Literal Magazine Interview with Sergio Troncoso

Sergio Troncoso's interview in Literal Magazine: Latin American Voices on Nepantla Familias:

"What stands out for me in all these works is how these writers are comfortable with uncertainty, how they embrace it, and how they find themselves in the fog of adopting the in-between. I think when you get too certain about who you are, you stop thinking, you stop looking, your curiosity starts to disappear. It’s difficult to live in uncertainty, but it’s also the most lived life."

 

https://literalmagazine.com/a-conversation-with-sergio-troncoso/

The Distance to Tucson

Distance—whether it be psychic, physical, linguistic, ethnic or cultural—allows us to easily stereotype individuals, groups, and even places. I wrote a novel, The Nature of Truth, in which I argued—yes, in my novels I argue, sometimes with myself—that the pursuit of truth through abstraction is often rooted in hate. Years later I read Anzaldua’s Borderlands in which she says, “In trying to become ‘objective,’ Western culture made ‘objects’ of things and people when it distanced itself from them, thereby losing ‘touch’ with them. This dichotomy is the root of violence.” I knew I had found a kindred spirit.

So it was upon my arrival in Tucson. What I expected after being outraged by the banning of books and the elimination of Mexican-American studies in the Tucson Unified School District (TUSD), and what I discovered after talking to people at the festival, were two different things. The all-too-neat abstraction in my mind was challenged by the complexity on the ground.

A Salvadoran taxi driver (a naturalized citizen) drove me to the hotel and said he feared Governor Jan Brewer and Sheriff Joe Arpaio from Maricopa County near Phoenix “porque son racistas,” that is, “because they are racists.” I could not disagree with him. But he also pointed out that it wasn’t necessarily like that in Tucson.

At my table at the Authors’ Dinner on Friday night, this point was repeated by the well-to-do crowd; some were Latino, but most were not. They argued that Phoenix was the more politically conservative city, and Maricopa County had the burgeoning population, many of them newcomers from California and the Midwest. It was this group, or a part of this group, that had voted in a radically conservative legislature and passed a state law to ban Mexican-American studies and installed the State Superintendent of Public Instruction in the TUSD who implemented the misguided, punitive agenda. Some at the table whose families had lived in Arizona for three or four generations, who were blond and blue-eyed and spoke excellent Spanish, were as vehemently against Brewer and Arpaio and John Huppenthal (the Superintendent) as I could have ever been. So the first thing I learned is that Tucson is not Phoenix, and vice versa.

The gifted storyteller Luis Alberto Urrea delivered a rousing keynote speech at this dinner. He gleefully mentioned having the most books banned at the TUSD, and thanked the district (to great applause) for increasing his books sales and Twitter followers. Urrea was funny and irreverent. But at the end, he pointed to the 900-plus attendees at the dinner, all of them booklovers in one way or another. He reiterated an important point: they were really the heart of Tucson, and the tens of thousands who would attend the Tucson Book Festival would emphatically repeat that point. The retrograde media image of the city did not do justice to how people often came together for books and culture in Tucson. Urrea received a standing ovation. Again, I appreciated that Tucson is not Phoenix, and certainly not Maricopa County.

Throughout the Tucson Book Festival, as I attended my panel and signed books at the University of Arizona Press table, people could not have been friendlier. It was one of best-organized book festivals I have ever attended. I spoke to high school kids protesting the TUSD's book banning and elimination of Chicano studies. They had a table next to the Nuestras Raices big tent featuring Latino authors. At this table, the kids displayed all the banned books. I bought two of their t-shirts featuring a Mexicano with a sombrero seemingly asleep with his arms crossed in one picture, only to look up in the next picture as he reads a book. The title on the t-shirt: “Think Again!” I’m giving the t-shirts to my sons.

In fact, the only time I heard comments in support of Sheriff Arpaio’s camera-ready crackdown on undocumented workers in Maricopa County was Saturday afternoon from a California writer, a Latino no less. Go figure.

At the festival, what I often did witness was talk of recalling Governor Brewer, petitions for signatures to make that happen, and people organizing for the next election to counter the crazy conservative elements that have for the moment dominated this state. Yes, I also saw many hairdos from the 1950s and 1960s, and too many new-age books about aliens hiding in the desert or plotting the end of the world. Yet I also experienced the variety and plurality of books and people and discussions that could have easily taken place in Brooklyn.

