San Antonio's Lilly Gonzalez shares Five Things She's Learned about America
View the next in our new series of messages, ideas, and inspiration – shared directly from Americans we admire.
Five Things I’ve Learned began with the aim of learning directly from people we long admired. Now, as we get ready for our upcoming Fall Class Series, we’re also continuing to collect and share written pieces, short videos, and other bursts of ideas and inspiration from people whose ideas and experiences give shape to the issues at the heart of our upcoming national election.
Thanks to everyone for the kind and enthusiastic response we’ve received to this ongoing series.
Today, from San Antonio, Texas, Executive Director of the San Antonio Book Festival Lilly Gonzalez shares Five Things She’s Learned About America.
Lilly was born and raised in the Rio Grande Valley, in the under-developed colonias of Pharr, Texas. She is the daughter of Mexican immigrants. Her first love was books and she has been reading ever since. She’s been part of the Book Festival team since 2015. The annual all-day event features over 110 national, regional, local and emerging authors and welcomes more than 20,000 visitors each year.
Five Things I’ve Learned about America
The hope lies in your small corner of the country.
I am not the most optimistic person. This assignment—being tasked to come up with five things I know about America and somehow avoid entering a depressive funk—seemed impossible. It is hard to feel optimism or inspiration or hopeful when you pay attention to the news or you look at the data behind any social issue in America: the state of healthcare or education or poverty, etc.
And yet.
Here I am in San Antonio, Texas, chipping away at my small corner of the nation, trying to make a difference in my local literacy environment. Here I am, trying to inspire individual children in San Antonio to develop a love of reading so that they may go on to become readers because studies show that readers become engaged citizens who vote, volunteer, visit museums, patronize theaters, etc. Here I am, manifesting a community of civically engaged readers who care about one another’s stories and ideas and who value literature. Here I am, hoping to drag the needle just a little so that our literacy rates are less abysmal. Here I am, hoping.
The problems of the nation, nay the world, can suffocate the heart. They can oppress the soul. So I choose to focus on my city. And when that gets overwhelming, I look at my neighborhood, at my backyard, at my own four walls. Hope is in the details. In the small tasks. It’s there for us good-deed-doers. We need only look.
The youth are all right.
I used to be student activist. I once had all the hopefulness of youth and believed that I could change the world. And then I entered the workforce and the cynicism set in. But the ideals and the vision…well, those never really go away. It just grinds you down when you see no wins.
So when I see today’s youth mobilizing and protesting, I’m reminded that for most of this nation’s history, the youth have always been on the right side of every civil rights movement or social justice issue or political debate.
When I see the youth rejecting the old capitalist structures many of us have come to accept as the norm or the default, when they question why we are overworked, when they refuse to adopt conventional attitudes about bodies, beauty, or gender, well, I catch myself smiling. It’s a sigh of relief, in a sense, to know the youth will inherit America.
Look for the helpers.
Changemakers are all around us, helping set the country on a more just and equitable path. Whatever your industry, there are individual Americans working on making things better.
I work in books. In Texas. Luckily, I have a front row seat to my favorite helpers: librarians. Amid book bans and school budget cuts and district layoffs and library closures, Texas librarians are leading the fight for students’ freedom to read. I see their impact, big and small. I see them work tirelessly supporting their students, seldom recognized for their work by the decision makers in the legislature or the school district or the school administration. I see them champion books that make their students feel seen and validated. I see them sign up and volunteer to do even more if it means their students will have a valuable learning experience. I see them testifying before the legislature. I see them pushing back against those who want to ban books in Texas schools.
And then I tell them that I see them. I give them flower crowns and sashes like they’re pageantry—because to me they’re royalty. Helpers, y’all. They are all over America, seen and unseen. Try and make them feel seen.
Writers are our archivists…and our guides.
Ever since I was a child growing up along the South Texas-Mexico border, I have turned to books. They were my comfort and solace. They showed me that the world was so much bigger than my own exposures. It is no wonder, then, that in adulthood I turn to writers to help me think through the biggest challenges facing America.
I want to read the words of people much smarter than I. I want to let their work penetrate my mind and course through the maze of my own thinking, infiltrating it with their wisdom. American writers—and by this, I mean journalists and essayists and novelists and poets—explain the nuances of American life to me. I trust them like they’re my kin. The sharper the words, the more I trust them.
Give me a memoir about someone growing up wildly different than I did. Give me an article investigating a story the public needs to know. Give me an essay exploring the complexities of current events. Give me a column dissecting the intricacies of a pop culture debate. Give me a novel to lose myself into. Give me a poem that will lift my spirits.
Give me writers in America. Always.
Put yourself in the way of beauty. Beauty is everywhere in America.
Sometimes our souls need a reboot. If you are a thinking person in America, you will inevitably need to be uplifted. May I suggest you set foot outdoors? I say this as a non-outdoorsy person. Go and explore this country we live in that has gotten far too good at disappointing us.
I’ve been in many American cities and towns and there is always beauty to be found. A park or a river or a forest or a beach or a museum or a sculpture or a perfect, unobstructed sunset.
Put yourself in the way of beauty, wrote the writer Cheryl Strayed. Do it over and over. Let America take your breath away.
ABOUT LILLY
Lilly Gonzalez joined the Book Festival team in September 2015 as Communications Director. Born and raised in the Rio Grande Valley, in the under-developed colonias of Pharr, Texas, Lilly is the daughter of Mexican immigrants. Her first love was books and she has been reading ever since.
Prior to moving to San Antonio, she spent 14 years living in Chicago, where she worked in public affairs at the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. She earned both her MFA in creative writing and BS in journalism from Northwestern University. Her favorite book is Caramelo by Sandra Cisneros.
MORE ABOUT FIVE THINGS I’VE LEARNED ABOUT AMERICA
Five Things I’ve Learned about America presents live, personal conversations with leading thinkers, organizers, and advocates for our democracy. In tandem, we’re soliciting and sharing written pieces, short videos, and other bursts of ideas and inspiration from people whose ideas and experiences are equally inspiring and instructive.
If you’ve just recently discovered us, please check out recent reflections about America from people we admire including including Tony Alcaraz, Yvette Benavides, Matthew Chamberlin, David Martin Davies, Sarah Fay, Francisco Guajardo, Tina Hedin, Marya Hornbacher, Megan Matson, Jeannine Ouellette, Cristina Tzintzún Ramirez, Greg Sandow, Brooke Warner, Oliver Wasow, and Jamie Whalen.
And check out our free conversation series presented in partnership with Resolute Square, featuring 90-minute sessions with Americans we admire including Alan Light, Jennifer Mercieca, Beto O'Rourke, Trygve Olson, and Stuart Stevens.