>> Announcer: From the Library of Congress in Washington, DC. >> Michelle: I'm Michelle Martin with NPR, and I am reminded that I'm supposed to tell you that I'm currently hosting a series of live events called "Going There," and next month I will be the host of weekend "All Things Considered," and [applause] I'm very excited to be here at the National Book Festival with this very special guest who almost needs no introduction, but I'm told I have to give one. So take a look at this lady here, and I dare you to say that you don't know her [applause]. >> Sonia: Thank you. >> Michelle: And that you don't already love her, and that you have memories of her teaching you how to read, how to count, and even explaining some of the hard things that happen in life like the loss of a very good friend. Fans of Sesame Street know her as Maria, [applause] one of the longest serving cast members, but what you may not know in addition to performing on the program, she has won 15 Emmy Awards for writing for the show. She is the author of award-winning children's books, and now she has a new memoir. It is called "Becoming Maria" where she tells the not always pretty story behind the story of her family's move to the mainland from Puerto Rico where her parents were born, their hard scramble, but ultimately triumphant rise-hers, anyway-to become one of the most recognizable and dare I say beloved figures in American television. She just retired from Sesame Street this year, [laughter] and now she's here with us, and if she hadn't, she might not have time to be here with us. So may I please present with great pride and pleasure, Sonia Manzano. [Applause] >> Sonia: Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you, Michelle. >> Michelle: Why did you abandon us, I mean, retire? [Laughter] Retire. Why did you decide to retire? >> Sonia: Well, actually the show started producing less segments while it expanded the cast of both human and Muppets, so there was less work to go around, and I found myself with all of this extra creative energy, and I needed some place to put it. I... So I decided to write. I got bitten by the writing bug a few years ago, and I wanted to continue. That's what's one reason I left, and also 44 years is long enough to wait for Oscar the Grouch to propose. [Laughter] I thought I'd move on. >> Michelle: To be honest, this book is going to come as a shock to some people who only know you as Maria because in it you recount in sometimes in very vivid detail, the story of your very interesting journey to becoming Maria. Will you just tell us a little bit about the back story, and I'm going to ask you to read a couple of passages if that's okay. So your parents came here from Puerto Rico. >> Sonia: Right, and they left this horrible poverty. The way they would describe Puerto Rico during the Depression makes Oliver Twist a walk in the park. It was horrible poverty, and they came to... they came separately and met in this country, but then they continued their struggles with each other because my father was a violent drunk, and there was a lot of domestic violence. So not only did they have to deal with this new culture that they were in, they had to deal with each other, and in the middle of that we were born and had to reconcile all the feelings that a kid has when your parents are battling and you don't know whose side you're on and you don't know if it's right or wrong, and you have no idea that this is going on in any other families as well. >> Michelle: Do you mind reading a bit of it? A passage that we've already talked about. I wanted to ask if you would start with... what did we say? Seventy... >> Sonia: Seventy-six. >> Michelle: Seventy-six, Chapter 3. Would you read a couple of pages from that? >> Sonia: I will. Our teacher, Mr. Gitterman, is reading to us from "Charlotte's Web." It's a magic book that makes everyone settle down, even the kids who could never sit still. Marion cups her chin in her hands and twirls her hair. I forget about myself and sit with my knees apart and my mouth open. Mr. Gitterman is all one color of sand as he sits on a student desk facing us. He reads slowly letting the words wash over us like rain, sometimes stopping to look past us and out the window, as if he might be thinking about something that had happened to him. Sometimes he scratches his ankle. Even when we know that he will soon stop because it's almost time to get our coats and go home, we wait, long and quietly, so we can squeeze a few more sentences out of him. One day we groan so loudly when he stops he tells us that our parents should read to us every day, like he does. "Mr. Gitterman says you should read to me every day," I say to Ma later. "Like I don't got enough to do?" "That's what he said." "We don't have any books." I asked him the next day, "What do we do if we don't