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Alma Flor Ada

César Chávez

Celia Cruz

Dolores Huerta

Nicholasa Mohr

Great Lives from History: Latinos

Monica Brown

by Jamie Campbell Naidoo

American writer

A college professor, children’s author, and outspoken advocate for social justice, Brown has been a strong voice in contemporary U.S. Latino children’s literature. Her works have made the accomplishments of famous Latin Americans, such as Celia Cruz and Gabriel García Márquez, accessible to young audiences.

Areas of achievement: Literature; education; social issues

Early Life

Monica Alexandria Brown (MOH-nee-kah ahl-ehks-AHN-dree-ah brown) was born in Mountain View, California, to Peruvian American artist Isabel Maria Vexler Valdivieso Brown and Daniel Doronda Brown, who was of Hungarian Jewish and Scot-Italian heritage. Brown, her sister Carolyn, and her brother Daniel spent their childhoods growing up in upper-middle-class neighborhoods where most Latinos were the hired help. Throughout her public education, Brown never encountered positive representations of Latinos or the works of great Latin American writers. However, she understood the transformative power of books and often used literature as a way to escape her surroundings.

When she began her undergraduate degree in English at the University of California at Santa Barbara, Brown had the opportunity to learn about the great works of Chicano and other Latino authors. During this time she became very involved in political theater and various social justice groups. Brown’s interests in social equality and Latin American literature were further fueled by salvation theology and egalitarian efforts in Central America. In her senior year, she was greatly influenced by her first Chicano literature professor, Carl Guitérrez-Jones, who encouraged her to pursue a graduate degree in literature.

After graduating in 1991 with a B.A. in English, Brown spent a year in Guadalajara, Mexico, as a journalist writing for the American-owned newspaper the Guadalajara Colony Reporter. Almost immediately, she realized that journalism was not for her, and she soon enrolled in Boston College, where she studied Latino and multiethnic literature before graduating in 1994 with a M.A. in English. Brown then moved to Columbus, Ohio, to begin a doctoral program with a focus in Latino literature at Ohio State University. While at the university, she received numerous awards for her writing, including the Helen Earhart Harley Creative Writing Fellowship Award in 1995 and the Common Difference Award from the university’s Center for Women’s Studies for her work about the contributions of women of color.

Brown received her doctorate in 1998, the same year that her first daughter, Isabella, was born. In 1999, Brown and her family moved to Flagstaff, Arizona, where she began her academic career as a professor in Northern Arizona University’s Department of English. Her second daughter, Juliana, was born a few years later. While teaching at the university Brown published numerous articles about the marginalization of Latino youth in the American education system and society. In 2002, she published an academic book, Gang Nation: Delinquent Citizens in Puerto Rican, Chicano, and Chicana Narratives, which examines how society’s understanding of Latino gang members is shaped by representations in literature and popular youth culture.

Life’s Work

Although she has received critical acclaim for her academic writing, Brown is best known for her bilingual Spanish/English children’s biographies that celebrate the lives of important Latinos throughout the Americas. Her first book, My Name is Celia: The Life of Celia Cruz (Me llamo Celia: La vida de Celia Cruz), was a picture-book biography about salsa singer Celia Cruz, illustrated by Latino artist Rafael López and published in 2004 by Luna Rising, an imprint of Northland Publishing. This book was a huge success and received the prestigious Américas Award for Children’s and Young Adult Literature, which honored both López and Brown as distinguished contributors in the area of Latino children’s literature.

In 2005, Brown published My Name is Gabriela: The Life of Gabriela Mistral (Me llamo Gabriela: La vida de Gabriela Mistral), another picture-book biography that describes the life of Chilean poet Gabriela Mistral. Illustrated by Latino artist John Parra, this book also garnered literary praise in the field of children’s literature and received the 2006 International Latino Book Award.

Brown continued writing children’s books and released her first work of fiction in 2007, Butterflies on Carmen Street (Mariposas en la calle Carmen), published by Piñata Books, an imprint of Arte Público Press. In this picture book, Brown depicts a young, self-confident Latina child who fits comfortably into modern society. Unlike many depictions of Latinos in children’s literature published in previous decades, the main character is not dealing with a problem related to her family’s immigration status or cultural heritage.

In 2007, Brown also published her third picture-book biography, My Name Is Gabito: The Life of Gabriel García Márquez (Mi llamo Gabito: La vida de Gabriel García Márquez), which firmly established her as the only Latina author writing bilingual children’s biographies about famous Latin Americans. This biography also received literary acclaim and was followed in the next four years by several other picture-book biographies featuring notable figures, such as Pelé (Edson Arantes do Nascimento), the King of Soccer; union leaders César Chávez and Dolores Huerta; Chilean poet Pablo Neruda; Colombian teacher and librarian Luis Soriano; and musician Tito Puente.

Significance

Inspired by her mother’s artistic passion for her Latino cultural heritage, Brown has dedicated her career to creating positive representations of Latinos in children’s literature, thereby providing role models for contemporary Latino children and diffusing preconceived stereotypes held by non-Latino children and educators. Her biographies are some of the only pieces of literature for young children that celebrate the accomplishments of Latin Americans and encourage contemporary youth to explore the achievements that Latinos throughout the Americas have made to society. While encouraging future generations of aspiring Latino writers, Brown’s body of work exemplifies the best in contemporary Latin children’s literature.

Further Reading

1 

Brown, Monica. Monica Brown: Children’s Book Author. http://www.monicabrown.net. Brown’s official Web site includes biographical information, as well as suggestions on how teachers can use her books and other resources in their lessons.

2 

_______. “From a Writer’s Perspective: Recreating Images of Community in Multicultural Children’s Books.” Language Arts 85, no. 4 (March, 2008): 316-321. An informative article describing Brown’s childhood, the influences of Latino culture on her writing, and the inspiration behind her scholarly book and several of her children’s picture books.

3 

_______. Gang Nation: Delinquent Citizens in Puerto Rican, Chicano, and Chicana Narratives. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2002. Examines the influence of gang literature and narratives on the lives of young Latino gang members and provides an underlying foundation for understanding the power struggles in some of Brown’s children’s books.

Citation Types

Type
Format
MLA 9th
Naidoo, Jamie Campbell. "Monica Brown." Great Lives from History: Latinos, edited by Carmen Tafolla & Martha P. Cotera, Salem Press, 2012. Salem Online, online.salempress.com/articleDetails.do?articleName=GLL_10013240009701001.
APA 7th
Naidoo, J. C. (2012). Monica Brown. In C. Tafolla & M. P. Cotera (Eds.), Great Lives from History: Latinos. Salem Press. online.salempress.com.
CMOS 17th
Naidoo, Jamie Campbell. "Monica Brown." Edited by Carmen Tafolla & Martha P. Cotera. Great Lives from History: Latinos. Hackensack: Salem Press, 2012. Accessed October 22, 2025. online.salempress.com.