Category: Humanities Washington Talks

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Book Reviews Central America Current Events Humanities Washington Talks Intellectuals Latin America Philosophy, World politics Talks and other events World Affairs

The Monkeys Have No Tail in Zamboanga–A Growing Up Story (a book review)

Wolfe, Reese. The Monkeys Have No Tails in Zamboanga (Chicago: Henry Regnery Company, 1959) pp. 169.

An old friend, gone by and by, wrote this wonderful memoir a few years before I met him. He confessed he was an author when we worked together, but I did not read his work until decades later. Now I’m glad I finally read this part it; it may have been his most satisfying.

The Monkeys Have No Tails is Reese’s memoir of growing up and becoming a man. He told me, when I knew him, that he had grown up in the Berkeley-San Francisco area in a well-heeled family, an assertion confirmed in this book. I discovered I was vaguely familiar with his growing up years, as chronicled here, most probably because we talked about his early life when my wife and I visited him and his wife, Dorothee, and I started learning the little matters that underpinned our work. We were cultural attaché’s in Central America, he the older, I the younger (much younger).

Reese tells us in his book that he became a man at sea. That is what this memoir is about; that at the age of eighteen he left home and made it to the old wharfs in San Francisco where he committed himself as an apprentice mariner on a rusty old merchant marine ship. He thought it was the beginning of an exotic adventure but was soon put to work cleaning and polishing the entire ship, day after day, then later shoveling coal into the steam boilers. This is how came to sail the briny blue for countless weeks. He became overwhelmed with regrets when the fabled ports of call turned out to be a big disappointment.

He couldn’t get back home quickly enough.

In between, he discovered, among other things, that in Zamboanga monkeys have no tails but more importantly he learned lifelong lessons: who he was and who he wasn’t. He admired the first assistant engineer so much that he began aping him, but soon came to terms with himself, with who he was—and to return to finish up college in Berkeley.

He writes in a light and friendly manner and includes songs he sang on the ship’s foc’sle, strumming his banjo-ukulele to ease the long days on deck.

Reese Wolfe and his daughter, Mimi.

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Book Reviews Central America Current Events Humanities Washington Talks immigration Intellectuals Mexico migration u.s.-mexico border United States World Affairs

LIVING AS AN UNDOCUMENTED PERSON IN AMERICA, A BOOK REVIEW

Marcelo Hernández Castillo. Children of the Land: A Memoir (New York: Harper Collins, 2020), pp. 362.

Every American should read this memoir because it offers a real, personalized story about what it means to live as an undocumented person in the United States. Most Americans have no idea.

The author was brought to the United States in 1991 as a youngster by his undocumented parents, making him a DACA person. This means that, like his parents, he too was undocumented but received protection from deportation in 2012 from President Barack Obama’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (hence DACA). He was one of a great multitude in similar circumstances, but different from most of them because he obtained a green card visa later, after all, as he explains.

Like most DACA folk, Castillo became Americanized to the point of losing fluency in Spanish, relying on over the counter drugs, wearing a nose plug, and even getting tattooed. And, like many of his fellow Dacas, he also achieved what most mainstream Americans do not: a master’s degree from a leading university. He does not expound on the challenges he encountered doing this, but they must have been enormous. Instead of becoming a lawyer or a doctor, he became a poet. Here are the reasons he admits for this:

I wanted to write poetry because I believed any practice in the English language would distance myself from my identity as an immigrant and I thought (naively ashamedly so) that the farthest association from an immigrant was a poet How foolish I was. Little did I know the lineage of immigrant poets I came from…(p. 75).

Then, again he explains regarding learning English:

I wanted to write and speak English better than any white person, any citizen, because in the unthinkable case of ever getting caught by immigration, I thought I would impress them enough with my mastery of English to let me go. What a stupid idea. (pp.75-76)

Castillo’s memoir is framed around the agonizing challenges of obtaining his own residential visa, then trying to get his father’s and later his mother’s. I found this part particularly gratifying because he unabashedly divulges the psychological and social strains involved. Just driving to be interviewed at the ICE offices to qualify for the visa he became fearful of committing a mistake that would get him pulled over and arrested obliterating his dream of holding a visa. Paranoia and trauma are words that he uses to describe his feelings—and those of his family. The rest of us would be better Americans if we could appreciate these experiences.

He is a poet writing his memoirs, so the biographical elements mentioned in the paragraphs above are veiled in his often florid text and fluid structure. Reading the text with care will help.