have any books?" "You don't need to have books," he said. "Your parents can just tell you stories about their lives." I wait until Ma is dyeing her hair before I ask for a true story about her life because she has to sit perfectly still as she pours "Black Loving Care" hair dye onto her head and cover it over with a clear plastic bag. She sits with a wad of tissue to keep the black goop from dripping down onto her face. "Tell me the story you and Boom Boom were talking about," I say. She looks at me blankly. "The story about the guy who threw coconuts at his wife's head." "What about him?" "Did he change?" "Who?" "The man who threw the coconuts at his wife's head." "No he was a mean [Spanish spoken], and mean, shameless men never change." "And she never moved out of the way?" "No." "Why?" "Because she was a good person," "Well, why does letting someone bounce coconuts off your head make you a good person?" "She was a good person, not like a person, but like a saint." By this time Ma misses a few drips of dye and begins to resemble Christ wearing His crown of thorns at church with blood dripping down His forehead. She leans forward towards me, raises both eyebrows and says, "Get it?" "I don't, but I want to hear the rest of the story. What happened to her?" Should I go on? >> Michelle: Yeah, that's good for now. I think you get the picture. >> Sonia: Oh, okay. We get the picture. >> Michelle: Thank you for that. [Applause] So what gave you the idea to write this memoir? Was this bubbling up within you all this time? >> Sonia: I love the form. I love the memoir form. I'll read anybody's life story, and I did want to reflect on my life and how I got to where I got. I think that there's got to be something good about getting older, and one of them is the desire to look back on your life and sort of put things in perspective. >> Michelle: Was it... I wonder, did you find any ambivalence about telling this story, which, I mean, you can see, you can hear that there's some very beautiful and there's some funny moments, and, of course, the way you tell it is very you, but there's also some very painful parts to it, and I wondered if you had any ambivalence about telling it. >> Sonia: I didn't. I think that with the pain came wonderful things. As awful as the upbringing was, there was the wonderful parts about it, and you can't have one without the other, and I like the idea of giving young people a straight answer about things that happen, and often it's not black and white. It is... life is gray. It happens in the gray area, and I think we have a tendency to tell kids this is a good thing or this is a bad thing. I wanted to have that sensibility when I was a kid, and but I think saying both is worthwhile. >> Michelle: So you grew up in the Bronx, and, you know, had some... and I do encourage people to read the book. It just tells a story that I think a lot... well is... we were telling, we were talking backstage, and you were surprised that... maybe you weren't surprised by how many people would say, "Oh, that's my story, too." "Oh, that happened to me, too." "Oh, it's not just..." Were you surprised by that? >> Sonia: I was surprised. A lot of journalists and... >> Michelle: Not just Puerto Ricans. >> Sonia: Not just Puerto Ricans said, "Oh that was, you know, such a familiar story to me. That went on in my life. It wasn't physical but it was emotional." So that did surprise me. >> Michelle: So are you glad now that you put it out there? Or any part of you say, "Oh, I wish I could stop it? Take it back. Take it back.?" >> Sonia: Oh, no, no, no. I don't feel bad about it at all about putting it out there. >> Michelle: I know a lot of people want to know... Can you tell me how you got to Sesame Street? [Laughter] >> Sonia: Practice. No. >> Michelle: Why don't you just read a little bit, and I would love if you'd tell us a little more about that journey to that, and I waned to ask if you'd read from... read a little bit about you went to Carnegie Mellon. >> Sonia: In Pittsburgh. >> Michelle: Go Steelers. >> Sonia: Right. >> Michelle: And did you even know about the Steelers then, or were you just totally focused on...? >> Sonia: No, I did know about the Steelers at that time. >> Michelle: Okay, did they wean you away from the Giants? >> Sonia: No, but I'm not a sports person. >> Michelle: Not into sports at all. >> Sonia: No. >> Michelle: Okay, fine. Okay, well we won't even talk about that then. [Laughter] Let's read a little bit and just talk a little bit about your journey into the place that you are. >> Sonia: Oh I went to after I went to performing arts high school, and I struggled academically a lot because I went to such an inferior school in the inner city. When I got to performing arts with middle class kids, I didn't know half the stuff that they knew. I didn't know what an