Martin Briones

Non-Fiction Mexican-American Literature

INTRODUCTION

The purpose of this research journal is to explore non-fiction Mexican-American authors and observe their use of images of the individual, the family, and alternative families. Objective 5 states: To study the influence of minority writers and speakers on literature, literacy, and language. More focused of what this research journal explores is stated in Objective 5a: To discover the power of poetry and fiction to help "others" hear the minority voice and vicariously share the minority experience. I really enjoy reading Mexican-American literature because I can personally relate with many of their experiences, especially those experiences that are described in family relationships. I remember as a kid on our trips to Mexico in the summers when our family would make that long drive. Not just the family in my house, I am talking about grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, and sometimes some friends. It did not matter who was in whose car, we were all going to the same place. Now that my cousins and myself all have children of our own we try and make the trip with our kids and our parents but with everyone’s schedule it does not always work out. We have had a few trips where a large part of our family has been able to make the trip though and I want my children to have those same experiences I had growing up that bonded my cousins and myself to the strong unit that we are. Though we are spread out over the states now and other countries and do not communicate as much, I feel that we are still there for each other.

This journal of my readings and references to websites and other sources can be a guide to my children to read about stories that they can relate to and having shared similar experiences can share with others. Thus, using the power of poetry and fiction to help "others" hear the minority voice and vicariously share the minority experience. Also, it can be another way for me to bond with them as they get older and on the appropriate reading level we will be able to discuss these readings and share experiences.

Some general themes I plan to come across are that the author’s location of upbringing will not be a factor in some of the experiences. Does it matter that the authors are from Chicago or Los Angeles? I believe that the experiences will still be the same.

This journal will also serve as a reflection of myself and my family in relation to the author’s stories. Comparisons will be made after the books summaries, hopefully in the future my children can create a similar journal of Mexican-American literature and how it reflects and relates to their lives growing up with their experiences and then they too can share it with their children.

JOURNAL

The first author I came across in my research was Maria Hinojosa. Hinojosa has held various positions within the media field with powers such as: NPR, PBS, CNN, CBS, WNYC-TV, as well as, WNYC Radio. She has authored two books, Crews: Gang Members Talk with Maria Hinojosa (1995), which was based on her award-winning NPR report. Her second book was Raising Raul: Adventures Raising Myself and My Son, a motherhood memoir about raising a Latino child in a multicultural society (2000). Throughout her career she has received many awards, too numerous to list. For a look at Hinojosa’s NPR Biography here is the link: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=2100638.

Raising Raul: Adventures Raising Myself and My Son, is about author Maria Hinojosa’s discovery of motherhood and the trials of raising her first son Raul. Hinojosa leads the reader on a voyage of lessons on family, romance, relationships, and the love of a mother for her child. Born in Mexico City, lived in Chicago, now in Manhattan. One incident in the story that was really clear to me was in the chapter, The Baby and the Barrio. Maria is looking for someone to come in and help with the housework a couple of times a week, later more hours when she returns to work.  The description of this girl Paty and her life with what she was going through reminded me of one of my cousins and the girl who would come help her and her husband with their new baby. The girl came from Mexico,  a family friend from my cousin’s hometown in Mexico. She would help with the baby, do some light housework and faced some of the same obstacles as described in the book.

            “She was the real superwoman, I thought. She faced obstacles everywhere---her macho father, her traditional mama, her jealous boyfriend, her family’s precarious economic situation---but she had goals of doing something with her life. Paty’s patient and humble dedication motivated me. And now she was part of my familia.” (Hinojosa, 142)

The other experiences I related to and laughed at while reading were from the chapter Mexico.

            “All six of us piled into an overloaded  station wagon, driving through Mexico for weeks and weeks.” (Hinojosa, 189)

This sentence brought back many memories of the times we would travel to Mexico for the summer. We usually went for a week, sometimes we would stay for an extra week and come back with another family member who was going on another week. And there were always more than six people in the vehicle.

            “I wondered if milestones in his (Raul’s) life would happen to him in Mexico, as they did for me.” (Hinojosa, 189)

This sentence reminded me of some of the things I saw in Mexico at the ranch that I would never see here where I live. Like a horse being branded, a chicken being raised and fed to later be killed and eaten, or the goat that was tied to the tree all week and at the end of that week have his throat sliced and then we ate the goat. Or being chased by pigs, or climbing a cave wall to the top. So many things that I would never have done or seen here at home.