I would argue that the conservative politicians in Arizona do not know Chicanos. I would argue that they also do not know what studying Chicano literature and culture does to a group of students who too often feel put down by those who don’t take the time to understand them. When I was a teenager in El Paso, I sometimes felt worthless because of the stereotypical images I would see in the media about Mexicanos being lazy, stupid, and even dangerous. When Latino administrators at my high school yelled at me and repeated, “They don’t take people like you at Harvard,” reading Anaya’s Bless Me Ultima gave me hope. I saw myself in literature for the first time.

I read Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed and Acuña’s Occupied America (banned books at the TUSD) at Harvard, but I didn’t become a bomb-thrower, nor did I grow to resent groups in power, even after I learned what they had once done to the downtrodden and the weak. I did vow never to forget where I was from. I vowed to understand more about my history and culture. And ironically, as I grew to believe in myself over the years, I was able to appreciate and seek out allies and even opponents from all backgrounds, races, ethnicities, and cultures.

This is what the hateful conservative politicians of Arizona are missing: the context. They assume that studying your race and ethnic history, for Chicano students, is exactly how they—the rich and powerful—would be if they studied their race and history. It’s racism by projection, in a way. For a downtrodden group, for a historically disparaged group, studying about who you are helps you to overcome and understand and eventually move beyond the hateful images you have to struggle against. Ethnic studies by and for a group in power, and ethnic studies by and for a relatively powerless group, are two different subjects with different motivations, for those with a reflective mind.

Radically conservative politicians in Arizona exploit the distance between the powerful and the powerless. Forget about getting them to acknowledge what it means. They simply don’t have the goodwill. But at the Tucson Book Festival, I also believed I shouldn’t act similarly with the city of Tucson: what it was in my mind before I arrived and the city I found on the streets were vastly different.

I remember at Harvard how I often saw undergraduates protesting South Africa, spending countless hours organizing protests against dictators in Central America, and so on. Yes, I agreed with them. But I also wondered why these same students didn’t focus on the racism in Cambridge, or why they too often mistreated their own friends in the dorm room next door. In a way, it was safe to focus on a faraway cause, to create the perfect and distant bogeyman, to abstract and so perfect an enemy in the mind, and to ‘act’ but not really to act, to improve this world.

I vowed to practice my politics locally, with my family and friends most of all. I vowed I would always check what I thought I knew in my mind with what I experienced. I wanted to seek out what Aristotle understood as knowledge: the practical work for the good that is grounded in what you see and hear and find out for yourself. Tucson is book country. That I know. At the Tucson Book Festival, we shared that common ground.

Arizona

Obama won the last presidential election, but Latinos are facing the political backlash from conservative whites, who see, more clearly than ever, that their days are numbered as the ethnic majority in this country.  That’s one conclusion I can draw from recent news and events.  I am felled by an awful spring flu, with a fever and an achy body and a nose that gushes as if it were the well of the Deepwater Horizon. But this is too important a day to be a bystander.

Arizona’s new law, SB1070, has been given an acceptable façade with the argument that it’s only against illegal immigrants and that it won’t result in racial profiling.  But what is ‘reasonable suspicion’ that someone is an illegal immigrant?  What does an illegal immigrant look like?  Like John McCain?  Sarah Palin?

It’s a law that the rogue cop who already hates all things Mexican, illegal or not, will easily abuse to jail a poor mother and father who don’t happen to be carrying their birth certificates in their back pockets.  I suspect that even if American Latinos have their birth certificates when they sleep, that the Arizona birthers will assume these documents are fraudulent.  They simply don’t like Mexicans, whether they are here illegally or not.

I conclude this not because I am paranoid, or because I see every political issue through an ethnic or racial lens.  I do not.  Read my blog, witness my marriage, see how I raise my children, examine my voting record.  What you will see, I hope, is a person who was given great opportunities in this country, who is conservative on some issues and liberal on others, who is proud of his Mexican heritage, yet still criticizes and tries to change practices within our community to make it more successful, more powerful, more open-minded.

