Teaching Requires Training and Experience

This week I was talking to my department chair about a course I will be teaching this fall that has few students enrolled currently. In thinking about a change of focus to try to get more students interested I commented that I put a lot of emphasis on writing in this course, to which he quickly responded, "we all do". I was taken back as it sounded a bit defensive. My intent was not to imply that I did more than others, I simply meant to say that I could incorporate other topics because the point of the course was to get students to write a major final essay in history.

A few hours later, feeling a bit ornery, I quietly said to myself, "yes, but not all of us write, and some of 'us' taken twenty years to write a book". After some serious repenting, I thought more about his comment and concluded that we often assume we know what we are doing because we are teaching it(BTW this is not the case with my dept. chair). From my earliest days in the department I struggled with people teaching courses that required a "publishable essay" when they were not publishing at all themselves.

Anyone in academia knows that we are often called to do things we are not trained or even qualified to do. The joke amongst us is that we are okay as long as we stay two weeks ahead of the students in the readings. As scholars we are suppose to know enough about methodology and historical construction to be able to teach a number of lower level courses outside our immediate fields. Once we get beyond that level we are out of our league. So why is it that we can all teach writing and research if we don't do it ourselves?

I know there a few people who can--let's be clear about that--but for the most part those who do not write are rarely qualified to teach it. Some professor out there is probably thinking, " I teach six course a semester, have committee duty, office hours, etc., and you expect me to write". The answer is yes. I don't mean publish major research findings in the top academic or literary journals, but do write. Writing is a skill and when you do it right and do it often you become aware of the intricasies of the written word, and come to understand the pitfalls of trying to put a point across.

 But there is another point I want to make. We also have to be qualified to teach anything and qualification usually comes with training and with practice. There are instances where experience trumps education. I have a friend who was a top Chicano writer a decade ago. He began writing while he was a brick layer. He was a prolific writer and got himself published in small Chicano literary journals and then began publishing in small presses. He became so popular--and several dissertations were written on his work--that he got a job at a community college teaching writing and Spanish. Then a few years later, he was hired as a "humanist" at the University of Arizona. At the time and until he retired he had no college degree much less an advance degree in literature.

But he was far from uneducated. He read profusely, getting everything he could find on writing, literature, philosophy, the Spanish language, folklore, culture, and the list goes on. He also use to frequent a small store that sold sandwiches and engage in intellectual debates and discussion with college professors who also hung out there. This is where he made the impressions that got him his academic appointments.

But recently, I read about a long-since retired faculty member who did not get tenure because she had no advanced degree. Her claim to expertise in her field was that she spent a lot of time in the community organzing and since she was teaching about the people she organized, she felt qualified to receive tenure. Those who know me know that I'm all for the barrio people telling their own story and that I tend to be critical of people stuck in the ivory tower who know little about the people they write about. Still, my thought was that having been warned to get more training she was rightfully dismissed for not attempting to do so.

Why supportive in one case and not the other? Did I think that an experienced male without a degree is better than a female with organizing experience and at least a bachelor's degree? Not at all. He was experienced directly in what he was teaching, and he had shown his abilities to publish, and had done so more often than some of those who became his colleagues. He was also a fiction writer which often calls for a different kind of research and different style of preparation. Despite the proliferation of writing programs, most good writers learn by writing and experiencing life, not through academic training or degrees.

The other person was engaged in teaching sociology, history, literature, etc without any advanced training in any of these, and her writings were mostly pamphlets that spoke to the needs of the barrio. I admire the latter, and still admire her work in developing women's studies, but she lacked training in methodology, theory, research fundamentals, and she was not doing research to further the field. Worse, she saw no need to continue her training. Her initial value should not have been questioned but no one can stand still and expect to remain relevant, especially a teacher.

To be able to teach one has to be trained--and in exceptional cases train themselves--and one has to have experience doing what one teaches. How to get the traininng is obvious. But how does one "experience" history, sociology or literature? You do so by researching, presenting and writing; by becoming involved in knowing the subject on the ground. How do we experience civil war history, Greek military campaigns, Islamic medicine? We research, go to museums, visit historical spots, handle the instruments (or guns), go to re-enactments, and write about the topic as much and as often as we can. Academic training usually requires some of that but often not enough. We usually depend on the person to do it because of their passion for the subject. Unfortunately, some people go into the academy because it is a "cushier" job and surely more interesting than say accounting. Even worse, there are some people who begin with  passion but lose it and then simply regurgitate what they learned years before.

I have great respect for what happens in the academy. There are fewer more exciting places and what we do there has a lot of impact, much of it positive, on the larger society; but we need to do a better job of training people and have higher expectations of them as teachers. Every future professor should be allowed to teach while in graduate training, and we should have courses that specifically train a scholar to teach. We should not hire people to teach unles they've had internships and temporary slots in which they've taught. And we should expect all of these people to bring a writing portfolio even if not all the work within it is published.

The reality is that most academic departments do a terrible job of training their young scholars to teach, and an even worse job of helping them to publish. Since so many tenured professor were never taught to teach and/or write they are often afraid to show their deficiencies to their younger colleagues, or they think everyone ought to do it on their own just as they did. This attitude does no favors to the students or our young colleagues.

And things may get worse if we continue to replace full time facutly with adjuncts who have neither the resources or the time to "perform their disciplines" or to write about them. We are guaranteeing that our students will learn less even as they pay more.

A final thought: I have never believed that student evaluations really measure the worth or the abilities of a teacher. Yet, so many universities are going toward that method to evaluate their faculty. What they do is not really empower their students to demand a better education but simply provide administrators more control over the classroom since they can use--and often do--these evaluations as swords over a faculty member's head. Teaching is more than pleasing students, or running a "tight ship" in the classroom. It is about imparting knowledge, getting students to enter unknown and sometimes uncomfortable circumstances, and it is about equipping them with the skills and knowledge to empower themselves. Sometimes you do all of that and they still hate you.

As one former colleague loved to say, students often don't know enough to contribute to their education, and it is incumbent upon us to teach them. But we can't unless we are trained and experienced.

A "Discussion on Race": Another Naive Suggestion for Progress

The "Call" by some for a discussion on race in this country since Obama was elected and particularly after the Trayvon Martin verdict seems to me a bit naive. After all, what is it that whites--the ones who are suppose to learn from this discussion--not know about racism in American society? They know we once enslaved black people and then developed Jim Crow after they were freed; that we took the Southwest from Mexico because we saw them as unfit to occupy the land; that we interned Japanese Ameicans because of xenophobia and in order to take away their property, and that profiling is something that policemen do all the time. Conservative politicians know all of this and they still block any kind of civil rights legislation that comes their way, and they promote voter IDs to limit minority voting and most of their "budget cuts" come on the backs of people of color.

Do those advocates for a "discussion on race" really think that the people at the Weekly Standard, Fox News, or that Rush Limbaugh or Glen Beck are really going to change their views about people of color? Do they believe that those who fear Latinos taking their job are going to call for the legalization of 11 million of them, or that they will be happy having them sing the national anthemn at sporting events? Do they believe that Republican House members are going to change their voting habits if they "knew" that American society is still a society based on some elements of white supremacy?

In our divided society, there are many on the wrong side of the race issue and a large number of others who remain "neutral" because they fear true equality means losing the advantages that white supremacy provides them even if they do find those advantages distasteful. Talking about it will change few of those.

We don't need a discussion on race. We need jobs, real affirmative action, better housing for the poor, better education--which neither side seems to understand how to get--legalization and a host of other things. People will be treated as equals once they are actually equal in many of the things that society considers important for the exercise of citizenship.

Republicans had their "discussion on race" when it came to Latino voters and so far the only thing it did was to rile up the racists and the Latino-haters in the party to become even more resistant to immigration reform. The party of stupid only became...

Democrats are not blameless given how they made sure that in their version of immigration reform businesses get most of the benefits, future "legal" Latino workers get even less protections than they do now, and the president continues to deport them in record numbers, and break-up families by the hundreds of thousands. When the president asked Senator Schummer to head the immigration reform efforts for Democrats, it became clear to many of us that it would turn out to be a bonus for businesses on the back of workers.

We don't need a discussion on race, what we need is for those who believe in the progress of people of color to work harder, compromise less on fundamental rights, and put forward legislation that will make this country better. If we are going to have a discussion on race let's have it on the senate and house floors, but let it be about legislation that actually makes a difference and not water-down bills that continue to keep people of color as second-class citizens.

And those who proclaim themselves as leaders of our communities need to come up with better ideas and stop simply creating "show" to get themselves on cable news, and get jobs as punditry. Much of the old civil rights establishment has run out of ideas, and while some deserve to be honored for their past accomplishment, as a group they are becoming irrelevant except to get their friends and family jobs. We need leaders with character who are not willing to settle for "the best at the moment". There has not been a single piece of legislation in the last decade that has not been mostly compromised away. We need new rules in the Senate to stop making compromises that protect one party or another when they are in the minority. We need to force senators to actually filibusters instead of threatening to do so. We need the House to have rules that allows pieces of legislation that have a lot of support to be voted on.

