Sergio Troncoso's Blog: Chico Lingo, by Sergio Troncoso, page 19
March 12, 2012
The Distance to Tucson
Distance—whether it be psychic, physical, linguistic, ethnic or cultural—allows us to easily stereotype individuals, groups, and even places. I wrote a novel,
The Nature of Truth
, in which I argued—yes, in my novels I argue, sometimes with myself—that the pursuit of truth through abstraction is often rooted in hate. Years later I read Anzaldua's
Borderlands
in which she says, "In trying to become 'objective,' Western culture made 'objects' of things and people when it distanced itself from them, thereby losing 'touch' with them. This dichotomy is the root of violence." I knew I had found a kindred spirit.
So it was upon my arrival in Tucson. What I expected after being outraged by the banning of books and the elimination of Mexican-American studies in the Tucson Unified School District (TUSD), and what I discovered after talking to people at the festival, were two different things. The all-too-neat abstraction in my mind was challenged by the complexity on the ground.
A Salvadoran taxi driver (a naturalized citizen) drove me to the hotel and said he feared Governor Jan Brewer and Sheriff Joe Arpaio from Maricopa County near Phoenix "porque son racistas," that is, "because they are racists." I could not disagree with him. But he also pointed out that it wasn't necessarily like that in Tucson.
At my table at the Authors' Dinner on Friday night, this point was repeated by the well-to-do crowd; some were Latino, but most were not. They argued that Phoenix was the more politically conservative city, and Maricopa County had the burgeoning population, many of them newcomers from California and the Midwest. It was this group, or a part of this group, that had voted in a radically conservative legislature and passed a state law to ban Mexican-American studies and installed the assistant superintendent in the TUSD who implemented the misguided, punitive agenda. Some at the table who had lived in Arizona for three or four generations, who were blond and blue-eyed and spoke excellent Spanish, were as vehemently against Brewer and Arpaio and John Huppenthal (the TUSD assistant superintendent) as I could have ever been. So the first thing I learned is that Tucson is not Phoenix, and vice versa.
The gifted storyteller Luis Alberto Urrea delivered a rousing keynote speech at this dinner. He gleefully mentioned having the most books banned at the TUSD, and thanked the district (to great applause) for increasing his books sales and Twitter followers. Urrea was funny and irreverent. But at the end, he pointed to the 900-plus attendees at the dinner, all of them booklovers in one way or another. He reiterated an important point: they were really the heart of Tucson, and the tens of thousands who would attend the Tucson Book Festival would emphatically repeat that point. The retrograde media image of the city did not do justice to how people often came together for books and culture in Tucson. Urrea received a standing ovation. Again, I appreciated that Tucson is not Phoenix, and certainly not Maricopa County.
Throughout the Tucson Book Festival, as I attended my panel and signed books at the University of Arizona Press table, people could not have been friendlier. It was one of best-organized book festivals I have ever attended. I spoke to high school kids protesting the TUSD book banning and elimination of Chicano studies. They had a table next to the Nuestras Raices big tent featuring Latino authors. On a table, the kids displayed all the banned books. I bought two of their t-shirts featuring a Mexicano with a sombrero seemingly asleep with his arms crossed in one picture, only to look up in the next picture as he reads a book. The title on the t-shirt: "Think Again!" I'm giving the t-shirts to my sons.
In fact, the only time I heard comments in support of Sheriff Arpaio's camera-ready crackdown on undocumented workers in Arizona was from a writer from California, a Latino no less. Go figure.
At the festival, what I often did witness was talk of recalling Governor Brewer, petitions for signatures to make that happen, and people organizing for the next election to counter the crazy conservative elements that have for the moment dominated this state. Yes, I also saw many hairdos from the 1950s and 1960s, and too many new-age books about aliens hiding in the desert or plotting the end of the world. Yet I also experienced the variety and plurality of books and people and discussions that could have easily taken place in Brooklyn.
I would argue that the conservative politicians in Arizona do not know Chicanos. I would argue that they also do not know what studying Chicano literature and culture does to a group of students who too often feel put down by those who don't take the time to understand them. When I was a teenager in El Paso, I sometimes felt worthless because of the stereotypical images I would see in the media about Mexicanos being lazy, stupid, and even dangerous. When Latino administrators at my high school yelled at me and repeated, "They don't take people like you at Harvard," reading Anaya's Bless Me Ultima gave me hope. I saw myself in literature for the first time.
I read Freire's Pedagogy of the Oppressed and Acuña's Occupied America (banned books at the TUSD) at Harvard, but I didn't become a bomb-thrower, nor did I grow to resent groups in power, even after I learned what they had once done to the downtrodden and the weak. I did vow never to forget where I was from. I vowed to understand more about my history and culture. And ironically, as I grew to believe in myself over the years, I was able to appreciate and seek out allies and even opponents from all backgrounds, races, ethnicities, and cultures.
This is what the hateful conservative politicians of Arizona are missing: the context. They assume that talking about your race and studying about your ethnic history, for Chicano students, is exactly how they—the rich and powerful—would be if they studied their race and history. It's racism by projection, in a way. For a downtrodden group, for a historically disparaged group, studying about who you are helps you to overcome and understand and eventually move beyond the hateful images you have to struggle against. Ethnic studies by and for a group in power, and ethnic studies by and for a relatively powerless group, are two different subjects with different motivations, for those with a reflective mind.
Radically conservative politicians in Arizona exploit the distance between the powerful and the powerless. Forget about getting them to acknowledge what it means. They simply don't have the goodwill. But at the Tucson Book Festival, I also believed I shouldn't do something similar to the city of Tucson: what it was in my mind before I arrived and the city I found on the streets were vastly different.
I remember at Harvard how I often saw undergraduates protesting South Africa, spending countless hours organizing protests against dictators in Central America, and so on. Yes, I agreed with them. But I also wondered why these same students didn't focus on the racism in Cambridge, or why they too often mistreated their own friends in the dorm room next door. In a way, it was safe to focus on a faraway cause, to create the perfect and distant bogeyman, to abstract and so perfect an enemy in the mind, and to 'act' but not really to act, to improve this world.
I vowed to practice my politics locally, with my family and friends most of all. I vowed I would always check what I thought I knew in my mind with what I experienced. I wanted to seek out what Aristotle understood as knowledge: the practical work for the good that is grounded in what you see and hear and find out for yourself. Tucson is book country. That I know. At the Tucson Book Festival, we shared that common ground.
www.ChicoLingo.com
So it was upon my arrival in Tucson. What I expected after being outraged by the banning of books and the elimination of Mexican-American studies in the Tucson Unified School District (TUSD), and what I discovered after talking to people at the festival, were two different things. The all-too-neat abstraction in my mind was challenged by the complexity on the ground.
A Salvadoran taxi driver (a naturalized citizen) drove me to the hotel and said he feared Governor Jan Brewer and Sheriff Joe Arpaio from Maricopa County near Phoenix "porque son racistas," that is, "because they are racists." I could not disagree with him. But he also pointed out that it wasn't necessarily like that in Tucson.At my table at the Authors' Dinner on Friday night, this point was repeated by the well-to-do crowd; some were Latino, but most were not. They argued that Phoenix was the more politically conservative city, and Maricopa County had the burgeoning population, many of them newcomers from California and the Midwest. It was this group, or a part of this group, that had voted in a radically conservative legislature and passed a state law to ban Mexican-American studies and installed the assistant superintendent in the TUSD who implemented the misguided, punitive agenda. Some at the table who had lived in Arizona for three or four generations, who were blond and blue-eyed and spoke excellent Spanish, were as vehemently against Brewer and Arpaio and John Huppenthal (the TUSD assistant superintendent) as I could have ever been. So the first thing I learned is that Tucson is not Phoenix, and vice versa.
The gifted storyteller Luis Alberto Urrea delivered a rousing keynote speech at this dinner. He gleefully mentioned having the most books banned at the TUSD, and thanked the district (to great applause) for increasing his books sales and Twitter followers. Urrea was funny and irreverent. But at the end, he pointed to the 900-plus attendees at the dinner, all of them booklovers in one way or another. He reiterated an important point: they were really the heart of Tucson, and the tens of thousands who would attend the Tucson Book Festival would emphatically repeat that point. The retrograde media image of the city did not do justice to how people often came together for books and culture in Tucson. Urrea received a standing ovation. Again, I appreciated that Tucson is not Phoenix, and certainly not Maricopa County.
Throughout the Tucson Book Festival, as I attended my panel and signed books at the University of Arizona Press table, people could not have been friendlier. It was one of best-organized book festivals I have ever attended. I spoke to high school kids protesting the TUSD book banning and elimination of Chicano studies. They had a table next to the Nuestras Raices big tent featuring Latino authors. On a table, the kids displayed all the banned books. I bought two of their t-shirts featuring a Mexicano with a sombrero seemingly asleep with his arms crossed in one picture, only to look up in the next picture as he reads a book. The title on the t-shirt: "Think Again!" I'm giving the t-shirts to my sons.
