[et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ admin_label=”Page Title Section” _builder_version=”4.9.1″ background_color=”rgba(247,194,170,0.74)” use_background_color_gradient=”on” background_color_gradient_start=”#f4f4f4″ background_color_gradient_end=”rgba(244,244,244,0)” background_color_gradient_direction=”90deg” background_color_gradient_start_position=”50%” background_color_gradient_end_position=”80%” background_color_gradient_overlays_image=”on” background_enable_image=”off” custom_padding=”150px||150px|”][et_pb_row _builder_version=”4.9.1″ background_color=”#fb4b8b” background_size=”initial” background_position=”top_left” background_repeat=”repeat” max_width=”960px” custom_margin=”||40px|0px” custom_padding=”27px|40px||10%” animation_style=”slide” animation_direction=”left” animation_intensity_slide=”2%” border_radii=”||6px|6px|” border_width_right=”30px” border_color_right=”#bdada0″ box_shadow_style=”preset3″ box_shadow_vertical=”35px” box_shadow_blur=”70px” box_shadow_spread=”-35px” box_shadow_color=”rgba(0,0,0,0.6)” use_custom_width=”on” custom_width_px=”960px”][et_pb_column type=”4_4″ _builder_version=”3.25″ custom_padding=”|||” custom_padding_tablet=”|||10%” custom_padding_last_edited=”off|desktop” padding_tablet=”|||10%” padding_last_edited=”off|desktop” custom_padding__hover=”|||”][et_pb_text admin_label=”Title” _builder_version=”3.27.4″ text_font=”||||||||” header_font=”Abhaya Libre|700|||||||” header_font_size=”70px” header_line_height=”1.2em” header_4_font=”||||||||” background_layout=”dark” custom_margin=”|||” custom_padding=”|||” header_font_size_tablet=”40px” header_font_size_phone=”” header_font_size_last_edited=”on|tablet”]<\/p>\n
[\/et_pb_text][\/et_pb_column][\/et_pb_row][et_pb_row column_structure=”1_2,1_2″ _builder_version=”4.9.1″ custom_padding=”38px||70px|||”][et_pb_column type=”1_2″ _builder_version=”4.9.1″ background_color=”RGBA(0,0,0,0)” custom_padding=”|||” custom_padding_tablet=”40px|40px|40px|40px” custom_padding_phone=”” custom_padding_last_edited=”on|tablet” padding_tablet=”40px|40px|40px|40px” padding_last_edited=”on|tablet” custom_padding__hover=”|||”][et_pb_text _builder_version=”3.27.4″ text_font=”Nunito||||||||” text_font_size=”18px” text_line_height=”1.8em” header_font=”||||||||” max_width=”600px” custom_margin=”|||” custom_padding=”||10px|” animation_style=”slide” animation_direction=”right” animation_intensity_slide=”5%” animation_starting_opacity=”100%” locked=”off”]<\/p>\n
Yuyi Morales was born in Xalapa, Mexico on November 7, 1968. The first years of Yuyi\u2019s life were marked by both scarcity and creativity. Yuyi and her two sisters did not have the same clothes or receive the same presents as their schoolmates. Instead, their mother sewed Yuyi and her sisters\u2019 clothes, bedsheets, curtains, and lampshades. When the family couldn\u2019t afford the gifts the girls wanted for their birthdays, Yuyi\u2019s mother would make everything from the cakes to the invitations to their dresses to their shoes. In a sense, her mother\u2019s resourcefulness was Yuyi\u2019s first introduction to art.<\/p>\n
When she was growing up, Yuyi did not conceive of becoming an artist. Simply put, this was not a career path that seemed viable to girls like Yuyi. But even so, Yuyi loved to create. When she was only five years old, she crocheted her own hat and vest. Soon after, her mother showed her to use the sewing machine so she could make clothes for her dolls.\u00a0Although she did not think of herself as an artist, she was skilled enough that a teacher in middle school saw a painting Yuyi made for an assignment and said there was no way she had actually painted it and gave her a low grade as punishment.\u00a0It was against this backdrop and an environment that told her that her art was suspicious and therefore not worthy, that Yuyi imagined herself as a grown up doing something else entirely\u2014being a swimming teacher.<\/p>\n
Yuyi and her sisters, whose exploits and antics would later influence her books, Ni\u00f1o Wrestles the World and Rudas<\/em>,\u00a0swam competitively in their youth. Yuyi loved swimming, so after high school, Yuyi moved to the port city of Veracruz, where she lived with an aunt while she studied physical education and psychology at La Universidad Veracruzana. Then, in the summer of 1993, Yuyi met her future husband, Tim, a tall American who hung around Veracruz\u2019s cafes busking and playing regional folk music. In March of 1994, their son, Kelly, was born. Only days later, Tim got a phone call that set into motion the events that led to Yuyi\u2019s migration to the U.S.