingo that ever comes to the Geirich Farms worker camp. So it's not like we see real a medic gun nose here every day. Kentucky looks at us and smiles. Then he makes a little hope with his finger and calls us to him. I point to myself like I'm saying, me? Yes you my friend, he says, my cousin says out on me, put down our sticks and stop playing our game of John Guy. My sister Sylvie and her cousins Olga and Tiny stopped playing hopscotch and they come over to the five of us circle around Mr. Kentucky. And he has a big old smile like he's going to tell us the greatest secret ever. Abla en Espanol, he asks. I'm surprised to hear him talking Spanish. It's like when we heard a parent say, Lucy, I'm home at my Diaz house. We didn't think he could do that. Then Caesar answers. Yeah, we can speak Spanish, English too. Caesar's so brave talking to that big pink white haired gringo just like that. Maybe when I get to the sixth grade like him, I'll be all brave too. Boy bueno, that is very good, says Mr. Kentucky real slow, like he thought we couldn't understand. Then he turns and opens up the two doors on the back of the van. Inside it has four big silver metal drawer stacked up. He grabs the handle on the bottom drawer and pulls it open. It opens up and we look and everyone's surprised. Wow. Holy waka moly. Oh, it's so nice. No way, Jose. The drawer is filled up with donuts. Shiny, perfect donuts all in a row like little soldiers. The smell is really, really nice. I had no van full of donuts arrive here at Guy Rick Farms worker camp before. Kentucky smiles at us and we smile back at him. He shows us the next, he shows us the next drawer. Oh my God, Jesus. All chocolate donuts. Some of them have little rainbow sprinkles on them or even better coconut. The chocolate drawer is so beautiful. Nobody says nothing. It's like a magic show. Kentucky is smiling so hard that his eyes get tiny and he opens up the top drawer. 100% cookies. I'm not lying man, huge cookies bigger than your hand. Some oatmeal, chocolate chip, some yellow, have a nice day, smiley face cookies too. It's a miracle. Someone bought a whole van filled up with donuts to the worker camp. They're here in the middle of the tomato fields in tiny San Juan Bapista. Nobody ever comes to the camp unless they're here to work or they're visiting the family. Please can I have one please says tiny. No, stupid says my sister Sylvie. They're not free. You got to pay. How much I got to pay as tiny. Not too much little lady says the man. They're 12 cents each or two for 20 cents. Oh, says tiny. Nobody says nothing. I feel embarrassed. I don't have no 12 cents or even one sense. This nice man drives all the way out to the ranch shows us the shiny donuts and nobody has 12 cents to buy one. I think he's embarrassed too. Maybe you can ask your mama, he says. She's working, I say. I point to the tomato field where my mom and the other mothers are working. Mr. Kentucky thinks and then he says. Alrighty, then, well, maybe next time you can save your pennies and buy a donut, my friend. He closes the cookie drawer. Then the beautiful chocolate drawer. And then Olga says wait. Please, can I have two donuts, please? Of course you can, little lady says Kentucky. What kind of donors would you like? Everyone's staring at Olga because where did she get money? The man gets a pink and white bag and a little piece of paper. Please, I want a chocolate donut with rainbow sprinkles. Please, she says. The man gets one and puts it in the bag. Then she points to a shiny glazed donut on the bottom drawer. He pops one of those in the bag too. 20 cents, he says. Everybody stopped breathing. What's she going to do? She don't got no money. Is she going to take the bag and run? That would be stupid because he could chase her in the van. Besides, if she did that, grandma would hit her so hard. She'd see the devil through a hole. I don't know what that means, but grandma always says that and it sounds pretty serious. Olga bends down and unties one of her tenies. She takes it off her foot and there in the bottom of her stinky shoe is a perfect, shiny quarter. She picks it up, wipes it on her dress, gives it to him. Mr. Kentucky takes the quarter, puts it in the chain's machine on his belt. He pops out a nickel and gives it to her. It's like a present. Thank you, darling, he says. Thank you, Mr. She says. Anyone else he asked? No one says yes. No one says no. So he smiles and closes up the drawer, shuts the back doors, gets into the van. He drives away slowly, waves at us one time. Then he goes faster down the road. We stand around Olga. Where should we get that money, says Caesar. I don't know. She gave me two quarters from my domingo because I helped out in the house. Say, pay you to help in the house, says Sylvie. She's really surprised that Olga got paid. I can't believe it either. Liar, says Sylvie. No one gets paid to help around the house. Believe it or don't, I got paid, says Olga. She looks really happy. Hey Olga, says Tiny, what are you going to do with the extra donut? That's not an extra donut. Bonehead, says Caesar. You know what she's going to do? She's going to scarf those donuts up, both of them. His voice sounds like something that got dropped and then broke. I'm just asking. That's all, says Tiny. You think she wants to cry? I can't blame her. You guys want some donut, says Olga. Really, I ask? Yes, she