In fact, the only time I heard comments in support of Sheriff Arpaio's camera-ready crackdown on undocumented workers in Arizona was from a writer from California, a Latino no less. Go figure.
At the festival, what I often did witness was talk of recalling Governor Brewer, petitions for signatures to make that happen, and people organizing for the next election to counter the crazy conservative elements that have for the moment dominated this state. Yes, I also saw many hairdos from the 1950s and 1960s, and too many new-age books about aliens hiding in the desert or plotting the end of the world. Yet I also experienced the variety and plurality of books and people and discussions that could have easily taken place in Brooklyn.
I would argue that the conservative politicians in Arizona do not know Chicanos. I would argue that they also do not know what studying Chicano literature and culture does to a group of students who too often feel put down by those who don't take the time to understand them. When I was a teenager in El Paso, I sometimes felt worthless because of the stereotypical images I would see in the media about Mexicanos being lazy, stupid, and even dangerous. When Latino administrators at my high school yelled at me and repeated, "They don't take people like you at Harvard," reading Anaya's Bless Me Ultima gave me hope. I saw myself in literature for the first time.
I read Freire's Pedagogy of the Oppressed and Acuña's Occupied America (banned books at the TUSD) at Harvard, but I didn't become a bomb-thrower, nor did I grow to resent groups in power, even after I learned what they had once done to the downtrodden and the weak. I did vow never to forget where I was from. I vowed to understand more about my history and culture. And ironically, as I grew to believe in myself over the years, I was able to appreciate and seek out allies and even opponents from all backgrounds, races, ethnicities, and cultures.
This is what the hateful conservative politicians of Arizona are missing: the context. They assume that talking about your race and studying about your ethnic history, for Chicano students, is exactly how they—the rich and powerful—would be if they studied their race and history. It's racism by projection, in a way. For a downtrodden group, for a historically disparaged group, studying about who you are helps you to overcome and understand and eventually move beyond the hateful images you have to struggle against. Ethnic studies by and for a group in power, and ethnic studies by and for a relatively powerless group, are two different subjects with different motivations, for those with a reflective mind.
Radically conservative politicians in Arizona exploit the distance between the powerful and the powerless. Forget about getting them to acknowledge what it means. They simply don't have the goodwill. But at the Tucson Book Festival, I also believed I shouldn't do something similar to the city of Tucson: what it was in my mind before I arrived and the city I found on the streets were vastly different.
I remember at Harvard how I often saw undergraduates protesting South Africa, spending countless hours organizing protests against dictators in Central America, and so on. Yes, I agreed with them. But I also wondered why these same students didn't focus on the racism in Cambridge, or why they too often mistreated their own friends in the dorm room next door. In a way, it was safe to focus on a faraway cause, to create the perfect and distant bogeyman, to abstract and so perfect an enemy in the mind, and to 'act' but not really to act, to improve this world.
I vowed to practice my politics locally, with my family and friends most of all. I vowed I would always check what I thought I knew in my mind with what I experienced. I wanted to seek out what Aristotle understood as knowledge: the practical work for the good that is grounded in what you see and hear and find out for yourself. Tucson is book country. That I know. At the Tucson Book Festival, we shared that common ground.
www.ChicoLingo.com
December 12, 2011
My brother in Afghanistan
Last Friday I went to Zabar's to select boxes of assorted nuts and dried fruits for my brother who is in Afghanistan with the Navy. As the Christmas and Hanukah holidays are approaching, one family member will be missing from these festivities. I think it was important to get this package in the mail, and not to forget those who are serving our country overseas and in harm's way.
Until last May, Oscar was a principal at Anthony High School, just outside of El Paso, Texas. He has been an educator for decades, but he has also been in the Naval Reserve for 22 years. In other ways, Oscar also breaks the stereotype many of us might have of our military servicemen and women: he is in his 40's, has a Master's degree, and was working on his Doctorate. Before he left for Afghanistan, Oscar was promoted to the rank of Chief Petty Officer in the Navy. Administrators, teachers, and students from Anthony High School also recently sent him a care package.
It is strange to have a brother in places you read about in the newspaper's front pages, where sectarian violence, for example, recently killed dozens of Afghanis and Improvised Explosive Devices still kill American soldiers in Humvees. It is strange because on the one hand I know my brother well, but on the other hand he is in as remote and as foreign a place as I could imagine.
I worry about my brother, and I hope with a little luck and skill that he will return to El Paso safely. My mother couldn't stop crying for days after Oscar told her the news of his deployment. Now she keeps a candle lit to the Virgen de Guadalupe in our living room, to ask Her to guide him home. It is what we don't know about his deployment, what our minds imagine, and what we see as 'news' about Afghanistan that is this cauldron of anxiety, fear, and hope. Our family is proud of Oscar, because we know he is doing his duty for his country.
I believe many if not most Americans are smart enough to support our military, to remember and honor their sacrifices, but to judge the politicians in Washington by a different metric. These politicians create American foreign policy, while the military is one of those instruments of that policy. For example, I don't believe we should have attacked Iraq to rid it of Saddam Hussein or the weapons of mass destruction that were never found. That war was George W. Bush's and Condoleezza Rice's mistake, which of course they will never admit, because they are politicians. They manipulated the fear after 9/11 to start a war that should never have happened. From the start, we should have focused on Afghanistan, where Al-Qaeda operated.
But not for one moment would I ever disparage soldiers, sailors or airmen from their service in Iraq. On the contrary, I would thank them for doing their duty. Once they are back home, I would do what I can to help them. I also believe how that war was started was one thing, but how it was carried out and how it evolved are different matters. You may start a war for the wrong reasons, but what happens during the long course of any war may have benefits. So even saying 'Iraq was a mistake' is too simplistic. We may not know for years what true effect we had in Iraq or Afghanistan.
Give Obama credit for winding down the Iraq war, and for beginning the process in Afghanistan. I believe the majority of Americans support this policy, in part because we see our economic problems at home as paramount, but also because the marginal benefits of what we can do in Iraq and Afghanistan decrease each year. Obama has cleaned up a lot of messes he inherited, and he has also fallen short as a leader at times, yet I give credit where credit is due.
You know, I am not a jingoistic patriot. But I am a patriot. It plays better for simplistic hurrahs, and in our TV culture with three-second attention spans, to wave the flag and spout unqualified red-white-and-blue accolades to motherhood, apple pie, and the United States of America. But I do not always agree with my mother, although I still love her. I prefer apple crisp to apple pie, and buñuelos with honey to both. I support our military and my brother in the military. But I will never stop thinking until I am dead, and that I am able to write what I think, even if it is critical of the United States, is one of the reasons why I know I am lucky to live in this country.
Before the holidays are over, and even after they are done and gone, connect with a military family, and invite them over for dinner or simply for a cup of coffee. Send a member of our armed forces a care package this week. Write them a letter. When we go beyond our selves, when we do something good that is not necessary or even asked for, we are all ennobled.
www.ChicoLingo.com
Until last May, Oscar was a principal at Anthony High School, just outside of El Paso, Texas. He has been an educator for decades, but he has also been in the Naval Reserve for 22 years. In other ways, Oscar also breaks the stereotype many of us might have of our military servicemen and women: he is in his 40's, has a Master's degree, and was working on his Doctorate. Before he left for Afghanistan, Oscar was promoted to the rank of Chief Petty Officer in the Navy. Administrators, teachers, and students from Anthony High School also recently sent him a care package.It is strange to have a brother in places you read about in the newspaper's front pages, where sectarian violence, for example, recently killed dozens of Afghanis and Improvised Explosive Devices still kill American soldiers in Humvees. It is strange because on the one hand I know my brother well, but on the other hand he is in as remote and as foreign a place as I could imagine.
I worry about my brother, and I hope with a little luck and skill that he will return to El Paso safely. My mother couldn't stop crying for days after Oscar told her the news of his deployment. Now she keeps a candle lit to the Virgen de Guadalupe in our living room, to ask Her to guide him home. It is what we don't know about his deployment, what our minds imagine, and what we see as 'news' about Afghanistan that is this cauldron of anxiety, fear, and hope. Our family is proud of Oscar, because we know he is doing his duty for his country.
I believe many if not most Americans are smart enough to support our military, to remember and honor their sacrifices, but to judge the politicians in Washington by a different metric. These politicians create American foreign policy, while the military is one of those instruments of that policy. For example, I don't believe we should have attacked Iraq to rid it of Saddam Hussein or the weapons of mass destruction that were never found. That war was George W. Bush's and Condoleezza Rice's mistake, which of course they will never admit, because they are politicians. They manipulated the fear after 9/11 to start a war that should never have happened. From the start, we should have focused on Afghanistan, where Al-Qaeda operated.
But not for one moment would I ever disparage soldiers, sailors or airmen from their service in Iraq. On the contrary, I would thank them for doing their duty. Once they are back home, I would do what I can to help them. I also believe how that war was started was one thing, but how it was carried out and how it evolved are different matters. You may start a war for the wrong reasons, but what happens during the long course of any war may have benefits. So even saying 'Iraq was a mistake' is too simplistic. We may not know for years what true effect we had in Iraq or Afghanistan.