 We need to develop a new re-districting plan for congressional districts that do not gerrymander to keep one party in power. And we need to change the way we celebrate American holidays so that they reflect the truth about our history and not venerate mostly one group of people.

In the process of doing all of that we will get our "discussion on race" in America but it will actually mean something and not be just another naive attempt to bring people together who have actually chosen not to come together. I believe in "coming and reasoning together" but I also believe that the process is not more important than making a difference in the lives of people who truly need help. Those who over-emphasize the process believe in a mediocre version of democracy and equality.

Trayvon, Zimmerman and Civil Rights Politics

Let me begin this post by saying that the decision to find George Zimmerman "not guilty" came as no surprise to me. While I did not fixate on the case as some did I did listen to some of the testimony and read up on the case. My first thought was what a terrible job the prosecution did, though I might add that the actual first reaction was what a terrible job in selecting the jury. Second (or third) was why the 2nd degree murder charge. It was going to be difficult to get a conviction without some serious eye-witness and the prosecution had none.

My sense is that if they had charged man slaughter from the beginning they could probably have been able to build a solid case and he would now be facing 30 years in jail. Coming in with the lesser charge at the last minute seemed to reflect to me--and I guess the jury--that the prosecution was desperate and unsure that it had proven its case. Finally, the defense had a game plan and executed it well, while the prosecution only wanted to make it a case about a guy who couldn't keep his story straight and was a "wannabe cop".

All that said, let me say that the case reflects a lot about the stage of American society today. Nowhere did I find an honest appraisal of the case. Fox had Trayvon the aggressor from the beginning, and MSNBC had Zimmerman as a pathological killer simply out looking to murder a black child. It quickly became a black vs white thing rather than the case of a man shooting a teenager in a gun-happy state. Did race play a part in the killing? Of course, so much of what happens in this country has to do in some form or another with race, but not all racial incidents are discrimination cases.

One thing that we can learn from this killing is that we need to make sure we know what fights to pick as civil rights cases. This was not a civil rights case even if it was a black teenager being killed by a "white hispanic" man. Not every confrontation between a person of color and a white person involves the violation of someone's civil rights. What was it that civil libertarians were fighting for: the right for a person to walk down the street without being followed by a neighborhood watch guy? Was it another fight against profiling? The fact is civil rights cases are about the individual and the government or the minority individual and the larger society not about two individuals.

The Trayvon/Zimmerman was about a white man killing a black man. Is that worse than a black man killing a black man as is happening by the hundreds in Chicago and Detroit? Or worse than a latino killing a Latino as it happens too frequently in the major urban areas in the Southwest? A racially-motivated killing--if that is what it was and we don't fully know--is not a civil rights case. Al Sharpton and other black leaders should have understood that. If it was a proven fact that neighborhood watch white guys are killing blacks or minorities indiscriminately across the country and no one is doing anything about it, then you have a case. If minorities are being jailed for using "stand your ground" and whites are not, then you have a case. Civil rights cases are about the systematic treatment of a large group of people and nowhere in the trial deliberations or even in the accompanying analysis was there any discussion that the Martin case involved any such situation.

One could argue that blacks are systematically being mistreated, but what would have been the "civil rights" outcome of a Zimmerman conviction? That black men have the right to walk a street in the rain eating Skittles and drinking Arizona drinks without being killed? They already have that right and 99 of 100 young black men do it every day--though Skittles and Arizona tea may not be their preferred snack--unless they are walking at night in large urban areas like Chicago. Where are the marches to stop that kind of killing? Why is it that killing a black person is only a big issue when he or she is killed by a white person? Is the life of black person only important if you connect it in some way to a white person?

The real civil rights question of today is why people of color have still not been empowered to change their own reality. While there are hundred of groups working at the local level to change attitudes and to empower people, too many national leaders are simply jumping on hot issues instead of doing the work that is necessary to change the status quo. We often forget that many of yesterday's civil/human rights leaders that we honor today were as much about empowering their people to change their lives as they were about changing the laws. They understood that if the laws were changed, things would still not change if people did not empower themselves.

In today's civil rights culture it is too much about what society can do for the person instead of how the person can take advantage of opportunities, or how they can fight against the obstacles still around. Civil rights struggles were never about solving every problem, only about eliminating those dejure ones that did not allow people to empower themselves. Give them the vote, desegregate the schools, end officially-sanctioned police brutality, teach then their history, and recognize them as human beings, etc. That was the goal. It was only partially achieved because the next phase was going to be the hardest, getting people to empower themselves by voting, going to school, taking bad cops to court, reading about their history and accepting themselves as full human beings. In many of our barrios and ghettoes that is still not happening enough.

There is still much to be done about poverty, discrimination, bad schooling, racial teachings, etc. And little of it had to do with this case. Trayvon was not a disadvantaged youth living in the heart of the ghetto with no chances for uplift. Convicting Zimmerman would have given closure to the family, might have called into question the idea of armed neighborhood watch guys, maybe created a groundswell against the gun culture in Florida or even punish a guy for doing the wrong thing, but it would not have done an iota of difference in the civil rights struggle.

The fact is that in the last study done that I know about, blacks were found to be killing whites at a much higher rate than the opposite. That isn't because black people hate whites or they are more violence-proned but rather the result of what most of us already know--poverty, unemployment, illiteracy, discrimination and what is causes: broken families, teenage mothers and fathers, unemployed, angry young men, etc. That is a real civil rights concern and it often gets lost everytime we have a case like this.

Like Cockroaches: Mexicans Spreading Across the Continent

Texas Farmworkers Union head Antonio Orendain use to say that Mexicans were like cockroaches, no matter how much you tried you couldn't get rid of them. For those who have never lived in Texas, you might not fully appreciate the comparison, but those of us who live or have lived there understand that fighting those critters is a battle that will end when you go to your grave.

If Congressional Republican lawmakers understood this, they would hurry up and pass a true immigration reform bill in the House and finally settle the issue. For too long there have been those who believe that they can build fences, round-up Mexicans and punish employers and somehow eliminate what use to be called the "Mexican problem" in the 1930s. And yet, done repeatedly over the last 100 years, it has not worked though it has brought hardship to families and communities. To use an old Chicano slogan, "this is our land". Mexicans, Mexican Americans and their cousins the Latinos are native to this land, not because they were born here or their ancestors lived here--though they did in places like the Southwest--but because they "live the land".

They work the land, whether it is planting and picking the crops, cutting and canning them, slaughtering and cutting up animals, sweeping the blood or the dirt off the floors in the butcher shops and factories, trimming the trees, mowing the lawns, picking up the trash, designing the landscapes, erecting homes and office buildings, driving the school buses or tractor trailers, and policing the streets, or even manning the borders. Mexicans are doing those jobs that fewer and fewer white people are doing, and thus becoming more and more important to maintaining the pace of this country.

They are also upholding the traditions long held sacred in this land. When I was in McLean, Virginia a few years ago, it was obvious that in that affluent and liberal community the only ones that ate turkey during Thanksgiving were Latinos. And a few years ago, the overwhelming number of parents dressed up in Halloween costumes parading their trick or treating children through the Provo mall for candy were Mexicans and Latinos. And today, most American religions that are growing are doing so because their pews are filling up with Spanish-speakers. The Hispanic Evangelical Association is 15-million strong while the Mormons will soon be Latiino-majority, while most of the Catholics that go to church are Mexican and Latinos. And the last time I heard some form of tamales was replacing ham and turkey as the main dishes during the Holidays

There are many issues still to be resolved and the debate about what it will mean to have Mexicans--the vast majority of the Latino population--be such a dominant force in American society is still to be had, but it is an undisputable fact that they will be a powerful impact in the social and political landscape of the United States. The more conservative politicians resist this reality the greater the alienation of many of these Mexican Americans from mainstream society. The less they will believe in American ideals. No doubt that even in the best of situations this will happen given the historical prejudices this country has had against its neighbors from the south. But things could be worse.

Making 11 million Mexicans and Latinos permanent residents and then citizens will change American society only for the good. They are already here and they are "living the land" and the only thing that will change is that some of them and their kids will move up in the economic ladder and become leaders in this country. The bad is already here--they are illegal, break the law to survive, are an unknown population, and they are frustrated. Fixing their status will resolve much of this. It won't make things worse.

Will it bring more of them? Probably, but not in the numbers we have seen in the past. There aren't enough Central Americans in the world to fill up New York City, and in Mexico the demographics are changing in such a manner that the country will soon start needing every worker to maintain its own society. The reality is that the anti-immigration solutions came too late and they soon won't have a problem to solve.

 The coming Mexican reality is already changing the way we see our history as Chicano historians are expanding our knowledge of the West, agriculture, unionization, military history, and the law. We are discovering that Mexicans and their Mexican American cousins are responsible for many of our policies and laws even if they were simply made to keep them at bay. More important, the history of Mexicans and Latinos is obliverating the notion of a black/white history as the only dominant narrative of our past.