says. She's going to share her fancy donuts. I can hardly believe it. Heck yeah, I want some, says Caesar. You can have some, she says. But you have to do what I say and you can't taste the chocolate one. Well, what do we have to do, asks Sylvie? First, you pochinos have to wash dirty hands and your faces and fix your hair like on Sunday. What for, asks Sylvie? I don't have to tell you what for. If you want a donut, you have to do it, Olga says. So we go to the big shower room where everybody goes to clean up after work. There's two big sinks and three showers. We use the big brown sprig of needy or soap to wash our faces. I wet my hair and push the wild curls down with my hands. I dry my hands on my pants like Caesar and we all go back out. Now you have to get in line on your knees, says Olga. This is stupid, says Caesar. If you don't like it, go away Caesar. But if you want donut, you do what I say, says Olga. And that is the beginning of the Jesus donut, the first story of Gordo. Thank you. Thank you so much, Jaime. Oh my God. Esos niños tremendos in this, in this book. Yes. So Gordo definitely is the short stories in this collection are through the viewpoint of Gordo, which we love. We love Gordo. I think when I saw the title, my nickname growing up was Gordo. And it's interesting because, you know, when you have a nickname like that, especially as a kid, I was like, um, did I have a Wednesday? So my grandma would go pick me up and from the, the school yard grita about Gordo. So all the kids would be like, Oh, your name is Gordo. So I just, I find it very amazing that you're able to capture that voice. Can you tell us about the process of developing the voice in the story and how tender and keen his voices towards his community and his, his vecinos, the people he lives with? I think, um, what I was interested in was a couple of things is, um, balancing, uh, the wisdom of an, of an observant kid. Like they see things and sometimes they see through things in a remarkable way. So there's the wisdom, but there's also the naivete of just being a kid and not knowing like, why do people do what they do? It's sometimes it's so opaque and it's so mysterious. Uh, and so I was trying to get that sense of, of an observant kid, but also a kid who's ultimately just a kid. They can only know what they know and they don't have all these skills for, you know, um, for jump, for, you know, make drawing conclusions from things often. So I was interested in that. And I think the thing I realized as I worked on these voices over the years was that the, the biggest, uh, risk was letting my adult mind impinge too much and, and using the child as like a ventriloquist dummy for my adult perspectives, that would have been the failure if, if I, if that had happened. So I was trying to be really mindful of, of, of respecting the wisdom and insights of a kid, but not overselling it. Uh, and so, so that was the, the kind of balance I was going for. I, I, I was, you know, hoping to get a kid's voice that sounded, uh, and I was very inspired by the writing of Tony K. Bombara, uh, in her book, Gorilla, My Love. She did that so elegantly and she was a real inspiration for me of like, oh, okay, you, this can be done. You just have to, you have to find the voice. So yeah. And the other element through element within the stories is the way that humor comes across these stories that are super, some of these stories are super heavy, right? Gordo's absorbing his nevers, navigate poverty and even though there's no word for it, right? Um, but the humor in it, um, what does that happen because of the voice? Was that a choice or is that something that you just noticed was coming across, um, in a way to make some of the topics within these short stories more digestible or, um, I think there's a, I think there's a bunch of things at play. And I think it's, I really like talking about the function of humor in this book. Uh, and really in my life, um, uh, I would say a couple of things. One of them is that it's, it's, it's the humor is in this, these stories because the humor was in my life growing up. There was a lot of funny people. I come from funny people. My mom and dad were funny. My grandparents were funny and salty. Very salty. And, uh, and so I, I feel like this was a cultural truth that I grew up with that, that humor was always there and that the humor was maybe the most central part of being resilient. Um, that was probably the, one of, certainly one of the key strategies, if not the key strategies was, can you still laugh about it? Whatever the, the horror is, can you still laugh about it? Um, I always feel like, you know, things are really desperate when the humor fizzles out and, and you can't make a joke anymore. Um, that's when you know you're in, in deep, uh, into a place of pain or a place of just, that's impossible to really navigate. Um, so I was interested in that. I also think that, um, humor is one of the best truth telling devices that we have because it's disarming, right? So you have these, this, this humor happening. Uh, and it's happening because these kids couldn't scrounge up 12 cents for a donor, right? So, but the humor is there. Uh, and that, that, that, that, that poverty is there and the humor is there. I don't want to get bogged down in the fact that they didn't have the 12 cents. That's just a reality. They weren't