Growing an Intellectual Community in the Academy

A few days ago a former colleague sent the history department an e-mail explaining why as a Mormon he was voting for President Obama instead of Governor Romney. It was a powerful combination of intellect, scripture and political savvy. Yet, its prime importance to me was that it reflected a sense of intellectual brother/sisterhood. His was not an advocacy letter but simply a explanation to friends and colleagues of his feelings during this election season.

A couple of days after I received it I spoke to another colleague about the letter and we agreed that its impact was more communal than political. It was a sharing and it was intellectual rather than partisan or emotional. It got us talking about what is the "academy" and what is "scholarly and intellectual" within that environment. We concluded that many parts of the university environment can be opportunities in which to grow intellectually as well as come together as a community. Needless to say, it rarely does play out that way, but it can.

Where can we create an intellectual environment while creating a sense of community? In practically every place at the university when we bring down the wall between students and professors--and among senior and junior colleagues--and create spheres of respect, recognizing that each has a particular role but that both are there to learn and evolve intellectually. Some examples: during office hours where we can take time to expand the discussions from one of what are the assignments to how they fit in the process of learning history. And we can invite students to share their ideas and then we share our own. The same can be done while chatting with young colleagues in the hallways, workroom or after faculty meetings.

In class we can ask the students to participate in the process of learning by going to the blackboard, to read out their material and to partner with others. And then we become a member of each group by our participation within each. In master's and honor thesis committees we can go beyong asking students what they know and learned to inviting them to have a conversation with us about how their topic fits into the scheme of learning history or simply their topic. As committee members we can engage the student's topic--discuss, debate, expand--and move the process away from an interrogation to a conversation. In this way we teach students what a scholarly discussion is like and make them feel like they are participants in learning rather than residents of Guantanamo Bay. In this process the student will fully understand how well they did and be more likely to understand our concerns or our "delight" with their work.

We can teach the intellectual process to students when we grade their papers, converse outside of lectures they are assigned to attend, and we can have outside class activities and even invite some to our homes. In every sphere mentioned we are teaching, sharing, listening and coming to a point where we are now "reasoning together" instead of solidifying the teacher/pupil asymmetry that is common in these relationships. At the same time by asking them to take on the role of scholars or at least students of intellect we create new boundaries of respect and a relationship of mentor/mentoree.

No doubt--and I stress this--not all students are interested in this relationship. And there is really little we can do about this if our invitations to go beyond the textbook and the classroom dynamics are ignored. The same is true when our own colleagues are more interested in shutting their doors and writing their books, planning their next lesson, or snoozing off in the comfort of their private space. Knowing this allows us to plan ahead. After all building community is about finding a group of people--students or colleagues--who have an interest in a particular topic or action. That is why there are "communities" and not just one community. Historian Richard Bushman argues that we all look for our "communities of scholarship," places where we feel comfortable sharing and learning. Without them we often feel isolated.

What about when you are in a place in which there is little interest in this? I have found myself in that situation for a mulitude of reasons: I'm Mexican, Mormon, liberal, conservative, feminist, anti-feminist, young, old, etc. Yet, I've found that there is still a way to make community even if it is a shifting one with students coming and going and colleagues participating and then fading way. That means that my community grows with me and around me there is an inviting environment and an attitude that says that my "space" is always open to the "wayfarer" who needs a stop over to recharge their battery or to find a helping hand.. We never know who will stay for a long time, who will come back periodically, and who will replicate that model of community somewhere else. Yet, we can be sure that in our community we provide a positive space in which learning, growing and friendship are valued. Through this process we mentor, are mentored, teach and are taught, comfort and comforted, but more important we live our lives as part of a larger intellectual community.

A Difficult Life

Here's an interview with Junot Diaz the pulitzer-prize winning author. The short interview reminds us one more time the difficult life of those who engage the written word.

Sometimes things just don't come together the way you want them to, and you find yourself tossing things out or rewriting until you realize it "ain't going to make a difference" and then you toss it out.  I remember as a young boy rolling my eyes when i read that Hemingway wrote 30 drafts of his novels before he was satisfied. I would find myself doing the same thing when I wrote my scholarly books and they weren't even half as good as the Hemingway novels. Success in writing comes after miserable and at times torturous writing sessions that often leave you anything but happy. Those people who say they just "love everything about writing" are those who write little, write fluff, or the ones who use ghost writers. That is the case with many of today's television pundits who put out a book a year.

Recently, I dumped a collection of essays in the works for years. It was a project I wanted to do so badly, but after taking a hard look at what I had done, I decided it just didn't work. It was like casting a beloved grandchild out into the "cold and dreary world". At the same time, if we don't learn to make hard decisions about what is good and what is not about our writing we won't progress. As it is, we often let thing slip by. Surely I have done it and recently I read something by someone I admire very much who did just that. The post was simply not very good and I could tell he had not put in the time.