The Latino voter has become the big prize in American politics, and their children will one day dominate the political offices in certain parts of the country. Many Mexican Americans are simply Americans who have been left out of the mainstream of this country both by government policies and by their own resistance to entering the mainstream devoid of their culture and way of looking at things.

While Mexican Americans are not a panacea for what ails American society they do provide a sense of hope for a society that seems to have lost its ability to pass laws, to respect its neighbors, that is gun-obsessed, is becoming childless, and which has trouble dealing with its history. American society has been refreshed periodically by immigrant "waves" and never before has American society been in need of a "refreshing" then now. 

Congressional Republicans may yet block any resolution to our "immigration problem" this year but they will not write the final chapter on the Latino-ization of this country. It will happen sooner or later and it is best that it occurs now. Maybe Mexicans will finally outlive the cockroach. Maybe not.

Getting "Older" in your Profession

I have been quite busy the last few weeks trying to finish a manuscript to submit to a press and have not had time to write my blog. At the same time I've seen so many ex-students and other young scholars publishing and submitting papers in a frenzy. It is both heartwarming and incredibly annoying as I contemplate the fact that I will never be that productive myself again. Time takes its toll, though it is not simply a lessening of physical stamina.

The biggest challenge to getting older in your profession, and here by "older" I mean more experienced and better, is that the scholarly problems become less simple and so do the goals. You begin to mine for a deeper meaing so past explanations do not satisfy, and former words do not convey the newer thoughts. The trail becomes tougher because it is steeper.It doesn't happen to everyone as some people continue to publish work that qualifies as a first book. And this applies not only to academics but also poets, essayists, playwrites and others who write often. It is easy to work out a "formula" and stick to it without giving it a second thought about maturing and doing something better.

Of course, as you seek to get better you confront the reality that life and physical self have changed. You might have a better situation at work or in your own business, but it doesn't mean that all things have stayed the same. What you did to get your initial respect and titles is not sufficient anymore. This, of course, is not a dilemma that waits for age. It can begin occuring as soon as you leave graduate school or simply the university. What seemed so wonderful and got you accolades as a young scholar,or  writer means less in your next phase of life. And nothing get as old fast as being a child prodigy or someone with "potential".

This may be why the academy and the publishing world is full of "one book wonders" and others who seemed to have faded long before their time. Or the third category which is that of a scholar or writer who is "productive," that everyone knows is "good" and whose book you "should have" but who few people read even after they buy their book. Undoubtedly, this third category is probably a good/bad situation. It is good because your work gets published and bought ($) and your resume gets longer. But it is not good because people will say, "yes, I have that book. But no, I haven't read it."

You will be mentioned as one of those scholars who is productive and who contributes, but in the discussion of what is important and a must read your work will rarely come up in a serious vein. In that case, it means you continue to be the same writer of years past who has not charted new spaces to explore or found new words to express his/her thoughts. We all know these people. They are there and their names are good when someone asks you to "name a few" whether its because you are trying to diversify your faculty or trying to get more people in your genre to be published. And then, you realize that you haven't read their latest work or the two previous.

Getting older brings the temptation to rehash the previous and to rewalk the familiar paths to gleam something that you might have missed. We "use new filters," find "new contexts" and re-emphasize what has been overlooked. All of that is good except for when it is simply an excuse not to do the work necessary to publish new things. I know, I've been tempted several times in the last few years. And there have been times when what I can "re-do" could actually be important, but so far I am not willing to get into a rehash pit that will swallow me up, and basically end my career.

Does that mean that there not things that we can mine that might consume our whole career? No. I know that some people become experts on an event, a person or idea and spend their whole lives writing about it. They usually get some specialized endowed chair (if they are good) and end up "editing" a collection of some kind. And that is very important, but it is not for everyone and even those who do it are not always that good. Most will never have an influence beyond their immediate subfield and over time their work becomes stale. Of course, that applies to most of us. Few break through and remain in front of the pack their whole lives. And that is okay. We all need our 15 seconds in the limelight followed by long periods of time in obscurity.

But as we go from one phase to another in our career, even if its from grad school to our first job, or from our first short story to the novel, or the second poetry collection we should remember that each phase has its own "measure" and requires our growth in thought and our evolvement in our vocabulary and our writing style. It doesn't mean abandoning our "voice" or making radical changes to our style, but it does require that we improve our skills and our thinking abilities. Sometimes the next work doesn't pan out or is not as good as the previous one. That is okay, it happens to the best, but hopefully its failure is because we tried to do a little bit more and not because we stayed too close to the beaten path.

Knowing how much to evolve and how much to keep is something that we learn over time if we put attention to our skill development and our intellectual pursuit. It also means keeping our bodies and minds in as best condition as we can. But that is a topic for another day. 

Remembering a Certain Nobility in the Chicano Movement

As I was reworking my memoir I came upon a section in which I dissect the Chicano Movement's impact on my life, and I was reminded of why at a gut level I was more partial to it than the traditional civil right movement. One of the things that I found difficult to bear in the traditional civil rights movement--which in this case would be the black civil right movement--was its concern with not offending white society.

I loved Martin Luther King's inspiring rhetoric and I often agreed that everyone needed to be called to be part of the struggle, but there were times in which his and other civil right leaders' rhetoric was simply wrong historically, and said to appease the white man. I am just as troubled today when President Obama speaks of how this nation "has always been just" when it deals with the rest of the world, or how our actions have "always had the highest ideals". Does the man really believe that? If he does, then he misread American history. I don't deny that there have been--as in every nation--great leaders and great moments. And I admit that no one is perfect and we should be careful how we judge human beings as it is with the same measure that we will be judged, and maybe we won't do as well either. But I think that we only truly change when we are honest with ourselves about our history.

Mormons are currently going through a phase of revisiting and reanalyzing their history and it is not comfortable at all, but it is clearing up a lot of bad history. When we deal with history as it is, it serves as a pruning phase for our ideals and our goals. In American society we rarely do it at the "public level"--mostly in academic works--and in these times there are even fewer courageous enough to try to do it. President Obama came into office talking as if he wanted to do it but has so far failed miserably at it. But then, if we had cloely listened to his 2004 "blue states, red states" speech, we would have known why. As inspiring as it was, it was fundamentally wrong; maybe not in its aspirations but surely in its assessment of American history. America has always been a divided nation whether by religion, politics, class, race, etc.

The Chicano critique was that it had always been a nation consumed by materialism, too much individualism, too warlike, too arrogant, too selfish, and too anti-others not of this land, and even many within its borders. I was reminded, as I wrote this, about an article I read several years ago about the agency in charge of using American dollars to help developing countries deal with their divided citizenries. The article added that most if not all the solutions the agency suggested--protection of minorities, power-sharing among the different groups, gender equality, land distribution and fair economic play--were all ideas rejected or never implemented in this country. It reminded me of the Chicano critique that America was a beacon whose light often hid the horrid darkness that lay behind it.

Chicanismo would be a failed political experiment--though much good came from it--but its critique of American society was pretty accurate. It questioned American ideals, white people's motives, and this nation's solutions to the world's problems. It's critique was never truly ideological but rather communitarian. A poster that circulated during those times had a picture of a hand and carried a caption that said, "una mano no se lava sola" (one hand can't wash itself). A cartoon that came out of a Chicano Movement group in San Diego, had the drawing of a tatooed cholo who looked doped-up and in a caption asked the question, "Hey stupid, what have you done for your people lately?"

The Movement was a call for everyone to take responsibility for making the barrios a better place to live, not to leave. It called for personal responsibility and for being responsible for others. It was not about having the "same opportunities" as others and simply running with them as some in American society teach us even today. We were about building a blossoming community way before today's progressives' urban gardens, ride sharing, block parties, and community art.

Chicanismo was about taking care of the youth and keeping families together. And if you believed in that it didn't matter if you were gay or straight, moreno or muy blanco, whether you spoke good Spanish or not. Chicanismo failed because it had many contradictions within it, and failed to address many internal problems--including those of gender equality and individual goals--but its aspirations were more noble that today's politics and its critiques less self-serving than those of many of today's professional civil libertarians who depend on their proximity to power for their "careers".

The critique continues to resonate with me because it parallels the critique I have about American society as a religious person who believes in community while respecting individual privacy and those much needed individual yearnings. While I was a "victim" of Chicano Movement politics, I simpy accepted it as the result of the frailties of man and the turmoil of secular politics, and not the aspirations of a people in struggle. Yes, I was naive but it was better than being callous or worse, fully gullible to an unfair society.

As I do research for my biography on one of the great intellectual precursors of that Movement I am reminded that in my youth I believed in something quite inspirational, and something that meshed well with my Mormon communitarian ideals. I may add that both are still besieged by the ugly side of American Exceptionalism, though admittedly both were/are in one form or another a byproduct. Revisiting the Chicano Movement reminds me that we are constantly in struggle to find the best in ourselves, even when we have to search for it in the annals of history.

