Imagine the writing scene looking like Santa Monica Beach: near the pier, itās another sunny southern California day, not too hot to want to hide in shade, the shore shoulder-to-shoulder bodies, pudgy to muscled, splashing, the waves as ferocious as seven-year-olds. There are many kinds of writers frolicking there, published and not yet published, of all colors, and lots of that skin darkness without sun or tanning lotions. Not so many years ago, when youād have been half as tall and following your mommy around when she shopped, visiting here was another mouth-open trip to the other land, like Beverly Hills or even the west side of Los Angeles. What you would remember about Santa Monica Beach then was the park on a cliff above the sand, its groomed lawn and peaceful benches, and there above the sand, those people wore stylish white dresses or suits, white shoes and hats. Santa Monica wouldnāt have seemed like a beach hang to you back then. Youād go to other beaches, where you were supposed to, or maybe just did.
Let me take you on a drive to the east side of the literary West, starting at that beach. Get on the Santa Monica Freeway and drive past the Robertson and La Cienega exits, past Hoover, Vermont, Normandie, past downtown L.A., into East L.A. But no, do not exit. Just keep driving east, really east, and pretty soonāwell, not so pretty soon, but eventuallyāyou will have crossed so much desert Southwest that youāll find yourself in El Paso, the Chicano Ellis Island. Half the people youāve ever met in Los have lived in El Paso or JuĆ”rez. But keep driving. Like nine more hours. If you were to stay on the Santa Monica Freeway (around here called I-10), itād take you to San Antonio and the Alamo. Which might also be a good point to start this story, but do what I suggest here anyway, and get off the interstate and take State Highway 290 to Austin, the capital of Texas.
What I want to answer is what itās like to be a Mexican-American writer these days, when our numbers are so many we can go to any beach in Califas, when many now know what you mean when you say Califas, or Nuevo Mejico, even when you pronounce āArizonaā as if it actually has the vowel āiā in it. What I have done is lead you to the western-swing dance of political and arty and tattooed-hipster Texas, every nativeās second home-town, because so much of the cultural love of the Texas Republic is centered here. If you look back in the American sixties, the most exotic music and spiciest food and mystic wisdom came from IndiaāRavi Shankar, chicken or vegetarian curry, and all that nirvana meditation. In here-and-now Austin, tacos are like pizza slices in New York City, thereās Flaco and Santiago Jimenez squeezing accordians wildly, and dude, if you want wisdom, you read about it in Spanish, you go to the local psychic, and if you donāt speak no espaƱol, you better be fluent in enough Spanglish to get that deep truth.
The downside, as my camarada Mando likes to say: they keep remembering the Alamo to remind us not to forget that we lost the war.
Excuse me for a second, Iām getting a little sleepies now that Iām back here. Itās hot, you know, and I theenk I might wanna leettle siesta. A leetle hard for me to concentrate a veces. Itās sometheeng I been learning aquĆ mero en este estado tambien.
Especially in Austin, the Chicano people have influenced the literary establishment. Take, particularly, the magazine of the state, el mero patrĆ³n del estado, Texas Monthly. They say that any writer who wants to be taken seriously here, for a magazine of this reputation to get behind him, has to make it with the editors of this magazine. Even though, by their estimation, it is as important as any periodical in the country, it is stand-alone concerned only with the issues of Texas. Its high standards are much like the old days of South Africa, when other issues werenāt darkening that countryāit knows what diamonds are, how exquisite and rare, and the focus and concern is as clear as a De Beers. Besides its own writersā craft and income, this mag shows how it cares about us, too: over the years, there have been several stories about one of us who has died, and sometimes one of their writers does a piece on one of our musicians, or a boxer, or our cholo or graffiti trouble, and they do like our food. A feature article a couple of months ago, with color photos, was about where to get our best corn tortillas. In a laudatory recent bio in the alternative Austin weekly, the Chronicle, the newest editor in chief is even quoted as saying he has made an outstanding offer to one of our most famous writers, Sandra Cisneros, to send him a story about not loving the myth of the Alamo. An against-the-tide gutsiness that is hard not to admire.