But when I see that yesterday the Arizona state legislature also passed a bill that “prohibits a school district or charter school from including in its program of instruction any courses or classes that promote the overthrow of the United States government, promote resentment toward a race or class of people, are designed primarily for pupils of a particular ethnic group, advocate ethnic solidarity instead of the treatment of pupils as individuals,” I know that this legislative majority in Arizona does not like Mexican-Americans.  Imagine, a Mexican-American studies program in Arizona is being compared to treason.  What kind of mentality makes that irrational link?  The Arizona Department of Education is also trying to fire teachers with accents who teach English classes.  What is happening in this crazy state?  This weekend, the ‘education’ bill is awaiting the governor’s signature.

So I don’t draw my tough conclusions on anything but the evidence of idiocy that are the actions of the Arizona state legislature.  I can only wait for those legislative Caesars in Texas to also take up racist and xenophobic causes, or Oklahoma and Alabama.  Are we about to start a new Confederacy in the South?  What happened to giving opportunity to new strangers to this country, to helping them become Americans, which they so desperately want?  What happened to being open-minded about someone who doesn’t look like you, who doesn’t sound like you?

For Latinos, we must organize.  We must protest.  We must register to vote in huge numbers, and then vote with our neighbors and friends at the ballot box.  We must get involved in politics locally, seek alliances with those who will help us.  We should never stay silent, and allow others to do the work of fighting for causes we care about.  That’s what this country is about: getting involved, gaining our voice, getting a chance to fulfill our highest potential.  These days should prompt a new grito for freedom, respect, and self-determination.

Is the Texas Library Association excluding Latino writers?

I had a wonderful time at the Texas Book Festival, which was well-organized and full of lively literary parties. On Saturday, I walked through the white tents next to the state capitol, gathering handouts from commercial publishers, lit organizations, and university presses. My panel was not until Sunday, so this was my day to play.

But as I stopped at the Texas Library Association’s (TLA) table and perused a yellow handout entitled “2009 Tayshas Annotated Reading List,” a book list compiled by public and school librarians from the Young Adult Round Table (YART), I noticed precious few Latino authors or subjects. In fact, as I counted and reread the book summaries (later confirmed by studying the books online at booksellers), only three were by or about Latinos. Three out of 68 young adult books recommended by TLA.

This fact was disturbing enough, but then I walked to the panel on the Tomás Rivera Children’s Book Awards, with Benjamin Saenz (He Forgot to Say Goodbye) and Carmen Tafolla (The Holy Tortilla and a Pot of Beans), and previous winner Francisco Jiménez. Saenz’s and Tafolla’s award-winning books are aimed at young adults. Both authors are from Texas. Both books are published in the time period covered by the TLA list, 2007-2008. And both books are excluded from the list. (Margarita Engle’s The Surrender Tree (a Newbury Honor book) and Oscar Hijuelos’s Dark Dude (Starred review from Booklist) are also not on the TLA list, and that's just a cursory look at 2008.)

As I sat listening to the panelists talk about fighting to have Mexican-American literature included in the canon of American literature, as I heard them talk about their struggles to reach young Latinos with stories that reflect their lives, I admired the careful words of Saenz, Tafolla, and Jiménez at the same time that I seethed at the TLA. What was going on here? The juxtaposition between what the TLA was peddling at their table and the Tomás Rivera panel was jarring.

My anger burst out during conversations at the Texas Book Festival, and I asked for explanations. One well-known Texas writer said it was the “morality police” mentality of certain Texas librarians, who enforced their morality more strictly with anything Latino, a sophisticated kind of ethnic discrimination. A Texas librarian said it had to do with the YART panel itself, who was on it, who recommended books, but even she was surprised the TLA list contained only three books by or about Latinos. “That’s pathetic,” she said.

Indeed, it is. Latinos comprise about half the current students enrolled in Texas K-12 schools. When we or the media decry the high Hispanic high school drop-out rates, are we also training school administrators to be bilingual? Welcoming non-English-speaking parents to become involved in the schooling of their children is essential. I know my mother did not feel, nor was she ever treated, like an alien when she went to talk to my teachers or the principal at South Loop School. Why? They spoke Spanish, even the güeritos who were not Latinos. But that was El Paso. What about Houston, east Texas, the Panhandle?

When we complain about low Hispanic high school test scores, are we also providing reading lists that inspire kids throughout their schooling, books that say the stuff of their lives is real literature? The School Library Journal said of Carmen Tafolla’s book: “This collection will be sought after by both teens and teachers looking for strong characters and an eloquent voice in Chicana literature. While regional appeal will certainly drive purchase of this book, libraries looking to diversify and modernize their story collections will also want to consider adding this worthy title.” But apparently not in Texas, if the TLA has any say-so about it.