Talent Matters & so does Experience

As I get ready to go research my next scholarly book, a biography on Octavio Romano one of the intellectual precursors of the Chicano Movement, I realize that I'm the most confident that I have been before a big project. In some ways this should be my toughest book and yet I don't feel the usual apprehensions about my ability to do it, and do it well. In fact, I am ready to state that this will be my best book. Why? Most probably because after six books I think that I now have balanced out all my skills, and nothing I will do in this book will be new or experimental though the parts will be arranged in a way that will be creative and different. I now consider myself a master at what and how I do my work. This doesn't mean I don't still have worked to do to refine my craft nor that I should simply coast. But it does mean that I can have confidence in the things I do and can approach a project with the sense that all creative roads are opened to me.

Experience brings these feeligs of confidence. But those experiences have also confirmed in my mind that I have "talent for the game".And talent is important, possibly the most important part of being a writer. Some might argue this point and they might be right if we believed that the only thing that separates one writer from another is how many pages one writes a day, and how willing they are to rewrite and re-edit their work. But without talent all the writing and rewriting would still not produce a good work. Hard work and experience will take even a small amount of talent a ways, but it will not allow you to produce a truly good work. For that you need talent.

This may sound like a depressing point for some if they don't see themselves as a Danielle Steel or a Truman Capote. And it probaly should be if they have no talent. But my sense is that most of the people who write and even bother to read this blog do have talent, maybe even at an undiscovered level. So I'm preaching to the choir although at this stage some are ready for the Mormon Tabernacle Choir and others for the barbershop quartet down the block.

For me, talent comes in one-size-fits-all quantity. That is that when people have talent, they all start out equally but then talent is developed according to time, effort and experience. The last three are like yeast to the talent dough. Once yeast is applied we may say the endproduct is bigger and yet the amount of dough has not changed, it has simply been expanded. And yet we can metaphorically call the endproduct--the bread, let's say--bigger, in the same way that we can say someone has more talent than someone else. Some people have no talent to write something beyond a grammatically correct essay. All  can learn to write to communicate but not all can write to entertain, inspire or to motivate. That is the domain of the real writer.

I've said nothing new here but I wanted to emphasize the point that writing is a talent that can be discovered, nurtured and developed but it is not one that can be "created". I say this because I often run across people who want to write great works and I see almost no discernible talent in them. I'm not being mean or dismissive, just practical. There are things I would like to do and some of it requires a level of talent that I am not willing to spend the years trying to find out if I have. It saves a lot of time if we are willing to accept that there are things we cannot do. It is also possible that we have some measure of talent but the required time to develop it to do something actually good is not worth the investment. "To each man/woman is given a talent," so says scripture, and we know some who seem to have gotten a whole lot of it, but we also know there are talents we don't have.

And talent without experience will rarely be developed to the point of doing good work.

Looking Forward to Summer

In a lighter vein than recent writings conveyed, I want to talk about some things I will do this summer. First, I will be visiting family in Texas while I engage in what probably will be research for my last book while in the academy. I love visiting family because they have always been my first priority. When my wife and I had younger children we sacrificed financially to be there at their little league games, plays, school activities, and to "set up and arrange things" in church so they would have a great experience in their activities. Every Fourth of July or other holidays, my wife and I would open the church building and invite all the kids over to spend a day playing sports, dancing, learning crafts or just hanging out. Most of the working class families rarely had the day off so we became the communal babysitters. I can't say that my kids always enjoyed it but surely Alex and I did.

Alex and I also love to travel. While she is now partially disabled and can't be in the car for too long, Alex enjoys seeing the scenery and stopping at different places to take pictures or buy "little things". In those moments we talk about both simple things and about things we have read in the most recent book, or seen in some documentary or news program. It is also a time in which I design my book projects because I have no better listener--and critic I may add--than my dear companion of 40 years. Her companionship on these trips has made them a wonderful time. My colleagues go to Venice, Brussells, Tokyo, etc for their research trips while I go to Edna, Crystal City, Beeville, and...you get the point. Without her the Church's Fried Chicken and the cheap motels would be unbearable.

Years ago we had a grandson who accompanied us to all these trips and the few cross-country ones we took and made life even more fun by forcing us to stop at every zoo and museum along the way. It is also great visiting him again, now that he lives with his mom, and having long conversations. This summer we plan to write our first short story together. What a wonderful thing to look forward to. He will--so he says--also take his grandfather "to school" on the tennis courts. Of course I will also get to see five other grandchildren, two daughters and a son-in-law and have a ball of a time with them. Each one of them is a joy and present me with opportunities for learning and fun. There are two other tennis players in the field, a cheerleader, and two younger ones that can wear me out while giving lots of joy. The only sad thing is that I will be leaving four other grandchildren here at home but I've been enjoying them this whole year.

All of this will simply mean a better research project because I research and write more when I'm happy. I plan to finish my memoir this summer. Three years ago several presses rejected them citing a number of issues. Just recently, one editor said it had been a "mistake" that had haunted her for three years. I think that when it comes out there will be others who will probably feel the same (or so I think). But in all honesty, I think it will be much better now, and a number of "issues" that prevented it from getting published have been resolved. As that editor said, in her apology, "I was a bit naive and didn't realize what you meant to the field and that you were a big part of that (Chicano) movement". Okay, a little bit of an overkill but it made me feel good.

I will also be looking around for a place to call home in Texas. There is a good possibility that I will be moving back after I retire here, and yet I have to admit that I love Utah. I'm made many friends and I just love the landscape. And in all honesty, while I like change, I don't like thinking about it. After many years away I admit that I am more Utahn than Texan but I still have lots of  family and friends in the Lone Star state.

This month three very special people in my department retired and it is getting to where the overwhelming majority of the colleagues I knew when I came here will soon be gone. It is strange to see the old go and the new come in. While I always try to strengthen the bonds with the new faculty, I admit that I feel a bit strange without the old colleagues. So, going to Texas will provide me an opportunity to think about the future and what I can do to keep building the bonds with the younger faculty, all whom are great people. The beauty of working at the BYU history department is that the colleagues are respectful, kind and don't spend their time undermining the other people in the department, as it often happens in other universities. After a good, relaxing summer, it always good to come back to start the new semester. For some reason, I feel like the coming academic year will be good, but only after a great summer.

Romney, Shallow Waters, and Big Fish

I recently heard the Commencement speech that Mitt Romney gave to the graduates of Southern Virginia University, titled "Launch Out in to the Deep" which is based on counsel that Jesus gave to his apostles. As the story goes, his apostles had been out fishing and they had not caught any fish. Upon seeing them, Jesus told them "launch out in to the deep and cast your nets" which they did and came back with a bumper haul of fish. The speech itself was not particularly impressive and the counsel was typical of commencement addresses. Still, the title intrigued me.

Too often, as Romeny reminded the graduates, we spend most of our lives in "shallow waters" hoping to make the "big catch" in a place where big fish rarely swim. And I know that as liberals too often we are ready to point out that the reason we stay in shallow waters is because we have no boats, no nets, and the rich guy on the shore probably owns the sea and doesn't allow us to fish without extracting a lot of money. But putting aside these probabilities, it is good to remind ourselves how often we retreat from deep (and troubled) waters when we should go forward.

In Puerto Rico there was the legend of the "Dutchmen"--developed during a time when dutch pirates roamed the Caribbean--and according to some this  made Puerto Ricans insurales, individuals afraid to venture out, thus insulating them from the rest of the world. Puerto Rican intellectuals like Juan Flores have debunk much of this theory and have shown how other factors kept Puerto Ricans isolated from the larger world. Nonetheless, there is some truth to the myth--if the details themselves are not. And in some ways, many of us are insulados or isolated within our own worlds.

Being afraid to launch into deep waters is a common fear. And no matter how far we go out into the ocean of our lives and our professions there is always still a vast ocean and each mile further out brings its own fears. Over time, every piece of ocean we navigate becomes "shallow" simply because we are so familiar with it and we have mostly conquered all that lies within. And the catches become smaller.

In an upcoming movie, a father tells his son that there is no such thing as fear but rather it is only a human reaction to real dangers that lurk out in the world. Now, as a guy with lots of fears it is hard to swallow that idea but yet I believe that it is mostlyy true. So often what we fear is the unknown, or the situation which takes the control remote out of our hands. We like to line up our ducks and make sure that all loose ends are tied and that whatever endeavor we engage in will be a success. Of course, we can be the other extreme in which we plan for nothing and find ourselves unprepared, thus unwilling, to venture out in the deep. And in that case, it is probably best if we do not.

Launching out into the deep is simply about stretching ourselves, developing new skills or enhancing our old ones, meeting new people or re-engaging with old friends, and testing ourselves in unfamiliar places. Not all the" deep-sea" explorations result in magnificent catches or discovered treasures. Sometimes they are simply ways of knowing that some dreams are not really what we thought they were, nor worth pursuing. In those moments of disappointment we sometimes develop new perspectives and thus new goals.