Give Obama credit for winding down the Iraq war, and for beginning the process in Afghanistan. I believe the majority of Americans support this policy, in part because we see our economic problems at home as paramount, but also because the marginal benefits of what we can do in Iraq and Afghanistan decrease each year. Obama has cleaned up a lot of messes he inherited, and he has also fallen short as a leader at times, yet I give credit where credit is due.
You know, I am not a jingoistic patriot. But I am a patriot. It plays better for simplistic hurrahs, and in our TV culture with three-second attention spans, to wave the flag and spout unqualified red-white-and-blue accolades to motherhood, apple pie, and the United States of America. But I do not always agree with my mother, although I still love her. I prefer apple crisp to apple pie, and buñuelos with honey to both. I support our military and my brother in the military. But I will never stop thinking until I am dead, and that I am able to write what I think, even if it is critical of the United States, is one of the reasons why I know I am lucky to live in this country.
Before the holidays are over, and even after they are done and gone, connect with a military family, and invite them over for dinner or simply for a cup of coffee. Send a member of our armed forces a care package this week. Write them a letter. When we go beyond our selves, when we do something good that is not necessary or even asked for, we are all ennobled.
www.ChicoLingo.com
November 1, 2011
November Readings and Events
New Jersey, New York, Texas, New Mexico, and Illinois. Oh, only five states this month: I am glad I am slowing down. It has been an exhilarating fall, as I have read across the country and reconnected with old friends and made many new ones. That is the part I love about traveling non-stop for new books: I get to talk to readers in person. Many with whom I have had 'Internet friendships' for years I meet face-to-face for the first time.
My best experiences so far? Eating Alma's chocolate cake in Kingsburg, California and talking to David Dominguez's classes for four hours, until I was hoarse. Also, my book party. That was another highlight. Friends from across New York City arrived ready to party in my apartment building, and bought 55 books! I was overwhelmed, and grateful. In San Francisco, it was also a treat to have a quiet dinner with my accomplished high school friend Adan Griego. Finally, my three panels at the Texas Book Festival: one for From This Wicked Patch of Dust , another for Crossing Borders: Personal Essays , and the last one for the You Don't Have A Clue anthology. Every panel was stimulating and thoughtful. I loved the audience questions, and relished the many conversations I had at the Barnes and Noble's signing tent in front of the state capitol. It was one of the best book festival experiences so far, and kudos to the organizers of Texas Book Festival for putting on such a great show and for their support of libraries. They certainly have their hearts in the right place.
A French scholar is writing a book about Latino literature and my work, among others, and so he is interviewing me in December. I had a testy, but fun interview with the prolific, quick-witted writer Roberto Ontiveros for the indy newsweekly the San Antonio Current, where I said: "I see in the United States a culture of stupidity that we have come to accept as the norm. In fact, most of us don't know anything different, and so we even don't have a sense of loss, how our minds have atrophied. We used to expect much from our writers and readers, in terms of patience, in terms of understanding and debating ideas, in terms of assumed knowledge. But no more. We've raced to the bottom." That day I had read too much Emerson and spotted too many images of the Kardashians on the Internet, television, and even in bookstores. Am I wrong? Finally, I was the featured author on The Latino Author website: The Latino Author.com. Thank you all: October was a helluva month. Here is my schedule for November:
November 1, 2011, 7 PM---New Jersey City University, Weiss Center for Children's and Young Adult Literature, Jersey City, NJ: New Jersey City University.
November 3, 2011, 6:30 PM--Co-honoree (with Aubrey Hawes), for contributions to the Hudson Valley Writers' Center, Benefit Gala 2011, Mark Twain-on-Hudson, Tappan Hill Mansion, Highland Avenue, Tarrytown, NY.
November 4, 2011, 7:00 PM--University of Texas at El Paso, Quinn 212, El Paso, TX.
November 5, 2011, 9 AM---Keynote Speaker, Region 19-Education Service Center's 14th Annual Parent Engagement Conference, Canutillo High School, 6675 South Desert Blvd. (Loop 375/Trans Mountain Road exit off I-10), El Paso, TX.
November 5, 2011, 2 PM---Barnes & Noble, 705 Sunland Park Drive, El Paso, TX.
November 5, 2011, 5 PM---Barnes & Noble, 9521 Viscount Boulevard, El Paso, TX.
November 6, 2011, 3 PM---Bookworks, 4022 Rio Grande Boulevard NW, Albuquerque, NM.
November 17, 2011, 6:30-8:00 PM---Guild Literary Complex, Global Voices series at the International House, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL.
November 18, 2011, 11 AM-12:15 PM---National Council of Teachers of English, Panel with other authors of You Don't Have a Clue: Latino Mystery Stories for Teens, Chicago, IL.
I hope to see many of you at these events. I am humbled that I am one of those the Hudson Valley Writers' Center chose to honor this year. You always wonder if anybody cares, or if anybody is reading your work, or if somebody will ask you a question based on what you actually wrote rather than on what they want you or your stories to be. It is more than enough to fight your own demons; I don't think I have the strength to fight someone else's. I am on the road again for a while, and all my wood chopping for the winter will have to wait until I get a break.
www.ChicoLingo.com
My best experiences so far? Eating Alma's chocolate cake in Kingsburg, California and talking to David Dominguez's classes for four hours, until I was hoarse. Also, my book party. That was another highlight. Friends from across New York City arrived ready to party in my apartment building, and bought 55 books! I was overwhelmed, and grateful. In San Francisco, it was also a treat to have a quiet dinner with my accomplished high school friend Adan Griego. Finally, my three panels at the Texas Book Festival: one for From This Wicked Patch of Dust , another for Crossing Borders: Personal Essays , and the last one for the You Don't Have A Clue anthology. Every panel was stimulating and thoughtful. I loved the audience questions, and relished the many conversations I had at the Barnes and Noble's signing tent in front of the state capitol. It was one of the best book festival experiences so far, and kudos to the organizers of Texas Book Festival for putting on such a great show and for their support of libraries. They certainly have their hearts in the right place.
A French scholar is writing a book about Latino literature and my work, among others, and so he is interviewing me in December. I had a testy, but fun interview with the prolific, quick-witted writer Roberto Ontiveros for the indy newsweekly the San Antonio Current, where I said: "I see in the United States a culture of stupidity that we have come to accept as the norm. In fact, most of us don't know anything different, and so we even don't have a sense of loss, how our minds have atrophied. We used to expect much from our writers and readers, in terms of patience, in terms of understanding and debating ideas, in terms of assumed knowledge. But no more. We've raced to the bottom." That day I had read too much Emerson and spotted too many images of the Kardashians on the Internet, television, and even in bookstores. Am I wrong? Finally, I was the featured author on The Latino Author website: The Latino Author.com. Thank you all: October was a helluva month. Here is my schedule for November:November 1, 2011, 7 PM---New Jersey City University, Weiss Center for Children's and Young Adult Literature, Jersey City, NJ: New Jersey City University.
November 3, 2011, 6:30 PM--Co-honoree (with Aubrey Hawes), for contributions to the Hudson Valley Writers' Center, Benefit Gala 2011, Mark Twain-on-Hudson, Tappan Hill Mansion, Highland Avenue, Tarrytown, NY.
November 4, 2011, 7:00 PM--University of Texas at El Paso, Quinn 212, El Paso, TX.
November 5, 2011, 9 AM---Keynote Speaker, Region 19-Education Service Center's 14th Annual Parent Engagement Conference, Canutillo High School, 6675 South Desert Blvd. (Loop 375/Trans Mountain Road exit off I-10), El Paso, TX.
November 5, 2011, 2 PM---Barnes & Noble, 705 Sunland Park Drive, El Paso, TX.
November 5, 2011, 5 PM---Barnes & Noble, 9521 Viscount Boulevard, El Paso, TX.
November 6, 2011, 3 PM---Bookworks, 4022 Rio Grande Boulevard NW, Albuquerque, NM.
November 17, 2011, 6:30-8:00 PM---Guild Literary Complex, Global Voices series at the International House, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL.
November 18, 2011, 11 AM-12:15 PM---National Council of Teachers of English, Panel with other authors of You Don't Have a Clue: Latino Mystery Stories for Teens, Chicago, IL.
I hope to see many of you at these events. I am humbled that I am one of those the Hudson Valley Writers' Center chose to honor this year. You always wonder if anybody cares, or if anybody is reading your work, or if somebody will ask you a question based on what you actually wrote rather than on what they want you or your stories to be. It is more than enough to fight your own demons; I don't think I have the strength to fight someone else's. I am on the road again for a while, and all my wood chopping for the winter will have to wait until I get a break.
www.ChicoLingo.com
October 3, 2011
October Readings and Events
I'll be in New Jersey, Oregon, Maryland, Texas, and California in October. I am exhausted just imaging it! I hope to see you at one of these readings or events. That is what makes these trips so worthwhile to me, when I connect with readers face-to-face.
