If I Can Get to a Library I'll be Ok

The death of Maya Angelou got me thinking that growing up I loved African American Literature- being an immigrant I felt like the stories of Frederick Douglass, Toni Morrison, Maya Angelou among others were written for the likes of me.  In Bluest Eye I found a friend who like me wanted to look more Anglo thinking blue eyes and blonde hair would fix the pain of entering a foreign country at a fragile age where children are cruel if one is different.  My difference - not knowing the English language.  At the time in a mostly white elementary school, one boy in particular who was placed next to me in class so he could help translate would take advantage of the fact that I couldn’t be understood. Since he spoke Spanish it was his duty to help me, yet he tormented me knowing I wasn’t able to defend myself...  In the Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass I learned to fight back by bettering myself- I realized the power of education and loved that Douglass taught himself to read and write (just like my mother had).  His material poverty, abuse and racial challenges where common themes of my childhood.  When I found Maya Angelou while watching Poetic Justice she spoke to my feminine soul.  Phenomenal Woman and Still I Rise are anthems that sang me to sleep and provoked such powerful dreams.  During my first bipolar diagnoses at twenty-one I found solace in Wouldn’t Take Nothing for My Journey Now.  African literature spoke to the child who on weekends confronted domestic violence yet successfully fooled the world that she came from a stable home.  African literature made feeling abnormal, normal and helped carry my brokenness.  It painted men the way I had always known them alcoholic, powerfully selfish and violent.  Many nights I consumed myself in powerful words, in the resilient stories and the distant hope at the end of each poem.  Poetry and literature communicated the shattered, secret pain and life I lived.  I had African American writers communicating publically the private hell I lived…

It wasn’t until 1995 when I fell upon the most influential book of my young life!  The book that changed the course of my life…  Many novels before had helped carry my alien self in the foreign land I lived, but The House on Mango Street did what no amounts of African American Literature could for this Mexican girl.  Through Sandra Cisneros’s first novel I saw a future full of hope.  I gobbled up the novel in a few hours and was left with my intial celebration of my Latino culture and a pride in my Mexican identity that has followed me since.  I no longer craved for blue eyes and blonde hair -now I wanted to speak Spanish freely and proudly share that I love Vicente Fernandez and Pedro Infante.  In this short novel my painful past was retold in poetic language and all the challenges that little Esperanza endured where all hurts that I too had faced- yet the novel ended with the heroine leaving the ghetto to follow her dream and write her stories.  Esperanza turned dreaming into possibility, into attainable reality.  The knowledge that if I endured and gave it my all I too would one day leave the ghetto - that a small insignificant Mexican girl could travel the less traveled road and enjoy the fruits of her labors in a university arena became my target.  I followed Esperanza right out of the ghetto and into a life worthy of living.

In 2003, in between tears I met Sandra Cisneros at the LA Times Book Festival and I was able to share with her how much The House on Mango Street inspired me (right into university).  Among loud sobs I told her that I owed little Mango Street Esperanza the freedom to see dreams as possibilities and that it was to her colorful character that I dedicated my upcoming Bachelor’s Degree.  I recall it was a terribly hot day and she was wearing a short sleeve top that showed a very (excuse my language) bad ass tattoo of La Virgen de Guadalupe and that for some reason increased my admiration.  Since then I found many Chicano writers, but Cisneros will always have my heart. 

Sandra Cisneros & I (crying)

For many years, my identity revolved around the beauty and color of my culture.  I prided myself in my ethnic background and turned shame into an identity that I was comfortable defending (though at times I was too American for my Mexican ties and too Mexican for my American ones). It wasn't until I got to know God that I finally arrived home simply as the daughter of God.  Though I still love my culture and am very much a blend of Mexican-American - my favorite self is the one who belongs to God...  It is in Him that I found the most healing and the most freedom.  Our true visas are for Heaven and we are all brothers under the blue sky (smile). Yet, I thank African American and Chicano Literature for walking alongside me during my greatest hour of need - for I know that all good writing is a a gift from Him who uses all venues to communicate with us (wink).

"People who live on hills sleep so close to the stars they forget those of us who live too much on earth. They don't look down at all except to be content to live on hills..." The House on Mango Street