This week, TheLatinoAuthor.com is featuring David Bueno-Hill. David currently resides in Los Angeles, California, and works for the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD). This interview captures an informative view into his life and how he used this experience to propel him in his career and life. It’s compelling, revealing, and gives an extremely candid view into the writing world.
Can you begin by telling us a little bit about yourself; where you grew up, where you currently reside, family upbringing, or anything you would like our readers to know about you?
I grew up on both coasts: east and west. I was born in Jamaica, Queens in a county hospital. My mom had to walk five blocks in labor because my abuelito didn’t want to drive her. She had gotten pregnant by a Puerto Rican, out of wedlock, who left her before I was born. When I was three, my mom hooked up with a black guy from Harlem who, after only a year, asked her to move to California with him. He had gotten recently divorced and needed to get away for legal reasons.
Besides that, everything was pretty normal until I turned 15 and joined a gang. I quickly realized that that wasn’t the life for me after being caught in a gang raid by the Inglewood Police Department. I went back to N.Y. to live with my abuelitos in Queens. I went to five high schools in three different states. In college I studied creative writing, but the chip on my shoulder really stopped me from making any real progress. I was always in some kind of trouble either on the streets or in school. I got kicked out of the dorms. I was unemployed after graduation when I found out that the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) was hiring teachers left and right. So, I went down to the district offices and got hired. I’ve been teaching for 12 years now. I have three kids and a wonderful wife. I’m the author of three award winning novels and one that just came out in April. So, this tragic tale of sex, drugs, and violence does have a happy ending.
When and what compelled you to be an author?
I always loved writing. I started in my most troubled times expressing my frustration with life in raps that I would recite to my friends while we were drunk and high. I have a ton of poems from my teenage years that just have to do with killing, sex, and drugs – not my best work, but probably the most real. Before you learn to write and study writing, all that stuff is beautifully raw. I had this idea of being a writer that was completely false, to travel the world, do drugs, and drink. After college I decided to put a book together. It took me five years to finish my first book “I Wasn’t Born a Teacher.” I loved writing back then.
You write with a focus on Teen Adult Fiction; although, your novels are also great for adults. What made you keep the focus more on the teenage group?
I know what these kids are going through on the streets. I am very respectful to my students because I don’t just see a kid talking during a lesson. I wonder if he’s being neglected, abused, or bullied out in the world. Now I see myself in school and it’s scary. My dad gave me a great foundation for education, so even when I was living with an aunt or uncle, I still kept my grades up. The kids I teach don’t have that. The school’s I taught at and teach at 99% Latino. There are no books that they can relate to. So I wrote the Mr. Clean Trilogy which is a series of books that any Latino teen living in America can pick up and immediately identify with.
What people, famous and otherwise, have inspired you to write?
I found a spiritual awakening when I read “The Third Eye” by T. Lobsang Rampa. It’s an autobiography, but he goes through some intense spiritual training. It tarted to make me believe that books could impact people’s lives. I’ve got to credit Ana Castillo here also. Her books were some of the first Latino based books that I’d read and they were a real eye-opener. I, like my students, had no idea that Latinos could be main characters in novels. I had a lot of encouragement at Cal State Northridge from my teachers, but I think I mostly just pissed them off with my attitude and raging silence. I came to class with a black eye once, and it was the first time many of them ever talked to me. Even with that, their passion and love of literature did inspire me. The creative writing program there is top notch.
What are some of the hurdles you’ve faced as a writer from a publishing or marketing perspective?
Hurdles? More like mountains. After I wrote “I Wasn’t Born a Teacher” I sent the manuscript out to any publisher and agent that I could find an address for. I received a mountain of rejection letters, and more commonly no reply at all. I decided to self-publish and soon realized from feedback that my book just wasn’t ready. I changed some things and reissued it. I never gave up. One day I got an email from Jeff Rivera, the author of “Forever My Lady,” and he had a great idea to start a company that would only produce books for Latino teens.
The company bombed, and I was left with the rights to “Mr. Clean and the Barrio.” I still didn’t give up. He had a great concept, but the execution was wrong. I kept on and now The Mr. Clean Trilogy has received three awards in total from the International Latino Book Awards and the Latino Books into Movies awards. Marketing was also a big issue. If I was 16 and I had 10 dollars, I’d go buy a beer and a nickel bag, not a book. How do you get kids to buy a book? It’s impossible. So I marketed myself to schools, but they didn’t want to touch my work because of the gang content and underage drinking.
The whole system is in denial and it’s a big problem. We can’t ignore gangs and drugs in the classroom. That is one place that we should be able to discuss these things intelligently. I digress, I kept trying new things like, postcard marketing, online marketing, mass emails. I’m not sure that Mr. Clean is suitable for mass consumption, but I get paid by Amazon every month for kindle sales, so people are buying my books on a digital level at least.
Do you feel that being Latino has hindered or helped in your writing career, or do you see this as a non-issue?