<\/p>\n When Tim learned that his grandfather had had a stroke, he decided he wanted Yuyi and his son to meet his grandfather. So Tim\u2019s mother set about finding a way to get Tim and his new family to the United States as soon as possible. Two months later, Yuyi, the recipient of a K1 Fiance Visa, crossed the bridge from Ciudad Juarez to El Paso, Texas, a moment memorialized in her book Dreamers<\/em>. Yuyi did not know when she crossed that bridge, that she would end up staying in the U.S. for nearly 20 years and would leave life as she knew it behind.<\/p>\n What Yuyi did not understand when she got her visa was that she was now obligated to live as a resident in the United States, or she would lose her visa.\u00a0She came to the U.S. with less than a week\u2019s worth of clothes and expected she\u2019d be back in Mexico soon and her parents and her sisters and her teenage brother would get to see Kelly grow. Instead, Yuyi now had no choice but to live in an unfamiliar country at the suburban home of her husband\u2019s parents, who spoke no Spanish, while Tim worked during the day.<\/p>\n This was the most difficult year of Yuyi\u2019s life. As she remembers it, she cried every night. In a town of mostly well-off white Americans, the only brown or Spanish-speaking people she knew were the Peruvian couple who came by Tim\u2019s parent\u2019s house every two weeks to clean. Tim\u2019s parents tried their best to make Yuyi feel included and introduce her to some of the wonders of the United States\u2014Yuyi was amazed, for example, by Indian food, which she declared \u201ctasted like flowers smelled,\u201d\u2014but there is no easy cure for transnational loneliness. To pass the time, Yuyi would write long letters to her family, replete with drawings of her and Kelly\u2019s life in this strange country.<\/p>\n Yuyi\u2019s life was forever changed when her mother-in-law took her to the public library, where Yuyi found refuge. In the children\u2019s book section, Yuyi found worlds that she could escape to. Although her English was rudimentary, she found that she understood the messages these books conveyed through visual language. Yuyi became an avid reader of children\u2019s books and through them she began to improve her English. When Yuyi, Tim, and Kelly moved to San Francisco, Yuyi made her second home at the San Francisco Public Library\u2019s Western Addition branch. On countless occasions, Yuyi and Kelly would stay at the library until closing time reading until a particularly attentive librarian took notice of Yuyi and offered to sign her and Kelly up for their own library cards.<\/p>\n At first Yuyi was certain there must be some kind of catch\u2014surely it couldn\u2019t be legal for her to simply take as many books as she wanted home with her. But the librarian, Nancy, assured her that she could do exactly that as long as the books made their way back to the library by their return date. With this incredible knowledge in mind, Yuyi began taking literal piles of books home with her, to the point that Kelly\u2019s stroller once broke under the weight of so many books. As Yuyi devoured more and more children\u2019s books, the letters she wrote to her family began to take on a form not unlike the books she so loved. Her and Kelly\u2019s adventures in this unfamiliar country were woven into rich narratives illustrated with burgeoning confidence and detail.<\/p>\n As Yuyi became more comfortable in the U.S., she became more and more interested in telling stories. Yuyi realized that the fantastical tales her tios and tias and abuelas told her of apparitions and unbelievable adventure were rich in detail and wonder. Those stories and the Mexican folklore of Yuyi\u2019s youth became the source material of a children\u2019s segment for the radio show, P\u00e1jaro Latinoamericano, she hosted for three years on San Francisco’s KPOO.\u00a0In this same period of time, Yuyi enrolled in an extension class on children\u2019s book illustration at UC Berkeley where she met the future members of her critique group, the Revisionaries. It was in this class and in her meetings with the Revisionaries that Yuyi made her first attempts at writing a children\u2019s book.<\/p>\n Yuyi found that the stories she wanted to tell were inspired by the tales her family had told her growing up. One of these stories, which later became her book, Just a Minut<\/em>e, was not a typical children\u2019s book story; its plot revolved around death and trickery. In this story,\u00a0a skeleton named Se\u00f1or Calavera<\/em>\u2014death\u2014arrives at the home of Grandma Beetle to take her away. But Grandma Beetle finds creative ways to stall Se\u00f1or Calavera<\/em> until finally, her grandchildren arrive for her birthday party, which Se\u00f1or Calavera<\/em> enjoys so much that he decides to leave her be and promises to return for the next party. When Yuyi showed this story to her critique group, they encouraged her to use the story to apply for the Society of Children\u2019s Books Writers and Illustrators\u2019 Don Freeman Grant.