Why Castillo’s family chose to immigrate without documents in the first place is a crucial point addressed only tangentially because it is, after all, a memoir, not a history book. He works as a professional poet.

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Book Reviews Humanities Washington Talks Uncategorized

EL CAMINO, A BOOK REVIEW (Life in a Spanish village in the 1940s)

[See Spanish below]

El Camino (Barcelona, Austral/Destino, 2009).  Delibes received several awards in his native land and, based on this novel, considered his best work, these honors, I think, are totally fitting. I discovered him to be an excellent writer and an authority of his fellow Spaniards (he died in 2010).

This 285-page book, edited by Marisa Sotelo, is divided into three parts. The first offers an introduction written by Sotelo concerning the author’s work, she an expert in Spanish literature. The novel itself occupies the second section, and the third takes the form of a curious “Reading Guide” alluding to Delibes’ work, conceived and written by Fernando de Miguel.

El Camino is about the life of three boys living in a northern Spanish village in the 1940s (I discovered a passage that refers to the Spanish Civil War of the late 1930s). It unfolded so serenely that I began to judge it as a string of trivial though colorful portraits. Soon, I noticed, however, the way in which the lives of the young characters mirrored more profound reflections about small town life. I found that Delibes handled his written work with impressive mastery revealing both detailed knowledge and amusing portraits of the villagers, like the blacksmith, the priest, the cheesemaker, the godless man, the train station manager, and others.

Delibes did this by following the lives of the three little friends, Daniel, the Owl, Roque the Stooge, and Germán, the Scab, looking especially at their mischief and tomfoolery. This device allows the author to unveil the relations between the adults of the town. For this reason I place  El Camino inside the literary genre that owns the Hardy Boys in the world of English literature, but showing greater literary complexity. His style is simple but solid. It was a delicious read.

Delibes ha sido galardonado con varios premios españoles y, basado en esta novela considerada como su mejor trabajo, pienso que dichos reconocimientos están en lo correcto. Leyendo su libro descubrí que Delibes fue un excelente escritor y conocedor de su país (murió en 2010).

Este libro, de 285 páginas, editado por Marisa Sotelo, contiene tres partes. La primera ofrece una introducción que Sotelo escribe concerniente a la obra del autor. La novela ocupa la segunda sección, y la tercera toma la forma de un curioso “Guía de Lectura” alusivo al trabajo de Delibes, concebido y escrito por Fernando de Miguel.

El Camino trata de la vida de tres chicos, naturales de a una aldea española en los años cuarenta del siglo veinte (descubrí un fragmento que hace alusión a la guerra civil). Esta se desenvuelve tan plácidamente que me pareció, al principio, como un hilo de retratos pueblerinos triviales. Pero pronto me di cuenta de la forma en que dichas efemérides encerraban reflexiones profundas. Es más, hallé que Delibes manejó su trabajo escrito con una maestría impresionante revelando un detallado conocimiento de la vida de los vecinos, tales como el herrero, el señor cura, el quesero, el sin dios, las “guindillas” y las “lepóridas,” y otros.

Pero mas que nada, Delibe protagoniza a los tres amiguitos, Daniel, el Mochuelo, Roque el Moñigo, Germán el Tiñoso, y sigue sus picardías y pillerías, las que corren el velo a las relaciones entre los adultos del pueblo. El Camino pertenece al género de cuentos protagonizados en el mundo de literatura inglés por los Hardy Boys, pero ostentando mayor profundidad literaria. Su estilo es sencillo pero firme. Fue una grata lectura.  [October 2019]

 

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Humanities Washington Talks United States

MR. TRUMP IS TOXIC TO AMERICA AS WE KNOW IT

I’ve been saying in the past that Mr. Trump is UNFIT as our president. With the headlines of the past few weeks, his UNFITNESS has become more visible than ever, and more dangerous.

Today’s New York Times (see below) includes an opinion piece by a former COMMANDER OF THE UNITED STATES SPECIAL OPERATIONS COMMAND, William H. McRaven, who says what I’ve been saying, but in an eloquent but frightening way. Read the key parts of his column below.

Think about what you read! It’s pretty damned important for us Americans!

“…As I stood on the parade field at Fort Bragg, one retired four-star general, grabbed my arm, shook me and shouted, “I don’t like the Democrats, but Trump is destroying the Republic!”

“Those words echoed with me throughout the week. It is easy to destroy an organization if you have no appreciation for what makes that organization great. We are not the most powerful nation in the world because of our aircraft carriers, our economy, or our seat at the United Nations Security Council. We are the most powerful nation in the world because we try to be the good guys. We are the most powerful nation in the world because our ideals of universal freedom and equality have been backed up by our belief that we were champions of justice, the protectors of the less fortunate.

