All Community Read Author Spotlight: Jennifer De Leon

If you haven't already heard the news, our upcoming All Community Read is centered on the themes of our recent Borders & Belonging ELA teaching collection. In a world where young adults are increasingly feeling a sense of loneliness, finding ways to connect and be understood is more urgent than ever. 

So when we were choosing books to engage in with our community, we wanted to give students the opportunity to immerse themselves in narratives that reflect the challenges they experience every day, to meet characters who are also struggling to belong, and to normalize these feelings in ways that help them build bridges across differences in their own schools and personal lives. How would they respond to a story that made them reckon with the expansive nature of “borders”—not just the metaphorical concept, but the literal borders between nations? 

This made Borderless—the latest novel by accomplished author and educator Jennifer De Leon—an obvious choice. Not only is De Leon a Boston-area native (just like Facing History & Ourselves!), but she’s been engaging with vital themes of identity and belonging for as long as she’s been writing.

In 2022, De Leon sat down with us in a Facing History webinar to discuss her novel Don’t Ask Me Where I’m From through the frame of "coming of age in literature in life." De Leon engaged in a deep and thoughtful conversation about her background, her work, and her inspirations. 

Born in Boston to parents who immigrated to the United States from Guatemala, De Leon is also the author of White Space: Essays on Culture, Race, & Writing, the editor of Wise Latinas: Writers on Higher Education, and a creative writing professor at Framingham State University. This may come as a surprise, but De Leon's childhood was not actually filled with books. It was, however, filled with vivid narratives recounted by her mother that had a major influence on her identity, her worldview, and her love of human-centered stories. 

Raised between the two worlds of her immigrant Guatemalan household and the more affluent and largely-White schools that she attended, De Leon has been thinking about borders and identity her entire life. As a former educator who didn’t have the opportunity to engage with works outside the traditional Western canon until she was nearly in college, De Leon is inspired by her own childhood as well as the diverse identities of her students to write the types of books that she wishes had existed when she was growing up. There’s a reason why her novels feature Latina teenagers as protagonists!

Borderless tells the story of Maya: a Guatemalan high schooler with a passion for creating fashion out of discarded objects, deep love and loyalty toward her country and her Mama, and a typical teenage desire for independence. When gang violence escalates in Maya’s neighborhood, she is forced to leave her beloved home behind to seek asylum in the United States. The storytelling style, rich imagery, authentic teen voices, and relatable dilemmas invite young readers to identify with Maya and confront the complex realities of the U.S. asylum system through her perspective. 

Even beyond the geopolitical borders that Maya must cross in the story, she spends her daily life in Guatemala City navigating tangible and intangible borders of age, ethnicity, social circles, economic class, and more. The multidimensional characters defy stereotypes and invite readers to question assumptions about the “who” and “why” of gangs and emigration in Central America.

This powerful and engaging work asks students to reflect on the complex historical context of migration and the impacts of economic segregation while developing empathy and focusing on shared human experiences and values.

We’re so thrilled to have Borderless be a part of our curriculum, and even more thrilled that Jennifer De Leon will be signing copies of the novel for the first 100 people in line at our NCTE booth! On Friday November 22 from 11am-noon, we invite convention attendees to join us at Booth 931 to connect with Facing History, learn about our new ELA curriculum, and meet this exceptionally talented writer face-to-face.