<\/p>\n Yuyi didn\u2019t expect anything to come out of applying for this grant, but when she received it, she got the validation she needed to start thinking seriously about being a full-time illustrator and so she presented her portfolio at SCBWI\u2019s 2000 conference, where her work caught the attention of an editor at Harcourt Children\u2019s Books, Jeanette Larson. When Harcourt offered her a contract to illustrate Kathleen Krull\u2019s Harvesting Hope<\/em>, a children\u2019s book about Mexican-American civil rights and labor activist Cesar Chavez, Yuyi realized she needed a literary agent. Yuyi didn\u2019t know any literary agents or any way to connect with them, so she did what she often did when she felt lost\u2014she went to the library.<\/p>\n That day, Yuyi happened to find an article in Publishers Weekly\u00a0on powerful and influential literary agents and decided to cold call two of them. The one who seemed to take her seriously, Charlotte Sheedy, told her that she didn\u2019t always represent children\u2019s book authors and illustrators, so she\u2019d have to see Yuyi\u2019s work before making a decision. When Yuyi sent her portfolio to Charlotte in that fateful e-mail, she quickly received a reply that appeared to be sent to the wrong person. It read, \u201cMiranda, I just signed a new illustrator and I think she\u2019s going to be a success.\u201d\u00a0With Charlotte now in her corner, Yuyi received the contract to illustrate Harvesting Hope<\/em> as well as a contract to write and illustrate Just a Minute<\/em>, which had scared off several publishers who rejected the manuscript, fearing it was not appropriate for the children\u2019s book market.<\/p>\n Before making her illustrations for Harvesting Hope<\/em>, Yuyi went to California\u2019s Central Valley to see the farms and crops whose workers Chavez fought for and met with labor leaders and activists who had known him. Yuyi\u2019s illustrations for Harvesting Hope<\/em>, done in acrylic, were lauded for their vivid colors and soaring perspectives;\u00a0Kirkus Reviews favorably compared\u00a0her work to the muralistic style of Diego Rivera. Harvesting Hope<\/em> received the Jane Addams Book Award, the Christopher Award, and the Pura Belpr\u00e9 Honor for illustration. That same year, 2004, Just a Minute<\/em>\u00a0won the Tomas Rivera Mexican American Children\u2019s Book Award and the Pura Belpr\u00e9 Medal award for illustration.<\/p>\n The success of Harvesting Hope<\/em> and Just a Minute<\/em> changed Yuyi\u2019s life. She was now an award-winning illustrator of two books and she and her family had moved to the Bay Area\u2019s East Bay suburbs where she now had her own studio, a big upgrade from the railroad apartment hallway where she drew and painted previously. And now, Yuyi had even more books to write and illustrate. In Amanda White\u2019s Sand Sister<\/em>, published in 2004, Yuyi illustrated a tender story of sisterhood and family.\u00a0Yuyi\u2019s second book that she wrote and illustrated, Little Night<\/em>, was praised by Publishers Weekly for its \u201cintimacy and grandeur\u201d\u00a0after its release in 2006. That same year, Marisa Monte\u2019s Los Gatos Black on Halloween<\/em> was\u00a0released, winning the Pura Belpr\u00e9 Medal for illustration in 2007. The following year, she won another Pura Belpr\u00e9 Medal for Illustration a for Just in Case<\/em>, the sequel to Just a Minute<\/em>, along with a Pura Belpr\u00e9 Honor as its author.<\/p>\n Yuyi\u2019s illustrations for Tony Johnnston\u2019s My\u00a0Abuelita<\/em>\u00a0won her a Pura Belpr\u00e9 Honor for Illustration in 2010. Over the following three year period, she illustrated Laura Lacamara\u2019s Floating on Mama\u2019s Song<\/em>, Maya Soetero-Ng\u2019s Ladder to the Moon<\/em>, and Amy Novesky\u2019s Georgia in Hawaii<\/em>. Her work in Georgia in Hawaii represented something of a shift in her stylings as Yuyi dabbled for the first time in mixed media illustrations. Although she had received effusive praise for her lush, muralistic illustrations, Yuyi was interested in the idea of doing something entirely different for her next books.