Mi Vida Mestiza...

"Indigenous like corn, like corn, the mestiza is a product of crossbreeding, designed for preservation under a variety of conditions. Like an ear of corn - a female seed-bearing organ - the mestiza is tenacious, tightly wrapped in the husks of her culture. Like kernels she clings to the cob; with thick stalks and strong brace roots, she holds tight to the earth - she will survive the crossroads."
Gloria Anzaldúa from the chapter of Borderland "La conciencia de la mestiza"

Memoria Mestiza

"¡Ya vamos ha comer! ¡Lávense sus manos!" my mother would yell from the back door of our house. Me and my brothers would come running in from outside ready to eat. We´d been running up and down the alleyways of San Angelo, Tx. on Tulane St. We played with kids named Trisha Holloway, Alex Tresler, Kim Cole, and Bret Miller. Running home each evening, I knew something was different about me and my brothers. As a young girl, I knew they didn't know the real me. I don´t ever remember telling them that my mom was Mexican and that we listened to Mariachi music like kids today talk about the Podcasts and music videos they watch. I don't ever remember wanting to tell them that we spoke Spanish at home, and that my favorite grandmother lived in El Paso, Tx, the Mexican border town. I knew some how that they would not understand. I knew somehow they wouldn´t think that it was "cool." We had the same skin color, but that was all me and neighborhood kids had in common. I just knew in my soul that I was different.

After serving the drinks and setting the table, we would sit down to dinner. My dad would choose one of just to bless the food. "Cristina," is all he would say and I knew to say the prayer on cue. "Nuestro bendito padre celestial te damos gracias por esta cena. Bendisela que de salud y fuerza a nuestros cuerpos. Te pedimos una bendicion para Gran´ma y Gran´pa Devereaux en California y tambien para Gran´ma Gonzalez en El Paso. Cuidalos y bendigalos. Tambien, bencie los hermanos y sus familias de la iglesia. Bendiganos mañana en escuela que nos valla bien. Te pedimos estas cosas en el nombre de Jesucristo...Amen." As soon as I said amen, the hands would shoot forward to grab the best chicken leg or to sip the Koolaid. The talk at dinner would go from school to who we were playing with that evening and what time we should come back after the meal. Dinner time was spoken all in English.

After the meal, my brothers would rinse their dishes and run back outside. I would scramble into the living room, sit down next to my dad in front of his homemade stereo and watch him select the music album of the evening. My father served a Mormon mission in the early 1960's in Mexico, right at the end of the siglo de oro. My father fell in love with the music, people, food, and culture. He brought that love home to us. Some nights it was Barry Manalow, and we´d buggy down to Copacabana, or Perez Prado and do a bit of Mambo No. 5. "Dad, let´s listen to some mariachi." Quiero oír Beatriz, o Lola, or Los Mariachis Vargas or Vicente or un Trio. My dad had all the masters in his collection. With the evening sun streaming into our living room, I was learning all about la música Mexicana. La música mas apasionado en todo el mundo.

And then other nights with the music playing in the background, I would creep into the family room where my parents had built a study station from left to right up and down against the wall. The shelves were stacked with books from American Literature to Encyclopedia Britanica. My favorite books were full of poems by T.S. Eliot, e.e.cummings, and Robert Frost. Poems written about dark things, winter evenings, and love. Poems carrying an Euro-Anglo tint. In my innocence, I didn't know about the radical nature of listening to Mexican singers such as Beatriz Adriana, Lola Beltran or Vicente Fernandez playing in the background while I perused through the pages of great American Literature. The cultural mixings in the evenings of my childhood have made me who I am today. I love good Am. literature (I got my undergrad degree in Am. Lit. and minor in Spanish), and I believe that the Mexican people and their culture live in me and form part of who I am in my memory, each memory of an after dinner time with my father, el profe Devereaux.

Below: Listen to Lola Beltran sing "Paloma Negra." This music stirs my soul... What stirs yours?