I’m working to reconnect with my extended family on my mother’s side and to acknowledge my family’s personal experience of mixed heritage now that I have daughters of my own. To be honest, I often felt uncomfortable identifying as Puerto Rican/Latinx, because of the fact of having been raised mostly Jewish, and not Latinx “enough.' I was the artsy one or the preppy one, depending on where I was. Among my less-rich friends, I was the rich one. Among my “rich” friends, we had less (though admittedly we had plenty). Among POC communities, I “presented” as a fairly stereotypical white, Northeastern Jew. I realize that my experience growing up was spent feeling “in-between” – among my Jewish friends, I was the only one with family that wasn’t Ashkenazi Jew. I would add that in these conversations, I’ve also begun coming to terms with my status as “mixed race,” and my own personal experience as a Latinx. We’ve just recently started to have conversations about how and why these choices were made. Of course, a decade-ish later, it’s clear to me that I was also slowly coming to terms with my parents’ choice to raise me predominantly as a Jew, quite sheltered from my Puerto Rican family. At the time it felt like a fairly typical coming-of-age story drawn from my own experiences. How do you connect to your heritage through your books (if at all)?Įmily Goldberg Learns to Salsa was my first original novel (outside of series and category publishing). I remember really embracing Cubanita by Gaby Triana, and You Are SO Not Invited to My Bat Mitzvah! by Fiona Rosenbloom. At the time that I was writing Emily Goldberg Learns to Salsa, I also really appreciated very modern, contemporary representations of both Jewish culture and Latinx culture, which so often – prior to that point – were heavily featured in historical work. I did love the book Incantation by Alice Hoffman about Marrano Jews during the Spanish Inquisition. More than any specific blend of Latinx/Jewish fiction, I responded as an adult reader of YA to books about blended cultures overall.

When was the first time you saw yourself represented? Around the house we call it “Jewyorican.”

My father is Jewish, and my mother is Puerto Rican (though she converted to Judaism when she married my father, and I grew up very assimilated). ¡Qué bonita bandera! AKA what heritage(s) do you claim?

Amity by micol ostow