Romney also said something interesting, and that is that we should give our jobs "our best but not our all" because our all should be reserved for God. Paraphrasing that in secular terms we can say that "we should give our best to our work but reserve our all for our vocation" which forms the larger views and passions that we had when we began doing what we love to do. Too often we give our all to the "process of our lives, instead of to its essence". I write for reasons beyond getting published, getting promoted or finding some kind of fame or notoriety. Sometimes, when seating in front of the department chair for what we call at BYU "stewardship meetings" I struggle with the bean counting discussion of articles and books and "achievements" because for me those rarely deal with my commitment to students, the profession and the larger community.

A good part, if not all, of my books have been found in the deep waters of history, and recovered from the divers places of history. Someone once asked me where I get all my ideas for my books. My response was "from living life and being aware of what is missing" in the story of people like me. This underscores for me that the "deep waters" are actually all around us. They are personal crevices that we should seek to fill at one time or another if we are to live a full life. And to catch the "big" fish, of course.

Using Our Time and Talents for the Good of our Fields

As I prepared for this week's Sunday School class which I have been teaching for almost three years, I was thinking of a just concluded conference at the University of Texas. Put together by graduate students in Chicano studies, it was a great gathering of young and old scholars, and I truly enjoyed it. But my thoughts were also on the lesson which is about when some Mormon communities practiced what they called the "United Order". In short, it was a communitarian approach to a religious life when all the families gave all their possesions to the church. The church would then sit with the family and figured out how much land and resources the family needed to live adequately.Then the family got title to all those possesions which they kept as long as they maintained the rules of the covenant between them and the church. At the end of the year, anything that was left over was given to the church to provide for the poor and afflicted, and also to sustain its mission.

The United Order went the way of other utopian communities but the principle remains a part of the charge of being a Latter-day Saints. Needless to say, few of us live that "higher law" wshich requires a deep concern for the poor, a dedication to loving those around us, and engaging in sustained religious work. At the same time, the law of consecration can teach us much about living in this life, and can also be of help in many aspects of our lives, especially those of us who joined the academy or took up writing because we believed in social justice, in the need for a better world, peace and in being good stewards of our world.

During the conference I heard a young lesbian scholar talk about her work with gay students. Her mission, undoubtedly, was not only about teaching them course work but also about literally keeping some of them alive by having them find dignity and pride in who they were. Now, admittedly I don't always understand gay scholarship, and sometimes I struggle with some of the language and explicit sexuality that is often part of queer studies, but I couldn't help admiring the commitment she was making to her students beyond the classroom.

Many of the people who enter the field of Chicano and Latino studies often do so because they feel a  commitment to their community and seek to use their scholarship to help do just that, but over time it is easy to become a "professional Chicano/Latino studies" scholar and get caught up in the game of upward mobility, tenure and recognition. Acceptable research, fund acquisition, and gaining recognition become more important over time. The "community" becomes a distant memory or simply another academic topic to be discussed. And of course, it also becomes a term to throw around to impress audiences and students with "our commitment".

Our topics become esoteric and we stop showing up to events where community people and students are around--such as the conference I attended just this week. We also become uncomfortable when we are reminded by those same people that we are becoming irrelevant to their lives, as did one community activist to some of us a few years back in Phoenix at a Chicano Studies regional conference.

The Law of Consecration had several important principles. The first was to live lives devoid of materialism and pride; another was to be concerned about the poor and not to judge them; still another to gain skills and talents that could be used to serve the community: it required a mind single to the glory of God. Now, those are very tough demands, but they made me think about our responsibilities to our field, our students and to the institutions in which we work--the latter can often be met by making them more sensitive and relevant to the students and community they serve.

I thought about how how much more I could help my younger colleagues become better scholars; how I could teach in ways to make the course work more relevant and also a rallying cry for people to be better members of their communities. I don't mean being more ideological or using the classroom to organize students for partisan issues, but rather making them better human beings who feel the need to be "their brothers/sisters keepers", who shun materialism, seek to be peacemakers, who are concerned about those in the margins of society, and who are disciplined in the way they live their lives.

The latter is also part of the Law of Consecration. It means living a moral life, and while I know that morality can be interpreted in different manners--political, social, religious, environmentally, etc.--I think that we can all agreed that it does call for higher ideals than those which come from just "living life". It calls us to be "better than what we have become". And all of us in the academy know how easy it is to become disinterested teachers, uncaring mentors, and individuals focused on our own needs.  We can also become what they call in Mexico "pilotos", pilots who fly in, teach their class, pick up their check, or attend the mandatory meeting, and then fly out not to be seen until the next scheduled flight. We see our responsibility in the rank and status process of our colleagues beginning when we read the files instead of two or three years earlier when we notice they are struggling or making the dumb scholarly mistakes we all make. We also apply to jobs advertised when we know we are not going to take them even if offered, and in the process either intimidate or cause to be overlooked other scholars who do need the job and would actually take it.

There is a joke among academicians that the university life would be wonderful if it wasn't for the students. I have used it myself in lighthearted moments. Yet, being a professor is first about being a teacher. Now, it doesn't mean that it is the thing we most like about the academy. Some of us might like more the intellectual environment, writing books or articles, artistic performance, or even the hours, but we must never forget that it is the students and the classroom that make all of those things possible. It was wonderful to hear two scholars I deeply admire talk about their concerns that the academy was moving away from truly serving the students. And they were not engaged in a political or ideological discussion but simply one in which two great teachers and mentors lamented that in our modern, hyper-individualistic, capitalist society our students were a low priority. Even when some of these changes were going to benefit them greatly, they rejected them as being unfair to students.

Religious consecration means setting aside the best for the Lord. In the academy, it should mean reserving our best for our students and for our communities. It means sacrificing some of the perks, some of "our" time and doing things that are for the benefit of others. This does not have to mean that we give up our individuality, that we focus only on the job nor that we accept the new assessment schemes that universities have put together to dwindle the faculties and make learning a business. It does not mean acquiesing to bad leadership; in fact, it means the opposite. It means being engaged and interested.

Now, as previously mentioned, I know that those of us in the academy, and often those who write, are a breed apart. We need our space, our time and sometimes for long stretches. I knew one dean who believed that professors should leave the campus every fourth year on a sabbatical, visiting professorship, study abroad or other activity that allowed them a break from the routine. I happen to agree because feeling fresh and excited is often the way we do the things we do best.

At the same time, the idea of commitment--our own personal law of consecration--should help us keep going even when we don't have the optimum situation. We should seek always to fulfill that goal we had when we entered the academy. It might mean having good semesters and bad ones, feeling fulfilled one year, and totally dejected another, but in the end it is about sticking to our passion and our vision of what the "good scholarly life" truly is.

And unlike those who practiced the Law of Consecration or other utopian schemes who had friends and neighbors (colleagues ?) we often have to do it by ourselves.  That is why conferences like the one I attended are good. We get a chance to see friends, see the next generation of scholars, and experience the enthusiasm that had us excited throughout graduation school and our first few years in the academy.

Meeting Our Obligations as Scholars & Writers

This past month I had a conversation with a scholar friend whose work I admire greatly. He told me that he had "finished his obligations" to his field and was now engaged in a work outside of it that had captured his imagination. Given his enthusiasm and the fact that he is such a talented historian, he is likely to do a great work, and possibly even find recognition in a new field.

That conversation made me think of the obligations that scholars have to their disciplines. I don't just mean doing the best work we can and being honest in how we construct our work. I mean doing work that we know has to be done in order for our field to prosper, and which we know we are the most likely person either because of skill or circumstances to do it. Often, these works take us away from some of the things we want to do and sometimes require that we do some retraining and to shift our focus. There is no doubt that they are a challenge and that is why they are a particularly important service that we do for the field.

The scholarly world, unfortunately, is so reflective of a society which tends to be too individualistic. People today tend to first seek "to find themselves" and to provide "for their needs",  and have less time to think of  their obligations. In general writing we can see the abundance of "personal" memoirs which offer almost nothing but individual reflections about nothing. Now, I do think that some have their place and some can actually be valuable, but too many of them reflect a society of individuals that only think about their wants..

I have a friend who says that too many scholars are "independent contractors" who simply want to be left alone. No doubt that many of us entered the academy to have our space and to do things that we like and believe to be important. Scholars, and writers for that matter, can be a strange breed and sometimes our world will be inhabited only by us and an occasional visitor. But even then we are not freed from the obligation to give back, and to do it in the best way that we can and that is through our scholarship and our writing.

I am a great admirer of Professor Rudy Acuna who is seen by some as the father of Chicano Studies. He is a prolific writer but his greatest contribution is the fact that he tries to never let "bull" go unchallenged. We don't always agree and he has at times been a ferociouos critic of mine but he has also defended me when I have been accused unjustly. What I like most about him is that he sees it as his obligation to keep mentoring students and keep writing what I call "obligatory" scholarship to keep the field moving forward. He may not see it as an obligation or a service but it surely is valuable to most of us in the field and to students who still flock around him at conferences.