apostrophe was. I didn't know how to write an essay. So they were way ahead of me. So I go from being an A student in the Bronx... I could phone it in, nothing was expected of me so I aced it... to a bad student at high school, and then I had to go to college. You're always catching up. So I went to college on a scholarship on acting in Pittsburgh, and that was a whole different world for me because I had never been around... I hadn't been around that many white people to be frank in my life because I came from a very... I really felt like I was from a very provincial area. So I'm in Pittsburgh, and Homewood is the inner city ghetto of Pittsburgh. >> Michelle: Anybody's familiar with August Wilson, then... >> Sonia: Yes, that's his town. I have one foot in Homewood, another foot in school, and I suddenly I feel I must grow a third foot to keep up in New York, where a bunch of young Puerto Ricans called the Young Lords had taken over a church right across the street from Grandmother's house. All this talk of freedom reminds me of them. They were militant, angry, and wanted to give out free breakfast to poor kids just like the Black Panthers did in California. They set garbage on fire. My brother-in-law, Bill, said they were stupid to mess up their own neighborhood even more than it already was, and that they should've messed up a rich neighborhood. "Hoodlums," said my uncle Angel. "Look what they've done to the neighborhood, like it wasn't dirty enough." But what flourishes up in my mind is that these Young Lords also said we should be proud of being Puerto Rican. Did they mean my family, too? Should I be proud of having a father like mine? And am I supposed to like machismo and letting your husband throw coconuts at your head if he wants to? >> Michelle: And then we're going to skip and we'll go to the next page. >> Sonia: But I am left with anger. Anger becomes my companion, sitting up on my shoulder at all times, entering a room before I do. The next day I skulk in to read the notices in the hall of the Drama Department and become annoyed when I have been assigned a show. Why am I annoyed? Didn't I come to this school to be an actress? Reading on, I see that I am to be in a show called "Godspell" and wonder what that word means, anyway. The show is to be developed by the cast. Aha! I knew... I knew it. I knew it would be something like that. The reason I am in it is that it hasn't been created yet. Perfect-a part in a play that doesn't exist. I should've known. >> Michelle: [Laughter] That's good. That's great. Thank you. [Applause] What? >> Sonia: What. >> Michelle: It went on to become a big hit. >> Sonia: Right. >> Michelle: You were in the original cast of "Godspell." A lot of people don't... maybe you don't remember it. You were just up and coming. You were written up as one of the up and coming Broadway stars, and then so how did you get to Sesame Street? >> Sonia: So, you know, I think the most important things happen when you're not paying attention. I was... got written up in the Times as this up and coming Broadway star. Meanwhile, what's the Times? I never heard of a newspaper. I have never almost read one, and I get a call to audition for this wonderful show, and I thought it was going to only last a year or two, and it was only in its third year, and I just gave this little audition. They asked me to tell a story, and I went back to a story, a nightmare that I had had when I was a kid, and I related that story, and I always think, see, you're using the misery that you went through to help you. I used that story to get... to be entertaining and to get on Sesame Street, but I did see Sesame Street at the Student Union right after I was angry that I was put in this show, "Godspell." I walked into the Student Union, and there was James Earl Jones reciting the alphabet in this very deliberate manner. A, B... [laughter] and I was so compelled, I thought this must be a show that teaches lip reading, and then when I saw Susan and Gordon, this African American beautiful couple from a street that looked like many of the neighborhoods I had lived in, I flipped, and I guess little did I know that only three years later I'd be a part of the show. >> Michelle: Not just a part of it. Maybe the heart of it. >> Sonia: Thank you. >> Michelle: Maybe the heart of it, but what is it that clicked for you with Sesame Street? Why do you think it clicked for you, and why do you think they clicked with you? >> Sonia: I think it clicked for me because they wanted to give kids straight answers. They kept telling me that... I kept saying, "What's Maria like?" And they kept saying, "She's got to be a real person, a real person so that kids can relate to a real human being that's Latin." And I related to that because when I grew up in the 50's, I watched "Father Knows Best," "Leave it to Beaver," and