But enough about me. Enjoy--or maybe not--as you are reminded of the torture sessions that await that next great scholarly book, novel, short story, essay...idea.






http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/30/magazine/junot-diaz-hates-writing-short-stories.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20120930

Gregorio's Christmas: a short story

It is probably too early for a Christmas story but given that I want to make a point about what I earlier called "democratic writing" I am sharing a short story that I wrote last year for my yahoo group of former high school classmates. It was never meant for publication and so there was a lot of license that I took in writing this piece. Most of the friends liked it and one or two still get a laugh out of reading it. Please share with me anything that you've done that follows this genre (my invention) or simply work that is there but has not seen the light of day.

Gregorio's Christmas

Democratic Writing & Writing that Transcends

One of the things that Facebook and Blogs have done is to democratize writing and publishing. The new e-book self-publishing phenomenon can be added to the above.This means that publishing is not the domain of a few editorial houses or magazines. People can now write for profit or simply to converse with their friends and those willing to read what they write.

There is something liberating about being able to write without thinking of where will "I publish this", though admittedly it is still the major publishers who dominate the process for serious writers. At the same time, publishing for kindle or other e-book distributors has provided more venues for writers of all kinds. And so we have more people writing and calling themselves writers than at any time in our history, although during the 1960s and '70s there were lots of free magazines and newspaper which provided space for more people to speak their mind.

I remember that when I was in my mid-twenties a number of magazines and newspapers sprung up in San Antonio that invited people in the West Side to submit their stories, poems, essays and interviews for publcation. They really did not have to be polished or even good to make it onto print. I guess there were some editorial guidelines and the editors--a husand and wife and friend team--did draw a line with the truly terrible submissions. But overall, if you had a passion and willingness to write you could end up a "published author". I never did publish with them being too self-conscious of my writing and figuring that I did not have anything important or interesting enough for them to want to publish.

Looking back now, I think that my reluctance was also due to my orientation for thinking about things that transcended the barrio. I had nothing against writing about the barrio landscape or the abuelitas, abuelitos or the day-to-day routines of Mexicanos which was a common theme in Chicano literature at the time. I believed, even then, that writing is universal and while the topic may be of a particular people, circumstance or landscape, good writing always transcends cultural, ethnic, racial and other boundaries. Consequently, my notion of good fiction rarely took place in the barrio.

When I became an editor of El Saguaro, a literary journal that came out of the Mexican American Studies & Research Center at the University of Arizona, I constantly tried to get Chicano writers to diversify. Most wanted to stay with topic of the barrio and in this they were following the advice of all writing teachers: "write about what you know". But I never believed that the advice was meant to keep us writing only about that which we experienced personally or about the people we interacted with daily. What we "know" can often be an idea, a character type, or something we read and fantasize about continually.

So, for one issue of El Saguaro I only accepted nontraditional--gothic, mystery, romance, avant-garde, etc.--Chicano literature. I had visions of someone writing a science fiction piece with Commander Valdez commandeering the U.S.S Enterprise, or about Inspector Roberta Castro figuring the murder case that had stumped everyone else. I would have even accepted a Mexican Animal Farm. Well, I didn't get any of those but I did get many other pieces that were non-traditional and incredibly creative and some even took place in el barrio. Even today I consider it a crowning achievement in my contributions to Chicano literature.

My own piece was about a Chicano military man called to govern a post-apocalyptic world. While liberal and progressive, he was called upon to save the Republic from some who had been his friends and people he had associated with in the past. The story was not about a Chicano saving the world from those who oppress but from those who felt oppressed. It was an attempt to tell a much more complicated story about leadership and governance.

Last year I wrote a Christmas story about a Chicano in Viet Nam who was going home after the Holidays. I wrote it for a yahoo group composed of friends that graduated with me from Sidney Lanier High School in San Antonio. This year I am hoping to write a Halloween story and I think I got one other person in the group to get excited about writing one also. So, great for our democratic writing. 

I will be practicing my own democratic writing when I publish my novel this month on Amazon kindle. I have simply not found anyone who wants to publish a novel about a couple of Mexicans Americans in Viet Nam. The theme is universal--so much so that a Latino press did not want it because it was not Latino enough--and speaks to those who have gone to war and fallen in love.

Good writing is neither white nor black, brown or yellow,  red, gay or straight. And it can be in any genre, landscape, with a multitude of characters (or animals) or possibly with none. But its message, in whatever form it comes--has to find application in particular stages of life of any or most people. Are there exceptions, yes, but most of the time no.

So, I'm glad for Democratic writing, but not for the kind that is only about writing "of our own" and having it apply "only to us". Writing for la palomilla (the folks) only is like "preaching to the choir". It has its purpose and its place, but rarely does it expand the conversation.

I'd like to see if anyone has a different opinion. It gets lonely talking to myself. Familia, at least you guys write to me. That's if you are even reading this.