dragged down by it. They were just like, shit, I wish I had money for a donor. That was their immediate focus. So I'm trying to kind of stay true to some of that spirit of, of that resilience. Uh, um, there's a time to go down into the grief of things to just, to plumb the depths of it. There's a time for that. Uh, and that's a great and important tactic. Uh, mine is a different one. I really like to use the, that mode of humor as a way of, of getting into that tragedy and the grief of things. Um, the other component that we see within this, uh, book is the setting, right? I think this is a beautiful way that you illustrate a place, you know, San Juan, Bautista, um, the migrant camps, all these places that oftentimes only exists in the imagination of people who didn't grow up like this. And I think the actual day to day of the people that work in the fields and, and, and are living in these camps, what was the pro, obviously, you know, you come from that background, but what is the process of trying to capture that in the book and making sure that you, you, you, you illustrate it for people that necessarily don't come from there. I would say that, you know, the stories take place in two, uh, nearby towns. One is San Juan Bautista, one is Watsonville. Both are real communities and they are the real towns that I grew up in. Uh, I spent a lot more time creating the sense of place in San Juan Bautista. Uh, and in the end it almost ended up almost like a, like a mythical place to me, uh, in the sense that it was this kind of, I always, you know, uh, I think of it, the, the camp as a tiny Mexican village surrounded on all sides by California. That's, that's how it was in, in my, in my imaginary, in my own mind. Uh, and so I wanted to talk about place. I wanted to talk about what summer heat feels like, uh, because San Juan tends to have hot weather. Watsonville has coastal weather. It's much cooler there, but I wanted to talk about heat. Uh, I wanted to talk about the agriculture. Um, I wanted to talk about dust when, when you're completely surrounded by dirt roads, like dust is this, this thing. It's a, it's a, it's part of, you know, it's literally what you breathe, uh, on the, on the daily. So, uh, so I was interested in creating that sense of place, um, and time as well, of course, because this, these are stories, uh, from an era that has passed now. You know, when I was a little kid, you would see so many little kids out working in agriculture. So especially on the weekends, it was a family affair. No one's going to pay for babysitting. So you just take the kids with you and maybe they'll sleep in the car. Maybe they'll help work as much as they can. And then they'll play, but they were out there and they were laboring, uh, at whatever capacity they could. Obviously you can't make a little, little kid work all day. That's not acceptable for them and it's not acceptable for the parents either. But once kids got a little older, once you get to that nine, 10 age, there was much more of an expectation that, you know what? You need to start earning and helping the family. So, so that sense of place and time, I think, both go hand in hand. Um, so in the book, we meet Gordo, we meet Gordo's boys. Gordo is, uh, becoming aware of his surroundings, right? And he's also becoming aware of himself. He's aware of his body, but in, in, but he's also aware of that he's different, right? And the process, right, but he's still an adolescent. I think one of the beautiful things that it's the straight in the book is that confusion of not knowing the word of naming it, of what is that? And people call me different. People think I'm different, but I don't know. I'm just me. Um, how was that in exploring that adolescence before, you know, before calling it anything? Yeah, you know, it's, it's funny. Um, I remember once talking to a gay author, uh, who's a bit older than me. Uh, and he defined himself in an interesting way. He says, I'm part of the last, one of the last generations of American gay people who could literally go through all of their adolescence and teen years and think they were the only queer. Like they could, they could, that was possible. There was such a lack of information. There was such a lack of representation that you could really think that you were, uh, alone in your feelings. Uh, and that really stuck with me and I found it deeply poignant to imagine that. Um, and so, uh, you know, uh, for Gordo, um, that was a really good technical challenge for me in the writing is there's not a word for it yet at the beginning, especially Gordo doesn't have the language for what is happening in his, uh, in his body, but also what is happening about, why is he so wrong around gender? Why is he not a real boy? Is that, is that's how he refers to himself at one point where he says he wants to be a real boy. He knows something is off the mark, uh, in terms of traditional gender expectations. Uh, and so my, my challenge was what are the metaphors? What are the poetics that a child who does not have kind of a queer vocabulary yet? How do they begin to articulate that there's something going on here and it makes me really uncomfortable. And I don't want to be this thing. I want to be normal. I want to be acceptable, but I don't know how. Uh, so that was what was the challenge for me was finding the kid language to articulate the sense of