So just imagine the honor it was for someones like me to be asked to contribute! I had another New York book coming out, Iād been given one of those Guggenheims and even had won a couple other of those eastern-award thingies, but that the editor in chief now wanted me to give them something! Heād said he read one of those articles Iād published in The New Yorker, and he liked it.
Ay!
You know how we are. I had to stop my brains from sizzling with all my schemes of getting some and had to write for higher goals, not just to impress las rucas masotas. Which, tu sabes, wasnāt so easys for me, si me entiendes. I like the girls. When I was only a chavalito, I, too, thought I would grow up to be a boxer, el mero mero chingĆ³n. I probably canāt help myself. Like they think, I guess I like to fight, you know? Fighting, hijo de su, that feels like ME, vato, you know? Especially when someone pisses me off. Pero, I also have this other drive? And, you know, I guess I decided I like the girls too much. So, sabes que, I must have, like, decided I wanted to be a good lover man instead, play my instincts that ways. You know? So, you know, I decided to be a writer. What better ways, verdad? You sit alone for long hours typing, and when you get out,
hijole!, all those killer models . . . yeah, se vale, itās worth it. Musicians and artists, even los ricos con los bucks, they get nothing como los escritores.
But this was a special opportunity: to include something from our people in their distinctive pages. It was such a big risk for them, I understood that, and I didnāt want to mess up nothing. I even had to not goof around for a while there to get a manuscript to them. And, hard as it was for me not to think of chasing muchachas instead, I did it, just like I promised I would, on time. I was proud of it, too. I am such a macho, I even thought it was good!
The editor in chief, he called and said he liked it, but . . . You know how it is when they go ābut.ā He said, like a dentist after an X ray, I should come over and visit the office. All those swats I deserved over my junior and high school years in the vice principalās office, well, as much insight as I have into my flawed character, I still get nervous being sent slips to go to the office. So I said, You couldnāt just tell me in writing? (Itās what I get away with when I publish in New York City.) He shopped the story around to find someone who could work with me. And finally, in an E-mail note, he explained to me how I should take the advice from this assistant editor he found just for me, and that I should work with him āconstructivelyāāhey, but donāt that word sound like from boring high school teacher lady, talking slow, because she thinks youāre so much dumber than Emily BrontĆ«? Quela, itās probably since I got this jalapeƱo blood that I couldnāt slow up that fighter in me. And then his assistant (who has even been promoted to their head sports writer) had suggestions for me on how to write correctly, like his people, and how what I got puts readers to sleep, and that I gotta wake up (he said my piece āputs them into a dreamlike trance,ā but since I seem to like una napita once in a while, this siesta need in my sangre, like wanting the girls too much, I see now maybe he was only trying to be culturally sensitive) (or could be they got like commercials, maybe, and thatās how I think they make money to pay for the pretty paper they print on). Well, what happened next I feel even sorrier about. I couldnāt show a good attitude. That too-picoso boxer in me felt disrespected and insulted. Like Iām thinking theyāre treating me like Iām so young and inexperienced, or like Iām just a stupid, like English learning. I told you! I yelled. Didnāt you say? I yelled. I even screamed how I should be paid for doing exactly what I said I would and exactly what he said he wanted. My hot-chile temper. I dunno what I got in my jeans (or do they mean genes, or both?).
Here they were, doing me a favor, giving me a literary opportunity in this land we lost, and Iām going off like theyāre . . . well, I wonāt say that word. Iām sure it is how they treat everybody, and I ruined my opportunity by throwing verbal chingazos, believing I shouldnāt have to accept being told by these people how to write. I am so obviously spoiled by shoddy New York City standards. I do trick those who arenāt from here and know how we are. In the East, they think Iām smart enough already. And what I wrote that Texas Monthly couldnāt accept, I sold to la Harperās Magazine. Those East Coast fulanos loved it just as I wrote it, and published it in June 2001 without any editing or advice whatever.