Rarely: But the Opposite is Just as Bad

The answer to the question in my last post is: I guess it depends on what kind of writing you do, but for the most part it is a resounding no! It is hard to write good literature or even good history without adversity. There are many reaons, the most obvious is that life is about conflict, obstaces that we overcome, or ones that overcome us. Without them, we have a story as flat as the plains of Kansas and just as boring. One can write poetry, psalms, songs and even comedy without engaging in sticky, or depressing details but it is hard to write a history or even a novel without tension, adversity and challenges that the protagonists or characters in your book confront. Even in scholarly work the people we write about usually face a pushback in their lives. Currently, I'm reading a short memoir that has very little drama and while I want to read it I admit that it is not very engaging. The protagonist faced many obstacles in his life but actually never engages them in an significant way, deciding instead to accentuate the positive to a point that it reads like a 7th grade essay.

But the point I want to make here is not that all literture needs tension but that tension, adversity and challenges are not the only point of any story or work of scholarship. It is about resolution even if that resolution sometimes turns out to be fully negative in the end. In today's scholarship and even in some of the general fiction there is too much negativity and too much whinning. Everything becomes a story of unfairness which suffocates all action. This is particularly true in memoir where "straw men (and straw women)" are constantly set up and the memoirist spends the rest of the book bemoaning his/her tragedy. It is like a revisit to the 1950s & 60s where American writers discovered how dysfunctional were their families and decided that since everyone else's was also dysfunctional they had a ready made audience.

Today, dysfunction and childhood adversity and "they don't treat me right because of who I am" stories proliferate. Now, there are many who do confront adversity and unfairness--lest I say racism, sexism, agism (I'm getting there), etc. But that literature mostly has value when there is some form of resolution even if its learning to live with one's misery. Resolution, then, is not about a complete turn around or a "fix" to all our problems, instead it is about personal--or at times collective--decision-making that frees one from hopelessness even if not totally from the problem itself.

This doesn't mean we don't write tragedy or histories of oppressed people. It means that we give them life, recognize the struggle, and validate them regardless of whether they fully solved their problems or are overwhelmed by them. Otherwise we add to the literature of negativity and whinning. Most people are fighters, and those that aren't are usually not worth writing about.

Good Literature Speaks to Adversity & Struggle

Earlier this year at a faculty seminar I made the comment that Mormon literature was yet to really be significant because it was too middle class. One colleague from the English department took exception and rattled off several works he thought were important. I quickly added that while I had been too sweeping in my comments I still believed that adversity and challenge is what makes good literture. If not, then all we write about is how well or not we fit into our institutions and/or our mainstream.

The same can be said about the intellectual pursuit. When we focus constantly on the personal we create small worlds around us that usually lead us to small ideas. I came from a generation that was engaged in large ideas but nevertheless there were people who still though small. We had civil rights, feminism, national liberation movements, Vietn Nam, the Cold War, the rise of conservatism, etc. and yet my brother would say years later, "where was I when this was happening?"

Real intellectual pursuit does not come in simply reading many books or engaging in unlimited academic conferences or literary discussions. It comes only when we put to use what we are learning and discovering. Now, you can't just have "zeal without knowledge" as one famous Mormon intellectual use to say, because then your learning might just be as inconsequential as that of the library couch potato. And without doubt a serious intellectual pursuit does require lots of quiet time in order to think and process what knowledge we accumulate.

But it also requires us to engage in the physical as well as metaphsycial world. It requires us to look deeply within us and then profoundly outside of us to see where we can serve a purpose. It means connecting what we write with what we see and feel and experience, and particularly with what we do. No doubt that not all that we do physically or even verbally makes us good with the written word, expands our mental capacity, or even makes us sprititually profound. But an indifference to that which swirls around us will surely guaranteed that we will not achieve any of the aforementioned.

When I feel detached, indifferent and insensitive, I realized that it is time to become involved with my students and my community in a different way, to expand my writing themes, attend different conferences or activities, and pay attention to those issues around me. More important I think of expanding my horizons and stretching my knowledge  so as to force me to look beyond my world. It can sometimes be about isolating myself--ala David Thoreau on Walden Pond--and at other times about rolling up my sleeves and doing something useful. That often means finding something to struggle over and to be challenged by.

One caution: struggle and adversity cannot simply be invented and they are anything but one-dimensional. That is one reason why Soviet writers and musicians rarely created any good art--though they played great music created by past Russian composers who did have much to write about adversity under the Czars. And one saw the decline of literature in Cuba soon after Fidel Castro came to power because it became all about promoting THE Revolution and not about the struggle and challenge of creating and defending the ideals--not the politics--of a revolution.

This happened to Chicano Movement-sponsored writing and music and is the reason why Chicano artists were the first to begin abandoning the Movement. As long as they were writing about struggle and liberation they were good. As soon as they started writing to promote the "institutions" within the Movement ideas dried up.