shows like that, and they took place in the suburbs, and I had never seen anybody who looked like me or lived in an environment that I lived in. Made me feel invisible, and I wondered how I was going to contribute to this society that didn't see me. I mean, what was my job going to be? You know, what was my part in this? And Sesame Street wanted me to be that role model for kids. >> Michelle: I was reading a letter that somebody posted on your site after you announced that you were abandoning us. I'm sorry. Sorry. [Laughter] I'm sorry. Oops, sorry. I should know better. And she said, "I just wanted to say thank you, and that you helped teach me to read. I was born in Manhattan in 1969. I have memories of watching you on television in my Aunt Amy's kitchen while my mom was working. I would practice my spelling with you daily. I even remember you talking to Big Bird when Mr. Hooper died. You remind me so much of my mom who grew up on the Lower East side and looked like she could have been your sister. I'm 46 years old now, but when I heard you were retiring, I wanted to let you know just how special you are. I wish I had met you. Good luck with everything. You deserve it." Yes. [Applause] But she has met you. I kind of think she has met you. How much of Maria is you? >> Sonia: I'd say all of me. She is me, probably more patient me, a kinder me, [laughter] and certainly has better makeup than me because it's... it was professionally applied, but I think that I took the best of myself and channeled it into Maria. >> Michelle: What about the angry part of you? Did you ever get a place to put that? I mean, the fact is, it's one of the interesting things of, you know, on the one hand kids know there's anger and pain in the world. On the other hand, you know, it's kind of the American way to not participate... let, you know... to not discuss it with them. At least that's kind of become the way it is. What about the angry part of you that you've told us about here? >> Sonia: It's a terrible handicap to be angry. You just can't... It's like this weight that you carry around all the time, and it flares up when you least expect it, and you fight people that are trying to help you because when you grow up, you're in a fight mode all the time. So you want to fight with people that are being nice to you. You assume that somebody is not on your side. So but I was lucky that the people at Sesame Street at that time sort of, they didn't care or they looked around it or they found that I was valuable in any case, but I did have to deal with the... my anger on my own so that it, you know, it wouldn't get in my way. >> Michelle: Did you ever try to... Did you ever bring that to work? And did anybody ever say to you, "Hey, you know, tone it down?" You know, you're not... >> Sonia: No, but there were times they certainly should have. I mean it was a very creative group of people. There was a lot of passion going on. I remember when I was first cast I'm a young girl, and they put... there were a lot of soap opera makeup people working for us, and they put all this makeup on me, and, you know, I'm doing what I'm told, and the producer comes in, and he's furious, John Stone, and he yanks me into the makeup room, and he makes me sit in a chair, and he says to the makeup artist, "I go through all the trouble of casting a real person, and you make her look like a kewpie doll." I mean, this was a big, dramatic explosion, and as the, you know, the woman is nervously taking off my makeup, and this is kind of, you know, I'm making a poetic analogy here, I'm seeing my real face, and I'm thinking, "Ah, I got this. They really do want a real person." >> Michelle: You're in the right place. >> Sonia: I'm in the right place at the right time, but there was a... I mean, he was furious at that time, and, you know, there was a lot of passion, and, you know, people from the community would come in and talk to us and yell at us for, you know, "What are you doing for the Native Americans? What's up with the [inaudible]" "You know, you have to..." you know, it was a very passionate time. So it was easier to be angry and have it be acceptable perhaps. >> Michelle: But I think you... I can see your point because for a lot of people, it was the only place where they kind of saw themselves, and so everybody wanted to be in it, right? A lot of people, whoever didn't feel that they were represented by whatever else was on TV wanted to be in it. That's interesting... including blue people, little fuzzy blue people. >> Sonia: Right. The target audience was African American kids in the inner city, and it was the Mexican Americans on the West Coast who had a platform and said, "No, no, you... it's public television. You need to represent us as well." And when I met Emilio Delgado who plays Luis, my husband on Sesame Street, I