October 5, 2011, 5 PM---Weiss Center for Children's and Young Adult Literature, with other authors of You Don't Have a Clue: Latino Mystery Stories for Teens, Jersey City, NJ.
October 8, 2011, 6 PM---National Endowment for the Arts Stage, Wordstock Book and Literary Festival, Oregon Convention Center, Portland, OR.
October 16, 2011, 2 PM---The Writer's Center, 4508 Walsh Street, Bethesda, MD.
October 18, 2011, 6:30-8:30 PM---Collegiate School, Collegiate Book Festival's Opening Reception, 260 West 78th Street, New York, NY.
October 21, 2011, 5-7 PM---The Twig Book Shop, 200 E. Grayson, Suite 124, San Antonio, TX.
October 22-23, 2011---Texas Book Festival (Saturday: 11:30-12:30 PM, "Stories from El Paso," and Sunday: 1:30-2:30 PM, "Latino Mystery Stories," and 3:00-4:00, "The Art of Personal Reflection"), Texas State Capitol, Austin, TX.
October 24, 2011, 4:30 PM---San Francisco Public Library, The International Center, 100 Larkin Street, San Francisco, CA.
October 25, 2011---Reedley College, 995 North Reed Avenue, Reedley, CA.
Also, I recently posted a YouTube video of a reading and discussion of my novel, From This Wicked Patch of Dust: http://youtu.be/m4pwgIuGUOM. I hope you enjoy it.
I received a nice review of my new book of essays, Crossing Borders: Personal Essays, from the El Paso Times: "Troncoso is a complicated man trying to understand a complicated world. In his quest for understanding, he eloquently shares lessons learned in 16 provocative essays. These very personal essays cross several borders: cultural, historical, and self-imposed. For example, he contemplates writer's block in 'A Day Without Ideas,' comparing it to a deathlike existence where nothing matters and he will 'simply be there.' In a painful letter to his sons detailing their mother's struggle with breast cancer, Troncoso the writer reveals his true identity as Troncoso the frightened, caring, and strong father. He takes on the 9/11 attackers, in a piece called 'Terror and Humanity,' not with hatred or revenge, but with a plea for basic humanity....the collection remains timely. We owe it to ourselves to read, savor and read them again."
Finally, I am working on several projects at the same time, while reading across the country for both books, correcting one son's essay for English, reviewing Spanish grammar for a test the other son will have today, feeding my beloved cat Ocistar, buying milk, and well, you get the picture. I am not that complicated; I am just exhausted. It has been a busy time, but so far I have not dropped anything I am juggling.
I love to hear from readers. That lifts me up like nothing else. Every time someone writes to me about how they enjoyed one of my stories, or identified with one of my characters, or thought about his or her life differently after reading my work, that day my bones do not ache and I feel as powerful as the Housatonic River. Thank you.
www.ChicoLingo.com
October 5, 2011, 5 PM---Weiss Center for Children's and Young Adult Literature, with other authors of You Don't Have a Clue: Latino Mystery Stories for Teens, Jersey City, NJ.
October 8, 2011, 6 PM---National Endowment for the Arts Stage, Wordstock Book and Literary Festival, Oregon Convention Center, Portland, OR.
October 16, 2011, 2 PM---The Writer's Center, 4508 Walsh Street, Bethesda, MD.
October 18, 2011, 6:30-8:30 PM---Collegiate School, Collegiate Book Festival's Opening Reception, 260 West 78th Street, New York, NY.
October 21, 2011, 5-7 PM---The Twig Book Shop, 200 E. Grayson, Suite 124, San Antonio, TX.
October 22-23, 2011---Texas Book Festival (Saturday: 11:30-12:30 PM, "Stories from El Paso," and Sunday: 1:30-2:30 PM, "Latino Mystery Stories," and 3:00-4:00, "The Art of Personal Reflection"), Texas State Capitol, Austin, TX.
October 24, 2011, 4:30 PM---San Francisco Public Library, The International Center, 100 Larkin Street, San Francisco, CA.
October 25, 2011---Reedley College, 995 North Reed Avenue, Reedley, CA.
Also, I recently posted a YouTube video of a reading and discussion of my novel, From This Wicked Patch of Dust: http://youtu.be/m4pwgIuGUOM. I hope you enjoy it.
I received a nice review of my new book of essays, Crossing Borders: Personal Essays, from the El Paso Times: "Troncoso is a complicated man trying to understand a complicated world. In his quest for understanding, he eloquently shares lessons learned in 16 provocative essays. These very personal essays cross several borders: cultural, historical, and self-imposed. For example, he contemplates writer's block in 'A Day Without Ideas,' comparing it to a deathlike existence where nothing matters and he will 'simply be there.' In a painful letter to his sons detailing their mother's struggle with breast cancer, Troncoso the writer reveals his true identity as Troncoso the frightened, caring, and strong father. He takes on the 9/11 attackers, in a piece called 'Terror and Humanity,' not with hatred or revenge, but with a plea for basic humanity....the collection remains timely. We owe it to ourselves to read, savor and read them again."Finally, I am working on several projects at the same time, while reading across the country for both books, correcting one son's essay for English, reviewing Spanish grammar for a test the other son will have today, feeding my beloved cat Ocistar, buying milk, and well, you get the picture. I am not that complicated; I am just exhausted. It has been a busy time, but so far I have not dropped anything I am juggling.
I love to hear from readers. That lifts me up like nothing else. Every time someone writes to me about how they enjoyed one of my stories, or identified with one of my characters, or thought about his or her life differently after reading my work, that day my bones do not ache and I feel as powerful as the Housatonic River. Thank you.
www.ChicoLingo.com
September 20, 2011
Why I Wrote From This Wicked Patch of Dust
Two days ago at the Brooklyn Book Festival a young woman came up to me after my reading, and asked me a simple question: Why did I write my novel,
From This Wicked Patch of Dust
? The festival was my first big event to launch the novel, and although what she asked was straightforward, the answer is anything but. Let me give it a shot.
I wrote From This Wicked Patch of Dust, because I wanted to write about the Mexican-American border, where I grew up. I wanted to write about the poorest of the poor in a Texas colonia, or shantytown, with a dream of becoming American. Although the novel is fiction, my family was also dirt poor in Ysleta on the outskirts of El Paso, yet I loved my childhood. Any voice I have as a writer is in one way or another rooted in communicating what was good, what was struggle, and what we couldn't answer in Ysleta.
Much of our political rhetoric only caricatures poor immigrants, documented and undocumented. There is rarely a sense of the commonality we, the more established inhabitants of these United States, share with these newcomers. I wanted to portray characters who come to life, and reach out to the reader, and find a place in your thoughts, emotions, and even laughter. I hope you will see the Martínez family clearly, their warts as well as their merits, and believe in these characters.
I also wanted to focus on the dynamics of immigrant families. If you read From This Wicked Patch of Dust you will experience the lives of Cuauhtémoc and Pilar Martínez, the parents from the 'old world,' so to speak, who sometimes, and sometimes do not, see eye-to-eye on whether and how their family should become American. The children —Julia, Francisco, Marcos, and Ismael— take divergent paths to becoming American, adopt different religions or cultures, and even move to different places across the country. The siblings are in conflict with each other, they are in conflict with their parents, yet all of them still belong to and love their family. The Martinez family tries to keep it together as many things, including their own decisions, pull this family apart. How do we honor who we are, how do we break away from where we began, and what does all of this mean for our families?
Another question at the heart of my novel was: How can I portray the culture of a group, not one individual, but a related group, as in a family? That is the reason From This Wicked Patch of Dust is told, alternatively, from the six perspectives of each family member. We live in families, yet each of us experiences being part of a family in a different way. We are together, yet we are also apart, in a family. What keeps us together, and what drives us apart? That's the drama at the heart of the novel.
How does time fragment the togetherness of a family? This is why the chapters in From This Wicked Patch of Dust are several years apart. Our common experiences are the bonds that keep us together for a while, but as we get older, as individuals and as a whole family, those common experiences become more experiences in the past. We start living our lives apart, yet we often yearn to come back together, as adult children, as elderly parents, to that togetherness we once had. Even though the children of Pilar and Cuauhtémoc Martínez end up in different parts of the world, so far from Ysleta in many ways beyond geography, they retain a bit of Ysleta within them.
Finally, the allegorical allusions in the novel are focused on this question: Why are we as a country growing further apart? Why do we have less in common with each other? Why do we see only 'the other' in our neighbor, or in an ethnic group not quite like us, or in a religious group not quite like us? Admittedly, a country is not a family. I know that. But there is a sense when a group feels more together, and when it has ceased to be a group at all and individuals just exist next to each other, ready to take advantage of each other at a moment's notice.
Have we reached that point in the United States, where we have little in common with each other? Where Birmingham, New York City, and Reno are as foreign as Cairo or Tel Aviv? There is no way empirically to prove or disprove this. I can only point to our bitter political rhetoric, the media manipulation to promote narrow agendas and to divide us, and what I hear and see on the streets of El Paso, New York, Kansas City, San Francisco, and wherever else I travel.