I wish I had been more explicit with the English professor that Mormon literature will get better when we start talking more about the struggles of people of color and women and less about "fitting in to" the faith. Or when our literature maturely depicts the struggle to transcend institutional limitations. It isn't all about dissident writing--thought some of it can be--but about the battles one confrtonts to remain faithful to an entity that like all other institutionalized ones has its particular needs and passions. That is what good religious writing has been about. Even that which promotes the faith.

Make no mistake, this kind of writing on any topic is painful and sometimes uncomfortable but it comes with the territory.

Next post: Can someone write good literature (or scholarship) without talking about pain, struggle or adversity?

Convention Speeches: Another Form of Good Writing

The Democratic Convention last night reminded me that I was once a part-time speechwriter for a hospital administrator and a director of Mexican American studies. Both thought I was really good at it, and I think I could probably have made it--with a break here or two--into serious speechwriting. I love to construct speech patterns, sprinkle some history, make a few jokes and then get into a cadence that drives home the point. I thought Deval Patrick and Julian Castro did a magnificent job yesterday whatever you think of their politics. By the way, Rosie Castro--Julian Castro's mom--and I were friends when younger and she was the one that re-introduced me to the Chicano Movement when I came back from Viet Nam.

Some people ask why most politicians do not write their own speeches. One reason is that it takes a lot of time to put words together and also a lot of practice. I remember in writing the speeches that I did, I would continually rewrite, practice outloud and then try to picture myself standing at the back of the room listening to my speech being given by another. If you can not detach yourself from your words you can't write speeches. For a candidate, CEO or other to write a speech, they have to love to write, to reflect, to understand an audience and laugh at themselves. Most jokes poking fun of the speaker are rarely written by the speakers themselves. Most politicians and leader types rarely know how to laugh at themselves.

Speechwriting like ghostwriting takes a humble demeanor because most people will never known who wrote the speech even though today some speechwriters are celebrities themselves. But can anyone name who helped write Martin Luther King's "I have a Dream" speech? Exactly my point. Or how about John F. Kennedy's inaugural speech, or Ronald Reagan's "Morning in America"?

Speechwriters and ghostwriters find their satisfaction in doing a good job. They also find joy in helping promote their candidate or their causes, and that is why you have liberal, conservative, democrat and republican speechwriters. It is rare that you have one writing for the fellows across the aile.

When I was writing speeches I would check out books from the library on speechmaking, famous speeches and, my favorites, memorable sermons. I was particularly enthralled by Peter Marshall who served as the Chaplain of the Senate. His sermons were so down to earth but so powerful at the same time. As a young boy I use to love to sneak into the chapel of my small Mormon congregation and give what we Mormons call "talks" to empty wooden benches, often emulating Marshall's sermons.

Giving speeches is also about practice and context. And it is only by practicing that you get good at it. When I became a lay bishop most people thought I gave good talks and asked me how I did it. I would simply say "practice, practice and more practice". But it helps if you have something to say--remember passion--which is a crucial part of speechwriting. The famous speeches are anything but fluff. You can't make a speaker or a speech great if there is nothing really important to say. You might be a wordcrafter of the finest order but your speech will fall on deaf ears or be remember only until the lights are turned off. Speechwriters have to believe in something and they have to believe that their candidate--or whoever--actually believes in the same things.

I think my stint as a speechwriter and a  sermon-giver--unlike many Mormon bishops I gave as many sermons as I did talks--made me a better scholar. I find that I quickly get into my grove and I don't give boring presentations. I remember going to Houston a couple of years ago and had to make three presentations in one day. Each was a totally different audience. After the last one a colleague, whom I deeply admire, said that I had given the same story in three different ways. I actually think he was mocking me but I believe it is because most scholars don't know but one speed in giving presentations and they rarely think of audience. They think of what they are going to say and what they want to get across and not who is going to receive it.

Here again, it is all about being a good writer. Writers know their audience and differentiate one group from another. A speechwriter also knows that space, time and interest all play a part in how people respond to a presentation. We all have heard great speeches and great presentations. Most of them seem directed at us. They make us comfortable--or sometimes uncomfortable if that is the point--they inspire us and they motivate us. We also learn even if we hear that which we already know.

Speechwriting is a good way to learn to write. Most good writers read their work outloud to themselves to see if it sounds right. Thus, it stands to reason that hearing someone else read your work is an even better way to find out how good you are. But like all writing, speechwriting is a craft and you have to invest in learning how to do it right. Some people are natural speakers and they can woo a crowd but it is when you read their speeches that you known whether they write well and whether their speeches will have any legacy.
If you didn't see the speeches last night, go back and search for them. I didn't say anything about Michelle Obama's but it was as good as any last night. That woman can talk and boy does she have a good speechwriter.

