SUBSCRIBE 93° as low as $0.99 LOG IN HOME / ENTERTAINMENT / BOOKS & LITERATURE advertisement Resize text A A A BOOKS Manzano of ‘Sesame Street’ reveals tumultuous youth in ‘Becoming Maria’ Posted: 12:00 a.m. Friday, Sept. 18, 2015 By Sharyn Vane ­ Special to the American­Statesman Sonia Manzano remembers trembling from her father’s outbursts. She remembers asking her mother if their family was poor and finding tiny roaches in her fruit cocktail. But she also remembers the magical day when she figured out how to read. + SESAME STREET/PBS Elmo and Sonia Manzano chat on “Sesame Street.” She was riding on the subway with her sister Aurea, begging her to read the signs for her. Cranky, Aurea snapped that she should read them herself. “I look at the letters in the signs and in one split second the words fall into place and I am reading. I’m reading!” Manzano writes in her revealing new memoir, “Becoming Maria: Love and Chaos in the South Bronx” (Scholastic, $17.99). “But I don’t say anything to Aurea. I can read and I don’t want anyone to know my secret weapon, and suddenly I can’t wait for summer to end and second grade to begin.” It was one of the bright spots of childhood for Manzano — better known to millions of “Sesame Street” viewers as Maria. Manzano, 65, retired earlier this year after more than four decades playing Maria on the beloved PBS television series, eventually winning 15 Emmys for her writing for the show. + “Becoming Maria: Love and Chaos in the South Bronx,” by Sonia Manzano She appears in Austin on Sept. 26, as the keynote speaker for the Texas Teen Book Festival. Manzano has written several books for children, including her newest holiday­themed picture book, “Miracle on 133rd St.” (Atheneum, $17.99). So why turn to memoir? “As ‘Sesame Street’ produced less and less shows … I found myself with all this creative energy and nowhere to put it,” she said in a phone interview. “I wanted to show how I ended up on a comedy show coming from such a tumultuous background. + ZACH HYMAN/PBS Big Bird chats with Maria (Sonia Manzano) and Gordon (Roscoe Orman) on “Sesame Street.” “Also, 44 years is long enough to wait for Oscar the Grouch to propose,” she quips. “Becoming Maria” is full of painful details of life with her father — capriciously refusing to allow young Sonia to attend a friend’s birthday party, or becoming so angry at her mother’s absence that he picks up a coffee table and smashes it against the wall. “Then he picks up a lamp and sends it flying into the door of their bedroom, and I watch the lightbulb shatter like my feelings even though I’m not sure what I’m feeling except that I’m beyond scared and turn into a one­ note, catatonic, unbroken scream,” Manzano writes. Reliving such episodes was necessary to tell her story honestly — a key priority of hers as a writer, she says. “ I had to wait to be as old as I was to do it,” she says. “First of all, you’re very angry when you live that life, you’re in fight mode. … One good thing about getting older is perspective. You can look back on something and be more tender. “I never said, ‘I’m going to enlighten people.’ I’ve always found that the more honest you are and true about your feelings, the more people will know what that feels like.” Manzano recalls meeting fellow memoirist Mary Karr, whose 1995 memoir “The Liars’ Club” depicted Karr’s tough upbringing in East Texas with an alcoholic father. “I related so much to that book. I met her at a book signing, and I said, ‘I’m Puerto Rican raised in the South Bronx — how’d you start writing about me?’ I understood those feelings that she had as a little girl even though it was not the same situation as mine. The truthfulness touched me, and that’s why I went for truthfulness in my book.” Part of that meant writing “Becoming Maria” in the simple­yet­eloquent inner voice of the child and teenager Manzano was at the time of the events she wrote about — from her earliest memories to her fascination with television and acting, as well as her audition for “Sesame Street,” which comes near the close of the book. “I did write a version in an adult voice looking back, talking about how my baby brother had asthma, but then I would read it and think, ‘Who cares? You’re just telling a fact.’ People don’t know how it felt for me to have my baby brother have an asthma attack every 20 minutes,” she says. “I really desired to have the reader feel my feelings at every age.” And how does she feel about the recent announcement that “Sesame Street,” long a hallmark of public television, will now air on HBO? “I was just as shocked as everyone else when they announced it,” she notes. “It would be wonderful if there were public funds for them to do the shows for young people and not worry about money. But I would be sadder if it wasn’t on the air at all.” The Texas Teen Book Festival Who: Sonia Manzano What: Keynote speech on her memoir “Becoming Maria: Love and Chaos in the South Bronx.” When: 1:30 p.m. Sept. 26 Where: RCC Gym, St. Edward’s University, 3001 S. 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