Jennifer De Leon was 19 years old the first time she read a book by a Latina author, a moment that inspired her to become an author.

“The books that I write are the ones I wished I had as a child,” De Leon said during a presentation at Swampscott Elementary School on Tuesday.

Swampscott community members gathered on Tuesday at the Swampscott Elementary School to listen to De Leon present “The Power of Storytelling” and sign copies of her two most recent young adult novels. In her talk, De Leon referenced University of Wisconsin-Madison’s 2018 study on diversity in children’s books, in which 23% of children’s books depict characters of color as opposed to 50% of characters who are white and 27% that are animals. While discouraging, De Leon said these statistics encourage her to “keep going,” as she writes stories that allow young Latino people to feel seen.

De Leon was raised outside of Boston by two Guatemalan immigrants. The only two books in the house were the Yellow Pages, delivered free by the mailman, and the Bible from their church.

As a child, De Leon was always writing. She filled notebooks with stories and personal essays, a hobby that provoked teasing from her Guatemalan cousins.

“Why do you talk like that,” her cousins would ask, “you sound like a white girl.”

As a result, De Leon began code-switching, playing “White Jen” during the week and “Latina Jen” on the weekends. She resisted learning to read and write in Spanish until she read “The House on Mango Street” by Sandra Cisneros while in her college English Literature course. De Leon thought that her professor had made a mistake assigning the book when she saw words in Spanish peppered throughout the book. It was the first time she realized Spanish could be integrated into English-language writing.

Since then De Leon has published four books, all referencing the experience of being a Latina woman in the United States. Her second most recent book, “Don’t Ask Me Where I’m From” tells the story of 15-year-old Liliana, a half-Guatemalan half-Salvadorian girl, who has just been accepted into the METCO program, sending her to an almost all-white high school in the suburbs. Now the minority at her new school, Lilian decides the only way to survive is to assimilate. She starts going by Lili, alters the way she speaks, and distances herself from her immigrant neighborhood.

Soon, however, Liliana finds out the reason her father hasn’t been home in a month. He’s undocumented and was deported to Guatemala. Liliana becomes faced with a choice: continue to change herself for the comfort of her white peers or show off who she really is and where she came from.

Through the METCO program, “Don’t Ask Me Where I’m From” has been a favorite for many book clubs in the Swampscott area.

“We have book clubs everywhere. We have teachers at the middle school doing it. We have 10 girls here (at METCO), and we have I think 12 seniors at the senior center reading it,” said Krista Lynch, the METCO district co-director.

De Leon spoke of the value of knowledge for everybody, as it can never be taken away.

“School and education, it’s not like a fancy car,” De Leon said. “It goes where you go.”

The book club at Swampscott Unites, Respects Embraces Diversity (S.U.R.E. Diversity)just finished reading “Don’t Ask Me Where I’m From” last week, which is how Margaret Somer found herself at Tuesday’s presentation.

According to Somer, the book’s title sparked discussion in her group about the question, “Where are you from?” She said it opened her eyes to the layers of meaning behind a question she often asked without thinking.

“You read the news differently, once you read that,” Somer said