otherness, to articulate the sense of, I don't understand why, why, but I always seem to be, I always seem to be getting in trouble around gender, but I don't understand why, why, what is this about? Um, so, so that was the, I think what, what I was trying to get at, like how does, when you're not verbal yet about it, when you don't have, when you, when you don't have vocabulary yet, how do you talk about it? So that was the challenge. Yeah. So those of the kids, as they are existing, there's a certain level of innocence, right? You are claying with innocence, but at the same time is juxtaposed with these violence things, violence that's happening, the violence of poverty. And on top of that, the violence of the adults are enacting upon one another. As a writer, uh, how was it difficult, not trying to protect the innocence of the kids or, or an all at the same time, not exposed at you, because we have this discussion of what kids need to be exposed to or what kids shouldn't. How did you navigate that as you were developing and, you know, playing with the characters? Yeah, that's a really good question, Yosemite. When writing trauma, every writer has to make a decision about how much to tell. And it's a really, for me it ended up being like probably one of the deepest ethical questions of the whole experience of writing these stories was how much do you tell? So I'm a great admirer of a couple of authors in particular, David Wojnarowicz and Dorothy Allison. And those authors, to me, they just went there. They held back nothing. And the stories are so absolutely unsparing in plumbing the depths of the trauma, the violence, the sexual abuse. They just go there. And I remember just reading those stories and I just felt like they were so pure in their truth. And I had, it was like a blue flame, a perfect blue flame of truth telling. And I admire that tremendously. As I kind of got into it, I started asking myself, how deep do I want to go with this? And I found my limits. I didn't want to go all the way. And I didn't. And every author has to make their choices. And every author will have consequences from making those choices. When you tell all, there are consequences to yourself, to your reader. When you tell part of it, there's consequences. When you conceal or don't bring it up at all, consequences. So we all, I think as writers, have to kind of contend with that. And so, yeah, the violence is there. I did not go into the full extent of the violence. But I thought there was enough there to let it be known that the threat of violence was always just under the surface of things. It could happen at any moment from a whole bunch of different directions. Kid on kid violence, parent on kid violence, parent on parent violence, adult on adult violence. There's just so many variations of it. So yeah. Yeah. And can you talk a little bit about the process of coming up with the stories? I know that you need to use personal narratives, photographs, things that stuck with you in your upbringing? Or what was the process of setting the kids in these scenarios or the situations as a writer? Yeah, because even that, like the story of the doughnut, the gloves, what was the process of, you know, how did Gordo get managed to get into these stories? Here's what's funny is, in doing these stories, I was a writer of very limited imagination. Really, all I had to do was remember what had actually happened and then build on that. In some cases, it just means a kind of a level of exaggeration. In other cases, it means cobbling together a Frankenstein story built of a whole bunch of different things that really happened. But all through the book are, I'm sorry, someone has decided to do aerial acrobatics above me here. And I don't know how long this plane's going to be doing this for, but hopefully it'll get... We can hear you. Okay, sorry. So, you know, in these stories, the Jesus doughnut, the story I just read, that really happened. The van really did come, everyone was busted, broke, we couldn't get a share. That really happened. The thing with my father and the wrestling and the boxing gear, that really happened. My poor misguided dad, he was worried about me. The way he understood the world was like, a man has to fight. You got to be ready to fight at any time. This kid is a sissy. There's something fucking wrong with this kid. I need to fix it. Let me get the boxing gear. That'll fix it. Totally misguided, but also protective. He was trying to watch out for me, but completely missed the boat. Didn't get it. So there really was incidents where families would show up with nothing. Just their suitcases. They had no jobs lined up. They had no family here. They had no connections. And they had to figure out how to start being working people here. So there's so much truth there. One of the stories, the remundo stories, the hair, the two stories of a remundo, the queer kid who eventually became the town hairdresser, those are based on a real person who I knew and who fascinated and terrified me because it was the 70s and it was a farm town. And here was this person with hair down to his waist and earrings. And back then, the only people who had hair down to their waist and earrings who were male were bike gangs. That was it. Otherwise, you were in a lot of trouble. So those were real. Probably the story that is most attached to the truth, that is most