What can bring us back together, if anything? From This Wicked Patch of Dust has a tentative answer at the end of the novel. Of course, I am always hopeful. I will always make the effort to grapple at an answer even when the question is one such as: Why did you write this novel? But I must have said something coherent to the young woman at the Brooklyn Book Festival. After I finished, she bought the book and asked me to sign it to 'Meryl.'
www.ChicoLingo.com
I wrote From This Wicked Patch of Dust, because I wanted to write about the Mexican-American border, where I grew up. I wanted to write about the poorest of the poor in a Texas colonia, or shantytown, with a dream of becoming American. Although the novel is fiction, my family was also dirt poor in Ysleta on the outskirts of El Paso, yet I loved my childhood. Any voice I have as a writer is in one way or another rooted in communicating what was good, what was struggle, and what we couldn't answer in Ysleta.
Much of our political rhetoric only caricatures poor immigrants, documented and undocumented. There is rarely a sense of the commonality we, the more established inhabitants of these United States, share with these newcomers. I wanted to portray characters who come to life, and reach out to the reader, and find a place in your thoughts, emotions, and even laughter. I hope you will see the Martínez family clearly, their warts as well as their merits, and believe in these characters.
I also wanted to focus on the dynamics of immigrant families. If you read From This Wicked Patch of Dust you will experience the lives of Cuauhtémoc and Pilar Martínez, the parents from the 'old world,' so to speak, who sometimes, and sometimes do not, see eye-to-eye on whether and how their family should become American. The children —Julia, Francisco, Marcos, and Ismael— take divergent paths to becoming American, adopt different religions or cultures, and even move to different places across the country. The siblings are in conflict with each other, they are in conflict with their parents, yet all of them still belong to and love their family. The Martinez family tries to keep it together as many things, including their own decisions, pull this family apart. How do we honor who we are, how do we break away from where we began, and what does all of this mean for our families?
Another question at the heart of my novel was: How can I portray the culture of a group, not one individual, but a related group, as in a family? That is the reason From This Wicked Patch of Dust is told, alternatively, from the six perspectives of each family member. We live in families, yet each of us experiences being part of a family in a different way. We are together, yet we are also apart, in a family. What keeps us together, and what drives us apart? That's the drama at the heart of the novel.
How does time fragment the togetherness of a family? This is why the chapters in From This Wicked Patch of Dust are several years apart. Our common experiences are the bonds that keep us together for a while, but as we get older, as individuals and as a whole family, those common experiences become more experiences in the past. We start living our lives apart, yet we often yearn to come back together, as adult children, as elderly parents, to that togetherness we once had. Even though the children of Pilar and Cuauhtémoc Martínez end up in different parts of the world, so far from Ysleta in many ways beyond geography, they retain a bit of Ysleta within them.
Finally, the allegorical allusions in the novel are focused on this question: Why are we as a country growing further apart? Why do we have less in common with each other? Why do we see only 'the other' in our neighbor, or in an ethnic group not quite like us, or in a religious group not quite like us? Admittedly, a country is not a family. I know that. But there is a sense when a group feels more together, and when it has ceased to be a group at all and individuals just exist next to each other, ready to take advantage of each other at a moment's notice.
Have we reached that point in the United States, where we have little in common with each other? Where Birmingham, New York City, and Reno are as foreign as Cairo or Tel Aviv? There is no way empirically to prove or disprove this. I can only point to our bitter political rhetoric, the media manipulation to promote narrow agendas and to divide us, and what I hear and see on the streets of El Paso, New York, Kansas City, San Francisco, and wherever else I travel.
What can bring us back together, if anything? From This Wicked Patch of Dust has a tentative answer at the end of the novel. Of course, I am always hopeful. I will always make the effort to grapple at an answer even when the question is one such as: Why did you write this novel? But I must have said something coherent to the young woman at the Brooklyn Book Festival. After I finished, she bought the book and asked me to sign it to 'Meryl.'
www.ChicoLingo.com
September 9, 2011
September Readings and Events
This is my schedule during the month of September. My new novel, From This Wicked Patch of Dust
, is being distributed right now, and my book of essays, Crossing Borders: Personal Essays
, should be available at the end of the month. If you are in Brooklyn, San Elizario or El Paso, please come by and say hello.
September 18, 2011, 11 AM---Brooklyn Book Festival, "The Good, the Bad, and the Family" in St. Frances McCardle Hall, 209 Joralemon, Brooklyn, NY. I will be on this panel with Tom Perrotta and Elizabeth Nunez.
From noon until 2:00 PM, I will then go to booth #125, with La Casa Azul Bookstore and Las Comadres Para Las Americas, and with two of my favorite people, Aurora Anaya-Cerda and Nora Comstock. They will have quite a line up of authors from noon until 5:00 PM, so please visit them and support independent bookstores and the Brooklyn Book Festival.
September 23, 2011, 2 PM---San Elizario High School, 13981 Socorro Road, San Elizario, TX.
September 23, 2011, 4-6 PM---The Bookery, 10167 Socorro Road (just past the Socorro Mission), Socorro, TX.
September 24, 2011---El Paso Community College, Annual Literary Fiesta, El Paso, TX. I will be spending the day with EPCC students, thanks to Rich Yañez. (Rich you don't know the software circus I had to go through to get that ñ into your name on Blogger. But now that I know how to do it, here's a few extra to keep in your pocket, ñ ñ ñ, whenever someone leaves them out. I know about mangled surnames, believe me.)
The third annual EPCC Literary Fiesta will be at its Administrative Services Center, Building A, 9050 Viscount in El Paso. From 10 AM to 4 PM, Sept. 24, the fiesta will feature readings, a children's corner, book sellers, food, arts and crafts, and vendors. Admission is free and open to the public.
For information: Keri Moe, 915-373-5096.
To see what I have lined up for the rest of the year, please visit my Reading Schedule at:
http://www.sergiotroncoso.com/readings/index.htm
, is being distributed right now, and my book of essays, Crossing Borders: Personal Essays, should be available at the end of the month. If you are in Brooklyn, San Elizario or El Paso, please come by and say hello. September 18, 2011, 11 AM---Brooklyn Book Festival, "The Good, the Bad, and the Family" in St. Frances McCardle Hall, 209 Joralemon, Brooklyn, NY. I will be on this panel with Tom Perrotta and Elizabeth Nunez.
From noon until 2:00 PM, I will then go to booth #125, with La Casa Azul Bookstore and Las Comadres Para Las Americas, and with two of my favorite people, Aurora Anaya-Cerda and Nora Comstock. They will have quite a line up of authors from noon until 5:00 PM, so please visit them and support independent bookstores and the Brooklyn Book Festival.
September 23, 2011, 2 PM---San Elizario High School, 13981 Socorro Road, San Elizario, TX.September 23, 2011, 4-6 PM---The Bookery, 10167 Socorro Road (just past the Socorro Mission), Socorro, TX.
September 24, 2011---El Paso Community College, Annual Literary Fiesta, El Paso, TX. I will be spending the day with EPCC students, thanks to Rich Yañez. (Rich you don't know the software circus I had to go through to get that ñ into your name on Blogger. But now that I know how to do it, here's a few extra to keep in your pocket, ñ ñ ñ, whenever someone leaves them out. I know about mangled surnames, believe me.)The third annual EPCC Literary Fiesta will be at its Administrative Services Center, Building A, 9050 Viscount in El Paso. From 10 AM to 4 PM, Sept. 24, the fiesta will feature readings, a children's corner, book sellers, food, arts and crafts, and vendors. Admission is free and open to the public.
For information: Keri Moe, 915-373-5096.
To see what I have lined up for the rest of the year, please visit my Reading Schedule at:
http://www.sergiotroncoso.com/readings/index.htm
August 30, 2011
The Lost Border: Request for Submissions
Request for SubmissionsThe Lost Border: Essays on how life and culture have been changed by the violence along the U.S.-Mexico border
Extended Deadline: October 15, 2011
This new anthology will focus on the unique life and culture along the U.S.-Mexico border that has been changed and even lost because of the recent drug violence. This book will feature writers from both sides of the border who explore the culture that has been changed or lost, the lives that have been split in two, and the way of life that has been interrupted, or even eradicated, by the violence along the border.
Some of the questions that might be explored are: What way of life has been lost due to the recent violence? What are the ramifications of this change for culture, politics, families, institutions, the arts, and even individual psyches? Will it be possible to regain what has been truncated? What might the border's future be? Are there any positive side-effects?
We hope that writers will conjure the past in telling moments and reflect on the forces that have spun out of control to destroy the unique bi-national, bicultural existence of la frontera. Location is a vitally important and intrinsic element of the essays we seek, and each essay should show substantial ties to the border through the essayist's lived experience. We anticipate that the writing will draw scholars as well as those in the general public who wish to thoughtfully negotiate the border's current complexities.
The publisher of this project will be Arte Público Press and the anticipated publication date is in 2013.