You are what you are – right? I tried putting my books in white book contests to no avail. I tried submitting to white publishers and literary magazines with no success. But when I put Mr. Clean and the Barrio in the Latino Book Awards, I got an Honorable Mention. It really excited and shocked me. It was like I’d found a place where my passion and dedication to literature could be recognized. I’m Latino and so are my characters in my books, so why would I be recognized by some lit magazine in Ohio? I’m fine with it, I love my people and apparently my work speaks to them as well. I don’t think I answered the question…, or did I?
How has your life experiences influenced your writing?
My life experiences are the foundation for every character, event, and sequence in my books. I wouldn’t write about 18th century Nigeria because I don’t know anything about it. I know about living in American cities as a Latino and doing anything to survive, so that’s what I write about. “I Wasn’t Born a Teacher” is basically my life story. What the character Kabel goes through is what I went through. The other characters are all composites of people I met and the times we shared, but after that it’s all fiction. In Mr. Clean, I took a lot of my initial determination and relentless need for respect, both at home and on the streets. I combined all of that into a scenario where it could be read in a classroom and explored using the state standards. I took out the profanity and sex that go with living on the streets and made the realest coming of age book for Latino teens since “Always Running,” by Luis Rodriquez.
What is your take on the “banned” books ethnic studies effort going on in the Educational system in Arizona? Do you think that this can somehow have an effect on your writing in the future? Please elaborate.
I actually had to Google that. I knew things were bad over there for la gente, but I didn’t know it was going that far. That’s crazy. Seems like a lack of ignorance that’s soaking up all the trees. How can they deny the truth? The history of Latinos is inescapably intertwined with American History. My books might end up on the banned list soon, I have a bit of the history of presidios and how Jesus was forced upon Latinos early in American history in the first book. I don’t know if I’m going to continue writing in the future. I really feel done at this point. Unless I get an agent, or a movie deal, I think I’m stepping away from this writing monster. I contributed to the history of human civilization and I need to focus on raising my kids now. If I did feel like writing again, I might tackle that issue in a roundabout way, maybe have characters affected by it, but if I don’t experience something like that I think any fiction I produce about it would seem contrived and I’d probably just leave it alone. I think it’s up to the next great Latino author coming out of Arizona to chronicle those emotions and those events.
What is the best writing advice you can give our readers?
Don’t do it. Writers get so little recognition and less money, especially Latino writers. You’ll have to fight tooth and nail for that Honorable Mention – trust me I’m speaking from experience. You hang it on your wall and keep writing, but the call never comes. No agent, no publisher, just a small payment in your bank account from a company that barely knows you exist. If you’re hard-headed and you’re dead set on writing then I’d say, never give up.
Even if you never become a millionaire from your work, you will reach a level of satisfaction from chasing your dreams and expressing yourself. So many people have dead dreams that they carry around like an endless scab on their soul. They wonder what could have been and make excuses. No time. No money. Too many kids. Don’t be those people. If the writing monster bit you early there’s no vaccine for it. Now you have to write, so go write and make it good, revise it, rewrite it, rework it, good writing is rewriting. Go! Stop reading this and go write.
In your Trilogy of Mr. Clean, what is it that you want your audience to take away once they read these books?
That’s tough. I definitely want readers to know that there are many dimensions to that “cholo” on the corner. I’m not going to lie, I only wrote these books with the intention of my audience being Latino teens, that’s why there is a brown history lesson in each book I write. Our people are so diverse. I hope that comes across in my writing. I want the Latino teens to know that they have not been forgotten by literature. I remember them every day as do readers of my books. You’re struggle is important. We need you to keep pushing, to never give up, and to always seek a bright future. I want them to read the trilogy, enjoy it, but to know that the overall message is to never join a gang. Never give up your freedom and individuality. We’ve fought so long in this country to gain that and it’s an invaluable asset.
What is your next project or do you have any upcoming events that you would like to share with our readers and audience?
“Mr. Clean’s Last Stand” debuted at the L.A. Times Festival of Books this year. It’s the final book in The Mr. Clean Saga. Go get it! I don’t have any events coming up. I participated in Barrio Writers this year out of Cal State Fullerton, and had a professor at Occidental College use my books in his class. I had a couple of TV interviews on local channels in Orange County, but in the near future there isn’t much.
I did what I wanted to do. I wrote books. That was my dream and I accomplished it. I’m looking into being a renaissance man and adding a couple of other titles to my belt besides author and teacher. Who knows, politics, business, the world is my oyster. I have screenplays adapted for my novels and I won a Latino Books into Movies Award this year. We’ll see if Mr. Clean ever makes it to the big screen. It would be nice. I do plan on releasing a “Complete Mr. Clean Saga” in a couple of years, a chance for readers to get the all three novels in one book. Contact me through my sadly neglected website www.painispoetry.com if you want to continue the dialogue. Laters!
Contact: www.PainIsPoetry.com
