Pat mora author biography john

A former teacher, university administrator, museum director, and consultant, Pat is working on new books for adults and children. Search for:. The author of several books of poetry, Toi Derricotte is cofounder of Cave Canem, a national poetry organization committed to cultivating the artistic and professional growth of African American poets.

She served as a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets from to Search Submit. Poets Search more than 3, biographies of contemporary and classic poets. Farah, Cynthia ed. Literature and Landscape 1st ed. The Autobiography Society: — S2CID Pat Mora's Homepage. Library Media Connection. Retrieved 7 February Association for Library Service to Children.

American Library Association. American Library Association: Awards and Grants. Literature and Landscape: Writers of the Southwest 1st ed. External links [ edit ]. Authority control databases. Mora's poetry is often anthologized, and her work is studied in elementary schools, high schools, and colleges. Several of her poems, including "" and "Illegal Alien," are considered classics.

Mora is generally commended as a writer whose contributions to literature, literacy, and cultural awareness have been significant. She also is noted for introducing children to Latino culture in a joyful and entertaining manner. Mora's books for children have been acclaimed almost universally for the sensitive and deft portrayals of Mexican Americans and Mexican culture….

Mora's writing for children has also helped to bring Hispanic culture to non-Hispanic children. She provides an excellent model for young Hispanics who are just beginning to understand the past and are about to experience promising futures…. As a successful Hispanic writer, and a writer who writes about and for Hispanics, Mora is an exemplary role model for the young people of an increasingly multicultural America.

Mora features her family extensively throughout her works. The Mora family is descended from Mexicans and a Spanish sea captain. The family settled in El Paso, as did her maternal grandparents, Eduardo and Amelia Delgado, who also had left Mexico during the revolution. At seven, he started selling newspapers; by ten, he had the pat mora author biography john spots in El Paso.

He then worked at Riggs Optical, a subsidiary of Bausch and Lomb, a company with which he stayed for ten years. During this time, he met and married Estela Delgado. A voracious reader, Estela had excelled as a student in grade school, despite the presence of a racist principal who was prejudiced against Mexicans. As a high school student, she won several speech contests.

Estela hoped to go on to college and become a writer, but was unable to continue her education due to the Depression. She met Mora on a blind date when she was seventeen; they were married five years later, in As a small child, Mora pointed to a pair of eye glasses and said the word, antiojoswhich is "glasses" in Spanish. She then began to run around the house, affixing names to everything in it.

Her grandmother Sotero Amelia Landavazo, called Mamande by the children, was a red-haired orphan who had been taken in and raised by rich relatives. She married Eduardo Delgado, a judge with three grown daughters, one of whom was Mora's mother's half-sister, Ignacia Nacha Delgado, whom the Mora children nicknamed Lobo, which is Spanish for wolf.

Nacha would come home from work in the evenings and ask affectionately in Spanish, "Where are my little wolves? I was born in these United States and am very much influenced by this culture. But I do want to polish, polish my writing tools to preserve images of women like Lobo, unsung women whose fierce family love deserves our respect. Mora attended St.

Patrick's School, a Roman Catholic grade school that was run by an order of nuns, the Sisters of Loretto. She also was learning about the power of words. Lobo's first, though at the time I'm unaware of her luring, unaware that stories are essential as water. I take books home from school and public libraries, join summer reading clubs, read biographies.

When I was in grade school …, I read comic books and mysteries and magazines and library books. I was soaking up language. Mora said in a Scholastic Authors Online Library interview. Although, at the time, I probably grumbled and griped about it, it was helpful to me…. I always liked poetry. I had lots of books in my house and I would just open them up and read all sorts of poetry.

Despite her interest in books and language, Mora did not think of becoming a writer as a child.

Pat mora author biography john

She related in the Scholastic Authors Online Library interview, "I always liked reading, and I always liked writing, but I don't think I thought of being a writer. I say that to students all the time because I never saw a writer like me—who was bilingual. So it's important for kids to realize that writers come in all different shapes and sizes.

She did not want her friends to know that she spoke Spanish to her grandmother and aunt, and she cringed when her father played mariachi music on the radio. At school, Mora found little consolation in being Mexican. I wished that we had had books that had Spanish in them. And I wished that I had seen things about Mexican culture on the bulletin boards and in the library.

One of the reasons that I write children's books is because I want Mexican culture and Mexican-American culture to be a part of our schools and libraries. He worked evenings and weekends to support his family, and he was aided in his business by Estela and the children. After graduating from high school, Mora thought about becoming a doctor, then decided to be a teacher.

Shortly after graduation, she married William H. Burn-side, Jr. In the first year of her first marriage, Mora began to teach English and Spanish at grade and high schools in El Paso.