Interview with Ernesto Javier Martinez, Author of “When We Love Someone We Sing To Them”

You have written several nonfiction books for adults, but When We Love Someone We Sing to Them is your first children’s book. What about the process of writing a children’s book was more (or less) interesting, challenging, and/or enjoyable for you than the process of writing for adults?

I would not have written the kind of intimate children’s book that I did without the close mentorship of my friend and illustrator Maya Gonzalez. She helped me to understand, on a personal/visceral level, why it is so important for queer adults to insist upon communicating with queer kids, and why that insistence is such a radical act within heteropatriarchal societies. Writing this book under her mentorship afforded me the opportunity to give voice to something in my body that needed healing, regarding my own childhood. It also helped me to understand just how essential it is to cultivate stories that originate from the experiences of queer people of color, experiences that while sometimes painful can be transformed through story into medicine for our youth.

How has your work as a professor, with students and other educators, impacted the creation of When We Love Someone We Sing to Them?

As an educator, I am keenly aware that the creative work I produce exists in a context where working-class, Latinx, and queer youth are strikingly underrepresented. For example, 20% of youth in the US live under the poverty line, but only 2% of children’s television depicts characters with lower socio-economic status. Latinxs constitute 18% of the US population, but only 5% of children’s books currently reflect Latinx communities. In 2018, more children’s books were published about animals and objects (27%) than about African Americans, Latinxs, Asian Americans, and Native Americans, combined (23%). Notably, these disparities in representation have consequences. Research shows that a lack of representation in media can lead to negative psychological outcomes, especially regarding self-esteem in youth who are poorly or not represented. Additionally, longitudinal studies on youth suicide confirm a startling reality: queer youth are 3 times more likely than their straight peers to attempt suicide, and some studies suggest that suicide attempts by queer youth are 4-6 times more likely to result in injury compared to straight peers. I wrote When We Love Someone We Sing to Them fully aware of the importance of positive representation for queer youth.

When We Love Someone We Sing to Them addresses many aspects of identity, including (but not limited to): belonging, parenthood, culture, tradition, and sexual orientation. What was the process of creating a children’s book including so many important - and intersectional - topics like for you?

I never set out to create a children’s book that “covered” many "intersectional" topics. However, I did set out to create a story that spoke to my life and to the deep hurt that I carried as a queer Chicano/Puerto Rican kid who grew up in a musical family that did not always understand how in conflict I was with our cultural traditions. This meant that I had to do quite a bit of self-reflection, pre-writing, and meditative activities to better understand what I was wrestling with as a person, which was related to, but different from the story I would eventually share with children and their families.

In the story, the father’s support for his child is wholehearted; he helps his child learn to share his feelings for Andrés through song just as they have done for his mother. What does it mean to you that the father’s response was one of immediate support and love?

Latino men are frequently represented in literature, film, media as valuing family and tradition. Too often, however, these representations suggest that Latino family values are antithetical to embracing and respecting LGBTQ kin. My book directly challenges that representation, underscoring the emotional intelligence and queer friendliness already present in working-class, immigrant communities. While homophobia does exist in our communities, my book offers parents and families a new story to tell, one that centers a new generation of fathers and prioritizes the well-being of queer Latinx youth.

You wrote the screenplay for “La Serenata”: a short film following the same storyline as When We Love Someone We Sing to Them. How did the experience of writing a screenplay compare to writing the book?

Both the book and the short film are products of intimate collaboration with Xicana feminist artist-educators who partnered with me to curate stories that provided healing for our communities. “La Serenata” was directed by Adelina Anthony, a critically acclaimed and award-winning actor, writer, producer, and director. As for the process of writing the screenplay, I enjoyed it tremendously. However, since screenwriting can be quite technical, I had a great deal of learning to do. I read many screenwriting books and eventually enrolled in a year-long screenwriting class at UCLA. One of the benefits of continuing to develop competency as a screenwriter is that I’ve been given several freelance writing opportunities to write for children’s television programs.