Please read the submission guidelines and follow them. We look forward to reading your submission. We will contact you by email about acceptance or rejection of your essay.
Sarah Cortez (Cortez.Sarah@gmail.com)Sergio Troncoso (SergioTroncoso@gmail.com)Editors
Submission Guidelines:The extended deadline is October 15, 2011 postmark. The length of the essay should be 3,000 to 6,000 words; please title your essay. The essay should be unpublished and written in English. All contributors shall be Latino/a.
Each essay should be typed in Times Roman 12-point type with standard manuscript formatting for margins and spacing.
Include your name, snail-mail address, two contact phone numbers, two email addresses, and exact word count in the top left margin of the first page of your manuscript.
We do accept electronic submissions. Send them to: SergioTroncoso@gmail.com.
If you are sending hard copies, mail two copies of the essay and your bio to Sergio Troncoso, 2373 Broadway, Suite 1808, New York, NY 10024. No submission will be returned; please keep a copy for your records.
Please include a one-paragraph biography summarizing your publishing credits. Include a sentence or two that defines your relationship with the border (e.g. cities or towns lived in, length of residence/familiarity).
If your essay is accepted, we will need an electronic file as a Word document. We will contact you about suggested revisions.
July 26, 2011
Economic uncertainty as a political weapon
You have to hand it to the House Republicans: they have outplayed President Obama in almost every respect on the deficit-ceiling debate, but primarily in their use of economic uncertainty as a political weapon. Republicans have set the terms of the debate, while Obama did not respond, analyze, anticipate, and attack months ago.
The president did not try to frame the debate, or lead the country to set the terms of the debate, and he did not anticipate how sophisticated, yet simple, the Republican plan against him was, and counteract it before it blossomed into the near-fiasco we are facing now.
Consumer confidence and business confidence are key to uplifting an economy burdened by recession, and shock, as the U.S. economy was at the end of 2008. George W. Bush left an economic mess for Obama to clean up. This confidence is invisible, but if it is eroded over time, people and businesses don't invest, don't create jobs, and don't take risks, even if they have the money. They hoard their cash.
After we weakly climbed out of recession with the emergency measures adopted by Obama immediately after he took office (some of these measures had been initiated by the Bush administration), I knew we were at the point where the economy would either gain momentum, or lose steam and fall back to some version of the disaster at the end of the Bush administration.
If we gained momentum, we would create more jobs, and the temporary measures which added to the deficit would be a historical footnote since the economy would grow fast enough to reduce the deficit in relation to the size of our economy. But if we didn't, then we would be saddled with the 'temporary deficit,' and a lack of jobs, and a weak economy, and Obama would surely not be re-elected. Since I voted for Obama, I was rooting for the economy to improve, and expand, over the past two-three years.
During these past two-three years, however, I noticed something interesting. I've read the New York Times and Wall Street Journal every day for decades. I want different perspectives; I want to consider different voices. But whereas the editorial page of the Journal has always been conservative, at least fiscally, if not socially, the front page and news pages have been a mix. But not, in my opinion, anymore.
With every slight uptick in the economy over the past two-three years, whether it was on jobs, or corporate profits, the front-page Journal articles were relentlessly negative. Sometimes on the same story, it seemed as if I were living in two realities: what the Journal reported —the economy is awful under Obama, we are going nowhere, these corporate profits are illusory— and what the Times reported— we may be turning the corner, banks have recapitalized, companies are flush with cash. Was the Journal being too pessimistic, or the Times too optimistic?
You could pick your facts to support either side, and that's my point. But why would anyone want to 'talk down' the economy? I even imagined that perhaps the new Journal owner, Rupert Murdoch, had placed the kind of editors who would undermine confidence in the American economy under Obama. But perhaps I was being too paranoid, I thought. But I also knew such a relentlessly negative spin on anything that might improve the economy might have an effect on whether individuals and companies spend money, even modestly, to grow us out of the deficit we incurred after we cleaned up the mess Bush left behind.
Obama didn't help himself by focusing on healthcare reform, instead of jobs, eighteen months ago. He didn't help himself by not recognizing that House Republicans, after last November's election, did not trust him, assumed he was a traditional, even radical liberal, and would not work with him. They want him out. Period.
As an old friend pointed out to me this summer, perhaps Obama was too young when he became president. Too inexperienced. Too much in belief of himself, instead of recognizing what effect he had on others, particularly a white middle-class seeing their livelihoods slip away for their children, while this country becomes more Latino, more Asian, more Muslim, while American corporations react to globalization by shipping jobs overseas, for more profits which their investors (often ourselves) demand.
If Obama had recognized the unique ways in which he would never be trusted by House Republicans, and perhaps a great swath of the American electorate, he would have 'triangulated,' à la Bill Clinton, before or certainly after last year's election. That just means Obama would have acted as a fiscal conservative to counteract the (reasonable and unreasonable) prejudices of these Republicans and the American electorate that would never trust him. In that way, Obama would have positioned himself for reelection, in the middle of the road, which is how you win elections in this country.
When Obama ordered our Navy Seals to kill Bin Laden, that was a perfect moment of 'triangulation': the quasi-Muslim American president, who may or may not have been born in Hawaii, killed one of America's greatest enemies. You could sense when that moment happened that Obama's harshest critics even tipped their hats to him, and perhaps for a moment reconsidered their zealous opposition to everything Obama. That moment put Obama in a new light. The problem is that Obama did not have, or aggressively pursue, enough of these 'triangulation moments.'
If he had done that, if Obama had recognized that a significant portion of the American electorate and these adamant, inflexible House Republicans were already painting him as a stick-figure liberal who will only explode the deficit any chance he gets, Obama would have acted differently, and set the terms of the debate. He would have gotten out of Afghanistan and Iraq, and pointed out the huge waste of billions of dollars on defense spending, while our allies spend so little and ride our coattails. He would have attacked government waste seriously, and closed unnecessary departments (but not the ones helping the disadvantaged or the needy). He would have repeatedly pointed out how certain American companies pay so little in taxes, because they have sweetheart tax breaks from Congress. He would have recognized that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac played an important role in the housing bubble that led to the financial crisis at the end of the Bush administration, and how Republicans and Democrats both benefited from their political and economic ties to these companies. Everybody in Congress was greedy when it came to Fannie and Freddie.
But Obama didn't do any of the above, relentlessly, day after day, ahead of the curve, so that he wouldn't be boxed in later. He allowed the House Republicans to set the terms of the debate, and he responded to what they wanted, and simply kept giving in to their demands. And they have just kept saying no.
What I think is rarely pointed out is how the House Republicans —by passing this temporary, short-term increase in the debt ceiling, with deep spending cuts and another vote in early 2012 on the debt ceiling— are precisely using economic uncertainty as a political weapon. The more uncertainty there is in and about the American economy, the fewer jobs will be created. The more economic uncertainty there is in and about the American economy, the more the stock market will languish, or even decline. And of course, the more the government is contracting before the election, the fewer jobs there will be in 2012. The fewer jobs in the American economy, and the worse off Americans feel about their economic prospects, the better the 2012 elections will be for the Republicans.
They have outplayed Obama, and now here we stand on the brink of default. We will all pay a huge price for these politically selfish games. When we 'talk down' the economy, when we lose our AAA credit rating, and when the dollar's role as a reserve currency erodes, we all lose. What happened to 'us'? Why are we not a 'we' anymore? Who could be that transformative, adaptive figure who can still lead us to change for the better, while still making us believe we belong together as a country?
www.ChicoLingo.com
The president did not try to frame the debate, or lead the country to set the terms of the debate, and he did not anticipate how sophisticated, yet simple, the Republican plan against him was, and counteract it before it blossomed into the near-fiasco we are facing now.
Consumer confidence and business confidence are key to uplifting an economy burdened by recession, and shock, as the U.S. economy was at the end of 2008. George W. Bush left an economic mess for Obama to clean up. This confidence is invisible, but if it is eroded over time, people and businesses don't invest, don't create jobs, and don't take risks, even if they have the money. They hoard their cash.After we weakly climbed out of recession with the emergency measures adopted by Obama immediately after he took office (some of these measures had been initiated by the Bush administration), I knew we were at the point where the economy would either gain momentum, or lose steam and fall back to some version of the disaster at the end of the Bush administration.
If we gained momentum, we would create more jobs, and the temporary measures which added to the deficit would be a historical footnote since the economy would grow fast enough to reduce the deficit in relation to the size of our economy. But if we didn't, then we would be saddled with the 'temporary deficit,' and a lack of jobs, and a weak economy, and Obama would surely not be re-elected. Since I voted for Obama, I was rooting for the economy to improve, and expand, over the past two-three years.
During these past two-three years, however, I noticed something interesting. I've read the New York Times and Wall Street Journal every day for decades. I want different perspectives; I want to consider different voices. But whereas the editorial page of the Journal has always been conservative, at least fiscally, if not socially, the front page and news pages have been a mix. But not, in my opinion, anymore.
