From Cartagena With Love, a guest post by Juan Vidal

It’s never fun to feel reduced to a stereotype. 

Even as a Colombian American who grew up in Miami, a city that has long been home to one of the largest Colombian populations in the United States, I was not immune. Whenever a non-Latino person found out where my family is from, the questions would come piling on: are your relatives safe? Is there cocaine everywhere? 

True story: a kid I used to skateboard with in elementary school once asked if I was related to Pablo Escobar. 

I’ve always felt protective of how people view Colombia — the country where my parents fell in love, and where I’ve lived and studied. A country that is richer and far more nuanced than American culture’s obsession with things like political corruption, crime, and the cartels that made the rules for so long.

When I started working on my novel A Second Chance on Earth, I wanted to write against this. I wanted to capture, in verse, the beauty and complexity of a Colombia that I love so intensely. What the novel became, naturally, went beyond that. It is a story of friendship and grief and hope and redemption. It’s a book about second chances. A book about a teenager being captivated by language for the first time; the words of his late-father — which he remembers anew — and of Colombia’s best-loved son, Gabriel García Márquez.

But at its core, A Second Chance on Earth is a love letter to a place that, for me, was more formative than any other. 

Excerpts from A Second Chance on Earth / Text copyright © 2024 by Juan Vidal. Reproduced with permission from Holiday House Publishing Inc. All rights reserved.

THE SUN SETS OVER CARTAGENA

like the sky exploding

into a thousand colors.

It kisses the horizon

making shades of

red, blue, and yellow.

From my tía’s couch,

I watch the day

fade like ink on paper.

I stare at the urn.

The urn stares back at me.

I’m ready for this

to be over and done.

MY MIND DRIFTS TO

how different life

would have been

had I grown up here.

Half-naked bike rides with Papi.

Chasing pigeons with Daniela around Plaza de Bolívar.

Hamburgers with Ma at La Pepita on Calle de los Puntales.

Weekly scoops of mint chocolate chip from Gelateria Paradiso.

Wars of words with Papi’s friends’ kids whose dads he

may or may not have

punked.

When they were our age.

Sun-drunk summers in Bocagrande.

Good music.

Forever dancing.

And me,

in my room every night,

recording it all

like a scribe

on clean white sheets.

EXCERPTS FROM TWO POEMS:

“THE SUN SETS OVER CARTAGENA” (PAGE 174)

“MY MIND DRIFTS TO” (PAGE 176-PART OF 177)

Meet the author

Juan Vidal is the author of the memoir Rap Dad, which Explores father-son dynamics and Latino masculinity through the lens of hip-hop culture. A Second Chance on Earth is his YA debut.

You can visit Juan at:

Instagram: @ItsJuanLove

Twitter: @ItsJuanLove

You can visit Holiday House at:

HolidayHouse.com

Facebook: @HolidayHouseBks

Instagram: @HolidayHouseBks

Twitter: @HolidayHouseBks

TikTok: @HolidayHouseBks

About A Second Chance on Earth

A father, a friend, and a favorite book help a teen boy understand love and loss in this moving and vivid YA novel in verse.

Have you ever encountered a book that KO’d you, Iron Mike Tyson style? One that hit you square in the face and heart like some abracadabra casting a hex from an unknown planet?

For sixteen-year-old poet and b-baller Marcos Cadena, that book is the beat-up copy of One Hundred Years of Solitude he finds among his late father’s possessions after Papi is killed in an accident.

Marcos’ papi has always loomed large in his eyes. So, when Marcos travels to his parents’ childhood home of Cartagena, Colombia to spread Papi’s ashes, he brings his father’s book with him, convinced that Gabriel García Márquez’s masterpiece holds the key to understanding Papi’s life and accepting his death.

In Cartagena, Marcos befriends eighteen-year-old Camilo, a taxi driver and fellow García Márquez fan who appoints himself Marcos’ unofficial tour guide. Together, the two boys explore the landscape of Cartagena, from the picturesque streets of Old Town to the poor neighborhood where Camilo grew up. But when Camilo reveals a troubling secret from his past, Marcos must ask himself whether everyone deserves a second chance.

Woven through with themes of friendship, family, and forgiveness, this poignant novel in verse is also a love letter to Colombia and to the books of Gabriel García Márquez.

ISBN-13: 9780823457113
Publisher: Holiday House
Publication date: 09/03/2024
Age Range: 14 – 17 Years

Filed under: Guest Post