BEST AUTHOR BEST : ELDA ROTOR [2]

 

.-  Is there a Penguin classic that you wish more people knew about?

'' Buddhist Meditation,'' translated with an introduction by Kurtis R. Schaeffer.

It's an example of Penguin Classic that is both a great resource for students and is fundamentally helpful to general readers for daily living.

.-  What kind of reader were you as a child?

My mother was deeply religious, and she had booklets of daily meditations in her purses that fed my early appetite for poetry.

I loved '' The Real Mother Goose. '' I adored  '' Nutshell Library,'' by Maurice Sendak. My favorite children story is still '' The Emperor's New Clothes.'' The Moby Books illustrated Classic Editions that we bought at a discount store definitely served as a foundation for learning some classics.

.-  How have your reading habits changed over time?

In high school I Loved the emotional dark and moody stuff : Keats, Byron, Shakespeare sonnets, Oscar Wilde, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, '' Wuthering Heights,'' '' The Picture of Dorian Gray.''

In college, there was a lot of eyeliner and underlining Milan Kundera, and coffee and Raymond Carver.

Now my favorite novelist is Jesmyn Ward. But the through line in my reading life is poetry. Audre Lorde remains a beacon.

.-  What's the most interesting thing you learned from a book recently?

Among so many recovered texts in the Penguin Classic '' The Literature of Japanese American Incarceration,'' there is a 1944 petition from the Mothers Society of Minidoka, signed by over 100 women, addressed to President Roosevelt and Eleanor Roosevelt, to suspend the drafting of their children, incarcerated American citizens of Japanese Ancestry.

.-  What's the best book you've ever received as a gift?

'' Brown River, White Ocean : An Anthology of 20th-Century of Philippine Literature in English. ''

My father gave it to me for Christmas about 30 years ago. It included a short story by a distant relative, Arturo Rotor. I had never read his work before. He was a sort of myth to me, and I only knew fragments about him.

It was an acknowledgement of the world that I wanted to be in, and it means a lot to me.

The World Students Society thanks The New York Times.