Do Not Write Advocacy or Prophetic Scholarship

My involvement in the Chicano Movement and the Raza Unida Party was what got me started on my scholarly journey. But while sympathetic and a promoter of Chicano/latino civil rights, I always resisted and felt uncomfortable by what I call advocacy and/or prophetic scholarship. I strongly believe in what I write but I do not feel I have any scholarly authority as a historian to put a conclusion or offer a solution to every historical narrative yet to be played out. This same reluctance should be embraced by other scholars of the social sciences and the humanities.

Most advocacy scholarship is driven by ideology and not research, analysis or even scholarly questions. Its interest is to promote a particular point of view that can only be validated through normally very narrow parameters. Now, there is nothing wrong with ideological writings but they are not scholarship per se. While I accept that none of us can write without advocating something or other, I do believe that we should not invent things outright or act like modern-day prophets who know more than they do.

One disclaimer here is that some scholarly work is meant to be advocated--some genres within sociology, economics, public policy, psychology, etc. But even those who do that type of scholarship should be cautious.

Caution should also be applied to what I call prophetic scholarship which is the type of scholarship in which we ascertain that something will happen because of how we interpret what has happened before.Recently, I had a friend who was waiting for an election to see if his several hundred page predictions would hold. His work ended up depending more on the efficacy of  a political campaign than on the "facts".While valuable--I read the manuscript--I did not consider the work scholarly writing in the best sense, though it might make him the next Karl Marx.

The problem with both advocacy and prophetic scholarly writing is that it is usually based on assumptions that have yet to be tested and it is difficult to test them before they are promoted. Since most of this scholarship is hardly earth-shattering, it is rarely put to a test. And often it is forgotten or, at worse, gives a scholar a reputation of doing shoddy work that is more astrology than scholarship.

When young scholars, in particular, start with advocacy scholarship it usually means they have skipped many a step. It is shameful that too many mentors and too many Ph.D. committees do not hold their students' reigns a little bit tighter. Advocacy scholarship if it is to be written and be presented as scholarship and not just as polemical or intellectual writing must be done when one has proven to know a topic well, to have researched it exhaustively and to have published extensively on it. To do otherwise is to try to pull a fast one on the public.

Does this mean that a brilliant young scholar cannot advocate something and be right--whatever right means--yes, that's probably what I mean. Even when they might get much of it right what they don't get is the process of how things evolve and how they reach the point they did, a crucial element in scholarship. You learn that not just by researching but by reading and writing about it, getting reviewed and criticized, and then responding to critics with more work.

To become a good "advocate" means seeing your own work and saying, "gosh, I coud have done better, or I didn't get it completely right". And doing it over and over again while seeing your ideas tested out over years. That is almost impossible for a young scholar to do in his/her first book, and even more impossible for the old scholar with no books in hand. Scholarship is partly about writing and if you don't write enough or haven't had the time to, you have little to say when you do. Are there exceptions? Yes. Are you one of those? Overwhelmingly the chances are you are not.

As scholars we make assumptions and even offer advice but we should be careful not to advocate what we have not proven ourselves. This is particulary true for the social sciences and humanities. Advocacy and prophetic writing is also a good way to have our work age almost immediately. I know of a scholar whose predictions of world calamity will prove him a prophet or discredit his scholarship within less than a year. Do we really want to be in that situation?

The function of scholarly writing can be to inform, to inspire and motivate, to correct an assumption or to critique, but it rarely works as a road map. There are always exceptions to this rule but they are exceptions which are often quite rare. And they come after years of writing, reflecting and testing out our ideas. When you are there then this doesn't apply to you.

Letters from Garcia: Part 3 : Scholarly Writing as Craft

Letters from Garcia: Part 3 : Scholarly Writing as Craft: A couple of years ago I asked a very productive colleague whether he considered himself a writer. Without hesitation he said, "yes". I asked...

Part 3 : Scholarly Writing as Craft

A couple of years ago I asked a very productive colleague whether he considered himself a writer. Without hesitation he said, "yes". I asked that same question to a Chicano scholar with the same amount of books and probably a better scholarly reputation, and his response was also without hesitation: "No".  Interesting, no?

Scholars are writers--when they write. And they usually don't publish or produce books if they are not. Accepting our role as writers is fundamental to being able to produce books and do it more than once. Writing is a craft, pure and simple, not some God-given ability limited to a lucky few. No, I don't mean that everyone is a Sandra Cisneros, Charles Dickens, Octavio Paz, Isabelle Allende or James Patterson, but each writing genre has its own levels of competency--and yes talent level--and for the most part they are accessible to those who make the effort to write well.

Since writing is a craft most writing rules apply across all writing genres which means that we learn to write by learning the rules of the craft and the techniques that have evolved over time. My shelves are full of writing books just as they are with books on how to do research, historiography, as well as scholarly books on many topics.