like everything I remember, was the longest story in the book, the story about Alex. That story about the neighbor and gender confusion for me as a little kid and partner abuse, domestic partner abuse, that is full of truth. It's almost like a journalistic recounting in some ways. So yeah, I didn't have to invent very much. There was plenty of content there. I just needed to figure out how to structure it and how to build it and also how to make it feel entertaining. I think one of the beautiful things as you read the book, it reminds you to also think because you're so immersed in the lives of these adolescents that you can't help but think of your own upbringing and the things that you lived through your own trauma and the way that you now are able to articulate and talk about the situations that you survived or that you've lived. But I think in the process of this, as you were developing the voice of Gordo, I think for me what I often question is, how do we not lose hope? How do we have these kids not lose that hope that things will get better? As you were diving into the stories of these characters, how did your own inner child or your own kid come out and have conversations with you? I think the whole thing is an interesting one. I don't remember hearing a lot of messages that were hopeful coming up as a little kid. But what I did remember is incredible stoicism and resilience. There was a lot of me more to deal with it, move on. There was a lot of that. And I think that that was how I was able to understand that. In some ways, I think about it as well. My parents and people like them, they had immigrated when they were in their late teens, early 20s, excuse me. They had just been married a year or two and they immigrated to the United States. And there is such a hope built into that gesture. And it's not like a naive, like, oh, everything's going to be okay. It's more like maybe it can be better. So I think I come from that. And I think that it's something that infuses so many kind of immigrant stories is might not be optimistic or cheery, but there is a hope that things can be better. I remember we would be driving around sometimes. I would be sitting in the back seat with my grandma and my sister. And my grandma would just be looking around. And when we would pass like the highways with the clover leaves and the overpasses, she would be like, this country, she goes, just look at what they do. You make these highways and you could go 100 miles an hour if you want. And they're beautiful and they get you everywhere. And this is what they use their tax dollars for. This is a good country. She would say stuff like that. And it's interesting. It just kind of gets into your consciousness. And it gives you, for me, like a kind of love of country that's not like a crappy jingoistic patriotism. It's more like a respect for what is good there. Yeah. Great. And then we're going to get into the questions. I know that we have some submitted in here. So if you have more questions, please type them in. We want to hear from you. As we warming up for you to get some questions, I want to talk about nicknames and how often nicknames specifically in Mexican culture are given through an attribution or something that's very keen and specific. We were having a pre-conversation with Jaime. We were talking about how often times your parents are your first bullies. If you are here, I would love in the people present, I would love to type if you could type in your nickname or your love name, what your parents nicknamed you. And of course, this happens in so many cultures, right? That the nickname is so important because you're right. Sometimes it can be really kind of not pleasant or rough the nickname, but it's also about belonging. You belong to us so we can refer to you with this special name. And in Mexican families, it's often like the most basic sort of thing. Like you look at the kid, what's the first thing that kind of jumps out? That's the nickname Gordo, fat kid. Chato, flat nose kid, right? Huelo, light-skinned kid. Flaca, skinny girl. So that's it. It's just very straightforward. So yeah. And definitely these nicknames will follow you forever. Yes. Yes. So Flaca can eventually become a big old curvy girl. They're still going to call her Flaca. Yes, my family still calls me Gordo. I'm like, girl. So tremendous, tremendous. Okay, let's see. How did your parents and family receive the book? My parents have both passed away. So sadly, I didn't get to share that with them. I would like to think that they would be excited about it. I did have a wonderful thing happen about three weeks ago. I went to an extended family gathering for the first time since before COVID. It was a beautiful wedding. And a bunch of my family members had already gotten the book and it had only been out a couple of weeks. And the book had only been out for a couple of weeks. And the response from family members was really wonderful. And that meant everything to me. I've been blessed so far. And this book has gotten national attention from me viewers, which has been astounding for me. I was not expecting it to roll out that way, but it did. It's gotten this national attention. But I'm not kidding when I tell you that it meant a little bit more to me, even than that, when a cousin said, man, I love your book. I've only ever read five books in my whole life. And