<\/p>\n For years, Yuyi had wanted to write and illustrate a children\u2019s book about Frida Kahlo<\/em> and so she did extensive research on the famed painter and visited Kahlo\u2019s home in Mexico City as she imagined a book unlike any she\u2019d made before. Rather than paint this book, Yuyi decided she would create puppets of Frida, her pets, and Diego Rivera, as well as a set of Frida\u2019s Casa Azul. Yuyi knit clothes for her Frida puppet and worked with artisans in her hometown of Xalapa, Veracruz, to make puppet-sized jewelry for her titular character. Over the course of three years, Yuyi worked with her husband, Tim, who lit and photographed Yuyi\u2019s puppets and sets in a warehouse in California, to create the multimedia achievement that was Viva Frida. After long days in the warehouse, Yuyi would come home and stitch together digital panoramas of Tim\u2019s photos and Photoshop eyes and lashes and expressions onto her puppets.<\/p>\n Viva Frida<\/em> was released in 2014, more than five years after work on the book began, and was met with wide acclaim. That same year, Yuyi won her fourth Pura Belpr\u00e9 Medal for Illustration, this time for her book, Nino Wrestles the World<\/em>, a child\u2019s lucha libre tale inspired by her childhood fears and tussles with her younger sisters. Viva Frida<\/em> received the Pura Belpr\u00e9 Medal for Illustration the following year, making her a five-time winner of the prestigious award. It also received a 2015 Caldecott Honor, making Yuyi the first Latina artist to receive the illustrious award. The next year, 2016, Rudas: Ni\u00f1o’s Horrendous Hermanitas<\/em>, was published as a followup to Ni\u00f1o Wrestles the World. This year should have been one to celebrate\u2014Yuyi had now illustrated 15 books in a little more than a decade\u2014but she found herself unable to create and totally dejected when Donald Trump was elected president of the United States.<\/p>\n By this point in time, Yuyi had returned to her hometown of Xalapa, where she\u2019s lived since 2013. She was now a U.S. citizen who\u2019d proudly voted in 2012 and 2016. The election of Trump did not necessarily shock Yuyi, but it disgusted her. How was it that the country that gave Yuyi opportunities and life beyond her wildest dreams had fallen under the thrall of a xenophobic and misogynstic politician whose campaign insulted and dehumanized people who looked and talked like her? Yuyi could not answer that question in a satisfying way. But what she could do was tell her own story and encourage other immigrants to tell their stories and so with the encouragement of her agent, Charlotte, and her editor, Neal Porter, Yuyi began to tell her own immigration story.<\/p>\n Nearly 25 years later after Yuyi immigrated to the U.S., the story was retold in her most successful book to date, Dreamers<\/em>. In Yuyi\u2019s darkest days in this unfamiliar country, she never imagined that the loneliness, suffering, and confusion she felt could inspire others. But now, the letters that she wrote to her family, the drawings her son, Kelly, made, and the books they fell in love with at the library, became central to Dreamers<\/em>. Yuyi poured her heart and soul into Dreamers<\/em>\u00a0and wrote not just an immigration story, but a love letter to the libraries and librarians that made her feel welcome in an unfamiliar country. Dreamers<\/em> became a New York Times\u00a0Bestseller in 2018 and won the Pura Belpr\u00e9 Medal award for Illustration, her sixth, the following year.<\/p>\n In her acceptance speech for the Pura Belpr\u00e9 Medal, Yuyi hinted at the themes that would inform her next book, \u201cLast year I toured bringing Dreamers<\/em>\u00a0to readers, and while I was freely crossing from M\u00e9xico to the USA and back, I learned, along with our nation, of the caging of children at the border and the separation of families asking for asylum. My stomach churned. Here I was, celebrating in a book the opportunity and the hands that had extended towards me and my son when we came to the USA, while at the border many families were and are being tortured in punishment for aspiring entry to a more luminous future for themselves and their families.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n As Yuyi wondered how she could write a story about these migrantes, she began researching the flora and fauna that lived in the lands whose habitats were being ripped apart by Trump\u2019s border wall. In 2019, Yuyi went to Tucson, Arizona and met with activist and environmentalist, Sergio Avila, who showed her the brilliant creatures and plants who lived in these borderlands. When she came home, she began to work on Bright Star<\/em>\u2014a book illustrated in mixed media that follows a fawn\u2019s arduous journey through these borderlands. Yuyi hopes that Bright\u00a0Star<\/em>\u00a0will give readers a sense of wonder and appreciation for these borderlands and that they will see how U.S. immigration policy has destroyed the paths and environments that sustain this diverse ecosystem and the harm this destruction brings to the humans that cross these lands. 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