I may never learn, but you still might. What I am telling you is that we are, unlike in the past, being offered never-before opportunities, only you have to watch out and not mess up and look bad for our peoples. We play on the beaches in Santa Monica, and continue to make homes in the sands of the desert Southwest, and even though weāre told how we lost the war in Texas, we are making our history proud again, even our own unique literature, and that sooner still, if we let ourselves do our best workāwithout having to perform as the stereotypes they have taught us is in our blood.
What I Would Have Said About the State of Texas Literature
Yes, a publicist at Grove Press had very diligently mailed me a copy of a fax sheād received weeks earlier for the first-ever Texas Book Festival. Yes, it read clearly that I was to be on a panel, in the House Chamber, at ten-thirty A.M.., November 16, the first day of the event. The evening before, yes, I took a phone call from the moderator, Rich Oppel, editor of the Austin American-Statesman, who told me what he intended to say. I did get there on time without anybodyās help. Early, even. About half an hour before I left for the capitol, Iād made notesāword count about several fingers on one handāon an utterly great idea, straight from the brain, I assure you. My yawning was simply an open expression of confidence.
Afterward somebody asked, Didnāt you get the idea when it said āHouse Chamberā? Hey, man, it sounded like a comfortable room to me. I donāt know where you grew up. Didnāt it occur to you, somebody asked, when you learned that Mrs. Laura Bush, the governorās wife, would be there to introduce this āopening panelā at which you were featured? Yeah, well, it was morning, it was way early, Iām not from Austin, Iāve never done this gig before, Iāve been real busy, real busy, and nobody told me, they shouldāve told me a lot more better. These Republicans are always trying to set us up, you know? Now that I get to think of it, Iām disappointed in the ex-librarian Mrs. Bush, who is very kind, very generous, who loves books as much as me, who was doing something inspired for Texas and its libraries and its literary arts with an extravagant, and successful, fund-raising festival, despite marrying the man who beat Ann Richards, who is cool even if she never did put me in such a position to make a fool of myself, which is also the point, you see?
Iām telling you, it wasnāt my fault that only one-syllable words, one at a time, period, next word, with pauses to help the memory, exited, distantly related, from my mouth. A couple of days before, after a public reading in San Antonio, for a good cause, too, where I had to sign several books for a couple of fans, two give or take, all of which was extremely exhausting physically and mentally for me to do two days before this other event, after which, at an excessively niceāif youāll excuse the expression, very niceāhouse, there was all this food, and I hadnāt eaten dinner yet, and then I sat with Larry L. King, and got to smoking one of the hostās Cubita cigars, listening and listening, drinking and drinking, spirits, not just that French wine, laughing too much to remember the serious business that lay ahead of me. Anybody who knows Larry L. King probably would have been aware of his profligate drinking and talking. Iād never met him before. He admitted that heās not even supposed to be smoking cigarettes, and yet he did, and a lot of them, Iāll tell you. Later, William Hauptman and Marion Winik kept me up late in that river walk hotel, digging at my psyche, I think, for material which is mine. They knew that in two days, I was supposed to say something intelligent and dignified and coherent (I know I told them repeatedly, and they simply did not care), and yet they did not relent on working me over, even though, by then, in less than two days, I had to be prepared. And then the next night, the night before, back in Austin, it was Marion Winik once again, using what she got on me against me. There was a reporter present from The New York Times, it was a bar, there was his wife. Need I say more? This is the state of Texas Literature, too, you know. And so itās not just my fault.