I read a lot, but not only in my specific field or even my discipline. I find that when I read science, sociology, anthropology, fiction, drama, poetry and scripture my concept of writing is enlarged. Everyone of my books has been influenced by a work outside my field because everyone of the authors was working at the same craft that I do. Sometimes I discover that "new techniques" in my field are ages old in another, and as such much more developed.

I find that fiction writers and essayists are the ones that put the most effort into their writing. So from them we learn the most about technique. Scholars tend to dismiss technique and so much of our writing is bland and in fact over the last century we scholars have developed the notion that the more inaccessible our scholarly books are the better they are. Its as if we decided that the fewer the people reading our work, the greater our academic glory.

If you don't know about flashbacks, setting, scene, characterization, summary, description...you know little about the craft. Now, these things won't make you a great academic writer, but without them you won't even be a good one. To them you add good research, good analysis, valuable feedback and expertise that often comes with time. But the latter are lost if you don't have the tools to put them into paper or on a computer screen.

Good scholarly writers use most of these techniques even when they don't know they are using them. Some people have the knack for developing some of these techniques without studying them by simply writng and reading. But it takes longer to "discover" them than it is to learn them.  Of course, craft requires practice and that means writing, writing and more writing.

One thing I learned from reading the biographers Milton Lomask and Barbara Tuchman is that you start writing as soon as you have some idea or have some research done. You don't do what most academicians do and that is wait "until the research is done". Writing helps develop ideas, reveals the blackholes in your research, and pretty much tells you if your project is doable. You can always correct as you learn more. Even if everything you wrote is wrong you will find that writing about your topic makes you more passionate about it and helps you feel closer to it.

For every project I write, I usually have two or three notebooks or folders of writing that rarely get into the final product. I also discuss my ideas, research, individuals, etc. in my journal. Scholarly writers should not go through life without a journal, even if its only to make sure your biographer has something to write about when you get famous. Write early in the morning, while on a break from family, during commercial breaks, and before everyone else wakes up. Develop a system that works for you and periodically upgrade it. Find a writing spot and when that gets old find a new one. Most important look closely at your work to see if you have some of the elements of writing that make your manuscript easier to read.

If you know setting, you will be able to place your work in the appropiate time and space. If you know characterization, you will be able to write better about people. If you know summary, you'll be able to get through those long parts that are simply not as exciting but quite necessary, and if you know flashback you will be able to expand your story across time without having to follow an A-Z narrative form exclusively.

Treating writing as a craft helps you to write what you are capable of writing, no less and no more. It won't make you a Pulitzer prize winner unless you have the talent and circumstances but it will make you a good scholarly writer who is capable of writing the books that are in you. It helps you when you fall into those trouble spots, when writer's block descends on you, and when you don't have the foggiest idea of why things are not flowing the way they should. Knowing the craft is knowing how to do what you most want to do.

I will stop here because its getting too long. But I will have a final note on this topic in a couple of days.

Part 2: Scholarly Writing With Passion

Years ago, when I was editor of a literary journal I wrote that all writing should have a "social purpose". It caused an uproar with debates breaking out between those who agreed and those who thought I was limiting their right to write for whatever reason they wanted. My intent was simpler. I wanted writers to think about why they were writing. What was their purpose? Recently, historian Rudy Acuna, wrote that [we] have to have a "reason for everything [we do]". I fully agree and believe that failure to have a reason for scholarship is why so many scholars do not write books.

When scholars don't have a purpose for their writing they find it difficult to motivate themselves to research, scrutinize documents and write and rewrite, edit and re-edit, all which are necessary for writng a book. For those who do a lot of writing, the lack of focus means they rarely write the longer works. Lacking a purpose also makes it difficult to continue to develop book topics because there is no logical trajectory.

 Having a purpose also provides form and reason for our writing. It forces us to focus on what we feel needs to be said, where sources are available and where the work will fit within the broader literature. The purpose for my scholarship was to affirm that Mexicans Americans were a people, not a minority group, and we needed to show this in the scholarship. This led to a second more narrow focus which was to show this "peoplehood" by writing about their politics and activism. One will soon see that there are other layers of focus as one defines and refines the topic to a point where it is doable.

Each of my works built on the former but remained focused on showing that Mexican Americans had all the fundamentals of a people. This is why it was not a hard transition to go from writing about politics and civil rights to high school basketball championships in my upcoming book. I was still writing about Mexican Americans as a people but doing it through another part of their experience.

 I would add that passion has much to do with our relationship to the people we write about, even those who have long gone. They give us a reason to write. I grew up in a vibrant community despite its problems and when I got to school and college I realized that they were invisible in the scholarship. And that invisibility impacted how those in the community saw themselves, and even how their children saw them, so I decided to do something about it.

