This is gonna get dirty...

Read anything good lately?

I was so excited to read the newest pick from Oprah’s Book Club, but then…

Anything...scandalous?

I have always been a big reader, thanks in large part to my mom's "No TV in the house" rule. [To be clear, yes, we owned a TV, but it was only used for watching movies.]

Books were always a huge form of entertainment, and as a side bonus, they also helped me to build a tremendous vocabulary from early on.

As a language coach, I (and many other teachers) highly encourage reading in your second language because it is the number ONE way to build your vocabulary.

In my Beginning Intermediate levels, most of what we read are short stories created by me. At the Intermediate level, we start branching out to shorter news articles, song lyrics, poetry, and original short stories. At the Advanced level, we read entire works of literature by Spanish-speaking authors!

You can see the trend: more language skills, more reading. These go hand-in-hand!

There's another trend that may not be as obvious:

As my students' fluency progresses, they also move from material created mostly by the teacher (me) to authentic material written by those who not only speak the language, but also represent the culture.

Reading is not just about language and vocabulary building. It's about the stories, and the people and traditions and cultures that they contain.

On a trip to Costco this weekend, I got momentarily distracted by the book section. [This is a regular occurrence in my Costco shopping trips.]

As my husband tried to pull me away, I cried out, "But look! This is the book that was on my list!"

I pointed to the copy of AMERICAN DIRT by Jeanine Cummins. I had heard rave reviews about the newest Oprah Book Club pick that examined that life of a woman who worked - ahem - in a bookstore in Mexico, who was unwittingly charmed by a high-ranking member of a powerful drug cartel and ended up immigrating - or escaping - to the United States with her daughter. It was being praised as a modern-day Grapes of Wrath seen through the eyes of a Mexican citizen. I was, needless to say, intrigued.

I managed to put the book down instead of adding it to my cart only so that I could check to see if the price was any better on Amazon [it wasn't].

Once there, I noticed there was a Spanish-language version of the book! But...the reviews were TERRIBLE.

Nearly every review explicitly outlined what an offensive, stereotypical portayal of Mexican people this book was, with no knowledge of the language or the culture.

Es más, one reviewer made the powerful point that the author was not only from outside the culture, but she had received a 7-figure advance for the book, while Mexican and Mexican-American female authors notably struggle to be published with fair salaries.

Suddenly, as both a student of the culture and a responsible consumer, I felt extremely not-so-great about buying this book.

[At this point, I have to ask: have you read American Dirt? Is it on your list?]

The experience really served to underline the importance of what I already practice in my advanced "Book Club" classes: we read literature by those who live within the culture, the majority of which are not translated but published originally in Spanish or English, whichever the class is studying.

Each book is an adventure, a journey, a lesson, a friend. They are powerful tools for language-learning and understanding history, traditions, perspectives, and experiences from other cultures outside our own.

So...what's on your reading list?

Tu amiga,

PS - If you'd like to experience a mini "El Club de Libros" or Book Club class session for yourself, check out my latest episode of #SpanishSaturday on my YouTube channel here!