Seventeenth International Conference on New Directions in the Humanities

Abstract

Keeping the four hundred year-old thousand-page classic Don Quixote accessible, relevant, and present in the curriculum is an ever greater challenge in the heterogeneous twenty-first century college classroom of “reluctant readers.” Whether taught in Spanish as part of a language and literature major or taught in English translation in a World Literature or General Education program, the Quixote’s socio-cultural-historical context and linguistic complexity are significant hindrances to any reader. This study considers the uncanny parallels between the Quixote and the 2009 Young Adult Novel We Were Here by NY Times bestseller and Newbery prize winning author Matt de la Peña as an ideal port of entry to Cervantes’ masterpiece. Marketed as “Young Adult Literature” (YAL), We Were Here is the story of Miguel Castañeda a teen-aged half-white half-Mexican Don Quixote, reading his way through the classics while on the run from a group home. His “Sancho” is Rondell, an illiterate African American foster kid. Their classic hero journey is an exploration of wealth and poverty along beaches of California to the Mexican border at Tijuana, through the farmlands of the Central Valley–spaces as recognizable to the contemporary American reader as La Mancha and the Sierra Nevada were to the seventeenth-century Spanish reader. We Were Here is a relatable reality for students in an American college classroom. This study outlines ways instructors may use De la Peña’s novel as a lens to bring into focus students’ perspective and aid understanding of the classic text through the similarities in stories and themes.