For this reason, I believe that scholarship has a purpose and scholars should have the feel of a "call" about their scholarship. Think of any good scholar and you will find that there is a purpose to her/his writing. It does not have to be crystal clear but it does have an implicit aspect to it. Not all the reasons are the same, but reasons are necessary to develop passion.

Passion doesn't have to be political or ideological but it must reflect a genuine concern for the topic even when we write about people we don't like. One last point about passion and that is that it is not an excuse for one-sided polemical works. The passion is about telling a story that provides a true picture about how things really are. I understand the postmodernist argument and there is much to be said for it, but I do believe in truth and facts even if we do have to continue to filter them so as to write something that is truly meaningful.

I should say that whether anyone responds or not I'm sure that this post will create a lot of mental debates, and a lot of rolling of the eyes, particularly by those who have struggled with writing the book. It is not meant to cause discomfort but simply to help those who want to write. And admittedly, I have to continually reaffirm my passion and find reasons for writing scholarly books because no matter how many times you write them they are still hard to do. I go into months of depression when I finish one and when I am in the process of beginning another. Sometimes the two connect and its a very long blue season. But eventually, I remember why I write and then I get back into it.

Next post: Part 3: Scholarly Writing as a Craft.

Why do Chicano/a Scholars Write so few books? Part 1

Over the last few years I've had an ongoing conversation with a well-known Chicano scholar friend about why many of our colleagues had published so few books. Initially, I simply criticized but then I took to thinking more seriously about the reasons and less about passing judgment. Now, mind you, not all scholars in Chicano studies belong to disciplines that require books, and there is no intent  here to imply that writing books is the only or best mark of a good scholar. Nor a good writer. Books do, however, require a particular skill and devotion that is different from writing articles, essays or putting together anthologies, all of which are legitimate approaches to scholarship.

So, what I say here does not apply to all Chicano/a scholars but it does apply to those whose discipline requires it and those who have begun but never finished one. The following reasons for not finishing a book or for finishing only one book in a long academic career can also apply to nonChicano/as who might face similar problems. They are as follows in my opinion:

Feeling out of place. The academy is still a strange place for many of us. In my department a good number of my colleagues are children, grandchildren, nieces or nephews of college or university professors. I still have yet to meet a Chicano colleague in that situation. This means that for the first few years we often find ourselves attempting to acclimate ourselves to not only the institution but to its culture. And this takes time way from focusing on our book.

We are pulled every which way. This is a problem for most young faculty who bring something that might be perceived as unique to an institution. As soon as I arrived at my first major university I was assigned to all the diversity committees, asked my opinion on all issues dealing with Latinos, and even had local high school teachers asking if I could play the guitar and come sing to their students.

We want to do what is not being done. Since we are often what Arturo Madrid use to call the "onlies"--the only one's in our department, in our field, in the committee, etc.--we get involved in doing things that we believe need to be done but aren't. So we become club advisors, community liasons, protest leaders, and "spokesperson" for every cause that involves our community. In some cases, we develop what famed attorney Gus Garcia use to call a "Messiah complex", and come to believe that if we don't do it, no one will. Often times we are right. When we sit at our desks to write we think of all the things that need to be done on the outside, and sometimes we go out and do them.

We don't get socialized into the system.  When I was a journalist I wrote an article on why many Chicano/as did not get tenure. There were many reasons but the one that stood out was that most Chicano/as are never socialized into their departments, which means they don't get good mentors, are not directed toward research funding, don't get research assistants, not provided leave time and have few advocates when the process of tenure comes up. Too often we come in as the "onlies" and remain the "lonelies" in our department.

Terrible Mentoring. Academics are terrible mentors, and Chicano/as scholars are among the worst. Oh, Chicano/a scholars might be good with undergraduates and even graduate students, but once their former mentorees get academic jobs, they turn into "friends and colleagues" and seem to find it embarrasing or uncomfortable to be seen as mentors. As one of my colleagues likes to say, "we all think of ourselves as independent contractors". Since most Chicano/as rarely had good mentors, they don't really know what it means to be a good mentor. It is hard to be a productive scholar without good mentors or colleagues that help you find your rythmn.

Not trained to write. Finally--and I will have more to say about this in part 2--people are not taught to write in the academy. After our English courses and maybe a capstone course in which we have to write long research papers, little time is set aside to teach us how to write unless you are in creative writing or other English programs. And since few professors are taught how to write, they don't know how to teach it. Oh, they might be good writers themselves but since they often learned it "on their own" they expect others to do the same.

So here we have Chicano/as (and others) in a new and strange environment, pulled in all different directions, pushed by their necessity to do something that isn't being done, unsocialized to the system or even marginalized within it, terribly mentored or not at all, and never been trained to write other than a research paper; maybe even having finished their dissertations by pansazos (bellyflops? you have to be Mexican to fully understand this). To this we can add that the majority of Chicano/as/Latino/as teach in junior colleges, small liberal arts institutions, or large middling state schools that have a heavy teaching load, little research and travel funding and you get an idea of the obstacles to producing a scholarly book. (I won't deal with personal problems thought these are sometimes the main culprit)

To write scholarly books requires concentration, funding, travel, research assistance (sometimes that is a luxury) mentoring, and a feeling that what you have to say is important and appreciated. And we are not yet even talking about the actual process of researching and writing.

