Elizabeth Acevedo stopped by Ali Velshi’s MSNBC news show to discuss her book The Poet X as part of Velshi’s Banned Book Club.
Acevedo’s breakout book, a young adult novel in verse, was published in 2018 by HarperTeen. The story of Xiomara, a 15-year-old Dominican American girl and aspiring poet growing up in Harlem with a devout Catholic mother, The Poet X won the National Book Award and was a finalist for the Kirkus Prize.
The novel has been the subject of challenges and bans because of its themes of religion, race, and sexuality.
Acevedo, the National Young People’s Poet Laureate, talked about the novel’s depiction of the relationship between Xiomara, who is questioning the faith she was brought up in, and her intensely religious mother.
“This relationship, this How do you get someone to understand where you’re coming from when they want to protect you so badly [that] they silence you, became kind of the overarching theme between mother and daughter,” she said.
Velshi asked Acevedo what she would say to readers who are hesitant to pick up a book of free-verse poetry.
“I think a good collection of poetry or a novel in verse will teach you how to read it,” Acevedo said. “If you surrender to the first couple of pages, you’ll get into the rhythm, you’ll get into the music.…Poetry is in many ways some of our first languages. Our parents sing us lullabies; our parents tell us rhymes all the time. We grew up listening to poetry, and then we lose that. There is nothing wrong with returning to poetry, because it’s in us, and it’s been there since the beginning. So be welcome, come in, hang out with us.”
Michael Schaub is a contributing writer.