this is one of them. And I just thought, oh, God, really? So yeah, it's meant the world. And so far, it's been really positive. I had a great conversation with some theas and cousins about it. And I want them to look at that and feel like a part of them is there and that the part of them that's there is being treated with tenderness. I'm not whitewashing anything. But I also want to make sure that they feel like there's love. I love these characters because I know who they're really based on. And I love those people. So yeah. Yeah. What ages were you and what years did you live in the migrant camps? We lived there until I was about nine. And then we moved to Watsonville from about age nine to 18. And then I left for college. So those first two chapters of my life were both in farm towns. And then some of the nicknames Chucky for chocolate bar because he was more than it for lollipop because she had a round face. And my Tia was nicknamed Aranya. These are hilarious. Chapparita. Shorty. Shorty. These are amazing. I think like, yeah, within the book, it kind of reminds you of your own upbringing. The other question that I asked was in terms of the characters, yes, we get the stories through Gordo. But we also see the kids around, right? They are also living. And they're also mean to each other. But somehow they're still like friends. But I'm like, you two are so mean to each other. Like, you're leaving them the same thing. It's such toxic little kids. Bien, peleaneros. But when you were developing the stories within the kids, how did you choose what kids to incorporate and for Gordo to interact with? Was that because your own memories of the kids you had around? The kids are mostly composites. So Gordo's older sister Sylvie is the composite of my own real older sister and some of the other cousins in the family, for instance. That's an example. So a lot of them are just composites. And more than anything else, there was something I wanted each of them to kind of represent a little something like Cesar. Cesar was there to just make sure that Gordo always knew that he was not meeting up to macho boy standards. Like, there was a function for that character. So that's part of what informed cobbling together the characters. But yeah, they're all based on real kids. We lived directly next door to my grandparents. We were next door neighbors in the camp. My grandmother had children until a very late age. So my aunts and uncles are my age. We never grew up calling them Theo or Thea because it would be strange to call somebody your age or even younger aunt or uncle. So we just call each other on a first name basis. So we were like this little mob of terrorist kids who were so mean to each other. It's just incredible. That's amazing. What's going to be your next project? Do you have anything in the works? I know that you're super busy. This is why I'm super amazed at the fact that you have this book out because you're a really busy individual. So because I think people think that, you know, being a writer is you writing, but you have another you're doing other things other than writing, right? So you have anything that you're right now it's promoting the book, obviously, but yeah. I think there's a couple of things to say. One of them is that, yes, I think that the stewarding a book that's kind of getting traction, it becomes a kind of a part-time job. And that's something I'm really realizing just in the past few weeks since the book has been released. So I'm seeing that and it feels like this kind of big wave that I see coming on the other horizon. It's a little bit daunting sometimes because I do have a, you know, a more than full-time day job that's meant to lead a taxing job. I work in philanthropy. And so I'm really trying to figure out how I'm going to manage all of this. I would say a couple of other things in terms of finding time. I never, I always think that I never wrote a book. I never had that intention. These stories have been building up for a couple of decades. So for 20 years or so, these stories have been building up. I never intended to do a collection. I just wanted to tell some stories. My editor, John Freeman, helped me to cobble them together into a more cohesive collection. But really, I was never thinking, oh, this is an arc of stories. It was always just, oh, God, I got to tell a story about the doughnut. You know, so it was much more short-sighted. So I never wrote a book. I wrote a bunch of stories that became a book. That's, and the distinction to me is significant because I didn't have a picture in my mind of a whole collection at the beginning. And these took place over a long period of time. If someone had, you know, locked me up and said, you need to write a book now, I don't know what would have happened. I don't know how long that would take. I only know my own process, which was slowly building up stories over the period of years. As for the next thing, I have a list of another dozen or so stories. I have unfinished business with Gordo and his extended family and friends. So there's that. I also have a graphic novel that I really want to do. I like drawing a lot. Drawing is my first and probably greatest love artistically. And I have a graphic novel that I want to do sometime. I want to talk about nursing my parents in the final phase of their life before they died and dealing with dementia