Iād compare it to that scene in Journey to the East by Hermann Hesse. Thatās probably not the right book, and thereāll be a head-shaking letter to the editor. Which is also the state of Texas Literature. . . . Hmm. How did that go? Iāve been out for a few nights, and been real busy, Iām not from here, and it was really a long time ago when I read Hesse. Hereās the scene Iām thinking of from wherever: a psychic literary night of dimly lit faces, masklike, in a black Catholic fog, staring at you, deciding whether youāre in or youāre out. Compared to being in the literal daylight of Texas, feeling a little hazy, at the Speakerās podium, the stateās most famous speaker of all, the Hog, in a bigger-than-any-in-Alaska portrait over your shoulder, in that darkly aging European Renaissance hue of historical majesty but with āRemember the Alamo!ā patriotism. A fifty-foot ceiling for enchanced, epic echo in the luxurious cavern of the august chamber. Distant faces staring up at you, going way way back, too, so impervious to your unadjusted sight you wish you had a pair of glasses, some prescription shades in this bright Baptist light, your jury attached to coastered executive chairs at desks with a voting mechanism, that yes/no electronic board behind the other shoulder. A red velvet and polished brass horseshoe gallery for observers. You never heard the board lighting up, but every face was very silently not smiling or winking. When all Iād expected were a couple of tables pushed together, folding chairs, an audience of twenty to thirty.
What I would have said is based on what Rich Oppel did say characterized Texas Literature: in a place rooted in soil but unromantically, unsentimentally, because of the natural forces that are constant reminders. Which is empowered by history, which always reinforces or subverts myth or tall tale. That is held by honor, which forces larger-than-life issues of good and bad, right and wrong, and which is driven by a humor that distrusts pomposity and snaps with skepticism for political trends or party affiliation. And, last, which is gripped by a rugged individualism that resists generalizations, even this one.
One thing I have to admit strikes me about this depiction, on the positive side, on first impression, is how it sure does sound like me and my work. That noble implication, particularly.
A second thing, a question, from my rugged, individualistic, skeptical side, is how many books and authors would have to be eliminated if the sentimental and romanticized restrictions alone were enforced? Iād cover a few wagers theyāre not the ones to get the biggest advances.
But okay, por fin (thereās another trait, missed, Spanish syllables sound like words, like, my favorite example, the street in downtown Austin, Nueces, is pronounced ānew acesā), hereās the real great idea I came prepared with when I walked into the House Chamber: that this sure does sound like a description of Ross Perot. Doesnāt it? Be honest. It does, right? A mythic, romantic, sentimental Ross Perot for all Texas times, in many Texas settings. Not necessarily such a pretty picture now, is it?
I learned from years on construction jobs that there are two lists to describe workersāparticularly the apprenticesāwho are kept at layoff time versus those let go, this being a process usually founded on a simple āintuitiveā judgment. While one was thought to be growing into his feet, fiery, hardheaded, the other was clumsy, too difficult to work with, and never learned. One got a winky grin, the other a head-shaking raised eyebrow. A foreman or super chose as if pulling out one or the other explanation sheet for his decision. If you werenāt quick, you, too, might go away nodding with understanding, satisfied. Because when you shut your eyes and honestly considered the activities of the two, their behavior was, at best, exactly the same. Those in charge didnāt have to be conscious of how or why they kept who they did, and in most circumstances werenāt, but the result was the same: of a clean-cut white guy, a Chicano, a black, and a white with scraggly hair, guess which one was the best worker?
I imagine someone living in a separate Texas, remembering an equally long heritage that is almost completely ignoredāgo to Mexico, see the pyramids at TeotihuacĆ”nāor a state history that isnāt likedāread With His Pistol in His Handābecause itās not so pleasant, some unnatural forces being constant reminders of disempowerment. Imagine that person who is rugged and doesnāt accept generalizations, who jumps at that traditional pomposity and arrogance, whoās proud of her saga and lineage (just as likely a him, but make it a her, which is also a more difficult fit in traditional Texas), trying to reinforce her past or to subvert the traditional myth that has called her names at the worst, romanticized and sentimentalized her exotic sex or transcendent passivity at the best. Think of her standing there listening to Ross Perot, think of what would happen if she were talking back to Ross Perot. Is she still considered a rugged, individualistic maverick? Or do you hear him harumphing about her āpolitical correctnessā and āmulticulturalismā? How disrespectful sheād sound complaining, how ānegativeā? How her version of pride and history sounds too angry to him. How her complaining is revisionist. Sheās poor. And poor is simply not as fascinating as rich. Poor does not sell magazines. Poor does not sell movies, TV shows, or books.
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