With every slight uptick in the economy over the past two-three years, whether it was on jobs, or corporate profits, the front-page Journal articles were relentlessly negative. Sometimes on the same story, it seemed as if I were living in two realities: what the Journal reported —the economy is awful under Obama, we are going nowhere, these corporate profits are illusory— and what the Times reported— we may be turning the corner, banks have recapitalized, companies are flush with cash. Was the Journal being too pessimistic, or the Times too optimistic?
You could pick your facts to support either side, and that's my point. But why would anyone want to 'talk down' the economy? I even imagined that perhaps the new Journal owner, Rupert Murdoch, had placed the kind of editors who would undermine confidence in the American economy under Obama. But perhaps I was being too paranoid, I thought. But I also knew such a relentlessly negative spin on anything that might improve the economy might have an effect on whether individuals and companies spend money, even modestly, to grow us out of the deficit we incurred after we cleaned up the mess Bush left behind.
Obama didn't help himself by focusing on healthcare reform, instead of jobs, eighteen months ago. He didn't help himself by not recognizing that House Republicans, after last November's election, did not trust him, assumed he was a traditional, even radical liberal, and would not work with him. They want him out. Period.
As an old friend pointed out to me this summer, perhaps Obama was too young when he became president. Too inexperienced. Too much in belief of himself, instead of recognizing what effect he had on others, particularly a white middle-class seeing their livelihoods slip away for their children, while this country becomes more Latino, more Asian, more Muslim, while American corporations react to globalization by shipping jobs overseas, for more profits which their investors (often ourselves) demand.
If Obama had recognized the unique ways in which he would never be trusted by House Republicans, and perhaps a great swath of the American electorate, he would have 'triangulated,' à la Bill Clinton, before or certainly after last year's election. That just means Obama would have acted as a fiscal conservative to counteract the (reasonable and unreasonable) prejudices of these Republicans and the American electorate that would never trust him. In that way, Obama would have positioned himself for reelection, in the middle of the road, which is how you win elections in this country.
When Obama ordered our Navy Seals to kill Bin Laden, that was a perfect moment of 'triangulation': the quasi-Muslim American president, who may or may not have been born in Hawaii, killed one of America's greatest enemies. You could sense when that moment happened that Obama's harshest critics even tipped their hats to him, and perhaps for a moment reconsidered their zealous opposition to everything Obama. That moment put Obama in a new light. The problem is that Obama did not have, or aggressively pursue, enough of these 'triangulation moments.'
If he had done that, if Obama had recognized that a significant portion of the American electorate and these adamant, inflexible House Republicans were already painting him as a stick-figure liberal who will only explode the deficit any chance he gets, Obama would have acted differently, and set the terms of the debate. He would have gotten out of Afghanistan and Iraq, and pointed out the huge waste of billions of dollars on defense spending, while our allies spend so little and ride our coattails. He would have attacked government waste seriously, and closed unnecessary departments (but not the ones helping the disadvantaged or the needy). He would have repeatedly pointed out how certain American companies pay so little in taxes, because they have sweetheart tax breaks from Congress. He would have recognized that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac played an important role in the housing bubble that led to the financial crisis at the end of the Bush administration, and how Republicans and Democrats both benefited from their political and economic ties to these companies. Everybody in Congress was greedy when it came to Fannie and Freddie.
But Obama didn't do any of the above, relentlessly, day after day, ahead of the curve, so that he wouldn't be boxed in later. He allowed the House Republicans to set the terms of the debate, and he responded to what they wanted, and simply kept giving in to their demands. And they have just kept saying no.
What I think is rarely pointed out is how the House Republicans —by passing this temporary, short-term increase in the debt ceiling, with deep spending cuts and another vote in early 2012 on the debt ceiling— are precisely using economic uncertainty as a political weapon. The more uncertainty there is in and about the American economy, the fewer jobs will be created. The more economic uncertainty there is in and about the American economy, the more the stock market will languish, or even decline. And of course, the more the government is contracting before the election, the fewer jobs there will be in 2012. The fewer jobs in the American economy, and the worse off Americans feel about their economic prospects, the better the 2012 elections will be for the Republicans.
They have outplayed Obama, and now here we stand on the brink of default. We will all pay a huge price for these politically selfish games. When we 'talk down' the economy, when we lose our AAA credit rating, and when the dollar's role as a reserve currency erodes, we all lose. What happened to 'us'? Why are we not a 'we' anymore? Who could be that transformative, adaptive figure who can still lead us to change for the better, while still making us believe we belong together as a country?
www.ChicoLingo.com
May 31, 2011
Solve the mystery, win a free book
I am a contributor to a terrific new anthology,
You Don't Have A Clue: Latino Mystery Stories for Teens
(Arte Público Press), which was published a month ago and has been receiving stellar reviews. From Booklist, the anthology won a starred review. Kirkus called it "a consistent, well-crafted collection." The Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books said, "The mix of realistic and fantastic mysteries guarantees broad reader appeal for this impressive collection." Much credit should go to our editor, Sarah Cortez, whose careful guidance throughout the project was exemplary.
This anthology is chockfull of writers I admire: Mario Acevedo, Carlos Hernandez, Diana Lopez, René Saldana, Alicia Gaspar de Alba, Richie Narvaez, Gwendolyn Zepeda, Ray Villareal, Manuel Ramos, Daniel Olivas, and many others. I am proud to be included among them, writing mysteries and encouraging teens (and all of us, for that matter) to read.
So herewith is a challenge, to all intrepid readers in cyberspace and beyond: whoever can solve the mystery of my story "Nuts" in this collection, and email me what really happened to whom and why, will win a book signed by me and mailed to you. The first three individuals (teens, I hope) to send the correct answer to my email inbox at SergioTroncoso@gmail.com will win a free book. Will you have a clue? Well, that is the question. Read the following paragraphs carefully.
I wrote "Nuts" because I wanted to write a story to make the reader think about what really happened in the story and to prompt the reader to figure out the puzzle. I believe in 'close reading,' that is, reading so that every word is weighed carefully for its meaning, so that every detail is understood for why it is there. "Nuts" is written for that careful reader who will not miss any detail, and whether a detail matches other details in the story. I also want the reader to ponder what is in between the lines of the story, to understand the relationships between the characters, and to appreciate what is left unsaid between them. I have two teenage sons, and one of them is allergic to tree nuts, so I also wanted to write about that hidden, quotidian danger he faces. By the way, my sixteen-year-old figured out what really happened in "Nuts" on his first reading!
So about those clues. First, the cookie clue. Think about the cookies, and every instance in which the cookies are mentioned. Compare these instances. What do they tell you about what really happened?
Second, have you seen the movie "Juno"? You better run to Netflix, if you haven't. Remember the relationships between Juno, Bleeker, and Katrina de Voort? How is a scene in that movie and what is meant (but not said) about these relationships important to understanding what Zendon is feeling about his friend Ethan? Are there any other clues to indicate what Zendon is thinking, but not saying, to his friend Ethan?
Third, isn't that a strange name for the person who writes Ethan that email at the end, 'Doable HePrey'? Did you know that 'Sergio Troncoso' can also be 'Cooing Roosters' or 'Scrooges Riot On'? I love anagrams, don't you?
Finally, once you decipher the meaning behind the three clues above, what can you tell me about Ethan's moment of decision in the email, the response he almost sends, versus the response he actually sends at the end? That is the coup de grâce to understanding the meaning of this mystery.
For the prize, I will give the three winners a signed copy of You Don't Have A Clue . You can give your friends your unsigned copy, challenge them to solve and understand the mystery, and you can keep your prize book. We need to encourage everybody to read. I hope if I see you at a reading you will say hello, and tell me how you solved the mystery and how you can't wait to get into another story to solve the puzzle, to explore a new world, to gain a new perspective, to relish in that shiver scurrying up your bones when you say to yourself, 'Aha! Now I know!'
www.ChicoLingo.com
This anthology is chockfull of writers I admire: Mario Acevedo, Carlos Hernandez, Diana Lopez, René Saldana, Alicia Gaspar de Alba, Richie Narvaez, Gwendolyn Zepeda, Ray Villareal, Manuel Ramos, Daniel Olivas, and many others. I am proud to be included among them, writing mysteries and encouraging teens (and all of us, for that matter) to read.
So herewith is a challenge, to all intrepid readers in cyberspace and beyond: whoever can solve the mystery of my story "Nuts" in this collection, and email me what really happened to whom and why, will win a book signed by me and mailed to you. The first three individuals (teens, I hope) to send the correct answer to my email inbox at SergioTroncoso@gmail.com will win a free book. Will you have a clue? Well, that is the question. Read the following paragraphs carefully.
I wrote "Nuts" because I wanted to write a story to make the reader think about what really happened in the story and to prompt the reader to figure out the puzzle. I believe in 'close reading,' that is, reading so that every word is weighed carefully for its meaning, so that every detail is understood for why it is there. "Nuts" is written for that careful reader who will not miss any detail, and whether a detail matches other details in the story. I also want the reader to ponder what is in between the lines of the story, to understand the relationships between the characters, and to appreciate what is left unsaid between them. I have two teenage sons, and one of them is allergic to tree nuts, so I also wanted to write about that hidden, quotidian danger he faces. By the way, my sixteen-year-old figured out what really happened in "Nuts" on his first reading!