The issue is not creating an ‘affirmative action’ literary list. That’s a great way to put down Latino literature while pretending to help it. We do have high quality literature, by any standard, by national standards, in the Latino community. We have writers who are craftsmen, who are highly educated, who are creating stories that win national awards and sell hundreds of thousands of copies.

So I am not asking to lower standards and make a new TLA list with 45.6 percent Latino writers. That’s ridiculous. But the effort has to be made to look at the new reality in writing and in Latino literature in particular, and to understand that there need not be a sacrifice anymore between diversity and quality. But to do that, we need open minds and their goodwill.

I don't want any librarians (from Texas or anywhere else) mad at me; I truly don't. El Paso public libraries changed my life and opened my mind to writing. I just want the Texas Library Association to think about what it's doing, and to consider a better way.

(Note: The TLA list did have three books about girls at “elite boarding schools,” and two books on Australian teenagers.)

Sotomayor, Empathy, and Intellect

I watched today as President Barack Obama nominated Sonia Sotomayor for the United States Supreme Court. Official America, yes, is changing, and better reflecting what real America has been for years. I believe Judge Sotomayor is excellently qualified for the highest court, not because she’s Latina, not because she’s a woman, but because she possesses an intelligent, incisive legal mind. What struck me were the comments in the media that perhaps Sotomayor didn’t have the “intellectual gravitas” or “judicial temperament” to be a Supreme Court judge. When will accomplished Latinos get their due? Perhaps it’s time again to kick down these walls of prejudice, to expose glaring double standards for Latinos. Let me tell you some of my stories.

You can have a handful of Ivy League degrees, you can have books published by wonderful presses, and you can even be somebody’s boss, yet that somebody may still stereotype you, for their advantage. That’s what happened to me when I served on the board of directors of a literary organization for many years. A few tidbits. I pointed out financial mismanagement when other board members did not bother to study financial reports. I was labeled a troublemaker, a loose cannon. Or I questioned the cozy management practices of cronyism, practices that cost our organization valuable dollars needed for our survival. I was a hot-headed Latino.

After many years of struggle, I won this war, as my nemesis finally left and we hired a terrific, open-minded leader for our organization. But what struck me as I analyzed the many battles I had fought and the scars I lived with, was how often polite niceness, even if it was prejudiced, and the glad-handling of fake smiles won over passionate arguments and blunt, to-the-heart criticisms. My lesson: lie, speak in half-truths, and even stab people in the back, and you can get away with it for years as long as you don’t yell or ever frown. I instead wore my heart on my sleeve. If I saw something wrong, if I caught a contradiction, if I smelled a power play, I would say something about it. After board meetings, in whispers, this righteous attitude was too often turned against me.

Wearing your heart on your sleeve does not mean you are not thinking. Quite the contrary, what you are thinking is Aristotlean. That is to say, what you are thinking is that if you don’t do anything and you know it’s wrong, then you will denigrate what thinking is. Thinking is about doing. Thinking is assessing the situation and doing something about it. Thinking something is wrong, and doing nothing about it, is thinking as a cop-out, as an escape into the head (Plato), what polite society does every day. I am not polite.

When Sotomayor is criticized for not having the right judicial temperament, is she being criticized for being outraged when she sees someone being shafted? In the Bronx, I’m sure she learned to be Aristotlean. Being calm or even pleasant when you see an injustice is not a sign of a good temperament. It’s an indication of a coldness to humanity and human suffering. It’s a sign of using your intellect to escape from the world, to avoid changing it. The worst atrocities in the world have been justified with such a temperament.

When Sotomayor is criticized for not having intellectual gravitas, is she being criticized because she doesn’t argue calmly, because she’s blunt? Being serious, evasive, and mathematically abstract is not a sign of intellectual gravitas. It’s a sign of an intellectualism that lives by itself, that pleases itself, that thinks the human being as only an abstract idea. Our Founding Fathers knew better; that’s why they set up a series of checks and balances with the separation of powers in government.

A Puertoriqueña from the projects and the South Bronx. Summa cum laude at Princeton. Yale Law School. Editor of the Yale Law Journal. Appellate court judge for over a decade. That’s the kind of Aristotlean intellect-in-action we should have in the Supreme Court.