I think we all know of people like that. They are conscious of the blessing of writing (and teaching) as a career. And while they could simply focus on the next book they want to write, they choose to keep an eye for things that ought to be done, and if they can't do it themselves they encourage and support others who can. It is an example to those young scholars and writers who are starting out, and probably for older writers and scholars too, in how to frame their careers. Being a part of the whole,
sharing our talents, being worried about what happens in the field and among those who follow our writing is the one way that we can find fulfilment in our lives, even as we periodically "do our own thing".

It is the way that we progress ourselves. As our fields evolve we do so too. And in the end, those are some of the most fulfilling works we will ever do. They will challenge us in ways that will make us grow because they expand our horizons, and often make us tackle topics we are "unsure of". I remember when I decided to write a biography on Hector P. Garcia, one of the giants of Mexican American history. No one had undertaken that chore and yet so much was being written about his era, and of course, as it is often common in our field, people were simply repeating the couple of paragraphs we knew about his life. I did not particularly like the man--he was still alive but died just before I started the work--and as a young Chicano activist he had been "the enemy". Yet, I could not see how the field was to progress without us knowing more about his life and his politics. In the process of writing the book I came to greatly admire the man and his co-horts, though truth be told I never did learn to like his personality.

At the moment, I am in the process of researching what will probably be the last "obligatory history" of my career. But after all these years, this "obligatory" history is as big a part of the history that I want to do as my recently completed book on Chicanos and basketball which was a change of course for me. In some ways, though, that too was obligatory for me because it was a story that I believed needed to be told, and it was also a way of putting some meat in the area of Chicano sports which is currently vegetarian at best. More important was my desire to see the history of Mexican Americans told in all its variety.  This new work is an intellectual biography on one of the intellectual precursors of the Chicano civil rights movement. I think we need to know about him in order to understand this movement, at the same time he is such a complex and interesting scholar that I am excited about using all the skills I have acquired to tell his story. Many of those skills I learned not only by writing what I wanted to write but also by writing those works that I felt needed to be written.

So, the next time we sit down to plan the rest of our lives, let's remember that there are works that need to be done, and that not too many people are lining up to do them. I'm sure that we will find room for them in our future, and the field and many colleagues--some still in high school--will be better for it. 

Cutting Across Theoretical and Ideological Boundaries

One of the most important characteristics of a good scholar and writer is the ability to maintain balance and certainty in an intellectual world in which so many theories and methodologies abound, and where being "behind the times" can mean the kiss of death. This is more particular to the academic world but it can also be almost as complicated in the world of blogs, 24-hour news cycles and in the political arena. That is why it is unusual for anyone deeply engrained in those arenas to write good works. Not impossible, and many have done it, but still difficult.


No doubt that the academy is a bubble and most of us who live there are often insulated and isolated from the real problems of every day people. That has probably always been the case, but in today's world too many good people find themselves unable to really write anything that is worth its salt outside the academy because of "overloaded minds" or because they put too much time into staying up with the blogs and posts. More and more we are pressured to write for our own bubble and our small community of likeminded individuals. And I find this a particularly poisonous environment for people who want to write scholarship or even fiction that has meaning or is valuable outside those limited parameters. So much writing is now conjured up within the four walls of an apartment, a classroom, or a cubicle at the library. The more people prepare themselves to be scholars and writers, the more they isolate themselves from the world they once wanted to influence.


Being an intellectual or good fiction writer means transcending borders and pushing against the grain, learning about new landscapes, listening to different people and being challenge to see things differently. Today, unfortunately, it often means staying within an ideological boundary and pushing back against only the enemy. We tolerate little dissension from our ranks. And we have too many litmus tests. I don't mean standards or ground rules but rather fastidious "gotcha" traps used to blunt rather than encourage intellectual conversation.

This is not a conservative or liberal problem but a problem with our society. Yet, the good writers always find a way to cut across ideologies and social norms. It is difficult and that is why literature is littered with writers who were recognized only after they left the scene or whose works--if they were lucky--remain dust-covered decades and centuries after they were published. In history, we are not so kind to such people. We know how to bury our dead deep lest they resurrect and show us how wrong we were.

Yet, if we are to progress beyond the rigid academia, the polarized punditry, and the blogsphere wars, we need to nurture more writers and intellectuals who are willing to push back against even their friends and colleagues when they are destructive, who find it more important to write meaningful material than popular one (to their bubble friends), and who believe that life is more than just about arguing and fighting or trapping people in ideological inconsistencies. We need to use words that do more than simply give us an advantage. Today, going for the jugglar is more important than finding the answers. It is also more attractive to humiliate, marginalize and destroy other people than to try to find common ground. Sometimes the battle is an end-all one and there can be no compromises--hough that is usually rare. Those also have to be fought, but we should still try to fight in a way that victory does not simply leave scarred landscapes.

Ideology and faddish notions is what makes us do that carpet-bombing. In contrast, principles are those intellectual and spiritual parameters that force us to try to convince people that we are right or that what we bring to the table can be better than the alternative. Those men and women whom we admire for their great work were people whose principles always transcended their ideology. That is why they changed in the ways they did and galvanized the people they did. When they, themselves, became too ideological they went the way of the ideologues. They weren't always right or their work wasn't always positive but they were consistent to the point that any work can be.

So, as we seek to become good scholars and writers and we are tempted to be the "movers of ideas" let us not forget that principles--those beliefs which are based on greater intellectual and spiritual depth and which apply to greater numbers of people than ideology or academic theories--are more important to have than great ideas. Let us not be "toss to and fro" by theories, methodologies or "great ideas" which come and go, but rather remain firm in the things we believe are good for the whole.

I am naive enough to believe that there are words to be written that are still meaningful beyond the next conference, the following blog post, and which cannot be undermined no matter how much we reconstruct or analyze them. Those usually involve writing about the lives of people, their struggles, defeats and triumphs. It is usually work that the people themselves can understand and appreciate and which makes them seek to "be better than what they have become". Now, I understand that not all work is specifically about people, sometimes it is about forces and institutions, and sometimes it speaks to tragedy, but the reality is that life doesn't exist without people and people's reaction to their world. My own grounding to this principle has helped me hold on through the winds of theoretical change. I have changed and some of those theories have been extremely helpful, but only because I've maintained my balance and picked and chose those which have enhanced and re-enforced my principles to write about people's struggles to find a place in this world.

After attending the National Associationn of Chicana/o Studies in San Antonio I am optimistic that it is possible to stem the tide of divisiveness, and faddish academic ideology. I saw and spoke to a number of scholars and young people who want to write things that are meaningful and which will have an impact for good. The only thing missing was a few more mentors willing to sit and chat and help these young people. But the struggle to make it on their own can also be helpful. Many of us had to do it on our own, and some of us did okay. Still, good mentors are always welcomed.

Fighting "Comfortable" History

I just finished reading The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks by Jeanne Theodoris, and I highly recommend it for those who like to read good history and especially for those who are concerned about how history is sometimes manipulated to make it fit into a nice narrative in which we can feel good about our society.  Theodoris' thesis is that Rosa Parks was a life-long activist who did not simply feel "too tired" to get up from her seat. She was a strong civil right activist long before the Montgomery bus boycott and would be even more committed to the struggle for her people years after.

Most of this goes contrary to the story we have been told about Rosa Parks and provides a different perspective on our nation's slow-walk toward equality. It is also a myth perpetuated by scholars who find "comfortable history" more palatable than the story of a tough as steel woman who believed in self-defense, admired the young black power activists, who spent more time fighting discrimination in Detroit than Alabama, and whose hero was Malcom X. Too many Americans would find it difficult to accept this version because it points out the messiness of history, and reaffirms what most good historians know and that is that loose ends are not always neatly tied together in the end. More important, the story of Rosa Parks creates another strain within Ameican history that challenges the hegemonic narrative we push so hard in public schools and in many universities.

At the same time, we find that myth-making is not simply a task of American scholars and intellectuals. Currently, that is happening in Venezuela where El Comandante's followers are writing history for their next electoral campaign. In a few years all we will know about Hugo Chavez will be what will benefit the Chavistas in power--or if they lose the election, seeking power. Rosa Parks hated the fact that the story line was that she was tired from working hard when in reality she was tired of being discriminated against. For Chavez, embalming someone and putting them in display was one more symbol of capitalist debauchery. Now his enemies will have another example of El Comandante's "socialist contradictions" to point out.

Too often historical figures become footnotes in a history that we can manipulate for our own politics and our own causes. We create an overarching narrative or paradigm and find the people and events, fine tune them, or blatantly manipulate them, and proclaim it history. Most all of us are guilty of it in one form or another but some of us try to keep to the "truth" as closely as we can, while others simply rewrite it as most scholars have done with Rosa Parks and most Chavista historians will do with Hugo Chavez. And with today's post-modernist notion that there is no truth except interpretation it has become much easier to do so. Conservative and liberal historians use to simply leave out things, today's historians simply interpret them which ever way they want.