and the kind of devastation of seeing someone's stories evaporate. So those are some things that are kind of in the pipeline. Awesome. We have some amazing questions. Are you in touch with any other kids you write about or the people that inspired the characters? That's my crazy family. Yes, I'm in touch with them. Yes, I am. Yes, I see my family regularly. We are very good terms. My older sister, my younger sister, my aunts and uncles. I see a lot of them regularly. And so they're with me and I'm with them. Is there a plan to develop a young adult version of Gordo, a picture book event for younger children? The people are giving you ideas. Yes. Thank you for managing my career because I'm not very good at it. Thank you. So I would say a couple of things about that. Again, this is what happens when you don't set out to write a book. Some of these stories are extremely kid-friendly. I have had people write me through my website to say, oh my god, I've been sharing the first few stories with my eight-year-old. She loves it. And I'm like, okay, that's great. You might want to think twice before sharing some of the latest stories. It's not appropriate for an eight-year-old. You know, that kind of thing. So it's a mishmash of some stuff that's appropriate for maybe kids, a couple of things. And then most, if not all of it, is okay for a young adult reader. So yeah, that might happen. I think if I get to do another collection, it'll be much more focused like audience-wise. Am I thinking about young adults? Am I thinking about something else? I know people are curious to hear about goals of growing up and becoming an adolescent. And people seem very fascinated as well with the character cookie, this badass girl in the labor camp. They're kind of fascinated with this young chingona. So there seems to be some curiosity about what happens to these kids and what happens to them when they kind of move through life. Yeah, we're all rooting for them. I mean, when I was reading this, I'm like, oh, these kids. The other question, why did you decide to write short stories rather than a novel since so many of the stories sent to her world? Do you kind of address this earlier? Yeah, I don't know if I have a novel in me. It's not clear to me. My good friend Claire Light, she released her first novel at the same time as I released this collection. And I read her book and I just couldn't fathom how you could structure such an intricate plot. Like, how do you do that? Like, I just take these things that really happened. I already know how the story ends. So to me, it seems a little bit remarkable that people have that mind. Obviously, it's a skill that you just work towards and you build. But right now, to do such a long arc would be a real stretch for me. Although the story Alex in this book is like 50 pages long, so that kind of begins to give me a taste of the benefits of the long form. So you can really dig into these characters. So that's beautiful. Yeah, I like that. Yeah. And someone said, have you had an affiliation with Dr. Campesino and so Juan Bautista? Honestly, I would love to see this as a play or sketches for some of these kids. Because it's so visual. You can so like see the interactions. I write, the stories is a movie in my head. And I write, I think, you know, my goal is to be almost cinematic. Like, I really like, I don't spend a lot of time exploring the thoughts and inner life of the characters. I try to get at that by showing their actions and words. So I'm interested in what can be seen as a as as revelatory of what's inside. So so yeah, that is kind of the approach I have. It tends to be very visual. Yeah. Awesome. Carla says, thank you. And yeah, I would, I, you know, Dr. Campesino is legendary. I love those folks. Yeah, they're so who knows what other life these kids might take on. Yes, we want to see them on the stage. Thank you for this book, Jaime. I'm glad you found your way in telling these much needed stories. Do you still spend time in Watsonville and San Juan Bautista? Your background looks very much like corralitos. Oh, actually, I do, I live in Watsonville. So I'm here constantly. I'm in San Francisco, usually, you know, part of most weeks, if not every other week. So I'm here in Watsonville a lot. And I go visit family in Hollister. And right now, behind me, what you're seeing is prunedale, which is kind of near between Watsonville and Salinas. So so yes, you were right to you got the basic area right. And this does look like prunedale. This is full of oak trees out here. Awesome. What do you hope for non Latinos takeaway about Mexicans, Mexican Americans, Latinos from your honest takes in your work? I was thinking in those terms, I just wanted to tell our stories. And you'll notice in the book that almost everybody is Mexican immigrant or Chicano of some in some form. And I really had that focus, I just want to talk about how we do each other, how we love each other, how we break each other down, how we destroy each other, or how we try to. That was really interesting to me. I mean, I think that and then for those who are not from this background, I hope they'll see a bit of their own world in that. I know I had someone talk to me about growing up in an extended Irish family and and how they just felt like this was resonant for them, the humor, the nicknames, the tenderness and brutality felt familiar. So