So about those clues. First, the cookie clue. Think about the cookies, and every instance in which the cookies are mentioned. Compare these instances. What do they tell you about what really happened?
Second, have you seen the movie "Juno"? You better run to Netflix, if you haven't. Remember the relationships between Juno, Bleeker, and Katrina de Voort? How is a scene in that movie and what is meant (but not said) about these relationships important to understanding what Zendon is feeling about his friend Ethan? Are there any other clues to indicate what Zendon is thinking, but not saying, to his friend Ethan?
Third, isn't that a strange name for the person who writes Ethan that email at the end, 'Doable HePrey'? Did you know that 'Sergio Troncoso' can also be 'Cooing Roosters' or 'Scrooges Riot On'? I love anagrams, don't you?
Finally, once you decipher the meaning behind the three clues above, what can you tell me about Ethan's moment of decision in the email, the response he almost sends, versus the response he actually sends at the end? That is the coup de grâce to understanding the meaning of this mystery.
For the prize, I will give the three winners a signed copy of You Don't Have A Clue . You can give your friends your unsigned copy, challenge them to solve and understand the mystery, and you can keep your prize book. We need to encourage everybody to read. I hope if I see you at a reading you will say hello, and tell me how you solved the mystery and how you can't wait to get into another story to solve the puzzle, to explore a new world, to gain a new perspective, to relish in that shiver scurrying up your bones when you say to yourself, 'Aha! Now I know!'
www.ChicoLingo.com
May 4, 2011
Obama's Focus
I like the picture released from the Situation Room, with President Barack Obama, Hilary Clinton, Robert Gates, Joe Biden and others riveted by the live screen as our Navy commandos enter Osama Bin Laden's compound in Pakistan and put a bullet in the terrorist's head. President Obama looked apprehensive, serious, and tough. But above all, focused. He took a gamble to get Bin Laden with commandos, rather than deciding to bomb the hell out of the compound. The man from Chicago would either win big or lose big.
But the gamble was a good one. The risk was commensurate with the reward: it was high risk to have our military men in harm's way, to risk a fiasco where they get killed, but it was also high reward to identify Osama Bin Laden, to kill him, and to prove to the world that the deed was truly done. What mattered was not only that our commandos were terrific, and that they completed their work without U.S. casualties. What mattered most of all was this focus. This focus from President Obama and why we were there. What 9/11 was originally about. Why we should ever risk putting our military in harm's way.
Too often, in the aftermath of 9/11, fear and paranoia were manipulated to focus on targets having little to do with what happened on that awful Tuesday in Manhattan, Washington, D.C., and Pennsylvania. I experienced that awful day as a New Yorker, and it is the day I became in my heart a New Yorker. But it is also the day I began to see this country twisted by opportunists and demagogues to focus not on Al Qaeda primarily, not on Bin Laden, but on agendas having little to do with what and who wounded us so profoundly.
Why did we start a war in Iraq? For weapons of mass destruction? But they weren't there. For vague Al Qaeda connections? But the terrorists who harmed us were principally in Afghanistan, and later we now know, Pakistan. My opinion is that President Bush started the war in Iraq to finish his daddy's work, to pay back Saddam Hussein for targeting his daddy, to prosecute a personalized, blustery foreign policy that put our military in harm's way. For the wrong reasons. For the wrong target.
Hussein was a creep and a dictator, but that isn't a national security reason necessary to commit to a war. And of course, once you start a war, as Eisenhower warned us, the military-industrial complex, from generals to lobbyists to anyone else who profits from wars, will make sure the ill-begotten war continues for years, with thousands of people dead, with hundreds of billions of dollars wasted. Attempt to stop a war we should have never started in the first place, and how many right-wingers will smear you as soft on 'defense'? How many in the public will believe them? How stupidly can we keep going round and round without the right purpose?
Here was another wrong target and wrong focus. How did we allow what happened on 9/11 to be twisted first into fear about security within our borders, then into paranoia about border security, and finally into attacks against undocumented workers? We allowed idiots like Lou Dobbs to manipulate our fears into a full-throated xenophobia against anyone dark-skinned, anyone 'not like us,' anyone whom we could easily blame, anyone weak and close at hand.
We couldn't get to Bin Laden, but we could kick these Mexicans pouring concrete on our sidewalks and slaving away for pennies, yes we could kick them in the ass and feel good about ourselves. It might have been false, this feel-good kick, but it was something, and it was what we had. How many of us stepped up, said no, and yelled at the xenophobes, to tell them they had the wrong target? How many pointed out that our lack of work ethic, and our lack of focus on educating our kids, and our adoration of a superficial, materialistic culture were primarily to blame for our not competing effectively against nations like China? Believe me, right now dying Detroit could be revived if civic leaders just rolled out the red carpet for one million, hard-working, undocumented Mexicans.
Obama, in that picture from the Situation Room, was focused. He was focused on the right target. He was focused on what should have been the target all along. Al Qaeda, and all it represents. Period. Now that this commando mission has been completed successfully, perhaps we in the United States can start focusing on our problems straight on. Our real problems. Not our prejudices. Not our fantasies. Not our petty vendettas. But the problems that matter. To solve them, to make us a better country, to overcome even the worst of our days.
www.ChicoLingo.com
But the gamble was a good one. The risk was commensurate with the reward: it was high risk to have our military men in harm's way, to risk a fiasco where they get killed, but it was also high reward to identify Osama Bin Laden, to kill him, and to prove to the world that the deed was truly done. What mattered was not only that our commandos were terrific, and that they completed their work without U.S. casualties. What mattered most of all was this focus. This focus from President Obama and why we were there. What 9/11 was originally about. Why we should ever risk putting our military in harm's way.
Too often, in the aftermath of 9/11, fear and paranoia were manipulated to focus on targets having little to do with what happened on that awful Tuesday in Manhattan, Washington, D.C., and Pennsylvania. I experienced that awful day as a New Yorker, and it is the day I became in my heart a New Yorker. But it is also the day I began to see this country twisted by opportunists and demagogues to focus not on Al Qaeda primarily, not on Bin Laden, but on agendas having little to do with what and who wounded us so profoundly.
Why did we start a war in Iraq? For weapons of mass destruction? But they weren't there. For vague Al Qaeda connections? But the terrorists who harmed us were principally in Afghanistan, and later we now know, Pakistan. My opinion is that President Bush started the war in Iraq to finish his daddy's work, to pay back Saddam Hussein for targeting his daddy, to prosecute a personalized, blustery foreign policy that put our military in harm's way. For the wrong reasons. For the wrong target.
Hussein was a creep and a dictator, but that isn't a national security reason necessary to commit to a war. And of course, once you start a war, as Eisenhower warned us, the military-industrial complex, from generals to lobbyists to anyone else who profits from wars, will make sure the ill-begotten war continues for years, with thousands of people dead, with hundreds of billions of dollars wasted. Attempt to stop a war we should have never started in the first place, and how many right-wingers will smear you as soft on 'defense'? How many in the public will believe them? How stupidly can we keep going round and round without the right purpose?
Here was another wrong target and wrong focus. How did we allow what happened on 9/11 to be twisted first into fear about security within our borders, then into paranoia about border security, and finally into attacks against undocumented workers? We allowed idiots like Lou Dobbs to manipulate our fears into a full-throated xenophobia against anyone dark-skinned, anyone 'not like us,' anyone whom we could easily blame, anyone weak and close at hand.
We couldn't get to Bin Laden, but we could kick these Mexicans pouring concrete on our sidewalks and slaving away for pennies, yes we could kick them in the ass and feel good about ourselves. It might have been false, this feel-good kick, but it was something, and it was what we had. How many of us stepped up, said no, and yelled at the xenophobes, to tell them they had the wrong target? How many pointed out that our lack of work ethic, and our lack of focus on educating our kids, and our adoration of a superficial, materialistic culture were primarily to blame for our not competing effectively against nations like China? Believe me, right now dying Detroit could be revived if civic leaders just rolled out the red carpet for one million, hard-working, undocumented Mexicans.
Obama, in that picture from the Situation Room, was focused. He was focused on the right target. He was focused on what should have been the target all along. Al Qaeda, and all it represents. Period. Now that this commando mission has been completed successfully, perhaps we in the United States can start focusing on our problems straight on. Our real problems. Not our prejudices. Not our fantasies. Not our petty vendettas. But the problems that matter. To solve them, to make us a better country, to overcome even the worst of our days.
www.ChicoLingo.com
Chico Lingo, by Sergio Troncoso
Sergio Troncoso is the author of A Peculiar Kind of Immigrant's Son, The Last Tortilla and Other Stories, Crossing Borders: Personal Essays, and the novels The Nature of Truth and From This Wicked Pat
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