While no doubt that much truth is in the eyes of the beholder there are facts that cannot be ignored. We can interpret Rosa Park's actions which ever way we want, but we cannot ignore what she said about those actions over and over again. We can argue that black power advocates hated traditional civil rights advocates but we cannot argue that those traditional advocates and those black power activist met numerous times, held conferences together, or worked with each other in particular issues. We can say racism was a "southern thing" but we cannot deny the rampant discrimination, segregation and police brutality in the north. We can say that Martin Luther King, Jr. was a man of peace and nonviolence and that he loved this country, but we cannot erase his words to the effect that American was one of the worse killers of innocent people in history. We can now claim him as an American hero but we cannot forever hide the polls taken during his time which showed him to be one of the most hated men among Whites.

Yes, we can manipuate intepretations but we cannot erase facts, documents, speeches and personal words even if we do choose to hide them. In the end, history is not "comfortable" for the human species. And no good scholar or writer should ever be part of a historical and scholarly approach that tries to make it so. We might be strongly conservative, liberal, left or whatever ideology we believe in, but that does not give us the right to consciously lie, distort or misinterprest. If we really believe that what we write is the "truth" or the right solution, we ought to have the faith that it will make a difference. Or as the apostle John said, that it will make us free. To say we believe in something or someone and then manipulate the facts in order for that something or someone to prosper unfairly is an admission that we don't have faith in what we believe. Sure, truth does not always triumph but trying to tell the truth is liberating to us and to the causes we espouse.

I always remember an old Chicano activist who saw himself as the ultimate socialist. He preached the poor people's ability to see through the lies of the politicians. And he knew they would pick his candidate, but he helped the truth along by ripping down all the opposition's posters and did everything to prevent the other side from participating in the public debate. So much for the faith in his cause. Today, he is just another rich lawyer. If we don't believe in what we preach or write then we shouldn't write or preach it. And if we find ourselves writing a history that fits comfortably into a narrative we know not to be fully true, then we ought to take a hard look at what we are doing.
                                                                         

El Comandante has Died!

Yesterday, Hugo Chavez, the controversial president of Venezuela died. While I am not a historian of Latin America--though I have a degree in the field--I sought to keep up with the actions of the man. I also went to Venezuela a few years ago to see what was going on since leftist politics is an interest of mine. I read several books, interviewed people and used my former journalist's eyes and ears and historian's mind to learn as much as I could about the man. Having gone to Cuba, Mexico, Central America and even the Middle East to study revolutionary movements, I developed some notions of Chavez and Chavismo.

I have no interest in writing about my personal feelings on the man or his movement, but I do want to write the just initiated discussions of the man and Venezuela. And I have to admit I quickly concluded that most journalists and even the "informed" pundits know so little about the man and his politics. They apply no framework for understanding the man but simply speak as admirers or disdainers. They evaluate him on issues that are political but which often have little to do with things on the ground. He is either a dilusional socialist or a corrupt leader, or he is the savior of Latin America. While these claims may have some "truth" within them, they are hardly good analysis of the man.

This leads me to my dismay in recent years of seeing pundits and journalists claim to be historians. From Chris Mathews to Bill O'Rielly, these individuals get interested in a topic--mostly one that will make money--hire a ghost writer, peruse the sources that fit their views, and then put out a mostly sensational work that has little merit, adds little to the historical record but stirs up the pollitical waters and thus sells books. None of these men--mostly men--ever find that their research and study of some political leader ever changes their mind. The view they have of their topics is the same when they are finished as when they started. Though historians have always written with ideological and political lenses, they could at least claim to bring in some expertise and some time spent looking at the sources. And surprisingly there are a few who admit to having learned something new or even changed their view about their topic. Those, of course, were individuals who took their professions seriously.

Today, however, most people write about what they like and they end up liking even more what they write. In one day, I saw people line up on either side of the Chavez divide and pontificate, though the anti-Chavez crowd were the most numerous. This was particularly true in Univision which is headquartered in Miami. And while the station claims a liberal view on American politics, they tend to be anti-anything left when it comes to Latin America. That is particularly true about Jorge Ramos who often seems "embarrassed" that Latin Americans leaders don't act like his favorite white politicians.

Most analysts, like Ramos and the mostly conservative analysts he brings in, will miss Chavez's growing up years, his evolution during his military stint, and will fail to connect his political views to a long tradition of military populism in Latin America that navigates between right and left. They will fail to understand that his closeness to Fidel Castro did not come initially because of ideology but because of the open door that Cuba offered to those in Latin American who were against the status quo. Most will also fail to note how the American approved coup radicalized him, and led him to embrace those who hated the U.S. not because of ideology but because of shared bitterness. They will either judge him a socialist who ruined his country or mock him as a candy-store leftist who was anything but ideologically inconsistent. Then, they will look at the problems of Venezuela and accuse him of failing to fix all the problems that the nation faced. They will do this while ignoring the fact that almost all of the Latin American countries--governed from the left or the right--are currently facing the same challenges.

They will compare him to Fidel Castro, maybe even Che Guevarra, and find him "wanting" as a leader with legacy. And then they will feel good about having done their job. This reminds me of when I went to cover El Salvador with a team of reporters during its civil war. While I read as much as I could about the country, the insurgency and Latin American politics, most of the other journalists were worried about whether they were in shape in case they had to "hump" out in the countryside. Some even learned a few spanish words to order a beer. As expected, most came back feeling the same about that "banana republic and its tin-sword" leaders as they did when they left. In fact, the chief copy editor actually provided the overarching thesis of the newspaper's coverage even though he knew nothing about the civil war or Central America. My complaints over the shoddy and unprofessional work got me fired, one week before my part of the coverage was honored for outstanding reporting. What the award committee found was that I cut through numerous layers of politics and perceptions to get to the core of what people were thinking as they lived through a horrible civil war. I did this because I prepared and I asked questions that went beyond the interviews and also spent time in country trying to decipher how people thought. Getting the "scoop" was less important than understanding the story of El Salvador.

El Comandante was a complicated figure and his life and politics say much about Latin America, its past, its ghosts, it racial divisions and its future. Few will noticed how much Latin American has changed because of him and how much less it is under the influence of the U.S., which for many Latin Americans is a great improvement. Most of that, however, will be missed by the pundits and need I say by a lot of the Latin American historians who will be asked for sound bites. My experience in the academy has taught me that most American Latin Americanists have little sense of Latin America. They may know the sources and they can figure out the larger actions but they know little about what people think, or why they vote the way they do. Few of them will have ever spent time walking up the mountainsides among the poor, lunched with military men, or interviewed refugees, or guerrillas. And most will care very little about the people they write about. So El Comandante will be just another "South American dictator" who came and went and left his country worse off. And then everyone will be surprised when another Hugo Chavez arises in Latin America, and they will then chalk it up to the craziness of Latin Americans.

Don't Write to Publish Every Day

A couple of years ago I wrote Maria Elena Salinas, Univision's talented and much admired anchor, a note arguing that she was taking a very simplistic approach in a column she wrote. I don't remember the topic now but I thought that she should have known better than to write what she did. A few days later, she wrote back saying that she had been attacked from both sides of the political spectrum and thus "I must be saying something right". I was reminded of that exchanged when I read about what one journalist calls the mainstream media's "Bipartisan Think" approach to reporting the news.  This approach assumes that "everyone" is equally responsible for the problems in Washington and the country, and that everyone has a legitimate or at least a right to have a different opinion on an issue and that both sides of the debate must be dealt with in a  balanced way. This can at times include balancing out a scientific pronouncement with a counter argument from an anti-science group.

This, of course, is ridiculous. Yet, it is becoming more common with the explosion of technology that allows anyone to write and comment on just about anything without having to take responsibility for their arguments. The media's fascination with reporting "all that is going on" bombards us with absurdities. The fact that people now do not write to their friends but to their "followers" means that words and ideas have become cheap and they now usually come as shots from the hip. Not knowing how to handle this explosion of "writings and commentaries" many in the media simply report as many of these sides as they can. This has allowed pundits from the left and the right to appear even though they have nothing serious or intelligent to offer. Twenty-four hour cable and computer live streaming add much to this morass of bad ideas.

But this instant messaging environment has also impacted some rather serious writers who do often have something important to say. Its just that no one, no matter how talented, has something serious and meaningful to say every day. One only has to study prolific writers of the past to realize that they agonized over every word and spent hours and even days going over what would become a permanent part of the public record. Computers might facilitate the writing, technology the venue, and one's name may attract the audience, but the process of saying something meaningful is still difficult no matter one's abilities. Yet, what writer shuns an invitation to be read (or seen reading) even if it is a self-created one with blogs, facebook, twitter, youtube, instagram, etc.? Now columnists who write several times a week have blogs and so do most anchor people and reporters.