I hope they'll see a bit of some of themselves and and maybe make a bit of a connection. Awesome. Thank you, Jaime. I you know, I think I think the wonderful thing about literature, right? And why I love books and obviously the people here are in love with your work is because it allows us to it's a meditation, it allows you to sit and marvel at the lives of the characters, but also take an introspective look at the things you survive and the things you live as a child. So I'm hoping that for all the people that pick up this book and read the book, you know, they visualized this in Bococito that you used to be that third grade picture and you hug them and you hug them and, you know, and then really take care of that because I think that was the reminder when I was reading these stories, right? These kids are are violence is all around and yet they they manage to still view the world with that innocence. And I hope, you know, that's why I'm rooting for those characters. What is your hope for the people that pick up this book? You ask a writer, what do you want people to feel or walk away with once they close the last page? I hope I hope you laugh at some point. I just I just feel like that's like the most special thing I could possibly offer is that sense of no matter what there's not no matter what, but even in the hardest of circumstances, sometimes there's a way to find a kind to kind of reclaim your joy with with laughter. It is it's not something that all authors can do or want to do, but it is what I want to do and it is what I think I can do is to offer that that joy of just laughing and giggling or being like, guys, you know, that moment. And then Betty wants to know people are here really try to manage you. Any t-shirts are merch coming out because we love the cover. Oh, okay. You know, I should think about that. I hadn't even pondered that thought of my friend. Actually, I had once my I have a friend who's starting a t-shirt company was hey, dude, if you want to do these shirts, let me know. Maybe I should. I don't know. Yeah, it's a big it's an amazing cover. It's super, super, super dope. It's great. And then yeah, I love all these career managers, by the way. I'm just trying to kind of reeling from the initial book release and you guys are planning out my next 10 years. It's amazing. It's because we want to see Gordo come out in different forms in different variations. We just want to see Gordo. We want to see Gordo win. Yeah, I laugh while crying crying and crying while I was laughing. Thank you for your Hey, man, where can people follow you and how can we support the book? So I have initiated an Instagram account and I think a Twitter as well. I haven't started being active on it yet because I've been kind of overwhelmed in the past couple months with managing the book stuff. But I will get more active on there and that's probably the easiest way to follow. And then, you know, to support the book, I was talking with my agent and I was asking her how are we doing? Like I don't have any point of reference for how we're doing. This is about two weeks ago. So we're doing really, really well. And one of the things she mentioned was word of mouth is just it is it is so golden in terms of helping the book succeed because just there's nothing like having a trusted friend say, Hey, I really enjoyed this. And I think that that has really helped and she's and her take was the book couldn't be doing as well as doing if there wasn't really good word of mouth happening. And that was very heartening to me. And I was touched to learn that. So if you enjoy it, please let people know about it. Thank you. And of course, purchasing it is wonderful as well. But whatever you're able to do to get the word out if you enjoy it, I think that's just as good. So yeah. Thank you. And I just saw a quick question come up about doing a presentation school presentations. Please reach out to me, Olga. I think you were Facebook friends. So please reach out to me. I like talking to students. And if you think it's age appropriate, I'm happy to do that. Amazing. I'm super, super excited for this book. I'm so excited to see it in the bookstores. I was at Powell's today and I saw it. I'm like, yes. That's in Seattle. Yeah. Again, Portland. Okay, Portland. Yeah. Legendary. Yay. Super, super amazing. But yeah, Jaime, I'm so super, super, super happy and congratulations on the success of the book. There's 40 people here. Tell other 40 people so we get this book to everybody. But yeah, muchas gracias for this and for your labor and I'm super excited. And one other thing I didn't mention in terms of reaching out, I have a website Jaime Cortez.org. You can also email me through that. So that's it. And I do check that. So and sometimes I'm a little slow because there's a lot of communication happening right now. But Jaime Cortez.org is another easy way. There's a way to contact me through that. Awesome. Thank you so much, Jaime. I wish you the best. Mucho, mucho, mucho éxito con el libro. Thank you everybody for being present and spending your lovely Sunday afternoon con nosotros. I will pass it back to Kevin. Thank you both so much. Thank you Jaime. Thank you, Yosemite. This has been great. Thank you to the audience for all the great comments and questions. Yeah. This was great. Thank you so much for joining us. Have a good afternoon. Take care.