“But, if we don’t care about our values, if we don’t care about duty and honor, if we don’t help the weak and stand up against oppression and injustice — what will happen to the Kurds, the Iraqis, the Afghans, the Syrians, the Rohingyas, the South Sudanese and the millions of people under the boot of tyranny or left abandoned by their failing states?

“If our promises are meaningless, how will our allies ever trust us? If we can’t have faith in our nation’s principles, why would the men and women of this nation join the military? And if they don’t join, who will protect us? If we are not the champions of the good and the right, then who will follow us? And if no one follows us — where will the world end up?

“President Trump seems to believe that these qualities are unimportant or show weakness. He is wrong. These are the virtues that have sustained this nation for the past 243 years. If we hope to continue to lead the world and inspire a new generation of young men and women to our cause, then we must embrace these values now more than ever.

“And if this president doesn’t understand their importance, if this president doesn’t demonstrate the leadership that America needs, both domestically and abroad, then it is time for a new person in the Oval Office — Republican, Democrat or independent — the sooner, the better. The fate of our Republic depends upon it.”

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Humanities Washington Talks Mexico Talks and other events Trump u.s.-mexico border Uncategorized United States

THEY LOOK LIKE ME….NEXT TIME IT MIGHT BE YOU OR ME

They look like me. In the victims and survivors of the Ohio and El Paso shootings, today, August 5, 2019, I saw people who look like me, or my relatives or my friends. The El Paso shooter was attacking “Hispanic immigrants.”

Well, that’s me, folks, even if I might feel safe because I’m not an immigrant. The psychos out there don’t know the difference between a Hispanic immigrant and one who is not an immigrant (most Americans can’t distinguish between a different-looking immigrant and an American born one). So, I say to my relatives and my friends, we can’t get too comfortable in our middle class homes and middle class cars, going to our middle class jobs. Why?

Because here is one more bit of proof that we must be forever vigilant. We run a great risk in dismissing these things because, who knows, the next time, it might be you or me.

We can’t be shocked. Mentally unstable people abound on our streets. Guns abound too; our gun laws encourage their being everywhere—even military type guns. And, we now have a racist president who openly attacks Americans of color.

So, there you have it. The psychos will pick up a gun or a knife and go after someone who looks like you or me because our simple-minded president mentioned it as an American problem. They’ll think they’re helping him out, like the El Paso shooter. It’s happened before.

What can we do?

1) Let’s be vigilant and avoid losing ourselves in the banality of our lives;

2) Let’s pay more attention to our leaders and what they do or don’t do,

3) And, keep score.

3) Our turn will come when we vote, when we fill out a ballot and give our support to a government leader who is not what we have today. Save our democracy, save our nation and save ourselves.

 

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History of Mexico Humanities Washington Talks We Became Mexican American, a book

Announcing a Centennial Event in our Family

Our family, the Gil Family, immigrated to the United States a hundred years ago! We occupy a place in one of the earliest recorded waves of Mexican immigrants arriving in the United States, those who were pushed out by the Mexican Revolution of 1910 and drawn into California by an economic boom. April 2019 marks a centennial.

Writing by hand, in her late 80’s, my mother (Grandma Lupe) recorded that she and her mother (Great Grandma Carlota) and brother (Uncle Miguel) walked away from the hacienda where they had lived as peasants, near Mascota, Jalisco, on or about April 15, 1919. Mom was 14, Grandma Carlota 39, and our Tio (uncle) 17. They aimed to join our other uncle, Tio Pascual, who had bolted on his own five years earlier, and found himself in Fresno, California; he was 19. After they came together, they moved to San Fernando.

While I’m estimating the actual date they stepped away once and for all, we do know that Mom wrote, with her trembling hand, that on March 19, 1919, they trekked from the Hacienda Santa Rosa to Talpa (a nearby village that venerates a local version of Jesus’s Mary) to say goodbye to Mom’s aunt. After that, they walked away from the hacienda “in April” of that same year. Mom wrote:

“We left before dawn. We passed the village of El Cimarrón while it was still dark and, as we climbed away from it, the glimmer of the morning light began to grow. We all stopped to look back, to take our last look at Santa Rosa as if we wanted to stamp on our memory that  piece of earth that saw our birth, that we’d never forget, and that we grieved to leave behind.” (p. 47)

Take a second look at Mom’s writing above. Not bad for someone who attended only two years of school but kept on writing anyway, in her own way.

