That’s right, Ms. Davis-Aceves’s students produced some wonderful verse, and now we’re organizing those poems (on the topic of “the color of my skin is…”) into a bilingual chapbook that the students can take home to their families.
The eighth graders in Ms. Davis-Aceves’s class at Everett Middle School are newcomer students, most of whom speak Spanish as a primary language. Working with 826 tutors in the Everett Writers’ Room for a week, the budding poets wrote in Spanish first, then translated their poems into English. The resulting work is incredible, and just so you don’t have to take our word for it, read Rodrigo Hernandez’s poem, “Like the Leaves that Fall in Autumn”:
The color of my skin
is like the leaves that fall
during Autumn.
My skin is a peach, soft,
and with few hairs that
cover all my body.
My skin is the coffee with milk
that I drink everyday in
the morning.
When I was a baby,
my mom told me that
I was a cotton boy
because my skin was soft,
delicate and white.
My lips are the petals
of a cherry tree in Spring,
soft and pink.
My hair is like the dark
night that arrives at the
end of each day.
The color of my eyes are like
roast coffee from Veracruz.
My skin reminds me
of family, friends, my culture,
traditions from where I come from.
I’m very proud of my country
and of myself.
See? We can’t wait to get the books into the hands of its many talented authors!