 

The next author I read was Ernesto Galarza and his book, Barrio Boy: the Story of a Boy’s Acculturation. Galarza wrote this biography about his family and their relocation from the mountains of Mexico to a barrio in Sacramento, California during the time of the Mexican Revolution. It takes you through his life in the mountain village of Jalcocotan on to their trail that gets them to Sacramento. In Sacramento Ernie faces new challenges and has new experiences during his acculturation into becoming an American.

Though this book was before my time I could relate some of Ernie’s experiences and challenges to those of my elders and imagine these things he goes through may have been some of the same challenges they faced.

            “Up to this point the adventure of enrolling me in the school had been carefully rehearsed. Mrs. Dodson had told us how to find it and we had circled it several times on our walks. Friends in the barrio explained that the director was called a principal, and that it was a lady and not a man. They assured us that there was always a person at the school who could speak Spanish.” (Galarza, 208)

This passage reminded me of my eldest aunt who came across the border with my grandma when she was about the same age as Ernie. She too started school in Galveston and was in a class with children who were from here and spoke English. I let her read a few pages in this book about Ernie at school and she laughed as she read it saying that it reminded her of her days when she started school here and was learning English at the same time and how challenging it was for her.

A favorite part of mine was when the problems with language are discussed and Ernie talks about different words and how they are pronounced or understood to signify.

            “Kelly-phony” – California

            “Boor-lan” – Woodland

            “Gualen-gro” – Walnut Grove

            “no peek een-glees” – no speak English

            “yarda” – yard

            “yonque” – junk

            “donas” – doughnuts

            “raite” – ride

            “oh, chet” – oh, shit

            “gar-demme-yoo” – God damnit you

            “san afabeechee” – son of a bitch

I’ll stop here but the list goes on. (Galarza, 235-236) I could probably make a list of those little words my Grandma used to say. Another very colorful memory I had form this book was in the beginning when the family was still in Jalcocotan and Ernie was describing and explaining some of the different items found in his home and telling of their uses. While I too had these items growing up in my home here in La Marque, Texas, thousands of miles from Jalcocotan, one of the items really stood out.

            “The wages my mother made sewing and mending were put into the alcancía, the fat clay pig painted in bright colors which served as the family bank.” (Galarza, 16)

I could describe our alcancía to you straight from my memory as a child. Ours was white with a pink dress on with light blue lace trim. Her cheeks and lips were red with makeup and she had little yellow shoes on. My brother and I actually got in trouble for breaking it one time on our search for some candy money. Not really a big problem though, easily replaced the next summer during our trip to the mountains.

In these two books the readers are left with a sense of a little of what I spoke of in the introduction. If you have personally experienced similar happenings you see that it does not matter where you are at now, the experiences are still the same. Also, like objective 5a shares, the readings help "others" hear the minority voice and vicariously share the minority experience.

 

The third author I used in my research is Luis J. Rodriguez. I came upon Rodriguez while reading his book, Always Running, La Vida Loca: Gang Days in L.A. I originally read this book to learn about the gang days of the 60’s. This I was able to sort of relate and picture some of my uncles and their gang days of the 60’s here in Galveston. I have heard a few stories from a couple of elders but to read about it in Rodriguez’s book is a whole different entity. This book details his life as a gang member growing up in L.A. from an early age. He chronicles his events in this lifestyle and later how it impacted his life. The writing actually started when he was 15-years-old. Later his oldest son gets caught up in the gang lifestyle he once lived and now this urgency has sped up the books completion. I have family members behind bars for whatever reason, but instead of journaling it in this paper and telling of stories I have heard from family members I will review Rodriguez’s website www.luisjrodriguez.com.

I found this website to be really informative, especially after spending over an hour browsing through it and reading every single bit of text as if it were a book. Also the links from the Links page were very informative as well. Though I believe the site to basically be a sales site for Rodriquez’s work it is cleverly disguised as an informative site with links to his Bio, Works, Events, and other helpful information. Besides all of the information about Rodriguez, the Links page gave me paths to other informative sites such as:

            www.Xispas.com

-          online journal for Chicano art, culture, and politics

www.MolotovMouths.com

-          collective of poets of the political imagination hailing from the San Francisco Bay Area

www.maryhelenponce.com

-          website for author Mary Helen Ponce, author of Hoyt Street: An Autobiography (1993)

 

Other authors I discovered in research and briefly looked at include:

           

Oscar Zeta Acosta

-          He was born in El Paso, Texas. His first novel concentrated on self-discovery in a fictionalized method. Autobiography of a Brown Buffalo (1972)

-          Disappeared in 1974 while traveling to Mexico