Fred Aceves was born in New York to a Mexican father and Dominican mother. He spent most of his youth in Southern California and Tampa, Florida, where he grew up in a tough, working-class neighborhood filled with single moms. He attended five high schools and worked two jobs before eventually dropping out of school. He later earned his GED and traveled around the world. He has worked as a delivery driver, server, cook, car salesman, freelance editor and teacher of English as a second language. He is published by HarperCollins and currently lives in Mexico. The Closest I’ve Come was a Kirkus Best Book of 2017. The New David Espinoza is his second novel. Fred has lived in seven different countries and currently resides in Mexico. His online home is www.fredaceves.com.
At 18, when I went from cook to delivery driver, I was able to earn tips and make ends meet with that one job. That’s when I started craving knowledge, and studied for my GED. Once I passed and could finally read what I wanted to, I soon discovered books and became hooked. By the time I was 20, I knew I wanted to write a book one day.
When I decided to write The Closest I’ve Come, I was living in La Paz, Bolivia, teaching English. That fascinating city and the friends I had there became distractions. I could always find a reason to not write. So I went to the Yungas, at the edge of the Andes Mountains, where I found a small cabin, and didn’t leave until I had a first draft.
My second book was very different. I knew it was going to be published because of my two-book deal, and I was better off financially. It’s also more in the YA tradition because I had become familiar with those books.
This issue was a cover story in Newsweek back in 2006, and things have only gotten worse. It’s difficult to discuss. We know boys and girls behave differently in school. For instance, we know that boys tend to be rowdier, have more difficulty sitting still, and are more likely to be diagnosed with ADHD. But we also know that gender differences are often the result of socialization, not deep biological drives. So, do boys or schools need to change? I say both. Personally, I say the school system failed me because it should have fostered in me a love of reading and learning, but instead it forced me to read books I couldn’t relate to and created the worst possible environment for me (and many others) to learn.
Nowadays, I can sit still for hours. That’s how my writing and reading gets done. But as a teen, I can’t imagine ever thriving in that “sit down and shut up” classroom environment. Richard Whitmore, author of Why Boys Fail: Saving Our Sons from an Educational System That’s Leaving Them Behind, has said that he has pretty much given up on this issue, because those with the power to change things have no interest in doing so. I won’t allow myself to lose hope. I focus on what I can do, which is work with teachers and librarians to create more readers.
I’ve worked with Behind the Book, a program that gives students my book to read, and a project related to some themes. The project is creative, challenging and requires interaction with other students. I think it’s more fun for everybody, and presenting the project gives everyone a sense of community and accomplishment.
So, projects are a great idea. I also believe in letting children choose whenever possible. I think that most reading and writing should be up to the student. Kids don’t allow their parents and teachers to choose the music they listen to, or the movies they watch, so it shouldn’t be surprising if they don’t like the books we’re forcing them to read.
That first book often reflects the reader’s life in some way. They identify in some way with the main character. They find the story or content fascinating. I talk to young people about the advantages of reading outside our experience, and I think they get it, but if they want to read about somebody like them, or about a topic that interests them, we should let them.
There are books out there that tend to appeal more to boys, including stories of adventure and non-fiction books, written by men and women. If students must choose something from an approved list, we should make sure the list contains plenty of titles that appeal more to boys.
Naturally, I’m going to address poverty and racism in my books because that’s my experience. Every person in the world is affected by gender role expectations, so naturally my main characters deal with toxic masculinity. Regarding negative body image and bullying, I feel that all boys deal with that too, and both issues are more complex for today’s teens. Actors, bodybuilders, superheroes, video game characters and action figures keep getting more muscular, and boys are feeling more pressure to look a certain way. Bullying is worse because it doesn’t just happen in school. It happens online, and bullies can be far more brutal because of their anonymity. Social media didn’t exist when I was a teenager. When writing The New David Espinoza, I had to think back to the bullying I witnessed and endured, and imagine what my experience would have been like coming up today.
As for future novels, I may write about the juvenile justice system one day. I’ve learned so much by working with teens coming out of the system. Many have substance-use disorders, disruptive disorders, family traumas. Rather than help them, society locks them up. The same happened to my friends back in the day.
One of my first author visits was to a school for boys coming out of juvenile detention, and I still haven’t gotten over that experience. These were boys that society has failed, not rotten apples. It was evident the moment you saw them. Each one had a backstory that most people don’t care about. It’s easier to dismiss them as delinquents and thugs. I keep thinking about those boys, and the others locked up, so I may write about that if I feel I can do the issue justice.
Q: What are your favorite approaches to dealing with topics?
A: Humor has always helped me cope. I find humor in whatever is affecting me, whether it’s a personal issue or a tragedy on the news, so I find humor in the stories I write. But I wouldn’t say it’s an approach to writing. When I wrote The Closest I’ve Come, my goal was to write the best story I could. I never saw it as a big challenge to create a relatable teen character. Readers engaged with Marcos because they found him, the teen character, convincing. I’m just lucky, I guess. Many people don’t remember what it was really like to be a child, and I have a very vivid memory of that time.
My interests? A typical week includes trying new recipes, making bread, going to the gym, visiting nearby towns, meeting friends for dinner, or just heading downtown, a short walk away, to see what and who I find. My professional goals are to keep writing, whether it’s another book or something for the screen, and to create more readers.