#goldy moldavsky

¡Qué bonita bandera! AKA what heritage(s) do you claim?

I am Peruvian. Born in Peru to a mother who was born in Peru whose mother was also born in Peru and so on and so on.

When was the first time you saw yourself represented?

I didn’t really see myself represented in books until fairly recently—but maybe that’s my fault for being a less-than-stellar reader as a kid. The first books that were read to me were picture books in Spanish, and they’re books that I still have and treasure. But when we moved to America it was a huge cultural shift and all the entertainment I consumed was super Americanized. I didn’t really see any Latinx characters in anything I read until adulthood when I picked up Junot Diaz’s The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. I was honestly delighted to read Spanglish right there on the page—Spanish words that weren’t translated into English. To me that was a clear message that this was written for me, for us. Reading that and identifying with the Hispanic/American/New York cultures in that book was a thrill.

In YA it was really cool for me to see a Jewish/Latina character in Anna Breslaw’s Scarlett Epstein Hates it Here and an undocumented character in Nicola Yoon’s The Sun is Also a Star.

How do you connect to your heritage through your books (if at all)?

In my latest novel, No Good Deed, the protagonist is named Gregor Maravilla—a nod to both his Eastern European and Latino heritage. A motif in the story involves his bunkmate constantly teasing him for being just another white boy and Gregor constantly having to stand up for his heritage and remind his bunkmate that he’s actually half-Latino. That was written from experience. There’s been plenty of times in my life where people pull the classic Mean Girls line and ask me why I’m so white if I’m really Latina, or they don’t believe me because of my name. It was important for me to show that Latinxs come in all different forms, and we’ve all got a connection to our Latinx heritage.  

What do you hope for the future of Latinx books?

I hope to learn more from cultures that aren’t my own. I want to see every kind of Latinx on the page.  

What is the book that inspired you to write for kids/teens?

Gossip Girl!

What are you writing now?

Working on something brand new but it’s way too early to talk about it just yet. My latest novel, No Good Deed, just came out this summer from Scholastic.

Goldy Moldavsky was born in Lima, Peru, and grew up in Brooklyn, where she still lives. Her debut novel, KILL THE BOY BAND, is a New York Times bestseller, and her latest novel is NO GOOD DEED. Both books are published by Scholastic in the US and MacMillan in the UK.

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