Content Warning: This section of the guide discusses physical abuse, child abuse, anti-LGBTQ+ bias, drug use, and racism.

Rex Ogle is an award-winning author of more than one hundred books and is a writer for Marvel and DC Comics. His writing is known for its explorations of poverty, abuse, and resilience in his works like Free Lunch and his memoir-in-verse Abuela, Don’t Forget Me. Ogle centers his memoir on his relationship with Abuela and the ways in which her unconditional love helped shape the course of his life. 

One of the most important influences she has on him is through his identity and self-perception. Throughout his childhood and adolescence, Ogle struggles with the shame associated with poverty, abuse, and the internalized racism of his peers. In an early poem, Ogle takes stock of himself in “mirror”, calling himself “a human zebra / painted wrong / by god’s own hand” (37). Ogle internalizes the slurs others use against him and dehumanizes himself, calling himself an animal and “painted wrong,” as if he is some kind of aberration of nature.

With Abuela’s guidance and influence, Ogle begins to see himself as someone with a

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