 The earliest memory I have of a scary story is a nursery rhyme my mother told me; There was an old woman who lived in a shoe. I had a lot of questions. Who was this old woman? How many children did she have? How could they possibly live in a shoe? Why did she beat them? I was fixated on this woman, this villain, and I did not even know what the word villain was at that time, but I knew this woman was very bad and very cruel. My mother turned the light off and I remember sitting up in bed not able to get this awful image out of my head, a wicked woman beating her little children, who were probably as little as I was at the time or smaller. My parents raised me speaking English, even though their first language was Spanish. We lived in a German, Polish and Greek neighborhood and we were the first Puerto Rican family on the block in 1980. By 1990, the neighborhood was predominantly Puerto Rican and Mexican. While my parents primarily spoke Spanish, they still tried to read English stories to me. The stories they told me were a mix of folk and fairy tales from their upbringing in Puerto Rico in the 1940s or Little Golden Books and the like my parents would buy at the local grocery store. We didn’t really go to the library much. My parents were too embarrassed to take us there, given their limited English. My parents tried their best in educating me, with their limited education. Both of my parents hold a 6th grade education. So, there came a point where they could no longer read books to me, because they would struggle. I can’t remember the name of the book, but there was a page with a duck wearing rain boots and my father stopped reading because he came up to a word he could not read, and maybe he was embarrassed or frustrated, but he just handed me the book and walked away. I later learned the word was ‘galoshes,’ and I felt so angry then that my father could not read it to me, but now I feel so sad, because he felt so sad in that moment. Many writers have these wondrous stories of growing up and regularly visiting the library, voraciously reading library books, or having their parents purchase them books, and having bookshelves and bookshelves full of fantastical books. I had neither. My parents avoided interacting with the English speaking population as much as possible, because in looking back, I remember the mean comments they received in stores from clerks who did not understand them, the sneers, and the demands to speak up or speak English. So, there were no visits to the library for me or purchases at the bookstore. My books came from my inner city public schools, schools with broken and limited budgets. Our books were decades old, with cracked and yellowed pages or covers missing. I remember many of our fiction books were from the 1950s or 1960s. I attended elementary school in the 1980s and high school in the 1990s. So many of the books I had access to were classics, Moby Dick, The Great Gatsby, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Lord of the Flies, The Old Man and the Sea, The Grapes of Wrath, The Count of Monte Cristo, Beowulf, Of Mice and Men, The Call of the Wild, Alice’s Adventure in Wonderland, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, and many more. Then with horror, my introduction to the genre came through those classics as well, collections of Edgar Allan Poe, H.P. Lovecraft, Frankenstein, The Invisible Man, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, The Legend of Sleepy Hollow and more. So, I read whatever I could find in my failing schools, and the elementary school I attended was indeed ranked as failing, as well as the high school I attended with its 40% graduation rate at that time. My high school’s graduating class college acceptance and graduation rate within four years was probably in the single digit percentage range. So I was one of only a few that went to college and graduated within four years – armed with a limited literature background. It was not until college, really, when I began to read more widely, mostly as a way to play catch up. For each book that was assigned as a required reading I found myself reading an additional two or three books, just to know the background and reference material that was a part of the greater and wider discussion. It was shocking to learn the books that fellow students in college had read when they were younger, about their frequent trips to the library and book stores and about the stacks of books they had at home. It’s funny, for a long time I kept this massive Merriam-Webster dictionary with a broken front red hard cover that was given to me by my J.R.O.T.C. instructor. He had noticed how I enjoyed reading the copy he kept by his desk, turning to it in class and searching for new words, and at the end of the school year let me take that and a thesaurus home. This is how books came to me, they were given by teachers, or given away at the end of the school year, stacks that were no longer needed or relevant and I picked through them, taking home what I could carry. Now, I surround myself with books, buying them up in a frenzy and hoarding them because I never had any growing up and I just can’t believe that they are mine and I can finally afford them. Like my college reading, I found myself playing catch up as well when I went on to complete an MFA in Writing. My undergraduate degree was in journalism and my first master’s degree was in research, but I still had that pull and need to read and learn more about reading and writing. I wanted to learn more about an area that had fascinated me so much while growing up – horror and mystery, and it was during that time that I gave myself a crash course lesson on modern horror reading and writing, reading the works of Angela Carter, Shirley Jackson, Anne Rice, Stephen King, Peter Straub, Clive Barker, Richard Matheson, Ray Bradbury and many more. It was also that time that I had the opportunity to return to some of the very first stories that frightened me, ones that were told to me, that didn’t require a book, but my mother’s memory from when she went to school so many years before – fairy tales. The love of reading touches you, and for many of us like me, once upon a time, I did not have access to books, but still, I found a way. Stories are so much more accessible now, with free content online. Still, I will ask you to know that there is a future horror writer out there, many of them in fact, and some of them will move along slowly, as I did, and some of them will need help along the way, finding books. So, I ask for your patience and understanding, and if you can I ask you to share your love of books and writing widely so that the future generation of writers and horror writers in particular can find the right words along their way.  Cynthia “Cina” Pelayo is the author of SANTA MUERTE, THE MISSING, LOTERIA, POEMS OF MY NIGHT, INTO THE FOREST AND ALL THE WAY THROUGH, and the upcoming CHILDREN OF CHICAGO by Agora/Polis Books. Pelayo is an International Latino Book Award winning author and an Elgin Award nominee. She lives in Chicago with her family. You can follow her at Twitter: https://twitter.com/cinapelayo or https://www.instagram.com/cinapelayoauthor/?hl=en Or visit her Website cinapelayo.com  Into The Forest And All The Way Through is a collection of true crime poetry that explores the cases of over one hundred missing and murdered women in the United States. "This book shook me, ripped my heart out, and haunts me still. Into the Forest and All the Way Through shines a harsh light on a subject society has been far too content to ignore...and it's about goddamn time. This Is a vital collection." -Kealan Patrick Burke, Bram Stoker Award-winning author of Sour Candy   Comments are closed.
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