thought he was an activist because every time he would pin a boycott grapes button on you every time he saw you. So I'm thinking, "Oh man, it's like this Mexican dude activist, too. Oh, you're an actor as well?" I thought he was just like this spokesperson. >> Michelle: Okay, well let's dish. Like who's your favorite Muppet? [Laughter] >> Sonia: I have to say... I always say this. It's Oscar the Grouch, right. I love Oscar the Grouch. >> Michelle: How come? >> Sonia: Many of you don't know this, but Caroll Spinney, who plays Big Bird, also plays Oscar the Grouch. I think he's nuance. His deep voice. I can't tell if he's 48 years old or 8 years old. You know, there's something going on there that's you see less and less in children's television now. It's like one-dimensional characters I think the Oscar's nuanced. >> Michelle: I want to give you... Do we have time for questions now? Can we do questions now? Okay, so do we have some questions for Sonia Manzano? Okay, great. >> Audience: You already led into it. I was going to ask you if you saw the Caroll Spinney movie, if you watched the documentary on him. >> Sonia: I'm afraid I haven't. I'm must be the only person who hasn't gotten around to it yet. >> Audience: No, it was an independent film, so a lot of people didn't see it, but it was really great. >> Michelle: You want to tell us a little bit about it? >> Audience: Yeah, well it was about Big Bird and how he became Big Bird, and it was pretty awesome because he explained the mechanism that was Big Bird. It was his hand that was the mouth. So he kept his hand up the entire show going like this, and he watched what was happening on a screen inside his costume. So when he walked right, it was going left on the TV. So he had to get used to doing that, and his pinkie controlled the eyebrows. >> Michelle: Oh, boy. I don't want to know that. He's 8 foot tall as far as I'm concerned. Yes, over here? >> Audience: A couple of weeks ago I saw an article I think in the Times about you and Sonia Sotomayor in a non-profit organization you guys have created in the Bronx, which I'm actually from the Bronx as well, from Park Chester. Can you talk a little bit about how the two of you came together and more about what the organization does? >> Sonia: I think we came together through the Latino Women's Lawyers group that somehow I met through... somehow I met her. Anyway, she introduced... this person introduced me to Sonia Sotomayor, and now we refer to each other as "the other Sonia from the Bronx," and so I've gotten to know her. I brought her onto Sesame Street, and I was able to write the bit that she performed on the show where she adjudicates being Goldilocks and Baby Bear as to whether Goldilocks had the right to sit in that chair and break it. So she's a wonderful person to know, and then we're putting our efforts together to create a Bronx children's museum. It's the only borough in New York that does not have a museum, and, you know, we're hoping to make it a reality >> Michelle: Oh, that's great. [Applause] >> Sonia: Thank you. >> Michelle: We only have about a minute left and so before we let you go, I wanted to... I have so many things I want to talk about obviously, so much that we would love to, you know, share with you and talk to you about, but I wanted to just ask you if you could, if there was somewhere here who was a younger you who was somebody who was struggling with a reality that wasn't what you hoped it would be and maybe you thought vaguely out there, there was better, but you didn't know what it looked like, could you talk to that person? >> Sonia: I would say understand that you know stuff. You might not know what everybody else knows, but your experience, whatever it is, teaches you stuff that you know, and once you know something, don't doubt it and compare notes with other people and maybe try and be a little bit more patient than I was, but other than that, I think that people don't give themselves credit for what they know, and just living makes you know stuff. So use it, and every life is worth making something out of it. It's... one of the titles of my book was "Make Something of It" when we were going through a million titles. So because that's possible. >> Michelle: And so your word of wisdom on "Becoming Maria" is what? What's your word of encouragement that you could leave us all with perhaps today because your career so much stands for encouragement, and what's you word of wisdom for all of us today? >> Sonia: I would say listen to the other guy sometimes. >> Michelle: Okay. All right. Sonia Manzano. I was going to say Sonia Sotomayor, the other Sonia. The other Sonia, Sonia Manzano. Her latest book is "Becoming Maria." [Applause] >> Sonia: Thank you so much. >> Announcer: This has been a presentation of the Library of Congress. Visit us at loc.gov.