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English Or Spanish?
When I was a kid, English wasn't my first language. In first grade I would get pulled out of class when the rest of the kids did all the fun stuff, meanwhile I had to practice my reading and writing in English. A very vivid memory of my first book was me reading, The Hungry Caterpillar in Spanish. My mom would always buy me books to perfect my Spanish. But in school it was all different, The Hungry Caterpillar was in English. Yet it still is one of my favorite childhood books in both languages. -
Reading Groups
When I was In 4th grade I started to find what I liked in books. I was really into comic books and lots of drama. There were a lot of kids who were into The Babysitters Club, the cool girls who read these books in fourth grade and of course I wanted to be involved because they loved drama as much as I did. -
Challenges
The challenges in reading for me was switching from English to Spanish and vice versa. Books in English started to get harder each year. There were new words and new pronunciations, I was all over the place. I remember the only books I wanted to get into were the Warrior comic books because everyone read them at the time but they were just too hard to read. I felt left out. -
Goosebumps
When I finally overcame the fact that I had to take my time in reading I became comfortable with fiction books such as Goosebumps. The way the books left me hooked in every chapter and were easy to understand, it felt amazing the way I felt like I was inside the horror story. I started to learn what margins were and how to highlight certain parts of information in books and it was annoying at first but I finally understood as I got older. -
Love Poetry
When Covid hit, it was the best opportunity to open up with different types of genres. I was in Walmart until one book caught my eyes and it was a Poetry book. That book was called, ¨Milk and Honey¨ by Rupi Kaur. Something about the way she writes makes you feel the emotions too. She puts so much emotion into the poems it made me want to express myself the same way. This was the beginning of my writing journey. I felt euphoric, as if I was meant to write poems my whole life. -
Flowers Bloom
As I started to write more and more about poems, I got more recognition. My 8th grade English teacher gave me an opportunity to write a poem for a poetry competition. Although, I never knew who won or if I even got a place but it made her emotional. She felt the way I feel whenever I read poetry and it's the most amazing feeling to know your poem can relate to another persons life. That's how we humans connect. -
Shakespeare
Freshman year we did a whole unit of poetry. I'll admit that Shakespeare is definitely not my type of poetry but he had very beautiful stories like ¨Romeo and Juliet ¨ There was a lot of writing but it made me feel a little bit more confident in myself. I made it clear to myself that I wont understand some English words neither with Spanish. I came to the conclusion with myself that I know enough to defend myself and still write with passion. -
My Future
I'd like to think that one day ill have my own poem book saying ¨ written by Ash Ortiz¨. It's a dream to come true and I am thrilled to learn more about writing to make myself the number one best seller in New York Times. Poetry and even biographies are more realistic and actually give you a glimpse of the outside world and gives you different perspectives that are all beautiful but can be the worst to take in at such a young age.