There use to be a reason why one read people three times a week and not everyday. There is also a reason why there is time and space between great journalistic stories, or poems, short stories and novels. That time was meant to be spend perfecting the idea before it came out. Today, we are obsessed with reading from the same people everyday. That is why kids who blog their tragedies have hundreds of thousands of followers, and why animals have facebook pages. We no longer seek to get meaning from what we read but we actually create it in our own minds and project it unto what we read or in the case of Youtube see. How else would we explain a pig without hind legs having more followers that the president?

Part of this faddish obsession with blogs and facebook is that many people have lost a sense of community. We don't talk to our neighbors, spend time after church or work talking to people in the same space, and our families are spread throughout the continent. We often work in places where we are separated by cubicles or assignments and we don't have real human contact except for the "hi" and "see you laters" as we come in and leave. Digital writing allows us to communicate without really communicating and given that we only use short phrases, it also allows us not to think too deeply about what we are going to say. We can also make snide remarks on someone's post and know that no one is going to take the time to rebuttal what we say. They'll just make snide remarks back.

Blogs have spread rapidly through academia and now we have hundreds of them in all the genres that call themselves part of the intellectual pursuit. Periodically you find some bright idea and some good writing. Most of the time it is shallow material that is "part of a larger research project" and which is often meant to elicit praise for our work, or to test the waters to see how many sharks there are before we jump in. For young scholars it is a wonderful opportunity to write and develop ideas, but for actual learning they are a bad place to spend too much time in. Even most of the good postings are shallow.

Yet, for some scholars it is the only place to "publish" something given the nastiness of the publishing arena in academia. And, of course, ideas should not be the domain of those who control the means of publication. So my beef is not that people want to write or even with the venues which allows them to be published or read, it is with the notion that you can write and have something significant to say without putting much thought into it than what appears in the brain that morning after the coffee or the hard workout at the gym. I am troubled with the liberality with which we throw out words and ideas and then believe that their accummulation means that we have said something meaningful. I am troubled by people who trivialize their tragedies or happiness by detailing every minute and every day of their lives to strangers, and am troubled just as much with those who urge them on because they are obsessed with knowing what someone is feeling 3,000 miles away even though they might not even know their next door neighbor.

So, what should the role of the serious writer be? This I know will get me in trouble with the "its a free country, all-ideas are important" crowd. But here it goes nonetheless. We should take time to think about what we write, study it in our minds, reflect on its usefulness, write it, leave it for a day or two, edit and rewrite and ask ourselves again if there is a purpose to it. Once we feel confident that it does then we publish it. And then we keep wondering if we actually said something useful because the mark of a good writer and intellectual is that they are humble enough to realize that even in their best moments something important was left unsaid and something trivial was given too many words.

Now, I'm not speaking to the person who simply wants a public journal to be read by all, or someone who likes to chat with their friends and meet new ones. It is meant for the serious writer, the person seeking to contribute to the intellectual pursuit. After all, this is what this blog is about even when it fails to meet the standard that I have set for myself. Writing is a serious business and it cannot be cheapened by the abundance of publishing venues. I remember when I was editor of a small literary journal that writers would send material to me that they would not send to "important" journals believing that they were doing me a favor. They weren't going to waste their best work on my meaningless journal. But that is exactly what they were doing, wasting--my time, their time, my journal pages, and their own computer screens. Work that is not pruned and perfected--as much as it can be--should never see the light of day. It should be in a journal, in unpublished notebooks, in stashed away files, or in the trash bin. I don't know how many blog postings I have finished, reworked, left to ferment, only to be deleted. Why? Because not everything written is worthy of publication and not every work that creates attention or controversy is worth the screen it was written on.

Writing should be fun and seeing our work in print or on screen is motivating but we should be careful not to be lulled into thinking that everything that comes from our computer or pad and pencil is good, or that by simply writing we are getting better. I am reminded of something Phil Jackson, the famous Laker coach once said about Shaquil O'Neil who would shoot 200 free throws in practice to improve his terrible percentage:"He's just doing it wrong 200 tiimes a day". It wasn't the times he shot that needed to improve but his technique. When we write every day we can improve but when we publish every day we usually just repeat the same mistakes. That is one reason why Ernest Hemningway once said that all writers should be journalists--for the constant writing and deadlines--but not for too long or they'd become bad writers.

Happy Valentine!

For those who love romantic stories for Valentine's here is an excerpt from my novel. It is more romantic-tragic but then all romance is part tragedy.


https://www.dropbox.com/s/l50jfph5z4wuj8p/Can%20tho%20Excerpt2.pdf

Letters from Garcia: Defing and Expanding One's Voice

Letters from Garcia: Defing and Expanding One's Voice: My trying to live/write one day at a time was suppose to eliminate the blues that I get when I am inbetween projects. So much for that idea....

Defing and Expanding One's Voice

My trying to live/write one day at a time was suppose to eliminate the blues that I get when I am inbetween projects. So much for that idea. Though, in all honesty, I am actually being crushed by the many projects I have. That won't change until I finally prioritize and line them up. At the same time, I will have to find a "new" workplace. I do this periodically--a Stephen King thing--so that my mind and writing soul can stay fresh. This time, I'm going into our large closet. It makes me feel like the aforementioned author who use to use a bunch of orange crates as a table to keep reminding himself where he came from, which was poverty. If it sounds like a gimmick, it is, but then to be a writer is to have gimmicks that put at bay writer's block, depression and provides you the notion "of a new beginning" which simply serves "to put at bay writer's block, depression..."

I got a "great" compliment this past week from someone who is reading my kindle novel Can Tho A Story of Love & War.  The reader remarked, "I'm about to finish the novel and I don't want it to end". A shameless plug, yes but one that I think is legitimate. The story is one that grows on you and you come to identify with the characters and eventually you want to read a little about them every day or every few days. In this, I think this novel is different from the blockbuster type that you don't want to put down until you've read it in one sitting. Those are usually about the action. My novel as most of my work--even the history books--is character driven. I find my voice in talking about people and getting the reader to empathize with them, to love them or even to truly dislike them but most important to focus on them. In the end, most fiction as most scholarship in my area is about people; without them much else is unimportant. One can write about trees, rivers, climate change, or many other things, but without people in the story most of that doesn't matter. After all we are not animals or inanimate objects writing about such others. We are humans talking about the human experience from a human perspective.

In my novel I talk about war but from the perspective not of a hero but of someone trying to survive while performing his "duty" in the best and most honest way he can. That he falls in love and is forced to be a crucial part of the battle--as a medic--is something that happens to him. He is literally dragged into situations and so he responds.

As I've mentioned before this novel is based on part of my experiences in Viet Nam, but the story is not created there, and it comes about only when I defined my voice. That is to say that I could not have written this novel right out of Viet Nam nor after my first couple of years in college. I needed to experience life, to begin to shape my long-term view of things, and to establish my personal philosophy. Once I knew how I wanted to live life and had developed a way to look back and assess, I was then ready to write my novel. While many things came out of my journal and my memory, and the main characters were based on real people and their personalities, the story itself comes out of my view of life. My voice then reflects what I think now even if what my characters in the novel say is different than what I, myself, would have said. A bit tortured prior sentence but I think the reader gets what I mean.

My voice was forged and continues to be refined by my experiences and by writing. The reason why writing is so crucial, aside from the practice and stories which in themselves help create a voice, is that writing forces me to confront rhetorical, grammatical and conceptual roadblocks, and those force me to reconsider ideas and actions. Most of us can see a little of ourselves in the work we do--in the case of my novel quite a bit of myself--and we often test our own character in the challenges our characters face. We might not be like the serial killer we write about, but no doubt he or she has something of us within them. That's because we can only write about what we have researched, experienced and integrated in our psychic. There is both an attachment to and a distance from characters we develop in our stories, even if those characters are real people in a scholarly or nonfiction work. One of my best works was about a man I deeply admired but whom I would have disliked had I interacted with him. My work then needed to bring out his best qualities while showing how they alienated many.

To successfully do this, I had to construct a voice that could speak to his contradictions. Do I mean that we have to have a different voice for different types of works? No and maybe slightly yes. No, in that our voice indicates how we think in most circumstances and how we resolve problems, contradictions, and how we either express hope or engage in lamentation about the things around us. But yes because the voices of good writers have philosophical intonations that get to matters that are difficult and complex and out of the ordinary for them.Sometimes our work--or our writing jobs--require that we alter our voice if only slightly or temporarily. Sometimes that alteration speaks to a view or conclusion that is not consistent with our regular voice. One example is that of a civil rights historian that finds him/herself writing about an instance when segregation actually worked for the benefit of the oppressed. For some the facts take them where they may, but for others, more ideological, it takes them where they don't want to go. The conclusion may come out of the facts and the analysis but it nonetheless challenges their voice.

Of course, this is complicated and for the good of our sanity it is usually best to avoid too many of these circumstances or they will shake our foundational voices and to survive we become chroniclers and not writers. Yet, these challenges can also expand our voice and makes us reassess the way we look at things and how we write about them. But expansion must have a purpose and must be consistent with who we are in one form or another, otherwise we simply dilute the way we think and write. Developing a voice is necessary early in our writing life but refining it is a life-long process.