Author: Vanessa Diaz

Jhumpa Lahiri’s The Namesake was the first time I came across an American immigrant story that really resonated with me. Reading about the family dynamics and concerns of her characters prompted me to reflect differently on the questions in my own life and the stories I wanted to tell — perhaps they, too, were worthy of exploring in literature.

I recall this as one of the first books I read cover to cover. I fell in love with the characters, and I was fascinated with the thought that a friend could betray another for the love of a woman. I fell headfirst into the adventure and was mesmerized at Edmond Dantes’ ingenious escape from a seemingly inescapable island prison. The book taught me to never quit fighting for my dreams and for what is right.

I was thirty when I read Larry McMurtry’s classic western. I fell in love with the Old West and with the characters on a journey to bring home cattle to Lonesome Dove. I read the book at a pivotal moment in my life. My longtime girlfriend and I had separated, and I was living alone and in the shadows of my highly successful siblings. When I read the ending, and Captain Call came home alone to Lonesome Dove, I cried for him and all that he had lost. It was one of the first books that touched me deeply, and I’ve tried to do the same in my own writing.

This was one of the first books I read that was more than just a story. It was a commentary on racial injustice. I came to understand that books could have a higher purpose than just entertainment, and could truly be a guiding light on intolerance, bigotry, racism, and other social issues while still being a fascinating read filled with wonderful characters. For much the same reason, The Green Mile and Stephen King’s deft touch at discussing racial issues and the unfair application of the death penalty, moved me.

I read this book for a course at Stanford University. I didn’t choose it and wasn’t all that excited, but I was hooked on page one and eagerly devoured the beautiful prose and the harsh reality of slavery in the deep south. It was an eye-opening read for a white, young man who grew up in a town with very few Black people, and who, up to that point, had never traveled farther south than the shores of Lake Tahoe in Nevada.

I read The Sun Also Rises for the first time when I was 14 or 15, and that book snapped my eyes open like nothing I’d ever encountered. I hardly understood a bit of it, but something about the precision of the language, the concreteness of the experience being rendered, flipped a switch in my brain. I began to think about my life as opposed to just stumbling through it day to day. My relationship with Hemingway has gone through many ups and downs since then, but however I’m feeling and thinking about his work at any given time, the fact remains that The Sun Also Rises kicked into life whatever capacity I have to think and feel in a considered way.

I could say much the same thing about Love in the Time of Cholera, which I read for the first time when I was in my mid-30s. That book kicked something into life in me; call it the mid-life version of what The Sun Also Rises did to me as an adolescent. García Márquez opened the door for me to a new way of seeing and feeling and thinking.

Like Bobby, the protagonist in Chasing Pacquiao, I grew up an avid comic book reader. The X-Men graphic novel God Loves, Man Kills—written by Chris Claremont and strikingly illustrated by Brent Eric Anderson—opened me up to the possibilities of social commentary in storytelling. The X-Men are a band of superhero mutants—individuals born with extraordinary abilities who protect a world that fears them. They come up against not a super villain with powers, but an ordinary evangelical minister who preaches hate against all mutants. The premise of the X-Men is based on the Civil Rights

Movement of the 1960s and can also be viewed as a metaphor for the plight of the LGBTQ+ community. This story in particular encouraged me to deal with social issues in my writing. It’s a groundbreaking work which showed that comic books are not just disposable stories for children, but can be serious works of artistic merit. Even today, the story is still relevant and continues to inspire me.

Like Bobby, the protagonist in Chasing Pacquiao, I grew up an avid comic book reader. The X-Men graphic novel God Loves, Man Kills—written by Chris Claremont and strikingly illustrated by Brent Eric Anderson—opened me up to the possibilities of social commentary in storytelling. The X-Men are a band of superhero mutants—individuals born with extraordinary abilities who protect a world that fears them. They come up against not a super villain with powers, but an ordinary evangelical minister who preaches hate against all mutants. The premise of the X-Men is based on the Civil Rights

Movement of the 1960s and can also be viewed as a metaphor for the plight of the LGBTQ+ community. This story in particular encouraged me to deal with social issues in my writing. It’s a groundbreaking work which showed that comic books are not just disposable stories for children, but can be serious works of artistic merit. Even today, the story is still relevant and continues to inspire me.

The Color Purple shaped me because I read it at a time when I was struggling with issues of my own worth and value as a Black woman. The main character of Alice Walker’s seminal novel has three strikes against her: she’s Black, she’s a woman and she’s “ugly.” All of my female heroines will battle with and overcome being underestimated in some way. All of them will find new ways to appreciate and understand their worth, and nearly all of them will have to overthrow villains in their life that only focus on their limitations.

Having recently finished reading But I Live, graphic novels that have influenced me are on my mind. I grew up reading superhero comics as a kid because they provided an escape from problems at home and from being queer in a small, conservative southern town. However, it was later as an adult when I realized what all comics could do. When I did, it was through graphic novels. I remember reading Fun Home, Y: The Last Man, and Blankets, one right after the other, and realizing that so many things were possible in the comic and graphic novel format from sweeping epic stories to extremely intimate ones. 

Craig Thompson’s Blankets has stayed with me over the years for many reasons. When I first read it, I could relate to the small town Christian upbringing and his lonely, isolated childhood. Also, the need to move away from home — not only to survive, but to thrive — really resonated with me. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve started to really appreciate and prefer more intimate and personal stories like Blankets. I’m also able to look back now and see how friends and loved ones from my childhood left their mark on me. Blankets definitely influenced Paper Planes. The confusion and yearning, the struggle to communicate feelings and emotions that we all experience growing up, all of that is so well done in Blankets. And how I felt while reading that book for the very first time well over a decade ago – that has stayed with me. It’s such a sensitive, human, bittersweet story. For me, it’s the bittersweet stories that are the most satisfying. As a reader, I often think I want the happy ending, but deep down I really want something that mirrors real life.