 

 

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Book Reviews Humanities Washington Talks Talks and other events We Became Mexican American, a book

Video of Carlos Gil discussing his Humanities Washington talk

In the link below you’ll find a short video clip of me explaining what my Humanities Washington talk (“From Mexican to Mexican-American: A Family Immigrant Story”) offers to the listener. My talks, featured throughout 2019, have already started and, so far, it’s been delightful. See a separate posting for dates and places.

Carlos Gil

 

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Book Reviews Humanities Washington Talks Talks and other events We Became Mexican American, a book

CARLOS B. GIL’S SPEAKING ENGAGEMENTS IN 2019

The following talks are sponsored by the Humanities Washington Office:

March 2, 2019           11:00 a.m.      Museum of Northwest Art, La Conner WA

March 23, 2019        1:00 p.m.       Lynden Library, Lynden WA

March 23, 2019        3:30 p.m.       Ferndale Library, Ferndale WA

March 27, 2019         6:00 p.m.       Jefferson County Library, Port Hadlock WA

April 2, 2019             5:00 p.m.       George Public Library, George WA

April 3, 2019             6:00 p.m.       Quincy Public Library, Quincy WA

April 4, 2019             6:00 p.m.       Twisp Public Library, Twisp WA

April 5, 2019             6:00 p.m.       Cashmere Public Library, Cashmere WA

April 15, 2019            10:30 a.m.     University House Wallingford, Seattle WA

April 24, 2019           12 noon          Yakima Valley Museum, Yakima WA

 

 

Categories
Book Reviews Humanities Washington Talks Talks and other events u.s.-mexico border United States We Became Mexican American, a book

SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY ON MEXICAN IMMIGRATION

SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY ON MEXICAN IMMIGRATION TO THE U.S.

 

For the talk, “From Mexican to Mexican-American:

A Family Immigration Story”

By Carlos B.Gil,  Ph.D.

 Humanities Washington Speaker 2019

 

Acuña, Rodolfo.Occupied America (1988). Contentious text.

Becoming American: Personal Essays by First Generation Immigrant Women (2000).

Brown, Theresa Cardinal and Jeff Mason, “Immigration Trends and the Immigration Debate,” Bi Partisan Policy Center, August 2017. https://bipartisanpolicy.org/library/immigration-trends-and-the-immigration-debate/

De la Garza, Rodolfo O. Et al. Latino Voices: Mexican, Puerto Rican, and Cuban Perspectives on American Politics (1992).

Foley, Neil. Mexicans in the Making of America (2014).

Galarza, Ernesto. Barrio Boy: The Story of a Boy’s Acculturation (1971).

Gamboa, Erasmo. Bracero Railroad Workers: The Forgotten World War II Story of Mexican Workers in the U.S. West (2016).

Gamboa, Erasmo. Mexican Labor and World War II: Braceros in the Pacific Northwest, 1942-1947 (1990).

Gamio, Manuel. Mexican Immigration to the United States (1939).

García, Mario T. Mexican Americans: Leadership, Ideology and Identity, 1930–1960 (1989).

Gil, Carlos B. We Became Mexican American: How Our Immigrant Family Survived to Pursue the American Dream (2012, 2014).

Griswold del Castillo and Arnoldo de León. North to Aztlán: A History of Mexican Americans in the United States (1997).

Hart, Elva Treviño Barefoot Heart, Stories of a Migrant Child (1999). Autobiography, south Texas.

Limón, José. José Limón: An Unfinished Memoir (1998?). Late Chicano/Mexican American choreographer.

McWilliams, Carey. North from Mexico: The Spanish Speaking People of the United States (1948 ed.) Old classic.

Ramón, Cristobal and Tim O’Shea. “Immigrants and Public Benefits: What Does the Research Say?” Bi Partisan Policy Center, November 2018. https://bipartisanpolicy.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/Immigrants-and-Public-Benefits-What-Does-the-Research-Say.pdf

Ruiz, Vicki L. From Out of the Shadows: Mexican Women in Twentieth-Century America (1998).

Sanchez, George J. Becoming Mexican American:Ethnicity, Culture, and Identity in Chicano Los Angeles (1993).

Suárez-Orozco, Marcelo M. And Mariela M. Páez. Latinos: Remaking America (2002).

Young, Biloine W. A Dream for Gilberto: An Immigrant’s Family’s Struggle to Become American (1999). Colombian Americans.