But these are reasons not justifications for failing to write a book or just one in a long academic career. After all, some Chicano/as do get recruited into a supportive environment, get adequate funding, are assigned mentors and have been basically taught to write. Some are even in colleges in which there are a number of other Chicano/a colleagues. Why don't they write more books?

 In my next post I will talk a bit more about the process of writing and why some lack it. But first, let me say that I will dispense with the "they are lazy", thought some are; "they are in the wrong profession" which some are; "they are not smart enough--I will leave that alone. They all apply to someone or another, but I've known some who fit into one or more categories and still write books. Heck, I think that I have fit all of them at one time or another and I have five books and two on the way. I don't think myself as somehow above the average but there were things I learned early in my profession and in some form or another most productive Chicano/a scholars did too.

I would like to know if anyone can add to the above, so if you have something to add please do so. Not only Chicanos, of course.


Part 2 will come sooner than next thursday.

Creating a New Personal Landscape

Some of you might know of me while many others probably don't or at least not as a scholar/writer--those in the last category are my friends and they don't need to know nor do they care much about what I do professionally. To them soy amigo. I decided to create this blog because I am expanding my writing to include more essays, memoir and fiction. I am not abandoning my scholarly work, just adding to my repertoire. From a young age I wanted to write. I didn't particularly care what I was writing. I started writing short stories, church plays, then went to sports as a sports writer/editor and eventually became a historian. But during that process I maintained an interest in all types of writing and continued to write short stories, plays, essays and a novel but did little to publish them.

A couple of years ago, however, I decided to expand beyond writing about civil rights and Chicano politics. My upcoming book (2013) tentatively titled When Mexicans Could Play Ball is my first major move away from the traditional scholarly work, though it still falls within that genre. But it allowed me a freedom that traditional scholarship has not, even though I do have a more accessible style than most academicians--at least that is what regular folks say. 

I was told I needed a blog in order to get more people reading my material. At first I resisted for the same reasons some people do but then realized that blogging could provide me a forum for the type of writings and discussions that I crave. I come to this much older than most and so amigos, companeras/os, blogeros patience and help. At the moment, my daughter with the help of her 13-year-old son, are doing much of the technical work. But I'm a quick learner.

I am hoping to engage in some good conversations about writing, scholarship, politics, religion, literature and other topics that will come up. This is something I love to do since I first discovered C.S. Lewis, Enriqueta Vasquez and Octavio Paz. To that group I could add David Thoreau, Rudy Acuna, Margarita Melville, Eliza Snow and a host of other writer/intellectuals. And also the viejito who lived next door to our house when I was still in elementary school. He would gather the barrio kids and tell us stories about la llorona and the Mexican Revolution. That is one reason I became an historian.

This blog will have a somewhat Chicano/Latino tilt, but Chican/Latinos are people too and we talk and think across boundaries all the time. We are a universal people and our thoughts are as important as anyone else's. In fact, I think that is the one boundary that we Latino intellectuals have to cross more often--though some have been doing it for quite a while. We are often known as people who "know their own" but not much of anyone else. People who think that way have never been to the Chicano kitchen table, the Latino bodega, the Tejano ice house, or la calle ocho in Miami; or for that matter the plaza in Havana, Cuba, the Zocalo in Mexico City and the public and privates spaces of much of the rest of Latin American. Hablamos mucho y de mucho.

But more than anything else it will be about the written word and how it contextualizes everything we practice. No it won't be about postmodernism or deconstruction or any of that other literary criticsm stuff, though English people are welcomed.

A couple more things about myself to make sure you get my context. I was born in Nuevo Laredo, Tamaulipas in 1950 but migrated with my parents to San Antonio, Texas when I was about six. I'm a Viet Nam veteran, was a journalist who did the religion beat, weeklies, sports and once worked for Nuestro magazine, still in my mind the best Latino magazine while it existed. I was an activist in the Chicano Movement and once ran for office on La Raza Unida Party ticket.

I'm also a Mormon, in fact, I served twice as a bishop in different congregations. I cherish those times. I consider myself pretty much a progressive but am morally conservative when it comes to my personal life style, and to people's conduct. I don't get into the culture wars from the right or the left and I refrain from personal attacks and expect those who comment to do the same. I believe in debate but not in pleitos. I will post at least every Thursday but will occasionally take the liberty of posting more than once a week. Hope that you will join me and make this your landscape as much as mine.

Next time: Why do Chicano/Chicana scholars write so few books? (no answers, just a lot of questions and conjecture about writing among that select group)